Feature request: Devstalkers

[A Man In Black]

It would be handy to have a tool for identifying when and where someone has made a comment in an official capacity, similar to (for example) Blizzard's blue posts on their official forums. These sorts of tools include marking threads where someone's made a comment in an official (or semi-official) capacity in the forum listings, having a button to jump to the first developer post, etc. Failing that, a listing or RSS feed of Paizo developer posts would be useful, as would an "official post" filter for the search.

I was reminded of how useful devstalkers are in tracking how MMOs are developed by this thread.

[Liz Courts]

Every staff member has the "golem" icon next to their name (even on their aliases), and you can follow their posts with the RSS feed on their Profile page, like so. You can also use the Search box (over there on the left) to find a user - select User from the drop down box.

[Cpt_kirstov]

Liz Courts wrote:

Every staff member has the "golem" icon next to their name (even on their aliases), and you can follow their posts with the RSS feed on their Profile page, like so. You can also use the Search box (over there on the left) to find a user - select User from the drop down box.

also if you click on a paizo employee's name (or any poster) and then click on the 'posts' tab you can see their most recent posts. you can also RSS this list

edit - I shouldn't post before food Liz already said that

[Gary Teter]

I think A Man in Black is asking something slightly different from RSS feeds for staff members. If I understand the question, he's looking for a way to determine when Paizo staff are speaking "ex cathedra" as opposed to simply voicing an opinion. We've talked about doing this in the past and have decided against it because the second-guessing ("Is this an official statement? Do I need to meet with others before promulgating an opinion?" etc) would end up decreasing staff participation in conversations.

[Sean K Reynolds]

"Official statements" regarding rules end up in the FAQ, anyway.

[James Sutter]

Gary Teter wrote:

I think A Man in Black is asking something slightly different from RSS feeds for staff members. If I understand the question, he's looking for a way to determine when Paizo staff are speaking "ex cathedra" as opposed to simply voicing an opinion. We've talked about doing this in the past and have decided against it because the second-guessing ("Is this an official statement? Do I need to meet with others before promulgating an opinion?" etc) would end up decreasing staff participation in conversations.

Yeah, it turns out, a given employee speaking "ex cathedra" frequently means that other employees who disagree start lobbing bricks from THEIR cathedras, and pretty soon nobody has any cathedras at all.

We are gamers, after all.

[Cosmo]

James Sutter wrote:

Yeah, it turns out, a given employee speaking "ex cathedra" frequently means that other employees who disagree start lobbing bricks from THEIR cathedras, and pretty soon nobody has any cathedras at all.

We are gamers, after all.

You are completely WRONG! Paizo employees NEVER disagree with one another!

Ever.

[TriOmegaZero]

*head esplodes*

[A Man In Black]

Gary Teter wrote:

I think A Man in Black is asking something slightly different from RSS feeds for staff members. If I understand the question, he's looking for a way to determine when Paizo staff are speaking "ex cathedra" as opposed to simply voicing an opinion. We've talked about doing this in the past and have decided against it because the second-guessing ("Is this an official statement? Do I need to meet with others before promulgating an opinion?" etc) would end up decreasing staff participation in conversations.

I'm asking about both (although I understand that there's not a bright line between "official" posts and personal posts in these forums). Devstalkers in other contexts are as simple as an RSS feed of all of the core devs' posts, or as complicated as heavy duty tools that flag posts that a dev has posted in, allow people to jump to dev posts, flag which answers are official or not, etc.

Even having a user-facing way to search for FAQqed threads that were resolved with errata/FAQ entries would be interesting.

[Lobolusk]

Like if I ask when will eratta/faq for ultimate combat come out

and you can say "fool"

look here gary already said friday!

[hogarth]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

"Official statements" regarding rules end up in the FAQ, anyway.

Note that the example quoted in the original post is not a rules question ("Will Paizo ever publish a psionics book?"), even though it's a frequently asked question.

The most recent answer was from 10 months ago, it looked like.

[Cpt_kirstov]

Cosmo wrote:

James Sutter wrote:

Yeah, it turns out, a given employee speaking "ex cathedra" frequently means that other employees who disagree start lobbing bricks from THEIR cathedras, and pretty soon nobody has any cathedras at all.

We are gamers, after all.

You are completely WRONG! Paizo employees NEVER disagree with one another!

Ever.

I thought you were going to to say that the employees weren't gamers - I was going to walk around confused and bumping into things for a few weeks tryign to figure out that paradox...

