Close to three months later, my verdict is that you ambassadors have done virtually nothing. You've more or less continued to do the things you were doing before becoming ambassadors, but all those plans and ideas in the first few posts of this thread... many of them didn't materialize and the others have presumably experienced a quick death.

What you've done is cool and all, but let's not kid ourselves: You are users with shiny orange banners on your profile pictures and that's the only notable change from three months ago. VGC didn't experience an improvement in thread quality or anything like that.

Perhaps the whole idea should be revamped into a seal of approval, so there wouldn't be a limit to the number of people who can get a banner. That could encourage more users to improve the quality of their posts. The obvious downside is that the mod team would have to deal with an increasing number of questions for why they approved certain users when someone has stepped over the line a bit. Probably too much of a double-edged sword.

Your resolution to improve yourself is hopefully a very recent one, because otherwise... oh god.

I don't have any other suggestions at the moment. If it were easy to come up with something, then someone would have already accomplished that in one of the previous years. To the credit of the ambassador initiative, it didn't turn out to be a counter-productive measure like previous ideas.

Sorry to get into, but I may have an idea.

I'll be straightforward: Much like a MPV (for sports) or a employee of the month, I think it would be good if we had an User of the Month on VGC.

I think it would not only celebrate great users but encourage a good amount of people to improve their posts/threads and all. I mean, this alone won't solve anything, but it might help overall.

I know this is mainly up to mods to decide, but I'm sure they're reading this thread. 

All I can say is hopefully soon.

No need to be sorry, this thread serves this purpose.

User of the Month sounds like an interesting idea. You're right it would need to be run past the mods and discussed, but I have a few preliminary questions that you may be able to provide input on.

-Who would decide the User of the Month?

-What sort of rubric would be used in order to judge candidates? ie: Would it be a popularity contest following subjective principles or more of an objective decision based upon what the user brought to the site? What other possible traits could be used as prerequisites?

-What sort of reward would you like to see the User of the Month get? Something to put in their avatar or sig? A shout out in a thread?

Cheers

1- Mods. After all they are theoretically neutral.

2- Objective; based on what the user has brought up to the site on the previous month (quality of posts, projects, meaningful threads, etc. would all be things to be considered).

3- Yeah, maybe something on their avatars. Plus, a montly thread to announce the current User of the Month would be cool. 

And maybe as a bonus there should be a top 3 or top 5 to let other good users know they did well. 

-Who would decide the User of the Month?

The ambassadors can take a vote and decide on the user of the month. Id leave out mods and general users. For the next user of the month, allow the existing user of the month a chance to vote on the next one. This also partly covers your questions of rewards.

-What sort of rubric would be used in order to judge candidates?

I'd use the points leaderboard to get candidates. Something like top 10 on the points leaderboard get an automatic consideration for the title. In addition ambassadors can nominate candidates. A combination of this would also be pretty good. There definitely needs to be a balance between subjective and objective methods in establishing candidates. I'm also not sure on the spread of the ambassadors amongst the various sub communities on the charts but ideally all should be represented.

-What sort of reward would you like to see the User of the Month get?

Definitely a custom tag thats official and supported. A specially designed signature as well. Voting rights for the next user of the month. 3 time user of the months should have an automatic right to become an ambassador. Something like that. :)

Regardless of the details i think its a great idea. Some people will be sour when they see others succeed, but dont worry too much about those people.

Thank you both for the input; some very good ideas. I think User of the Month is a good idea that will definitely be looked into. As an Ambassador some of the points made - such as putting a banner in the avatar - are things I cannot do so I will need to ask users like Truck and Miguel about that (regardless of getting permission to go ahead with it). Trucks would especially need to be on board if custom tags are accepted as a reward.

If anyone else has input feel free to step forward. If this gets the green light it would probably be held until after User of the Year is completed to avoid conflict.