Journal 2009-09-12 Most Valued Contributers - New Forum Rank!

Most Valued Contributers - New Forum Rank!

A new GMC rank has just seen the light, MVPs will soon populate our forums, but what are these MVPs you might be asking yourself?

Moderation Policy Director Andrew Cockburn has just explained in our boards all you need to know about this brand new feature, so let's hear what he had to say about it:

Dear all,

As you are all aware we recently launched a thread for nomination of new Forum Seniors. Whilst we are very strict with the attributes we are looking for in a Senior, we also saw in the nominations that there were many very deserving individuals - far too many to make them all Seniors. As a result we have decided to create a new forum rank called "Most Valuable Contributer" (MVC for short).

MVCs will be decided by a popular vote on the forum, based on nominations in a nomination thread (we'll use the existing Senior nomination thread for the first vote or two).

- As an MVC, you will get free GMC membership on a rolling 3 month basis - we will just check that you are still as active every 3 months before renewing your membership, so as long as you stay a top contributer, GMC will be free for life! - You will also get a special MVC badge (similar to the Senior badges)

The MVC qualification will be a true measure of how helpful you have been on the forum, and over time we expect there to be more MVCs than Seniors - Seniors will continue to be selected by the management as individuals are seen to deserve the honor.

So, what is the difference between a Senior and an MVC? Apart from the selection method, in Seniors we are looking for something a little extra.

- an MVC will be very active and answer questions in the forum and give great advice, help others out. - a Senior we would want to be as active as an MVC but also be proactive and maybe come up with some new ideas for GMC, help start a new program (for instance, Chris Evans became a Senior for his activities around virtual bands).

In most cases we would expect Seniors to already be MVCs when the program gets going, but not always. Finally, for Seniors, we demand impeccable forum conduct. Anyone that has caused the moderators any problems in the past will not be considered, as we will often recruit Seniors to positions of responsibility within GMC.

Enough of the rules - it's time to get started - we will be running an MVC election every month for a few months to get some of you deserving members promoted as soon as possible. After that we will run an election based on the number of nominations we receive. Again, there is no fixed quota of MVCs (just like the Seniors) we only want to promote deserving members.

So look out for the nomination thread and a vote in the next few days!