There seems to be a lot of good stuff here, I am still sort of digesting it all, but the main takeaway is that feedback is being taken onboard, and stop asking where your PokéStop is. 😆
That's what I assumed, but @NianticDanbocat specifically called it a "infographic on what makes a great Wayspot," and I think we can all agree that the one shared has nothing to do with what makes a great Wayspot.
@Gendgi-PGO@PkmnTrainerJ-ING - Eagle Eyes - you're right. We didn't yet post the one I mentioned, sorry! I meant to point out the Wayspot Eligibility infographic, which you've already surfaced in your reply. Appreciate it.
Also would love to hear what didn't work for you with that infographic!
I just want to add I really appreciate you taking some time to reply and get into the general discussion with us. It helps humanize the Wayfarer team and makes us feel more like we're being heard.
Thanks for mentioning and being open to feedback on the previous one. I won’t speak for Gendgi, but I think this infographic starts off badly.
Step one is “Submit your Wayspot for review”. Step one for me, as a new submitter, would be “Review the criteria (link) and ensure what you’re submitting is eligible”. Some mention of checking your Nomination Contribution on Wayfarer for any spelling errors and such before it reaches a Voting stage would be worth mentioning also. I am sure others have feedback. Thanks again for being open to it.
Oh yeah, forgot that Gendgi did a whole thread about it, so all the feedback is there.
@NianticDanbocat@NianticTintino Thank you SO much for the very thorough update, it's awesome! I don't mean to diminish that by bringing up a very beaten horse, but I BEG of you one consideration, relating to the upcoming Brazil challenge. (NO, this isn't "I didn't get my reward!") :)
You can go back and find my post after the Russia challenge for my long plea then. My issue was that my daughter and I both participated, loved the event, but we mis-read the initial post's "guidelines" that only HOME town should be reset - the statement was ambiguous and mentioned both Home and Bonus location reviews would be eligible. Again, please see my former post which I hope you will find well-stated my position. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18983/please-reconsider-letting-us-reset-bonus-location-after-russia#latest
So now I'm stuck with Russia as my Bonus location - I really don't like it but can live with that for a year. But many people were in the same boat as me and my daughter. I'm concerned that due to this mistake that I argue was never made clear in the "rules" - now I won't be able to participate in Brazil, unless I change my Home location and now the majority of my reviews will be Brazil and Russia, and not my own home area.
The ideal solution for MY particular situation would be that for Brazil, allow us to change either Home or Bonus, and then reset it back after. That way I could change from Russia to Brazil, and then back to an area of my own language afterward.
No matter what, I encourage you, warmly, to put out a very specific list of rules at the start of the event. In the Russia challenge, some of the very key "rules" were written NOT in the Russia thread, but in the India thread where it was specifically stated to use the Bonus location. I didn't participate in India, so I wasn't even following that thread.
Thank you very much again for that awesome update - it all sounds awesome!!
This is all great news! All I'll say is keep people in the loop. Radio silence isn't cool so even if things keep getting delayed its better to keep everyone updated on progress instead of saying nothing at all or "soon".
@NianticDanbocat you mention email text with "eligible" and "accepted"... previously ingress emails had the "unfortunaltely your nominatios was too close..." will emails get back to that or something similar? This was the best indicator to know if we needed to resubmit because the nomination was blocked from all games, or if it was ok to appear at least in Ingress.
I'm glad the next challenge is in Brazil. For those who will participate and help us, please consider carefully, there are many regions that have Street View 2011 data or just satellite data.
@NianticDanbocat is anything being done to address the backlog? Currently the system seems to prioritize upgrades and whatever the system uses to define rural areas... meanwhile regular nominations are taking longer and longer each day... currently in Los Angeles nominations are taking over 18 months without an upgrade... Is there any way that the system can also prioritize nominations that meet a certain age threshold?
In general, I'm glad we got this update. It sounds like there is indeed some good stuff coming. I definitely have some feedback, though:
Recent Infrastructure Work
There are a couple important issues that are not mentioned here, which include:
Inability to withdraw a nomination while In Voting
Inability to view satellite imagery and access StreetView on the Nominations page
Team, Events, Features
[...]
More educational content in more places: We shared a lightweight new infographic on what makes a great Wayspot. What infographic should we work on next?
The very next infographic needs to be a revised version of the previous infographic that doesn't basically tell players "submit whatever you want, then maybe eventually look up what the rules are." I suppose that will work itself out once the enforced submission quiz is in place.