[Gorbacz]

Cpt_kirstov wrote:

Cosmo wrote:

James Sutter wrote:

Yeah, it turns out, a given employee speaking "ex cathedra" frequently means that other employees who disagree start lobbing bricks from THEIR cathedras, and pretty soon nobody has any cathedras at all.

We are gamers, after all.

You are completely WRONG! Paizo employees NEVER disagree with one another!

Ever.

I thought you were going to to say that the employees weren't gamers - I was going to walk around confused and bumping into things for a few weeks tryign to figure out that paradox...

Well, as far as we know several Paizo employees aren't gamers, so...

[Lobolusk]

can we get a ask the devs kinda forum?

Gary can delete any arguments or stupid stuff

and we can just ask for official rulings

and they can dispense there humane wisdom form upon high.

[Gorbacz]

Lobolusk wrote:

can we get a ask the devs kinda forum?

Gary can delete any arguments or stupid stuff

and we can just ask for official rulings

and they can dispense there humane wisdom form upon high.

You really want to slow the company to a crawl, do you? :)

[Lobolusk]

Gorbacz wrote:

Lobolusk wrote:

can we get a ask the devs kinda forum?

Gary can delete any arguments or stupid stuff

and we can just ask for official rulings

and they can dispense there humane wisdom form upon high.

You really want to slow the company to a crawl, do you? :)

No, I would like to get questions answered

like ultimate combat, there are 2-3 forums and I never get an answer

when will the faq be out, what is the deal with the tetori missing non existent feats, ect...

if they took an hour a day to answer a few questions it would help me get a good insight on what is going on. or if they had just a post saying " ultimate combat faq out by april 1st 2012" would work.
i know the ask james jacbs went to crap, but that was because people were jerks. maybe i am doign it wrong, but i am very interested in devs opinions cannonical or non cannonical

EDIT: i did buy a product and it was unfinished in my mind. not trying to be a jerk open to feedback about a better suggestion

[Gorbacz]

I guess the answer is something along the "wait for the convention madness to end while we try to put Beginner's Box and Bestiary 3 out" lines.

[Lobolusk]

Gorbacz wrote:

I guess the answer is something along the "wait for the convention madness to end while we try to put Beginner's Box and Bestiary 3 out" lines.

i can understand that, but you should focus on the first product you put out, i am not askign for a fix just a eta on the fix or a quick explanation.

i am patient like moss, my life will not be over if i dont know. just thought i liked the ops idea

[Gorbacz]

Lobolusk wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

I guess the answer is something along the "wait for the convention madness to end while we try to put Beginner's Box and Bestiary 3 out" lines.

i can understand that, but you should focus on the first product you put out, i am not askign for a fix just a eta on the fix or a quick explanation.

i am patient like moss, my life will not be over if i dont know. just thought i liked the ops idea

I feel you, but this is pen and paper gaming industry - if you stop swimming, you drown. And by swimming I mean focusing on new stuff.

Companies like Paizo don't have the luxury of "yeah, let's now sit back, issue patches and tune our Ferraris while the bank account soars" of the video gaming industry.

Here's one advantage WotC has - they're not in charge of their own survival, so they can shift resources to errata/FAQ department far more easily.

[A Man In Black]

James Sutter wrote:

Yeah, it turns out, a given employee speaking "ex cathedra" frequently means that other employees who disagree start lobbing bricks from THEIR cathedras, and pretty soon nobody has any cathedras at all.

We are gamers, after all.

The filter may still be useful, not to turn on when you're speaking officially, but to turn off when you're being silly, dealing with an issue that only addresses one person (like the "What's going on with my order?" threads), or otherwise saying something you don't want aggregated.

There's a cultural difference between a "This is an official post" flag and a "Do not aggregate this post" flag, but there's not a mechanical one. The latter is still useful (if even a basic devstalker tool existed)

Another reason to do this, even a basic tool, is that it allows Paizo to do it in-house and thus have control over how it develops. There's no reason someone else (the d20pfsrd guys, for example) couldn't just make their own outward-facing aggregation of all of the posts by such-and-such posters, using the RSS feeds for new posts, similar to third-party devstalkers everywhere (recently most notable: Bluetrackers for WOW). Doing it in-house, even in a very basic way, allows later development (e.g. do not aggregate this post, exclude this forum, etc.) for any issues that arise.

For clarity, these are the sorts of things that go into a really, really involved devstalker (like Blizzard's or Mythic's).

• An aggregator of posts by developers or people who are otherwise the face of the developer (so not interns, joke accounts, etc.)
  
• A way to exclude otherwise-eligible posts from the aggregator, when you don't want that post advertised to the world.
  
• Posts with such threads flagged in an obvious way
  
• A way to skip to or read only such posts in a thread.

