Introducing the Planetary Vanguards

I don't want to be a stick in the mud, but....

How is this any different WHATSOEVER to what these people did before?

Like at all?

Seriously? This is what Knight does already! Or at least, beforehand.

What is like a merit badge system, a way of giving people a shiny sticker for the 'contributions' they have made?

This all seems a little.....POINTLESS and really kind of a way of dividing the community between the posters who uber likes and doesn't like.

It just sounds like a way of putting up a wall between the community and the company, stifling communication through the 'vanguards' rather then fostering it.

there is no bad blood between me and any realm members. I chose to stand down at the time because uni started to become more demanding. my objections and criticisms ate against the system that is presented here, not the people in it.

Good on you man!!! wasn't all that long ago I was the same and this post made me realise just how far I have come

I also think you'd be perfect as a PV

Believe me killer when I say we'd have liked something smoother to start with but it seems the guys at Uber are just too efficient and the badges were assigned before anyone realized and the first we had learned of it was someone on the forums asking about it leaving us scrambling to get the post ready and trying to involve as many members as possible but because he group was already public we wanted to get I out as soon as possible and add to it as required instead of leaving the community in the dark until we were fully ready.

As for Max's choice, if you find the information he's already shared to be insufficient I suggest PMing him direct to ask if he has anything further to share.

Brian, it is still a selection thought. Like we said, this wasn't a brash "off handed" decision. We as letter co-signers played no active role in choosing the initial Vanguard members.

Ign, you are vastly over assuming the amount of communication I have have with the devs, prior to this at least 95% of my contact with the devs happened on the forums just like everyone else.

Mike

Exactly, so why introduce this vanguard thing when it changes absolutely nothing and has no purpose?

What I was able to do before and what we hope the Vanguards will be capable of doing are very different. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Mike

What I was able to do before and what we hope the Vanguards will be capable of doing are very different. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

Mike[/quote]

Well from the initial post all it did was describe what you already did, so I still don't know the point.

Can you be more specific? Like I explained until this I was not regularity in contact with the devs outside of regular forum posting that are available to everyone.

Mike

I don't see what the issue is with who the Vanguards are. They've already said any issues you might have had with them are in the past, and that they are held to a particular standard now.

As far as I'm concerned, that's good enough for me. People deserve to prove themselves, especially if they're dedicated about the game. Which they are from what I've seen, even if I've disagreed with them in the past.

The current situation is this:

• Uber have said that they want to use the Vanguards to facilitate 'high bandwidth' communication. Obviously communicating by voice is much easier and more fluid than a textual exchange, and whoever we're talking to can multi-task and carry on working at the same time. It means that Uber can transmit and receive more information in less time
• I offered them the use of a private passworded channel on the Realm's Teamspeak to at least get this sort of communication established.
• This means that, when a developer wants to drop in to discuss anything, there will usually be someone to talk to them - a message gets sent to all the Vanguards via the Uber forums informing them that there's a dev on the Teamspeak, and any that are available will make sure they are there.
• The developers sometimes drop into the public channels too and field questions from and chat to non-Vanguards - they had done this a few times prior to the Vanguard being formed.
• So far, the non-Realm members of the Vanguard have not expressed any concern at using the Teamspeak. As mentioned, everyone is informed when a dev wants to talk, and it is a convenient, established and controlled environment for effective group discussion.
• The use of Skype as an alternative means of voice communication has been discussed and we are looking at possibly using this going forwards.
• I am happy to continue to offer the use of our Teamspeak until such time as an alternative is deemed desirable.
• To my knowledge, the Teamspeak is the only Realm resource used for Vanguard activities at this time.

I hope this clarifies things - if you want any more details on any of these points let me know.

If you want to make a group to represent a wide community, it seems pretty degenerate to compose it primarily of people who are part of a narrower sub-community.

Welcome to the world of politics, where a few state that they work for the community but only work for their (very) small subcommunity.
Look at your local government/country for the results .

Never thought that it would happen on the forums, but I expect quiet a show from it.
Lobbyists also have a very high bandwidth communications to those that matter in a state. Nothing good resulted out of it.
And its two way also.

