may be semantics, but she is a Community Specialist, not a manager. She is active on the forum everyday and has been handling a lot of issues like MD badge ticks, rollbacks on NL1331 ticks, and many other support related issues. what exactly are you missing or waiting for?
To me, it seemed like this person would help with some of the communication troubles that have plagued the Ingress team since I started playing, if not longer. I suppose that was up for some amount of interpretation, but I'd guess I'm not the only one who assumed the same.
IMO Thia has been awesome and seems busy fixing a lot of issues agents are having thanks to bugs and inadequate support. I hope that Niantic will fix some of their issues so she doesn't have to spend as much time putting out fires.
Yes, yes, and in this thread of the forum she "regularly reads our discussions and communicates with us." How much did they write to her here? A bunch of times, how many open letters to NIA were there? Did she answer at least one? I don’t remember that. And questions like the one I asked in the first message? They are never answered by company representatives. In the course of such a community, the manager is absolutely useless if he only writes on topics strictly defined by Brian. Where is the dialogue between us and a company representative? There is no this, stop dreaming. A company that spits openly on the requests of its clients will not hire a community manager for such purposes.
Perhaps you haven't seen the hundreds of agents she's helped get their Mission Day credit because of the bug that happened during the event, or all of the banners for that event she helped get approved because Niantic announced details on such short notice, or all the agents she's helped with the C.O.R.E. inventory issue, or all the agents she helped remove the unwanted NL-1331 badge ticks. It's unfair to act like she's just sitting on her hands doing nothing. Has she addressed everything? No, she's put out the fire on a few floors of a skyscraper engulfed in flames.
It is the job of the technical department to fix all faults. And the job of the community manager is to develop the community. But for now we are sitting here alone without any dialogue with the company. Under Andrew we had at least some kind of dialogue, here there is no dialogue at all.
Yet they weren't getting fixed by the "technical department." Many agents with the C.O.R.E. inventory issue were being ghosted by Niantic. Niantic also literally created a thread saying "hey we'll remove your NL-1331 tick if you want"...and then, jk... thread was ghosted for months until Thia addressed it. What do you think would have happened with the Mission Day bug if Thia hadn't taken on that project? If Niantic has other people who can do these things, they should have had them doing it long ago.
It seems that she's filling a vacuum. Hopefully someday she won't have to do support's job for them and we'll be able to see her grow more into her position. Because yes, there are still many communication issues with Niantic and there does need to be more dialogue on the forum and elsewhere. I'm just saying it's wrong to suggest there has been none and that nothing has improved.
These are not her duties. The fact that a specialist is not doing his own thing does not do her credit. It just shows once again that there is a mess inside the company. Do you understand? The main task that is entrusted to it is not fulfilled, but it solves problems with medals, glitches in the counting, and so on. Imagine that you need urgent heart surgery, you are sent to a cardiac surgeon, and he left to fix computers at a security post, then he ran to help installers install windows in cardiology wards, and he does not want to hear about an operation on YOUR heart. Then he still has to run to fix the kettle in the hospital kitchen. Is the analogy clear to you?
>These are not her duties. The fact that a specialist is not doing his own thing does not do her credit.
Have you seen her contract? Have you listened to talks between her and Niantic? You can't claim that those are not her duties if you're not privy to her internal communication with Niantic. Maybe those are her duties and you just have a warped perception of what she is supposed to do?
-No, I haven't, and you yourself know that very well.
Have you listened to talks between her and Niantic?
No, but I see the result, or rather the lack of it. Many of us who have turned to the developer remind me of believers in the temple talking to God. And it is not clear whether God answers them or not to their requests.
You can't claim that those are not her duties if you're not privy to her internal communication with Niantic.
Quite right, but knowing what a mess reigns inside the game, when the old echoes of the plot have not yet been removed, many good beginnings have not been completed and some game moments have not even been repaired. Although I do not want to offend anyone, I can assume (based on the aforementioned mess) that anything could be spelled out in her employment contract, from proofreading the program code to cleaning the server room.