“Fix the system!” ⚙️
I'm glad to see these two issues are both high on the list. I am concerned that the extreme wait times, which vary wildly depending on location, are lower down in the "eventually" section, but at least they're on the list.
“Show me my impact!” 👀
This section is good to hear. I'm not sure that "fixing typos" really belongs in "an archive of [my] adventures," but as long as we get to see/control our edit submissions, I'll certainly take it.
“Help me succeed!” 🙌
Again, sounds good, especially the part where the company is acknowledging the need for more staff to take on these tasks.
“Make Wayfarer an app!” 🤳
As long as it isn't exclusively an app, this would be fine. I've tried reviewing on mobile before, and the screen is just too small to adequately check location, among other things.
Continuing to collect your feedback
Already mentioned this above in my comments on "Fix the System," but it's good that these issues are at least on the radar, even if there are no concrete plans at this point.
Final Note - Where is my Wayspot in the game?
Good luck with this! Also, I know that @NianticGiffard has addressed the current Ingress sync delays in the Bugs section, but it might have been useful to acknowledge these ongoing issues instead of relying mostly on the standard "not every Wayspot appears in every game" language.
Weirdly, I can't seem to tag you SilverLyra-PGO (I'm still a Vanilla forum noob) but thank you for pointing out what's missing. You're totally right. It is one of the things @NianticTintino and the Community team will be working on and you'll hear more once we've landed on a better method for this! Thanks for your patience as we onboard them as our new Community Manager!
That's a great question. Let me get back to everyone on this with more details in a separate post so it doesn't get lost in thread. Plus I do want to finalize a few product details before replying as well. Hope that's ok with you!
Thanks for commenting on that! You can probably understand why the long silence on this matter is really discouraging for some of us.
I do understand that you guys have got your hands full at the moment (and best of luck to all new team members) - it was just worrying not to see any mention of this aspect of the Wayfarer experience in your lengthy, detailed post.
Hoping to hear more on this sooner rather than later, as the community's already been waiting for quite some time.
absolutely, I appreciate the back in forth, a lot of posts in the past, although great for being updates, feel lost because any feedback seems ignored. This is different and very appreciated, thank you :)
thanks @flatmatt-PGO for the line by line feedback - love it
@Roli112-PGO - yes, long wait times are definitely something to fix (my own nomination is still pending LOL). It's a surprisingly pretty complex. But yes...
@TrevorAlan-PGO - word. sorry about the silence. we literally didn't have enough humans. Niantic is....busy 😅 now we have @NianticTintino and myself added to the mix. I wont be posting as often as the others, but I will do my very best!
@MamaLlama619-PGO - So sorry to hear that got lost in the forum. @NianticTintino - can you reach out and we can get this sorted. And yes, we learned from that and are pulling together a much more specific listing of the rules.
Alright, time for me to walk my dogs and have some dinner. I love that I'm in the mix with y'all!
New User Orientation: We’ll be funneling all new users to the Wayfarer website first, where they’ll experience a simple stepwise orientation of the program that eventually leads to the Wayfarer quiz. Once folks pass the quiz, both the in-game submission and website review features will be unlocked for them. This will only affect new or lapsed Explorers (e.g. 6 months from the date this feature is shipped). Also note that, following several other improvements noted below, we will be reconsidering the use of a quiz for orientation purposes.
Does this mean Nominations/Contributions will be locked for players until they take the wayfarer quiz, or that the Contributions List will be locked for them?
Also, I understand wanting to grandfather in players who are already eligible, but a large amount of the backlog is by players who met the milestone over 6 months ago, but barely checked the wayfarer site (the the criteria has changed a lot since Wayfarer was first announced). Could you consider some players recever some kind of quiz/refresher even if it's been more than 6 months? We've talked about in threads before about some kind of continuing education for submitters and reviewers who's ratings mught not be up to snuff.
I'm really curious. In this thread (https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/13319/day-1) NianticCasey had said on April 22 that the abuse reporting tool would be ready May 1, but after missing that deadline came back and pushed it further down the road. How did the scope shift so much that at least a Beta couldn't be released to help remove reporting from the Wayforum, that continues to put targets on many of your users?
The changes to the Nominations/Contributions view sound great and I can't wait to see them. I've previously resorted to some pretty hack ways of trying to aggregate my portal edit data and it is a lot of work.
