Suggestion for the Vanguards

From my understanding, the purpose of the Vanguards is to sift through the forums and bring things to the attention of Uber as well as inform and correct forum posters about questions and the like.

The main concerns about the Vanguard from the Community seems to be the lack of transparency from the Vanguards and the concern of bias and censorship, largely tied into the heavy realm membership in the Vanguards' and questionable member selection. Other concerns are also tied into the apparent lack of structure and vague answers regarding to internal communication.

Before I continue, I should state that I am all for a Vanguard like organization. I've been pushing for increased amounts of mods and communication between Uber and the community for months now. I also like most of the members of The Vanguard (I only say most because I haven't ever seen some of the Vanguard members before). Most of them have lots of great posts on the forums and are lots of fun to play with and against.

In light of all the debate regarding the Vanguards, I have a suggestion (originally brought up by thekiller666) that would alleviate most of the concerns about the Vanguards and even increase the communication to and from Uber to the Community, which is something that was laking for a while, but has improved lately (and could improve further).

The Vanguards should do a periodical roundup of the suggestions they're communicating to Uber.

Be it in the form of a weekly roundup forum post or whenever The Vanguards bring suggestions to Uber, they make a post.

This will accomplish many things.

• Increases transparency with this organization
• Removes concerns about bias or censorship
• Allows the community to provide feedback on what the Vanguard is bringing to Uber
• Allows the Vanguard itself to be more organized and clear in what they are doing
• Allows Uber to communicate directly back to the community in a streamlined fashion by responding directly to that thread talking about all of the suggestions
• Allows Uber, through the Vanguard, to communicate back to the community informing the community of what suggestions it accepts or rejects, and why
• Allows the community to feel more involved and having a direct impact on the game
• Allow Uber to provide feedback to the community without having to spend as much time talking directly to the community

At any rate. I really like thekiller666's idea.

There aren't any reasons that I can see not to do this. The Vanguard is a large group of people, so creating these posts, even if it's on a weekly basis, would be pretty easy. Heck, even if there wasn't any concern about the current execution of The Vanguard, this would be a good thing to do.

TLDR: Create a Feedback Friday or something. Once a week, The Vanguard posts about what they're suggesting to Uber, and what Uber is providing in feedback.

Increases transparency in The Vanguard, increases community involvement, and increases the amount of communication to and from Uber and the community.

Lemme know what you think and I hope The Vanguard takes on this idea.

I like it that you are starting to be constructive, good post in general

This I just have no idea how to answer. We basically explained you guys the whole story we had to tell in the other thread. There is not more to be told, unless you want us to break promises towards Uber. When they say "don't tell" we don't tell.
But there isn't a lot "don't tell" stuff you'd care about anyway. Everything important has been explained.

The increasing transparency was specifically in regards not to the story of how you were made, but instead towards the concerns of bias and censorship. I am by no means making claims that you will have bias or censorship, but such an important organization should be above reproach and the community should not be concerned about censorship or bias.

These roundups would remove any concerns or claims of bias or censorship.

I understand. Generally I like the idea. We're gonna discuss what to do. It's obvious that we need to do something.

We have basically been doing as you asked, the weekly newsletter or weekly idea pull sharing with the forums thing you suggested. It hasn't been weekly, but we haven't been an "organization" for a whole week yet, and neither can we correspond with the devs on a granite schedule, sometimes they have more work they can do to get answers with, and less answers to give until some of their work catches up to that. Whenever you see the devs share info, usually that is the result of a inquery on something excessively asked on the forums that we bring to their attention. The orbital camera. The unit area commands. The brain dump post. Not necessarily in that order.

The claims of "lack of transparency" are false as we were very detailed and factual of all the events leading up to formation and following formation of the Vanguard. Were you not clear about us collaborating, signing, and sending a letter to Uber, or us asking lingering forum questions which led them to start doing some streams, or us encouraging them to share what is in their build so you know whats coming while not encouraging a timeline because of build-breakage possibly creating delays?

