Has the XM Ambassadors program been successful?
I'm pulling this out as a question from another discussion.
What value has the XM Ambassadors program brought to Ingress? To Niantic? To the forum? To the community?
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I'm pulling this out as a question from another discussion.
What value has the XM Ambassadors program brought to Ingress? To Niantic? To the forum? To the community?
Comments
Very little from my PoV.
Most have not been active in any visible way.
Just recently we had some GOOD gameplay hints and tips published, which I fully applaud.
Apart from that, I cannot see much to commend the program, or to condemn it..
Your questions also really ask:
- Is the current state of the forums beneficial?
- Is this a place where you can thrive as a community?
- What value does Niantic see with these forums?
If one has to ask the question, then the answer is likely, "not successful, no value added." It's been over a year. I can't name a single thing XMAs actually do, let alone something that might count as a "success."
Actually, I should dial that back. I've seen posts translating English language announcements into other languages. Those are valuable.
https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/13534/xm-ambassadors-call-for-applications
"The XM Ambassadors (XMAs) are Ingress Agents who are active participants in the Ingress Forum. They’re passionate about Ingress, excited to engage with other community members in the Ingress Forum, share gameplay tips, and share constructive, actionable feedback with the Ingress team."
I believe the XMA Program has the potential to add value, but it has not been really used or guided to a specific end.
What Thia wrote in another post
There are things that I'd like to see done with the XMA program before I feel comfortable rotating it - the biggest being speaking to each XMA individually to hear what their expectations of the program is/were (and more) ...
It would be great to hear it here from XMAs:
- from their perspective, did they have opportunity to make ingress better? I think some ideas were suggested by XMAs or at least discussed, but not sure. Couple of examples?
- did they have an opportunity to beta test features and provide feedback? Was it addressed? (I have some doubts)
- did they have an opportunity to ask a question / clarify something, get an actual answer, and bring it back to community?
Hardly any of that has happened.
I think there are a few decent XMA in current cohort. Most however seem to have done little.
@holdthebeer makes an excellent post above. I'd be interested in their responses.
I really liked that the Wayfarer Ambassadors worked on defining three goals to achieve during their year.
It would be great if the new XMAs & Niantic could do something similar.
I feel that the XMAs have not realized their potential, and that much better use could have been made of our skills, enthusiasm and willingness to contribute. Can't go into any details because we signed a non-disclosure agreement.
I'm going to discuss this with @NianticThia long before I provide all my thoughts on the XMA program in a public space. There are NDA'd elements to it as well.
However, my public forum activity is largely unchanged with the tag as without, except for the hate directed at "You're an XMA, you should agree with whatever I say instead of telling me no". Before it was just "Who are you to tell me no". 😉
Players: Wouldn't it be great if Niantic were more open, transparent, and communicative?
Niantic: We agree! That's why we're constantly finding new ways to sew our mouth shut and why we're taking advantage of the XMAs to help us out here by making them sign NDAs.
That's not specifically what the NDA's for, but I can't tell you what they tell us behind the NDA 😉
its a shame XMA are so limited to talk with community due to the NDA... it shouldnt be like so.
That implies the NDA is holding back things you'd want to know. It's not that exciting.
The original posted goals of XMA:
"The XM Ambassadors (XMAs) are Ingress Agents who are active participants in the Ingress Forum. They’re passionate about Ingress, excited to engage with other community members in the Ingress Forum, share gameplay tips, and share constructive, actionable feedback with the Ingress team.
Program Specifications:
I would say on the community side, we've seen XMAs post. There are one or two however, who are not constructive and good for the community. It's absolutely time to rotate positions.
Can't speak to if the program has been good on the Niantic side as we don't see those interactions.
The program seemed to be flawed from pretty early on when many of the agents selected had very minimal or no forum participation, even though it was listed as the first qualifier for the program. Hopefully Thia is able to turn yet another mess around :(
"The XM Ambassadors (XMAs) are Ingress Agents who are active participants in the Ingress Forum. They’re passionate about Ingress, excited to engage with other community members in the Ingress Forum, share gameplay tips, and share constructive, actionable feedback with the Ingress team."This is a group of loyal agents that does not criticize the company. These gents were chosen not on their merit, but exclusively, as I heard, on the principle of nepotism.
Here, take the same SSSputnik or me, we are active participants in this forum, but we make constructive criticism that the company is not interested in. How do you think we would be taken into such a group of active people? Nooooo. At one time I was both a beta tester and a professional copywriter in Russian and Ukrainian. I described it in the application for entry. So what? instead of me and many other worthy people, they chose only their selected homies for beta testing.
I think it would be interesting if Niantic invited people to participate as ambassadors based on their constructive contribution to the forums rather than having an application process, or maybe a 50/50 split between applicants and invitations.
