The Upgrade-Curse
KoviYT-PGO
Posts: 12 ✭✭
Hi. I’m a pretty active wayfarer user, and during my time here, I’ve noticed that upgrading certain nomination may decrease the chances of it being approved.
It’s really strange, because identical nominations (which I don’t upgrade) usually get approved compared to the ones I upgrade. This is really strange, and I’m wondering why that’s the case. Any ideas?
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Some people have said that fewer people see upgrades, so it takes fewer votes to get it rejected. Also, upgraded nominations seem to be sent to active reviewers whereever, so less likely to be reviewed by locals who understand the importance of the nomination to the area.
Upgrade sucks. When I started they were useful because the nominations got approved quickly, but lately almost all my nominations that are upgraded are not. I thinks it's because people who review the upgraded nominations aren't from the area around, so unless it's clearly a 5 star nomination they just reject it.
I nominated again the ones that were rejected, and without the upgrade they got accepted.
A bit annoying that if you get a lot of upgrades, like from certain Wayfarer challenges, your in queue nominations will be automatically upgraded. I just lost several nominations that I had waited to be locally reviewed for the from-upgraded-to-rejected-curse. And from all the wrong rejection reasons mostly.
I have completely stopped upgrading anything. Which also means I rarely do reviews so as to keep from getting upgrades. They seem to have a 90% chance of getting rejected nowadays, even for slam dunks.
People say that a lot but the experience is not universal. 100% of the things I've submitted since upgrades came out have been upgraded. Here are my most recent results.
It really depends on what you're submitting.
I've found that upgrades work well for obvious candidates (athletic fields, murals, gazebos, etc), but for candidates that are local hotspots or rely on a memorial for someone locally significant, or may not have updated streetview, they tend to have a lousy time being approved.
I've moved to using all my upgrades on obvious candidates (like in @Hosette-ING 's example) and leaving the more ambiguous stuff to locals. It sucks cause some of the ambiguous stuff is the stuff I want approved most, but it's the best solution I have for now.
Except for coin-operated play rides in malls. Locals hate them for some reasons so I have to upgrade them to get approved.
I am talking about slam dunk stuff. Parks, trail markers, sports fields. Stuff you really shouldn’t have to prove it’s worth. I have no faith at all in the review process anymore.
It seems most people review wanting you to prove why it shouldn’t be rejected, rather than looking at it being a good nomination until something proves it otherwise. That’s not how anyone should be reviewing. Which is why I don’t think many know what they hell they are doing reviewing, and certainly don’t know the criteria.
I agree. I only upgrade playgrounds and basketball courts. Anything else is rejected for dumb reasons.
@Freakmaster5050-PGO The whole purpose of submitting a wayspot candidate is to show the reviewers that your candidate is high quality. As a reviewer since 2016 I have always expected that the submitter would convince me that their candidate should be accepted-- I start from a neutral position and only accept something if the submitter has given me enough information to accept it, though I'll do some legwork on my own (usually around verifying the location).
I believe this is the way it should work.
The issue is you shouldn’t have to “sell” stuff that doesn’t need selling. In fact, if one chooses, they don’t have to give any info at all, as it isn’t a requirement. That being said, for parks and sports fields and the like, exactly how much info does one really need to consider them? Shouldn’t be much as outside of extenuating circumstances they are normally practically automatic acceptances.
In reality, there are not only "high quality" candidates in our world.
Theres always a B and a C submission that has flaws. There are people out there that never learned the criteria, or were pushed by niantic into the new criteria system without any information.
The System is very much broken with the upgrades, and i always strongly advise that an upgrade should only be applied if the submission is a rock solid submission.
@Freakmaster5050-PGO For something that's obvious the selling essentially involves doing a good job of presenting key information. You need a passably-good photo, title, and description. If there's any question about the location then you also need to ensure that reviewers have whatever information they need so that they can confirm the location. You'd be surprised by the number of "automatic" submissions I've seen that don't even meet those very minimal requirements.
