Russia Challenge - an interesting observation

Oakes1923-PGO

I've noticed an interesting trend with the recent Russia challenge and I think it is directly related to the rewards.

I did partake in the challenge and reviewed some, but its been a crazy couple of weeks so I did not get a chance to review as much as I normally do. However, in the last two weeks I have gotten nearly 275 agreements (based on my rate of upgrade attainments). Usually in that same timeframe, with more typical review rates I will get around 100-140 agreements. I did the best I could with the local language but honestly I gave out a lot of 3's because I truthfully didn't know in many cases.

Since the rewards shifted to getting new wayspots in game and not attaining agreements in wayfarer , I think its fair to say that some voting patterns changed. I think agreement fishers may have slowed down or even stopped down voting everything down for at least the last two weeks to get their prizes.

I am definitely under the assumption, based on my own antidotal evidence and some interesting write ups from others, that it takes a much smaller minority to vote something out then to get something accepted. Which means when a small portion of the voting population changes their voting habits it has a huge impact on the outcomes of votes. If/when the agreement fishers flipped it had a huge impact for even other stops outside of the challenge.

My local community for example, in southern NH has well over a dozen new stops over the last two weeks that had been languishing in queue or voting for months. Suddenly they are coming out of the woodwork. We only had two things that got rejected that I am aware of. This is VERY atypical outcomes.

To me this is further proof of why we need to continue to push back on those that vote and advocate so hard for submissions that must be pristine, and provide every shred of evidence in their submission, and not vote with a discerning and forgiving eye and common sense standards. Not draconian or outdated demands from those that are submitting who may not have the in-depth knowledge we do.

For those that will surely disagree and rail against this post, I am not advocating for substandard submissions. I am advocating for more folks to migrate to that middle ground. "nEed MORES pOkESTops" is still not acceptable, but having to provide the equivalent to a local Q rating for your favorite coffee shop shouldn't be the requirement either.

My perspective, it clearly only takes a minority to doom an above average submission. These last two weeks, we saw part of the voting pool go the other way to get their rewards. For the betterment of many folks in my opinion. Lets hope this trend continues (I fear not without the rewards) and lets hope that some folks start to have a change of heart when it comes to the demands they place on certain submissions. And finally lets hope that Niantic starts to pick up some well needed lessons from these events and implements ways to improve the process for all of us.

Roli112-PGO

Such a big wall of text, some good points some bad points, I disagreed because theres stuff in there i disagree with and dont think your message to those disagreeing applies to me.