Maybe those are her duties and you just have a warped perception of what she is supposed to do?
I have something to compare with, I remember Andrew, who communicated with users and answered their questions, regardless of whether they were convenient for the company or not. There is no communication with ordinary users at all. And in general, I doubt that anyone intends to conduct any kind of dialogue with us at all. Example - how long do agents ask to make a medialoker ??? I'm asking you???? What is the result of all this ???
If you read anything, you'd see I compared Niantic to a skyscraper engulfed in flames so no need to ask if I understand. So, your solution is to leave all the issues I mentioned neglected. Nice.
The position description on Niantic site stated the following responsibilities:
building communities, engaging with other players, taking the Ingress community to the next level
While currently I see another support worker who removes and adds badges, resets kinetic capsules and deals with the consequences of bugs, and doesn't "engage with other players" anywhere but in Report a Bug section. You OWN open letter was completely ignored, yet you still defend them.
she needs take care of all ppl that now needs a different color for their sixth free key capsule... time that could be spent on something more important.
Impressive! engagement by NianticThia to solve things the team and support already should be on top of? Thx!
I hope You soon can delegate such tasks to get time for broader community issues @NianticThia for example:
collect the figures of number of registered/active/paying Ingress players each month (or quarter) from Beta to date
and make The Chart -if The Chart doesnt already exist.
Then find out from this data what makes people 1) start playing 2) stop playing, 3) play more/less and 4) pay -by marking the dates of events/changes in Ingress history like anomalies, 1331 tours, global events, 09/30/19, covid and perhaps nerfs like MUFG, axa, Guardian, Recruiter, fracker, apex, -and compare this to community experience and todays situation.
Just airing this idea in case The Chart isnt there already -but of course it must be on Niantic -to systematically follow up on nerf effects, player engagement, revenue and gaming intensity such as server load.
Perhaps it would be fair to simultaneously salute the hiring of someone who can deal with pressing agent-specific issues, while also noting the ongoing need for a position to deal with more strategic communications? Seems like the main issue is the usual one: Ingress is understaffed, given the complexity of the game, its global reach, and so forth. The individuals on the team can't easily fix that, alas. (In the long run, there needs to be a business model that will support the cost structure. Not trivial.)
Agreed, and in a lot of lines of work, understaffed means you end up being forced to do tasks outside of your job responsibilities. The jobs Thia has done may be outside of her job description, but some of them are/were urgent matters that need to get done. You can't leave hundreds of agents twisting in the wind without their Mission Day credit. And the C.O.R.E. issue is even more urgent...like class action lawsuit urgent. Somebody's gotta fix it. In a perfect world, support would handle all this. Niantic will need to address why support cannot handle these responsibilities and why they are turning to the CM to handle them. I think all of this has shown though that having open lines of communication with someone capable of resolving support issues is effective, it would just be better if that were actually somebody from support rather than the CM.
@kiloecholima Indeed. And it's a little disturbing (I won't say surprising) that Niantic seems not to have allocated the team the resources needed to deal with the C.O.R.E. problems, because - assuming that the problems are still live and ongoing - this is indeed a genuine liability. I have only observed this company from the outside, and have no inside information. But many things about the way the company has handled its entire suite of products over the years (not just Ingress) strongly suggest that their real problem lies with the executive team; one suspects that the Pokemon IP is covering for a lot of non-optimal decision making. If so, that is a tough problem to fix.
Comments
Dark mode is great!
But also the quotes needs to be dark!
Thx!
I wasn’t asking for day/night mode in the forum, I wanted a day mode for the scanner.
Community manager! Where are you? We are waiting!
Community Messiah.
Community Missing.
Comment Manager.
may be semantics, but she is a Community Specialist, not a manager. She is active on the forum everyday and has been handling a lot of issues like MD badge ticks, rollbacks on NL1331 ticks, and many other support related issues. what exactly are you missing or waiting for?
