Please give us some feedback about "Report an Issue" form, it has a HUGE need right now!
GreatSpeedy-ING
Posts: 5 ✭✭
First of all, I should acknowledge the creation of this form was a BIG step forward. But now, I don't want to discuss why, we are having a IMMENSE amount of invalid nominations. In my personal experience it has been 10 good for 90 invalid nominations, where I must say, almost 70 were invalid and worth a report from the form.
BUT! In my local community of reviewers there is a feeling that these forms isn't working at all. Some abusive nominations and edits are appearing again and again. Some of ours greatest and oldest reviewers are saying they wont come back "in service". And I am personally struggling login in and out in a few minutes because of these nominations.
Please, if these forms are beeing read and something are beeing done, show us some feedback. We need to know if our free volunteer work isn't been useless and fully disrespected.
Ps.: This is not my first language, i'm learning by myself, feel free to send me tips if you feel you want to point something out.
Comments
Well, the major problem with that form are (but not limited to):
For real, I really hope they will change the report from using Google Forms into any games' 'Report an Issue' web form style.
As someone who has reported a lot of abuse in Ingress over the years I can tell you with certainty that Niantic will never tell you the outcome of the reports that you submit. The most you ever get is that the case has been closed. Admittedly, that is far better than nothing at all and it would be strongly reassuring to players who submit abuse reports to know that the report has been acted on... if in fact it has.
My suspicion, and this is only a guess, is that Niantic is so deluged by abuse reports that they may have to triage them rather than reviewing every single report. I don't have any evidence at all to back this up, but I'm guessing that the number of reports they receive per day is quite high, possibly higher than they can respond to. If this is the case then knowing that reports have been closed would probably be a net negative because then people would know that their report has not been reviewed by a human.
And to reiterate, I'm not trying to cause fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes at Niantic-- I'm just speculating about what it might be like on the receiving end of these reports.
I concur with most of this and add:
We don't always know exactly what Niantic considers abuse. You know, I know, many of us know that minor location edits for manipulation of in game factors is "abuse," but it took us until 3.1 criteria update to have an actual statement along those lines, and even it isn't clear cut. Similarly, there's ambiguous warnings about "accounts with a history of spamming ineligible nominations," but again that's hard to define.
Lastly, there's sometimes much more nuanced behaviour that is hard to explain and can be often times overlooked by somebody who isn't familiar with the history of the location. I have a semi-local area that pops up in my review all the time. They learned how to manipulate photos to oversaturate areas. "Nominate the pier, then slowly add photos focusing on the foot trail until you can 'repurpose' the POI to a simple sidewalk," for instance, or photos of nearly identical buildings that can be swapped around. None of my reports have brought action to that area.
So, there may be some "abuse" we take for granted that Niantic doesn't. It's also obvious across different communities how we all consider when the form is abusive. I saw somebody reporting "abuse" because there was no "trenching" leading up to a recently installed water fountain.
I would like to add that un-timely actions make things worse. Report a fake. Get actions within a week. In that time frame, 7 more fakes pop up. Report them all. Another bunch appears. Report them all. And get disappointed that there are no bans and the people who do care are getting tired over and over.