The claims of questionable membership is false for now, since those were the people in the letter those were the people Uber replied to for continued correspondence. We just wanted to correspond with them, but it was decided that a group actually shortens correspondence time cutting into development (as usually they use the short ending of their Fridays to correspond and we all know nobody ever gets anything done at the end of Fridays in the office scene anyway).

I am not saying we have spent months deciding best membership, I am saying we have membership based off participation in a letter and not by any system of recruitment. We are designing a system for recruitment. Until then the only ways we know for sure to get in is for "Garat to tell us specifically to add you" as that was how SXX came in. Needless to say he and a handful of others was discussed to recruit but we don't have a system, however Garat said we were required to extend an invite to SXX immediately. Right now, the only system is to get Garat or I suppose any dev to request us extend an invite. It shouldn't take long for us to agree on a way for us to add members internally by some form of agreement so we can start getting helpful hands where they exist.

As I said, the lack of transparency has nothing to do with the formation (as I have said at least twice now) and are by no means false. The community is concerned about transparency – specifically when it comes to bias and censorship from the Vanguard – not the formation. Your claims that the concerns are false does nothing but increase the concerns from the community.

The claims of questionable membership are also not false. Just because you say they're false, doesn't mean they're false. Several people have brought up concerns about the membership selection, specifically with the large realm membership and members in the Vanguard who are not very active on the forums. Specifically since members who are more active on the forums and in the community were excluded. That raises concerns from the community – and I am not the only one to raise these concerns.

The community is concerned. You simply claiming false over and over does nothing but increase the concerns.

In fact, the "people were included because they signed a letter" also continues to raise concerns from the community, as has been expressed by several people. Getting into an elite group on the forums because you co signed a letter rather than being active in contributing to the community is the exact reason why people are concerned about the Vanguard membership roster.

The Community has raised concerns.

You seem to be ignoring these concerns, and even using some of the very things we're concerned about as reasons why we shouldn't be concerned. Dismissing the concerns is also bad and increases concerns.

Again. I should be clear since this also seems to be dismissed.

I am for an organization like The Vanguard. I have been pushing for someone to fill this role for months before the Vanguard was started.

I just want to second Brian's idea. Whether justified or not, the vanguard has a huge PR problem right now. Regular updates summarizing everything that goes on behind the scenes would help make it clear that you are not the illuminati (unless you are! )

The deal is, we do have a huge PR problem right now. People are accusing us of monopolizing what I can only believe is dev-consultation for the Realm (I actually am not entirely sure what claims are against us, people say too many of us are Realm and people say they can't tell what we do, so if there is a definite accusation please formalize it). At the same time, we are claiming to do a simple function. At the moment, Uber supports our claim to our function, in the form of crediting us with recent communication about game updates. The devs are willing to back us up, can you not trust even that just long enough to give us a whole week of existence so we can bring you a roundup? (as well as some form of plan on recruiting, because we are seriously discussing it but it isn't going any faster by pressuring us)

Again, we do probe Uber with questions active in forum threads weekly. We do it no often than that only because it is detrimental to do it in the middle of their work, only to have them stop and waste a day possibly more of development and coding time.

We let you know this. We let you know how we ask Uber things. We will in fact do a summary for you, what questions we presented and what answers they presented, if you just give us time.

We would also like to be clear, we can not guarantee a timeline. We say this because we have been corresponding questions to Uber since the letter but before the group for a little while, but have gotten one week they had no answers, followed by two weeks straight they did have answers. They told us they can not guarantee weekly audience with us, nor can they for-sure plan the next day they can have answers. That is the honest to goodness reason why we can promise a "roundup" but cannot promise "weekly".

If there is any questions you have, we will answer and inform. We will be as transparent as possible. Hopefully, you can have questions, we can answer them, and any suspicion can fade. We really want you to see whatever you want to see, because we do not like suspicion.

My impression in relation to the roundups was that the roundups would have nothing to do with communication from the devs, only communication to. Ie - you guys would go through the 40 page threads discussing some feature and give the devs the highlights of the main suggestions and questions every week or so. And whenever they have time, they would look through them.