So now weve got people to influence Uber with whatever they want in the game, and Uber may or may not tells them how to steer,form,shape the opinions and discussions on the forums. Two way, win win. Well, winwinloose to be exact as the random Jon Doe user matters even less. Voice a different opinion than the masses, maybe even in broken English, and have 5 vanguards insta jump on you. Rest of users see 5 guys with a blue ribbon (must have authority thus) against him. Reasonable. Well written texts. No chance. Most will go for the opinion of a greater authority if its worded halfway decent.
And back we are at politics ;D

Thank you, Mike, for taking the time to read and also respond to my post. I was beginning to think that Brian was the only one who noticed it.

1] For me those are two pairs of shoes. This whole thread is about establishing who and what the Planetary Vanguards are, and that is important, yes. What I was referring to however is, that going forward, the PVs should let us know, when they forwarded something to uber. This by no means has to be a super elaborate process with standardized reporting threads and extensive explanations why or why not something has been forwarded to uber. Something as simple as a "We forwarded this to uber" like what raevn did about the gameplay video forum goes a long way for me. If that turns out not to be sufficient, well, take it from there and keep adjusting. But right now I get the feeling that the PVs don't see a need to be very open about their exchanges with uber and that for me gives the impression that the PVs are not really about the claimed improvement of the communication, but rather that they want to be a bunch of snowflakes who want to feel special about what they've got going on with uber. Yes, I know, you've been very adamant within this thread about how this is not (going to be) the case, and I acknowledge that you apparently have been just as surprised by this whole thing as much as the rest of us. But the vibe I am catching so far is that the PVs are not actually thrilled about the idea to act as open as they could, and embrace the suggestions, but are displaying a skeptic to defensive "Why do we need that? Trust us." attitude. So for me words and projected course of action don't fall in line - yet.

As for an actual reason, besides gaining trust of the community (or at least, well, me), as to why being open is important? Quite frankly, since there is so much focus on wanting to perform a trial period, I have no idea how to judge if that was successful, if all I can see are the effects, but none of the causes (or there lack of). Ie. if you were to not do anything at all for the next few weeks, and the communication flow between uber<->community becomes the best if could ever be. Then was the trial period successful? Was it not? Why?

2] As far as I understand the PVs are required to mark the difference between "Vanguard mode" and "regular mode" anyway:

So instead of relying on easy to misinterpret words, why not use color? It would:
- make it very clear in which mode you are talking
- make "uber approved" responses in a thread you are skimming over more noticeable
- add the ability to see which posts by a user were made before, while and after he was part of the PVs



Okay. There is a lot of my opinion in these posts, and it can be told that I am not very impressed by how the PVs came about and what they are for. I do hope though it is evident that I am not about blindly shooting them down, but trying to provide constructive criticism. I also don't have any gripe with the particular people that form the PVs, since frankly I don't actually know anyone inside nor outside the PVs. That many of them belong to the same gaming group.. well, maybe something to keep an eye on in the long run, but it doesn't appear to be a problem for uber.

Hence please don't feel offended by this and feel free to reach out to me if I've crossed any line that you think I shouldn't have. It's most likely just the result of feeling strongly enough about a topic that makes me spend an hour of my night writing a post...

I don't see uber being this short sighted. Like, not at all.
I mean, yeah, it makes a somewhat decent conspiracy theory.
But what would they even have to gain out of that? So please, take it down a notch, no?

Edit: Sorry for the double post. Brain-fail to use the edit button.

I agree with this.

The Vanguard's default "state" should be their own personal opinion. If they want to bring forth the all powerful confirmed word of Uber, then designate that.

Otherwise these people are now and infallible in everything they post by the rules stated out at the beginning of the thread.

If the Vanguard really are regular members who just communicate directly to Uber, then their default state should be personal opinion.

