Main gist of the meeting
So Saint has been head of SpA, but having his life duties while also maintaining the back end of SpA have obviously left him little time develop the community. So I'll be assembling a team that will help run and structure the community for the future to relief Saint of community worries. Currently this team is myself, Whiskers and Mbl, but please if you are interested, speak up or shoot me a pm (maybe you have someone to suggest?) and I'll probably discuss it with the other two.

Head of SpA?
So one thing that needs to be worked out is who is going to head SpA? Does it need to be a singular person? Can we divide up community tasks? Will we still need a deciding vote even on a team?

Recruitment
This has gotten a little ignored, I head recruitment but unfortunatley I have a limited scope of SpA. I depend heavily on suggestions and feedback from all existing SpA members. The thread is still there and open, suggest new names or give feedback, positive or negative, so long as it's mature and without bias.

Age
SpecialAttack is obviously a mature(lolol) community and likewise for it's forum, this means swearing and 18+ content is allowed here. However if you are under 16 like I was once, your mind is probably already in the gutter, but just bare in mind there will be content not suitable for your age group. You wont be banned from the forum or any game servers if you're under 16, just so long as you behave maturely enough. If you prove to be a valuable and mature member of the community, your age shouldn't hinder your chances of joining the SpA members.


Social media
Amongst other jobs that will probably crop up if we restructure SpA, we will need a press team. We have GB3 already involved in this to some extent, so hopfully we can get some more people involved in that. I am able to do editting once I'm 100% finished with uni over summer if anyone wants to put some videos out there. Ideally we need a finger in every pie, people to promote us and represent us appropriatley outside of SpA, be it Reddit, Minecraft Forums, YouTube, FacePunch, Steam, Facebook or whatever.

New Games
Changes in the online gaming today mean it's not as easy to pull in players from purely running servers now that most games have their own servers. It's difficult, but we need to think about encouraging players from new or existing games we host, or do not host to get involved in the community.
If you feel we should host a game, and that it would benefit SpA, then suggest it. We can make mistakes and some failures, but just make sure when suggesting a game you are doing so for the right reasons, not just because you like it. Can we earn community members from it? Is it resource heavy? Does the game have any big problems like hacking or bugs? Most importantly the more people interested in the said game the better, because we need admins and people to look after the servers for that game.

Possible games?
DayZ Standalone
Starmade

Suggest!Suggest!

Get in involved yo
I know some of you really want in, and that's encouraging, ideally more jobs aimed at developing SpA will open for people as time passes. If you feel you should cover or be involved in a certain aspect of SpA then speak up, maybe pm one of the new managers or vouch for someone else, we will need you to run this community. There's some people who might feel entitled to help manage SpA or become a game manager, that's fine too, please approach us and so we can think about it. Alternatively you can leave it to other people, but you can still post feedback and suggestions, especially SpA members, you should all have a say in recruitment.

Most important thing I think is just being around really, bum around on IRC or mumble, organise nights to play a game. Check the forums, spark some interesting discussion, make use of the funny pictures thread etc. Beside playing the games, this is what keeps a community alive, this is what we're here for.

Other Notes:

• One idea I have is to recruit mutiple people to handle tasks. That way when someone has personal issues or hard work to do, other members will be able to pick up the slack. So that would go for anything from gameservers to handling a youtube account. Deffinetly a management structure we should test run.
  
  Forum flags, currently they rely on hlstats. Maybe they should rely on ip or have it so users can set them?
  
  Thoughts forum titles for donators? Should they expire? Will they create a negative hierachy?

We need to clean up and minimalise the forums.

Anything I've missed? Lets see some discussion.

Nice man! Seems about all that was covered. I do think we need to work on SpA points, and get them working. There are a few MC things that would be nice to see added to the shop.

For the flags I know there is a GeoIP api with google that we can use. This would allow us to do it all auto-magically.

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

Cool beans, exactly what was discussed.

We want ideas

As for the flags, if I remember correctly: The flags are pulled from our hlxstats if we have our forums account linked. The hlxstatsx gets our location based on our ip through GeoIP, but has not been working in hlxstatsx since I joined

Thought you said you weren't taking very detailed notes Junco. Anyways, I'd definitely be interested in helping out with minecraft; maybe even TF2. Best of luck to the three of you in managing SpA.

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<@wankin> i have a double penis one where it's meant to be and one on my head so i get called dick head alot but a plus is the ladies love it

Hello guys, you covered everything in the meeting nicely. I've already told SaintK that I'm involved with the sectors of advertising/promotion/marketing/economics and management. I'm currently in the middle of a promotion project for the community with Saint and we are trying to finish it. If we make it work, we'll announce all the details. So, I can help or manage those sectors that i mentioned and if i could manage the facebook page too i'd really like that. By the use of it, i could talk about the news of the gaming world, the news of the community, and with the facebook advertising program I will try to promote the server on my expense, and its a very good start of promoting our community. So yeah, i'll be waiting for an answer from you guys. Thanks.