To me, it seemed like this person would help with some of the communication troubles that have plagued the Ingress team since I started playing, if not longer. I suppose that was up for some amount of interpretation, but I'd guess I'm not the only one who assumed the same.
in my opinion, there has already been markedly improved communication from Niantic since she has stepped into her role.
IMO Thia has been awesome and seems busy fixing a lot of issues agents are having thanks to bugs and inadequate support. I hope that Niantic will fix some of their issues so she doesn't have to spend as much time putting out fires.
Excuse me, sir, it wasn't me who named her as "Community Manager".
And excuse me again, but you are looking at the wrong Goblin.
😘
Yes, yes, and in this thread of the forum she "regularly reads our discussions and communicates with us." How much did they write to her here? A bunch of times, how many open letters to NIA were there? Did she answer at least one? I don’t remember that. And questions like the one I asked in the first message? They are never answered by company representatives. In the course of such a community, the manager is absolutely useless if he only writes on topics strictly defined by Brian. Where is the dialogue between us and a company representative? There is no this, stop dreaming. A company that spits openly on the requests of its clients will not hire a community manager for such purposes.
Not many topics appear on the forum per day, at least 2 or 3 of them could be answered by allocating half an hour for this. But this is not the case.
The moderator who reads this message, invite the community manager to this topic, let her talk to us. Answer if you read this message.
Perhaps you haven't seen the hundreds of agents she's helped get their Mission Day credit because of the bug that happened during the event, or all of the banners for that event she helped get approved because Niantic announced details on such short notice, or all the agents she's helped with the C.O.R.E. inventory issue, or all the agents she helped remove the unwanted NL-1331 badge ticks. It's unfair to act like she's just sitting on her hands doing nothing. Has she addressed everything? No, she's put out the fire on a few floors of a skyscraper engulfed in flames.
It is the job of the technical department to fix all faults. And the job of the community manager is to develop the community. But for now we are sitting here alone without any dialogue with the company. Under Andrew we had at least some kind of dialogue, here there is no dialogue at all.
Yet they weren't getting fixed by the "technical department." Many agents with the C.O.R.E. inventory issue were being ghosted by Niantic. Niantic also literally created a thread saying "hey we'll remove your NL-1331 tick if you want"...and then, jk... thread was ghosted for months until Thia addressed it. What do you think would have happened with the Mission Day bug if Thia hadn't taken on that project? If Niantic has other people who can do these things, they should have had them doing it long ago.
It seems that she's filling a vacuum. Hopefully someday she won't have to do support's job for them and we'll be able to see her grow more into her position. Because yes, there are still many communication issues with Niantic and there does need to be more dialogue on the forum and elsewhere. I'm just saying it's wrong to suggest there has been none and that nothing has improved.
These are not her duties. The fact that a specialist is not doing his own thing does not do her credit. It just shows once again that there is a mess inside the company. Do you understand? The main task that is entrusted to it is not fulfilled, but it solves problems with medals, glitches in the counting, and so on. Imagine that you need urgent heart surgery, you are sent to a cardiac surgeon, and he left to fix computers at a security post, then he ran to help installers install windows in cardiology wards, and he does not want to hear about an operation on YOUR heart. Then he still has to run to fix the kettle in the hospital kitchen. Is the analogy clear to you?
>These are not her duties. The fact that a specialist is not doing his own thing does not do her credit.
Have you seen her contract? Have you listened to talks between her and Niantic? You can't claim that those are not her duties if you're not privy to her internal communication with Niantic. Maybe those are her duties and you just have a warped perception of what she is supposed to do?
Have you seen her contract?
-No, I haven't, and you yourself know that very well.
Have you listened to talks between her and Niantic?
No, but I see the result, or rather the lack of it. Many of us who have turned to the developer remind me of believers in the temple talking to God. And it is not clear whether God answers them or not to their requests.
You can't claim that those are not her duties if you're not privy to her internal communication with Niantic.