I absolutely agree with the principle of a round-up - really good suggestion Brian. It'll help us to collect our thoughts and will definitely help with transparency. However, as Trophy said above, we cannot promise anything 'regular' because of the nature of Uber's schedule. What I hope we can do is a 'brain-dump'-style post every so often summarising our exchanges with Uber since the last brain dump. We'll discuss the best format for this internally.

Yes, but sometimes, particularly if we table stuff to them via voice chat, they are able to offer a response, which I'm sure people would be interested to know about.

Keeping issues in the spotlight is a good thing.

I am by no means being aggressive, and instead have been very supportive of your goals and am trying to help.

My concern is you guys waving off concerns from the community and claiming our concerns are false and saying "give us time" without telling us what you're trying to do.

If y'all had instead been understanding of the community's concerns and not defensive or even downright aggressive, then many of these issues would have gone away. The constant dismissing of concerns simply increase the concerns.

This thing just seems poorly planned and poorly executed. I understand taking time for things to get organized and sorted out, but much of this should have been discussed and organized before the organization public.

Let me repeat what I said in my original post and in my posts on the Vanguard announcement thread.

The main concerns about the Vanguard from the Community seems to be the lack of transparency from the Vanguards and the concern of bias and censorship, largely tied into the heavy realm membership in the Vanguards' and questionable member selection, mainly, people who aren't very active in the community being placed into the Vanguard simply because they signed the letter and people who are more active in the community excluded. Other concerns are also tied into the apparent lack of structure and vague answers regarding to internal communication.

People are concerned that their voices won't be heard and The Realm's agenda will be pushed and any ideas from the community that oppose The Realm's ideas will be suppressed and ignored.

So far I have seen little to nothing from The Vanguard to put the community at ease aside from "we'll be good."

Hence, my proposal for making all of this stuff more public. Not only does it make The Vanguard more transparent, but also engages the community more. So this is something that should be done even if the community wasn't concerned about bias and suppression.

Also, keep in mind that I'm saying all of this as a Realm member and someone who agrees with most of the member's of the Vanguard say.

I feel like I'm repeating myself over and over.

There are concerns from the community. From a community who supports the idea of the Vanguard. The Vanguard mostly is rejecting or dismissing any concerns saying to trust them and to give them time.

I also find it strange that Uber has been pretty silent about all of this.[/quote]

Agreed; I don't think any party intended for things to be as abrupt as they were. But it is what it is, and we're frantically working to get everything running smoothly.

Cool deal.

This is what I (and probably the community) wants to hear, rather than our concerns are false.

That is fine. I am not saying the concerns are false, just the claims. I mean, when you are in court, accused of something, again what I am only led to believe is monopolizing development consultation to the Realm, which is in fact what we are not doing, then you are asked to plead innocent or guilty, and we plead innocent is all we say.

Also...

All of this is Uber voicing. Also, if you mean this thread and just for today, then yes, they are silent.

The reason is no surprise, it is a weekend and they aren't at the offices.

That being said, what part of any of this on our end is aggressive? We reply once calmly and cooperatively to every 5 of your much longer posts which ask something of us to prove ourselves. We won't call your approach aggressive if you don't call ours aggressive, and I personally feel neither is aggressive.

I have no problem having some patience regarding the formation of the group. While I think that the concerns raised are mostly valid, I do think that the pressure put on the members of the Vanguard isn't working in the community's favour. The last thing we want is a rushed formation where people haven't had the time to think things through.

There will be plenty of feedback to give when some results are actually produced.

Everyone is overreacting because the name "Vanguard" sounds flashy. The vanguard is merely composed of community members and vanguards have no powers that any other community member doesn't have, like mods do.

We have been discussing a newsletter for some time, and it is my understanding that we will implement some sort of weekly publication about what the community thinks is important lately. Something like an executive summary or digest of many extremely long threads of the forum, filtered down so it is shorter, more meaningful, and more informative.

I suspect the newsletter will be a useful resource both for the community and for Uber to know what is happening in the forum without having to read the entire thing.