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“Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston S. Churchill

Even though I ain't [SpA] (applied, though), I will help in any way I can. Zomb should know he can trust me with anything and so should mbl and Bubba, who already said what I was going to say.
      So, as I've already mentioned a few times, I'm pretty good with composing and photo manipulation, including creating completely original logos, images, BGs and shit (comes with "owning" the latest Adobe software). One thing we really need is advertising, which Zomb is supposed to be taking care of. Been away for a while, so I don't know how far he is, but he won't be 'alone' anymore.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
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“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.

Yeah this looks nice. I'm up for helping with anything, preferably minecraft. Also I am going to continue talking to saint, (or whoever is in charge now), about helping with forum management. Ect: Updating posts, and removing the ones that are no longer helpful.

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<Gandolf> If it's stupid but works, it's still stupid, but it works anyway.

I just got home from work. Sooooooooooo, I can be hardass and boss people around if you need an arsehole

On a more serious note. I'm one of the few veterans of SpA left here. So if you need someone for an odd job just holler

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Of all the things I lost, I miss my mind the most.

Don't worry - as long as you ain't dead and are useful for a recording of a game (or even a good explanation of "What? Wher? Why?" you'll be needed.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
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“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.

Just make sure you record him playing a game where rage is likely

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Looks Nice! I'm up for helping and stuff! Send me a pm if you want me to do something!:P

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“It always starts with rain. To hell with the light, I’d swear there was always rain first...”
-The keepers of the key

"What you believe to be true is false
What you thought right, wrong"
-Dimmu Borgir

I will be more than happy to help out with Minecraft. Most of the time I am on most staff are asleep or heading there so many things go unseen by staff. I have a good understanding of how everything works and I am willing to learn the ways of SMP. As for other games I'm always happy to get involved if my calculator of a computer will run them. If there is any way I can help I will be glad to.

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Procrastination is like a credit card: it's a lot of fun until you get the bill.
-Christopher Parker

Hmmm....

Perhaps we should take a more aggressive expansion. What I mean is try out lots of smaller servers (of what ever is new and popular). If something is big, keep/expand it. If something goes south just do away with it and try hosting something else. I'm not sure if this is practicle or not insofar as the technical aspects, but it would give lots of chances for us to get another big server going.

Sort of like the poker philosophy: "1 win should cover 3 losses."

Or pehaps I'm just on another crazy rambling.

No no, that makes perfect sense. It was mentioned in the meeting that we can trial some games, if they fail that's cool. What we need to avoid doing however is putting up game servers that no one from this community will play on. If someone approaches us with a promising game and a plan to manage it, then we might go through with it.

I don't want to be "the guy" but I've always felt like the forums color and arrangement was a tad bland, maybe a make over for the display would help. Maybe it's just me..idk

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Assassin3562: ./Suck my balls Divotoo
Divotoo> asking to get your balls sucked doesnt really help you when called gay
<Divotoo> just saying tho
<Assassin3562>
*Assassin3562 thinks his life over

Yo.. hello..
I just wanted to say that a Dayz-Standalone-Server would be very nice.
We (about 5 or 6 guys from GGC and GDC) are just waiting for the game and would like to play it on a SpA-Server.

.. so I know.. its no new suggestion.. just to point out that it is a great idea..

cya

Nice man! Hopefully its a lot better than the mod. I can't wait for this myself either

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jhvirik: you... get new one befour I get red in my face of hate
saintk: you have to send a DNA sample to Google these days in order to be able to reply on youtube

This is good news for us, deffinetly makes me a lot more confident in getting a server up.

I've been following the devblog, it looks really promising. A great deal more stable and cleaner than the mod is.

Maybe we can incorporate SpApoints into all or most games, especially minecraft, seeing as Minecraft is the most popular game we host. Like an addon to the contributor rank.

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Assassin3562: ./Suck my balls Divotoo
Divotoo> asking to get your balls sucked doesnt really help you when called gay
<Divotoo> just saying tho
<Assassin3562>
*Assassin3562 thinks his life over

Minecraft? Popular? Really, it's always just us "insiders" playing. TF2 seems to get much more traffic. The few times I've played it, all the servers've been fullish. But yeah, Minecraft could do with SpA points. I still must add that it ain't a new idea.

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https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL502D6BAD7E3A5EB8 – My compositions :U
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“If I myself had to portray the term 'people' by drawing it, I'd draw a mere gaping mouth, a clamouring mouth.” ― Pentti Linkola.

I think the big issue with SpApoints is that it requires a fair bit of coding to implement, and we don't really have the people to do that. That doesn't rule out a similiar system for some games though. No promises!

If you'd be interested in Epigenesis (think quake/UT shooterisch combined with bombing run and handball and plants and well yeah that'd be about it) I could see if I could rustle some jimmies and get a 4 pack or so for free.