The upside of doing this in-house is that it heads off questions about what the developers think, encourages people to read threads where the developers have posted, and gives you control over how the devstalker works. (Along with some minor advantages, like a chance to say "Come to our forums and check out this awesome new tool.") The downside is that it encourages people to read and post in threads where the developers have posted (but a third-party tool could do that, too), plus the obvious issue that it's web development time taken away from the likely-long list of other stuff to do.

[Lobolusk]

Gorbacz wrote:

Lobolusk wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

I guess the answer is something along the "wait for the convention madness to end while we try to put Beginner's Box and Bestiary 3 out" lines.

i can understand that, but you should focus on the first product you put out, i am not askign for a fix just a eta on the fix or a quick explanation.

i am patient like moss, my life will not be over if i dont know. just thought i liked the ops idea

I feel you, but this is pen and paper gaming industry - if you stop swimming, you drown. And by swimming I mean focusing on new stuff.

Companies like Paizo don't have the luxury of "yeah, let's now sit back, issue patches and tune our Ferraris while the bank account soars" of the video gaming industry.

Here's one advantage WotC has - they're not in charge of their own survival, so they can shift resources to errata/FAQ department far more easily.

Gorbz, good buddy thanks for the info and explanation that makes a lot of sense. I was under the impression that paizo had far surpassed wotc. Pathfinder is super popular way more popular than 4th i would think.... i am not edition bashing just my observation.

[Gorbacz]

Lobolusk wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

Lobolusk wrote:

Gorbacz wrote:

I guess the answer is something along the "wait for the convention madness to end while we try to put Beginner's Box and Bestiary 3 out" lines.

i can understand that, but you should focus on the first product you put out, i am not askign for a fix just a eta on the fix or a quick explanation.

i am patient like moss, my life will not be over if i dont know. just thought i liked the ops idea

I feel you, but this is pen and paper gaming industry - if you stop swimming, you drown. And by swimming I mean focusing on new stuff.

Companies like Paizo don't have the luxury of "yeah, let's now sit back, issue patches and tune our Ferraris while the bank account soars" of the video gaming industry.

Here's one advantage WotC has - they're not in charge of their own survival, so they can shift resources to errata/FAQ department far more easily.

Gorbz, good buddy thanks for the info and explanation that makes a lot of sense. I was under the impression that paizo had far surpassed wotc. Pathfinder is super popular way more popular than 4th i would think.... i am not edition bashing just my observation.

Actually it's a slightly different point, completely separate from what sells more and what's more popular.

D&D is just a part of WotC (they also do that whole Magic: The Gathering world's biggest card game and so on). WotC is a subsidiary of Hasbro. Hasbro is a giant corporation. Now, that means they can do stuff at far more relaxed pace, because what happens at the D&D division of WotC doesn't impact the whole corporation as much. Also, they have much more resources at their disposal

Whereas Paizo is on it's own, and the quarterly bottom line has a direct effect on everybody there. And since we're talking pen-and-paper RPG industry, which isn't really the most lucrative out there, if you want to keep a medium-sized company alive, you have to swim. Swim as in churn out new books at a reasonable pace. Lisa said that several times - get new stuff out on the market or perish. Given her track record of business management, I'm inclined to believe blindly in her observations.

It's one of the downsides of Paizo being a friendly neighbourhood company where you know everyone and it's so cozy around. They can do that, because they're in charge of their own turf from A to Z. But that also means that they also can't back-burn for a couple of months and focus on errata. It's onwards and upwards, and hopefully at some point Paizo will have enough resources to keep one dedicated guy who will do nothing but comb thru all those FAQ threads and try to keep everyone happy. But that's not that point yet.

Also, apparently they are tied or ahead or slightly behind or just somewhere within the zone of overtaking WotC's D&D, and I'd rather have them win this battle first and then focus on looking back. But that's my very personal opinion many in this thread won't agree with. :)

[James Sutter]

Gorbacz speaks much wisdom regarding the "publish or perish" problem faced by all small publishers/authors/professors/researchers/etc.

[Gorbacz]

James Sutter wrote:

Gorbacz speaks much wisdom regarding the "publish or perish" problem faced by all small publishers/authors/professors/researchers/etc.

Oh this totally applies to academic work as well. I would LOVE to revisit a ton of stuff I wrote earlier during my PhD studies, but I simply can't afford it. Write new stuff or perish, simple :)

[A Man In Black]

I know this is nearly a year old, but I think it's worth mentioning again in light of something SKR said.