We'd very much like that to be the case. But as you yourself noted in another thread:

As you rightly point out, EVERYTHING we say from now on has that little blue badge next to it. People will rightly expect a certain level of authority in what we say as a result unless we state otherwise. The default state has to be Vanguard mode simply because of the uniformity of the badge. If it were possible to only assign the badge to posts that you wanted to make in Vanguard mode, I'll wholeheartedly agree with you (and it would certainly make my life a lot easier ) - as it is, we can't remove the blue thing from our own personal opinions, so we have to clarify in the content of the posts.

It's simply the pragmatic stance to take, nothing more.

Well if we didn't no anything Uber would obviously call us out on it, regardless of thier level of communitcation.

In the end it really comes down to Uber, they really hold all the power in this relationship, and as nice as it is for people to think us Vanguards are good enough Con Artists to trick Uber, it won't happen.

Cwarner touched on it, but beyond what he said, if you or anyone is ever unsure, just ask and we'll be glad to clarify.

Mike

I'd disagree with you there.

Mods have extra power. Mods have the badge. But Mods don't have the infallible this is the holy word of Uber granting that you guys have.

You guys do have more influence, but your proclamated this is the holy word of Uber default state makes your words even more powerful than the power the badge gives you.

So your default state does most definitely does not have to be infallible, since Mods have been around long before the Vanguards and they weren't put up on the pedestal that you guys have been placed on.

You guys keep on saying that you're just regular community members that talk with Uber and whatnot. You claim you guys aren't special.

But then you self proclaim yourselves as everything you say as the holy word of Uber.

Let's put up an analogy.

The badge makes you guys as influential as Cardinals from the Catholic Church. But you guys are since elevated even further to the level of Pope by the appointed holy word of Uber label.

If you really don't want to be an elite group of VIP that is instead part of the community, your words shouldn't be by default the holy word of Uber.

Besides, I would guess that you guys will be communicating your personal opinion more often than not.

And even further evidence that you guys should not have the default position of holy word of Uber is this very conversation.

You and the other Vanguard are talking without the "personal opinion tag" – yet I can all but guarantee that most of what you guys have been saying in this conversation and the Vanguard suggestion thread I created have not been discussed and verified by Uber.

If you guys want to be an elite VIP, then by all means by default be infallible. If that's the stance you guys take, then you need to drop the stance of "we're just one of the Community and we have no extra power – yet we're infallible and we are now the intermediary between you and Uber."

There is something the "Vanguards" need to add to their charter to avoid any perception of conflict of interest: Vanguards shall exclude themselves from offering their own opinions or suggestions pertaining to the development of PA.

This is absolutely essential for the rest of us mere mortals to be assured that the "Vanguards" are doing exactly what they claim they will do; help the Developers get a better idea as to what matters to the Community. To do this they must be seen as completely impartial and the only way for that to happen is to exclude themselves from the community. It's the only way we will know for certain that they aren't simply passing on the opinions & suggestions that their group of 15 people think are best for the game.

Also, where is this letter? Make it public, there is no reason not to, the secrecy adds to our collective suspicion. It is pretty clear from this forum thread that there is enough doubt and ill-feeling towards this endeavor that you should write it off as one of those "sounded like a good idea at the time" things when it is clearly an idea that needs to be killed off ASAFP.

Dangit, ninja'd by brian. But I was mostly done typing already, so I'll post it anyway, even if it looks like a duplicate now.

Is it though (the most pragmatic stance)?
Moderators have that orange badge all the time as well, but I believe only the fewest people would consider that every not otherwise marked word they say is considered as moderation. Why should the logic applied to PVs be any different?

Don't mistake me though, I'm still agreeing that the badge does give you more perceived authority and I would expect anyone who wears any type of badge to emit a certain kind of respectfulness and awareness with their posts.

I don't see how that contradicts using color to highlight "the uber-word". I mean, do you actually want that from now on forth each and every word you write is considered to come directly from the horse's mouth, unless you explicitly mark it otherwise? As much as I can respect what I assume to be the intention of trying to hold yourself to a high standard, I don't think you're doing yourself a favor that way.

Mike: I consider the point about the PVs being more transparent moot now, that in the other thread it was already better explained how this will be happening. I appreciate your response though!