Many of this "beta testers" have never had experience in application testing before, and are not even active forum members at all. Therefore, we have problems in the Russian version of the game, the Turkish version of the game and a bunch of bugs in each new version. And about some people who were elected to the role of testers, there were generally negative reviews from the local community. Correct me if I'm wrong about something.
>This is a group of loyal agents that does not criticize the company. These gents were chosen not on their merit, but exclusively, as I heard, on the principle of nepotism.
My guy, have you seen the comments and threads of @Perringaiden?
His messages can solve something? and another question, how many in% of the betatest team participants take an active part in the life of the forum and the game ??? No no no. This group, as well as the group of ambassadors, could not make the game better, take it to a new level, make it more interesting and richer.
Your reply has nothing to do with my post unless I'm blind. Relax and take a chill pill. You should know by now that endless threads on the forums will not suddenly mean that Niantic is the world champion in communication.
In addition, because Niantic sucks at communication, we don't know what the XMAs have been doing. That doesn't mean they have done nothing, for all we know, they could have shot down a feature that would have ki.lled the game, like crosslinking. You cannot say that "This group, as well as the group of ambassadors, could not make the game better, take it to a new level, make it more interesting and richer." because you simply don't know what they're doing.
For me, the result of their work or lack of result is expressed in the final product - the scanner that I run for the game. Everything is as clear and prosaic as possible.
I open the scanner and see cheaters flying around, minimal new content, no changes to the plot area, a bunch of glitches like morse code links. And I open the section of the forum dedicated to errors and see glitches in the Turkish version of the game, and many other things that, in principle, should have been fixed at the beta test level and not allowed into the release ... And I generally have a doubt that someone is beta testing new versions of the game.
Why is there not a single player with knowledge of the Turkish language who would identify problems even at the beta test level? Why is there not a single Russian-speaking beta tester who would point out spelling errors in the scanner?
Because there are only 50 XMAs, but over 7100 languages spoken in the world. You simply cannot have a beta tester for every single language. Also, getting a beta tester just to check for language issues when you use a professional translation service (from the eyes of Niantic at least, can't deny that some languages do have some errors) would be nonsense.
All in all, I think you have a completely wrong view of XMAs and what they're supposed to to.
Actually, we do know that they've done nothing of note (so far): Not a single XMA has answered the original questions of this thread in the affirmative. Nor has Niantic. Not a single, "Can't talk, 'cause NDA, but trust us, we've done awesome things." Not a single, "Can't talk, 'cause NDA, but we're really excited about what we've accomplished."
Given the original source threat that the question came from was "How do we get rid of the XMAs?" it didn't start out as eager demonstration of "All that's been accomplished".
That said, as I've mentioned elsewhere, it hasn't been as significant as XMAs or the general population might have desired, but a one year review by @NianticThia with the XMA's is definitely the first step for us rather than "Here let me break the NDA and discuss everything".
Back to this statement:
We have nothing to discuss, nothing at all. Scanner hasn't received a single major contact update over the past year. Maybe I'm wrong about something?
If after a year, the first step for y'all is to review what's been done in the past year, then the program is being managed poorly.
A review comes after doing a thing, which makes the review a second step, or third, whatever.
The big issue that needs to be addressed here is the misconception agents have about the XM Ambassador program and what XM Ambassadors can/can't or should/shouldn't do. And I don't blame you for it. The original "recruitment" criteria and objectives do not align with the current criteria and objectives.
The same applies to the Vanguard program.
Perringaiden is a good contributor to the forums. We disagree on a lot of topics however I still respect their opinion.
Saarstahl is also pretty active.
There are a lot of loud mouths on here, me included. I'm an older person 50+ and I used to moderate my opinions so not to offend Niantic. After years of non communication and broken promises I'm now a grumpy old guy who I like to think just says it how it is.
Keeping head down and accepting things didn't work and now it seems being brutally honest does nothing either.
I'm often in discussion with multiple overseas agents, Vanguards and forum members.
I do event organising, social get togethers, community moderation and anti cheating activities.
I'm always willing to discuss things here or on TG. (Same name as I use here).
The NDAs XMAs signed seem to be too restrictive if you cannot even discuss how well you believe the programs worked.
The NDAs XMAs signed seem to be too restrictive if you cannot even discuss how well you believe the programs worked.
I think we're all in agreement that it didn't go as many hoped when it was announced, but I'm not restricted by the NDA on that. I just want to talk to @NianticThia about it first. There are some elements that got wrapped in the NDA because they were discussed internally, but the majority of it is just "Laying all the problems (and the benefits) out without giving the person in charge a heads-up" that I want to avoid.