Quite right, but knowing what a mess reigns inside the game, when the old echoes of the plot have not yet been removed, many good beginnings have not been completed and some game moments have not even been repaired. Although I do not want to offend anyone, I can assume (based on the aforementioned mess) that anything could be spelled out in her employment contract, from proofreading the program code to cleaning the server room.
Maybe those are her duties and you just have a warped perception of what she is supposed to do?
I have something to compare with, I remember Andrew, who communicated with users and answered their questions, regardless of whether they were convenient for the company or not. There is no communication with ordinary users at all. And in general, I doubt that anyone intends to conduct any kind of dialogue with us at all. Example - how long do agents ask to make a medialoker ??? I'm asking you???? What is the result of all this ???
Your topic has no more importance than any other topic on here.
We ALREADY HAD mechanisms to do all of those things.
If you read anything, you'd see I compared Niantic to a skyscraper engulfed in flames so no need to ask if I understand. So, your solution is to leave all the issues I mentioned neglected. Nice.
Go search @NianticThia 's posts to see how many manual fixes she's done for agents because those mechanisms failed.
The position description on Niantic site stated the following responsibilities:
building communities, engaging with other players, taking the Ingress community to the next level
While currently I see another support worker who removes and adds badges, resets kinetic capsules and deals with the consequences of bugs, and doesn't "engage with other players" anywhere but in Report a Bug section. You OWN open letter was completely ignored, yet you still defend them.
she needs take care of all ppl that now needs a different color for their sixth free key capsule... time that could be spent on something more important.
Agree.
Impressive! engagement by NianticThia to solve things the team and support already should be on top of? Thx!
I hope You soon can delegate such tasks to get time for broader community issues @NianticThia for example:
collect the figures of number of registered/active/paying Ingress players each month (or quarter) from Beta to date
and make The Chart -if The Chart doesnt already exist.
Then find out from this data what makes people 1) start playing 2) stop playing, 3) play more/less and 4) pay -by marking the dates of events/changes in Ingress history like anomalies, 1331 tours, global events, 09/30/19, covid and perhaps nerfs like MUFG, axa, Guardian, Recruiter, fracker, apex, -and compare this to community experience and todays situation.
Just airing this idea in case The Chart isnt there already -but of course it must be on Niantic -to systematically follow up on nerf effects, player engagement, revenue and gaming intensity such as server load.
Perhaps it would be fair to simultaneously salute the hiring of someone who can deal with pressing agent-specific issues, while also noting the ongoing need for a position to deal with more strategic communications? Seems like the main issue is the usual one: Ingress is understaffed, given the complexity of the game, its global reach, and so forth. The individuals on the team can't easily fix that, alas. (In the long run, there needs to be a business model that will support the cost structure. Not trivial.)
Agreed, and in a lot of lines of work, understaffed means you end up being forced to do tasks outside of your job responsibilities. The jobs Thia has done may be outside of her job description, but some of them are/were urgent matters that need to get done. You can't leave hundreds of agents twisting in the wind without their Mission Day credit. And the C.O.R.E. issue is even more urgent...like class action lawsuit urgent. Somebody's gotta fix it. In a perfect world, support would handle all this. Niantic will need to address why support cannot handle these responsibilities and why they are turning to the CM to handle them. I think all of this has shown though that having open lines of communication with someone capable of resolving support issues is effective, it would just be better if that were actually somebody from support rather than the CM.
@kiloecholima Indeed. And it's a little disturbing (I won't say surprising) that Niantic seems not to have allocated the team the resources needed to deal with the C.O.R.E. problems, because - assuming that the problems are still live and ongoing - this is indeed a genuine liability. I have only observed this company from the outside, and have no inside information. But many things about the way the company has handled its entire suite of products over the years (not just Ingress) strongly suggest that their real problem lies with the executive team; one suspects that the Pokemon IP is covering for a lot of non-optimal decision making. If so, that is a tough problem to fix.