Introducing the Planetary Vanguards

PERSONALLY
I think that is an awesome idea i posted in the vanguard chat because i think it would be a great way to show the community what we are alerting uber to in the community..(Not saying that it will happen but i'm voting for it, i also think this has been brought up in conversation before but we need to sort out how or where and many other thing's too still)
And it would be a great place for us to get feedback from the community about the decisions we have made about the topics chosen..

Well i now i will never be an ( Planetary Vanguard member ) thats just impossible!

But i still dont now what is a Planetary Vanguard hehe

Question: What kind of method will you guys be using to measure community interest? Or in other words, how will you guys decide on what makes it on the list and what doesn't?

POLLS!

i think the best way to answer that is "We are still trying to figure that out internally".
If such a forum or thread was made like TheKiller suggested, we could use that thread as a source of feedback to better shape the information being passed onto uber..
everyone would be able to veiw the "Hot Topic(s) we are trying to bring to ubers attention" then.
And like Thekiller said the community can "Scrutinize" over it to make sure the "Best Interest's of the Community" is what's passed on to uber and not personal agenda's

lol OMG please don't go there .. hahahahahahaha

--edit--
But a voting system would be cool

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well, let me state my suggestion this way:

the situation without logging and sharing what the vanguard forward to uber:


Ubers lack of transparency and external communication (except a few official posts) will now be fixed by a organisation that lacks transparency and external communication.(except a few official posts)

the amount of irony is so high that I'm now building a nuke every three seconds.

Seriously, polls are underused. The point of a poll is to show the thought process of the users reading the thread, in the inevitable scenario that me and another user turn the thread into a 5 page argument over nothing.

Once the forums gets the art of polling down pat, we'll be home and host

Polls only work when there is a discrete number of options with no variations, which is rarely the case. Even then they are self-selecting. Discussions take longer, but are far more fruitful and useful.

Polls are meaningless unless properly designed and a representative proportion of the population/community participate. Unless you can force people to answer polls or they are significantly interested then self selection biases make them effectively meaningless.

Discussions are more fruitful and useful, yes.

Polls are just indicative. They aren't stats.

You know this forum isn't the be all and end all of the community and community interactions with uber . There are after all Twitch, Steam, Reddit, IRC, the tournaments just to name the most common ones. And the current VGs are recognisable from them (at least to me and I'm not massively involved in any of them, currently) and at the end of the day they actually went and did something they discussed it and then actually went ahead and raised there concerns with Uber.

The result of which they have a slightly different forum title and get to take it on the nose from part of the community in the hope that they, using the channels that already existed (but maybe with a little more interest from uber now as they know they're interested and are constructively working to help) will provide a few more eyes to go over stuff and will hopefully manage to improve comms between the communities (there are more than just the forum remember) and uber. The current result of which seems to be a 8+ page thread before they've had a chance to actually see if this works. So give them a month and see how things are working at the end of it, and if they're working well they've already said they will potentially add more people.

At the end of the day Qui audet adipiscitur (who dares, wins) and they dared do something and got a "win" which to me doesn't really seem like much a win , seeing if anything if gives them more work with no pay off. End of the day Uber is God and will remain so as far as PA goes and Uber is and will continue to act in the forums and make all final calls.

Polls are not meaningless or ueless. Someone run a very simple one, the results of which the Vanguards will abide by as per the following:

Poll Question: Do you want the Planetary Vanguards to disband?

1. Yes
2. No

Yes of course, thank you kiwi.
All members of the Vanguards should abstain, but will they and is there any way for us to know whether they voted in favour of themselves or not? (ie, is this forum polling a secret ballot?)

Before we break out the pitchforks and initiate a poll to disband the Vanguards... GIVE THEM A BLOODY CHANCE. I'm willing to give them a month to get things settled and figure out the ends and outs of relaying information better then the devs.

I liked the game status brain dump. it alleviated a lot of pain the forum was having and settled some fears.


Also. @cola_colin Zaphod posted this in the thread and might of got buried, can you put it in the first post of the thread?
The Vanguard member list:
@cola_colin
@Culverin
@cwarner7264
@greppy
@KNight
@ledarsi
@liquius
@maxpowerz
@nanolathe
@SXX
@thetrophysystem
@wpmarshall
@YourLocalMadSci
@zaphodx

good idea, added that to the front post

I dig it. Being a very long time follower and poster of these forums I can say this is a good thing for PA and it's Community. Uber needs to worry less about the community uproar and communication and more about working on the game at this point. Sure they hired Brad to be the Community Manager but that's not just for PA. That's for all Uber's projects.