If the photo is dark and blurry and I can maybe **** the candidate if I squint really hard, the title is "oi#sdfl we%lks9df", or the pin is in the middle of a vast empty field on satellite view and the supporting info is useless then I'm going to reject it.
Same -- no use on using an upgrade on anything that isn't a sure thing. On that note, my upgrades seem to work fine and are nearly always successful. I also will use my upgrades first on nominations that are more local to me, as I stand to gain the most benefit if they are approved versus those that I would rarely visit.
So havent seen any evidence of any upgrade curse.
I am generally against upgrades. They were nice to have when I wanted something in the super-slow queues of the Sydney CBD to go through ASAP but borderline nominations or those which I still try to sell as much as possible but they are not needed anymore. Upgrades come naturally as I review to my pending nominations, but even so I have to be careful with nominations such as park signs, murals and footbridges to an extent.
I acknowledge that the sentiment is not universal, and that's okay. But upgraded rejections are very common where I'm from, such as a mural for a gym or a tennis court which got the not culturally significant treatment with an upgrade (it has since gone through naturally). Conversely, I've read with other communities such as a rural community interstate that when they get their nominations upgraded, it's actually a higher chance of approval because their local reviewers are far more stringent with eligibility. The dynamics are pretty interesting.
But I, as I've been clamouring for a couple of months now would appreciate the choice in choosing whether to redeem an upgrade or not, instead of them auto-applying to something unexpected. That choice should be free to make and not surprise people or disappoint people who accidentally got something upgraded and had it rejected.
@Hosette-ING then pretty much all my upgrades would have been accepted, which is not the case. I am a stickler for good photos, and always give at least basic info for a location (more if warranted). I’m not new to doing this. Yet as I stated, I have low upgrade acceptance. And I’m not the only one in my area either. It’s better off not upgrading anything. Increases the acceptance rate tenfold, even tho it takes a year to do so.
Recently I had a playground rejected with an upgrade for explicit content and pedestrian access. I also had a sportsfield, rejected for a URL even though it was in the supporting statement. And a historical plaque in the CBD rejected as well for a tombstone. I'm really just done with upgrades. It really is the upgrade curse. I assume everyone is frustrated with the outcome of the survey mark abuse response citing that they won't be removed and people such as the collective of Queensland Ingress players who started that invalid appeal post and attempted to snowball it, New Zealanders who chose Sydney as a bonus location (for no particular reason), and the rest of Australia are voting everything else in New South Wales down and are causing grievous undue harm to even regular run-of-the-mill nominations.
Upgrades are much more dangerous than ever based on my experiences these past couple of days. And some people I've talked to have actually resorted to nominating clear duplicates just so upgraded nominations are just duplicated and add their photo to the nomination and the nomination that they thought were safe (but isn't anymore) would just be reviewed normally. Perhaps I should just follow suit if people choose not to review properly. Of course, excessively wild assumption, but I have absolutely zero faith or use case in upgrades whatsoever.
Now trust me, I hate survey markers more than anyone else right now. Beyond what you don't see with upgrades are an endless slog of attempts by people with the laziest supporting photos, people who think it's fun to call them "Let's Mark It", people who place the pin in the middle of the road when it's actually adjacent to the sidewalk, zero-effort nomination attempts, and the countless amounts of blurry photos and markers buried in dirt and blades of grass.
Just remember NianticCasey's words in this thread:
An upgrade is not a reward anymore. They are hurtful and filled to the brim with erroneous reject reasons.
I have used 5 upgrades so far, only 2 approved. Not to mention it takes effort and time to earn another upgrade.
Seeing those 'low quality' wayspots whenever I review one really make me upset, like how did it get approved and mine didn't. 😙
When I nominate near home or work, it HAS to have an upgrade, or it will take at least six months. When traveling, a non-upgraded takes 2 days to 2 weeks. Over the past year, I nominated 70, with 60 upgraded (5 rejected, 55 accepted), and 10 not upgraded (1 rejected, 9 accepted).
Maybe Niantic prefers reviewers who play where there are a lot of wayspots already - because they have a better feel for what makes a good one. So maybe Niantic slows down nominations in busy places, so those nominators will HAVE to review. And speeds up nominations in sparse areas, so those nominators won't bother with reviews.
