Where is the 12th ambassador and why was the community outcry about the lack of one ignored?
AisforAndis-ING
Posts: 875 Ambassador
Niantic promised the community 12 ambassadors, which frankly, the community agrees was too little in the first place. When it came down to it, despite receiving hundreds of applications, Niantic failed to fill all 12 spots, most seemingly due to prioritizing invitations to less engaged users who couldn't be bothered to even check their emails.
The worst part of the decision for Niantic to not fill the 12th position was that is essentially said to the community that choosing no one was better than choosing someone for that last spot. This was echoed by many people in this thread. This is compounded by the fact that there are glaring holes in representation, such as in Western Europe (namely Germany), South America (namely Brazil), and Africa, as well as a strange apparent bias towards Central America which received 3 ambassadors while other high profile locations got less or none.
The community outcry to this was entirely ignored by Niantic, with their only statement on the topic of there being no 12 ambassador being a prememptive statement of "At this time, we have closed the Ambassadors program and will be continuing forward with the 11 we have selected. There's lots lined up and we gotta keep moving forward."
Despite that statement, the Ambassador program is now a month old from when the original ambassadors were announced and not only is there nothing to show for it yet, but the general public doesn't seem to understand their purpose yet nor do the ambassadors themselves seem to be taking on an increased role within the community. It does not seem like Niantic was ready to launch this program and it very much seems like the decision to not choose a 12th ambassador was completely arbitrary and pointless.
So where is the 12th ambassador and why was the community outcry about the lack of one ignored?
Comments
what do the ambassadors do? I'm still not really clear on that
Frankly, that is still not clear, and thats part of the problem. Why was there a rush to close the applications when it has been over a month and they still lack purpose.
Something else worth noting is that there are quite a few questions asked by Ambassadors during this round of AMAs. While I don't think that Ambassadors shouldn't be allowed to ask questions, I think there should clearly be some other way for Ambassadors to get answers from Niantic. Otherwise what is the point at all?
Can you also talk a little bit about why there is such an apparent lapse in communication even with the chosen ambassadors?
Looks like two questions from Ambassadors will be making the top 15. What a waste of a resource that Ambassadors are forced to get information this way, and that regularl users will miss out on their questions being answered because of it.
Maybe Niantic communicated with the ambassadors and had them plant the questions…
I would like to see an update on the ambassador program from Niantic. Mostly general information on what we can expect from them and when they will get started.
One thing to note that, one of the selected ambassador had to face worse thing due to Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Maybe this is the very reason Niantic had to delay this.
There was 579 applications for the wayfarer ambassador role, this question got 72 votes. I would have expected that a community outcry meant many more votes.
That leads me to believe that the number of people interested in wayfarer is really small
That leads me to believe most applicants are not a part of this forum, or at least not actively.
I would be surpised if the weekly number of people that visit this forum is over 200
Don’t worry folks, we found the missing 12th! 😆
Based on some chosen making their first or second post to say thanks for the acceptance, I don’t think active participation here was a requirement.
There were plenty of issues that I felt very strongly about that were asked as AMA questions, but despite that I did not end up voting for them because there were other issues I was more interested to see addressed. Dont take a lack of votes as it not being a popular concern. It still made it to the top.
But there were 572 applications for the ambassador role, where are all of them?
If I had applied, I would be very upset and want a response, unless I sent my application without really caring about it.
So again, do you think that there's a big community that cares about wayfarer or most of the people don't care and think that the AMAs are a big joke?
I think a lot of people are, despite Niantic telling us the limits of the Wayfarer Ambassador program, expecting Ambassadors to have a lot more influence with Niantic as a company than they will actually have, and that somehow questions asked in here will have much more weight if asked by am Ambassador.
Though I'm not entirely sure what exactly the duties of an Ambassador are, I'm fairly certain that Niantic don't see this forum as the primary area of operation, they want them "out in the community" - ie participating in all of the other areas of social media where Niantic very rarely go. I think Niantic's hope is that people with a "Niantic approved" tag will go and act as cheerleaders for them and encorage more people to submit and review, though without any solid Niantic criteria backup going onto some social media sites and saying "You know, that really does not make a good Waypoint" is going to get a lot of flack.
Lets see the program get started first. I think a lot of people want to see how it goes, and i think a lot of people are going to be surprised how little impact Ambassadors will have in here.
I sure feel like a **** if I really did miss out. I wish there would have been more than just 1 email asking to join or to somehow reach out in-game to get my attention a little bit more. I had technical issues on my end for a few months anyways, so I wasn't able to access my extension/invite the best way possible-that's totally on me with that one. I didn't even know an ambassador program existed beforehand. Lame sauce, but hopefully I'll still be able to contribute in other ways now that I'm actually sign-up and on here as well.
They’ll change the Ambassadors every 12 months so you’ll have another chance.
it is like missing the bus, or missing school when you have the flu.
if you had technical issues for a few month... face it, there are trees that arent made to be tables.