While Uber stay 'nose down' they can entrust a select group to bring and take info to the community. Remember this is going both ways. Not only will the Vanguard bring info to Uber they will most likely be the first to bring info to the public community.

A Planetary Vanguard acts both as Uber's ears and megaphones.

Personally I am most excited about the streamlined communication between Uber and their Community. They get to truly feel their own pulse and we may easily see their dreams. . .

This Post has to be a 2 parter, sorry guys.

Garat already replied a bit, I'll try to hit on the other areas;

1] This falls on Both the Vanguard members and Uber as well. Again, we can't stress this enough but this still very much in trial, as time goes on feedback from the community, Uber and the Vanguards themselves will be factored into how the group evolves over time and this is really nothing more than a starting point. This starting point was set more less by Uber themselves, we made some proposals and discussed possibilities with them but at the end it was Uber that said "We're gonna give this a shot, but you guys have to make it work".

2] See the last sentence above and my reply to Gunshin below.

3] I see it as being less about selecting specific information and more about picking a Topic(whether it's of our own initiative or requested by Uber) and trying to compile all the relevant information, possibly in a more digestible format, for Uber.

4] Personally I feel that the Vanguards being a Public group has far reaching benefits, far beyond trying to run this as some kind of secret society. Primarily in that the Devs can only handle so much "bandwidth" as Garat said, they can't talk 1-on-1 with 100 different people on a single subject, days can quickly vanish if they tried to like Neutrino did with this thread, and that's not something that Uber can really afford nor is it good for PA's development either. Our primary role is to help them make the most of that bandwidth.

Among the Vanguards we might be able to agree on some of the broader points like "current balance is bad" when it gets down to the specifics of What is needed to make balance not bad for example we get all kinds of differing opinions that pop up. Generally the more specific you get, the more different opinions there are and the Vanguards are no different from the forums int his regard.

As for the initial member list initially it was just a 1:1 transfer based on the letter that was sent, we've already had a couple changes to the list since this became public and ever a few more before that stage. As we've said this is still a lot to be figured out on both ends of this program so I would bet the list will change even further still as we move forward although currently we don't plan to add anyone until we get things in place more.

Personally I think the worst part about the current members is the timezone issue, many members hail from the EU and surrounding area which can leave our 'forum coverage' a little lopsided but this should matter less once we get things more structured.

There isn't anything overtly specific thus far, but the general idea is outlined in the first post.

1] We have spent 8 pages being as transparent as we can. we might have had a rough idea of what our overarching goals are for the Vanguard Program from making proposals and discussing them with Uber, but in many ways we do depend on each other being active and taking part in order to do everything we'd like to. Some things we just won't know how it'll go until we can actually do it, and we found out about this happening within a day of the community, so it's not like we've had time to figure everything out with Uber yet. We can't stress enough that this is still very much a trial and we will make changes as we discover they're needed.

2] Personally I don't see how this is an issue, part of the point of the group being public and the badges is so that when we say something "on Uber's behalf" it isn't written off as trolling or anything by someone that doesn't know any better.

End of Part 1

Part 2

I get where you're coming from with this, but I don't think it's a solution to a problem. Pretty much any issue you have with the Vanguards is, or can be, present in a 'Community Review' but possibly be even worse because you can't guarantee participation and so you could easily get biased 'reviews'.

At a certain point you do need trust, but in the end I don't see it being so much trust in us, but Trust in Uber because they still have the power at the end of the day. Uber isn't going to vanish from the forums and if we were to try and pull a fast one on them I'm sure they'd pick up on it, they're a bunch of smart guys after all.

Aside from the obvious metric of how often something is discussed there are other factors that will need to be considered such as relevancy. For example Uber might not want to do a "round-up" on UI stuff right now because they are close to updating with a UI Overhaul(essentially it's too late at this stage to change things) but maybe a week or so afterwards they might want us to 'round-up' the communities' thoughts on areas of improvement perhaps.

In the end this isn't really a science and I imagine that Uber is going to 'dictate' ares they want us to focus on to a fair degree. It makes sense because we are here to help them in the end.

This is one of the hopes we have for the program, I'd imagine Uber would still be making the announcements and such while it's the Vanguards that help the people understand some of the reasoning where appropriate. Like I said earlier, the guys at Uber only have so much 'bandwidth' and our goal is to help them maximize it.

Whew, hopefully that helped some people out.

Mike