SKR wrote:

My much-earlier point from the other thread still stands: I go out of my way to engage with people on the boards, discuss rules, and figure out what people want in the FAQ. When Jason and I discuss something in the rules, if I disagree with his ruling (for example, I think the trip weapon property is really weak), I'm not afraid to (1) explain the official ruling, and (2) admit that I disagree with that ruling. Yet too many people here think that I'm some kind of FAQ-lackey, making rulings without talking it over with other members of the staff, and think it's okay to be rude to me or go "over my head" when they disagree with the official ruling from the design team. I got tired of that attitude. And I stopped posting answers to rules, and stopped posting FAQs, because I didn't want to deal with it any more (which is sad, because I actually like answering rules questions). Because I'm not required to deal with rudeness and personal attacks, I won't do it.

It would absolutely be useful to have some sort of centralized resource for making ex cathedra statements, since it's clear that there was a common misunderstanding of when SKR was speaking as a game designer and gamer and guy, and SKR was speaking on behalf of the design team as a whole. This isn't his fault, but it's a consequence of not having a bright line between "personal" posts and "official" posts. This wouldn't have to take the form of an "official" flag for posts; it could be something as simple as a shared "design team consensus" account (complete with silly councilmembers-in-shadow avatar). It seems silly and unfair to me that SKR would be taking all the heat as the messenger for decisions which weren't solely his.

[hogarth]

A Man In Black wrote:

It would absolutely be useful to have some sort of centralized resource for making ex cathedra statements, since it's clear that there was a common misunderstanding of when SKR was speaking as a game designer and gamer and guy, and SKR was speaking on behalf of the design team as a whole.

Isn't the FAQ the repository for "official" comments?

[A Man In Black]

hogarth wrote:

Isn't the FAQ the repository for "official" comments?

Yeah, but the way it was being distributed didn't enough of a difference between SKR speaking as the guy who announces FAQ entries and SKR the guy with strong opinions about (or offering insight into why he wrote) the rules. He did his best, but at the end of the day they both had his name (and only his name) attached, with no distinction made other than reading them carefully.

Devstalker-style tags or just a central ex cathedra account would go a long way to help with this.

[hogarth]

A Man In Black wrote:

hogarth wrote:

Isn't the FAQ the repository for "official" comments?

Yeah, but the way it was being distributed didn't enough of a difference between SKR speaking as the guy who announces FAQ entries and SKR the guy with strong opinions about (or offering insight into why he wrote) the rules. He did his best, but at the end of the day they both had his name (and only his name) attached, with no distinction made other than reading them carefully.

Devstalker-style tags or just a central ex cathedra account would go a long way to help with this.

Personally, I would prefer for the FAQ to be the "central ex cathedra account" and that any comments elsewhere be unofficial. That wouldn't require any extra changes to the web site, at least.

That's basically how I've treated it: any comments buried in a thread somewhere are off the cuff remarks, even if they're accompanied by "this is officially the way it is, stamp stamp, no erasies".

[wraithstrike]

I harassed(for lack of a better word) Paizo for FAQ's along with many others for over a year, and then I lost it because some people wanted to be jerks. I am still unhappy* about that.

*The filter would ban the words I want to use so I still leave it at that.

[ciretose]

Some people need to go start their own publishing companies if they don't like how the devs rule...

We all theoretically pay money for their opinions for a reason.

[Quandary]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

"Official statements" regarding rules end up in the FAQ, anyway.

= There is NO official statement re: Attack Action and Vital Strike/Spring Attack?

(or relatedly, whether the UAS/NatWpn/Ranged/Crit info located under Attack action
should be understood as belonging under the 'Attack Roll' section and not just the specific Attack action?)

...Not trying to be a dick, I just think having that info clearly available in the FAQ would actually help real players.

[wraithstrike]

Quandary wrote:

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

"Official statements" regarding rules end up in the FAQ, anyway.

= There is NO official statement re: Attack Action and Vital Strike/Spring Attack?

(or relatedly, whether the UAS/NatWpn/Ranged/Crit info located under Attack action
should be understood as belonging under the 'Attack Roll' section and not just the specific Attack action?)

...Not trying to be a dick, I just think having that info clearly available in the FAQ would actually help real players.

The problem here is that the board used to used to give out official information before the FAQ was made. In order to have the old official answers put into the FAQ we must FAQ them again. Le sigh.

As for Vital Strike it takes place as part of an attack action which is a standard action. Spring Attack is a full round action. If Vital Strike was listed as part of an attack, like power attack is then it would be legal.

With all that aside I still think it could have been written better. :)

PS:I don't think you are being a dick. If they know they made a ruling we should not have to bring it up a second time.