I think I just got this - a cricket club:
Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Nomination appears to be a natural feature (waterfall, mountain, lake, etc.) that is not connected to a man-made object, Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views.
it's on Google Maps, visible on Street View and you can see the sight screens and pitch covers easily...
sigh. Try again I suppose. Great when you're an extremely rural player trying not to keep getting the car out! I think I'll try very hard not to get upgrades in future if this is what happens...
In addition to leaving it up to reviewers whether to upgrade or not (should have been the default setting from square one), upgraded submissions that have been denied should return your upgrade to you. It doesn't make sense for it to have been spent uselessly and lost, especially with the system being automatic as it is. Or, at minimum, automatically applied upgrades that fail should be returned, since you never had a choice in spending it.
Do not agree on the return of failed upgrades. Opens door to many abusive submissions. The auto applied system is supposed to change in the future, so looking forward to that.
Returning upgrades on denied candidates has been suggested before. What this ends up doing is giving people a freeroll on submitting garbage. Someone who wants to create a bogus couch wayspot can just keep upgrading the same rubbish submission in hopes that they eventually get lucky and it gets approved.
Imagine if the original video games were designed like Niantic Wayfarer. If Niantic made Pac-Man, the power up (Upgrade) would happen randomly, while the player character wandered the maze. It’s only random chance if you get an opportunity to win with no chance to improve you game position.
There are cases where a little RNG is good, but having your reward snatched away with no chance of retrieval isn’t one of them.
Confirmo lo que dice, mis propuestas que fueron mejoradas el 80% fueron rechazadas y las que no mejoré fueron aceptadas
The "cursed upgrade" experience is definitely not universal. Last time I checked, my approval rate for upgraded vs. non-upgraded submissions was the same within 2 or 3%. I've had borderline things both accepted and rejected when upgraded and when not. I've had good things rejected when not upgraded and risky stuff accepted when upgraded. I can't discern a pattern in my large sample.
Of course, none of this is to say that the bad experiences others regularly report aren't very real, but I'm having trouble understanding why it should happen in places like the US or Australia. I can see why a wider audience in places like Europe could introduce language and cultural issues, but it makes much less sense in a large monolithic country.
I review in the Baltimore-Washington area, but largely see things from places like southern Virginia or central Pennsylvania. I have no more familiarity with or connection to the places the vast majority of my reviews come from than I do with California submissions, for example. Culturally I can understand pretty much all California submissions as well as I can understand rural PA submissions. And I have no more skin in the game for rural PA submissions from places I couldn't find without a good map index than I do for California submissions. I am having a hard time seeing how the situation would be different for anybody else in the US or a place like Australia.
My approval rate for upgrades is about 12 points higher than it is for others even with a few hard to believe rejections on upgrades. Really my only complaint is that upgrades more often have awful rejection reasons.
Understandable, however I need another form of compensation. Perhaps by sending me a compiled result of said rejected upgrade (with user-friendly interface of course). Example :
Following lists might be weird, but I kind of need these as well, it might affect my language usage (should I use native language or should I add English) and stuffs.
This is really good actually. Even better if you could appeal this result and/or contribute fixes or supporting info without burning another upgrade, and then send it back into the system on the original upgrade as a second chance. Let reviewers see the original plus updated info so they know how you've improved it, and they can submit a new vote. They'd also have the option to flag it if it's clearly more garbage, and then that upgrade would be ended with no further chances. You'd have to burn a new upgrade to continue further.
I mostly upgrade art - all my art upgrades get accepted. The one exception is a Pokemon friend of mine tried to nominate some art that was visible in the lobby of an office building. You could stand on the sidewalk and view it so not in the center, right at the window. He upgraded his and it was rejected. I submitted it again and instead of concentrating on the actual art, I submitted the plaque that was on the sidewalk outside that explained the art. I also sent reviewers to a website that talked about the art in the area and that was one of the highlighted art pieces. I also sent them to the artists web page and there was a photo of him standing within the art! I really included a lot of detail! Accepted.