Most of you know OptionZero already from his insightful diaries and comments, but he's taking on an additional role at GSoM. He's going to keep the diaries section up to our high GSoM standards and making sure everyone follows the community guidelines. If you can't follow the guidelines, you got problems.

We were impressed by his knowledge of the game and willingness to help make the community better. After he approached us about assisting our efforts, we began talks with his agent to give him a little more power. Atma, OZ's agent, and I spent long nights discussing exactly what his role would be. A couple of the times, Atma and I nearly cut off negotiations, but after weeks and weeks of negotiations, the dust settled and we hammered out a deal. Terms of the deal will not be disclosed, but we're still under the cap for other possible free agent deals. So what exactly did we decide? Here's a summary from his original post:

We're excited to bring on OptionZero in this volunteer effort. He's going to make this community even stronger with his experience from moderating and improving other online communities. I'll be honest, in the last week or so, things have greatly improved in the diaries. GSoM is receiving higher quality and well thought out diaries. OptionZero is just going to make ensure that this keeps up and that we get only high quality diaries for all of the readers on the site. We respect his decision making and will stand behind his decisions in what he feels is necessary. We expect you to respect his decisions as well.

This is the free agent pickup that Atma and I feel could be the blogosphere steal of the summer. Marco ain't got nothin' on OptionZero!