Can we expect changes to how edits are reviewed as well? A common request is for some means of supporting information for edits as often it is unclear to the reviewer what has changed and what is currently most accurate (especially if google maps is not up to date). I understand that to a certain extent, edits that fall into this category don't align with Niantic's view of the process as outlined in the past (ie the new thing may not be a great waypoint and folks should remove the old and nominate the new) but this isn't reflected in the current system either.
Having photo reviews split from all other edits further complicates the process. It's very common to see a title and description edit and then a while later a photo edit corresponding.
Photo edits on their own are a bit of a problem. We are instructed to "select those which do not meet criteria" but quite often there are some that are poor enough quality to make this uncertain. Perhaps instead we could rank photo quality from the options presented? Also it is common to see duplicate images among the selections, are we to select both of the duplicates? just one? In short, photo reviewing is very confusing.
NianticDanbocat, hitting the ground running! I am charmed and hope renewed, seeing sentences like "my own nomination is still pending LOL" and the fact that you're walking numerous dogs and your super quick responses to everyone here, it's lovely, you're a real breath of fresh air.
Will withhold my burning desires for questions until the AMA comes to town, but solid introduction. Major infrastructure projects are something I thoroughly enjoy (especially those covered by The B1M like the California HSR), and your skills in Korean, Spanish and Dutch are sweet as. But I definitely look forward to seeing you around more around these forums actively and seeing some of our pain point find acknowledgement and eventual progress towards implementation.
Keep up updated on that nomination, Is it in queue or in voting? Maybe you can join our Discord Server and we can awe at your nomination skills lol. Maybe you should review so you can earn an upgrade for it. Again, we can watch you review in our Discord Server.
@NianticDanbocat will there be a feature where we can view our edits, along with its status (in-queue, in-voting, accepted or rejected), just like nominations? Also, is there any possibilities we can withdraw edits in the future?
And maybe, add some functionalities exist in Wayfarer+ (minimal text translation and nomination stats).
Comments
There seems to be a lot of good stuff here, I am still sort of digesting it all, but the main takeaway is that feedback is being taken onboard, and stop asking where your PokéStop is. 😆
I'm very optimistic about the post. But...
We shared a lightweight new infographic on what makes a great Wayspot. What infographic should we work on next?
Can somebody point me to this?
It’s pretty awful but here;
Oh, quick edit. That may not be what they were on about, so not sure.
That's what I assumed, but @NianticDanbocat specifically called it a "infographic on what makes a great Wayspot," and I think we can all agree that the one shared has nothing to do with what makes a great Wayspot.
You’re right. Perhaps a scheduled post hasn’t gone up yet, or it’s awaiting moderator approval as it has an a image in. 😆
@Gendgi-PGO @PkmnTrainerJ-ING - Eagle Eyes - you're right. We didn't yet post the one I mentioned, sorry! I meant to point out the Wayspot Eligibility infographic, which you've already surfaced in your reply. Appreciate it.
Also would love to hear what didn't work for you with that infographic!
Please note that we do not test features against any third-party plug-ins you might use on your browser of choice.
@NianticDanbocat
I hope you've been able to take a look at the features listed here https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21970/wayfarer-feature-request
Many reviewers consider these features essential to the Wayfarer experience.
theres a whole discussion about it here...
Resources for New Explorers: Submitting a Wayspot - Discussion — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
I look forward to the new one!
A discussion on the linked infographic above can be found here:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18218/resources-for-new-explorers-submitting-a-wayspot-discussion
I just want to add I really appreciate you taking some time to reply and get into the general discussion with us. It helps humanize the Wayfarer team and makes us feel more like we're being heard.
Thanks for mentioning and being open to feedback on the previous one. I won’t speak for Gendgi, but I think this infographic starts off badly.
Step one is “Submit your Wayspot for review”. Step one for me, as a new submitter, would be “Review the criteria (link) and ensure what you’re submitting is eligible”. Some mention of checking your
NominationContribution on Wayfarer for any spelling errors and such before it reaches a Voting stage would be worth mentioning also. I am sure others have feedback. Thanks again for being open to it.Oh yeah, forgot that Gendgi did a whole thread about it, so all the feedback is there.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino Thank you SO much for the very thorough update, it's awesome! I don't mean to diminish that by bringing up a very beaten horse, but I BEG of you one consideration, relating to the upcoming Brazil challenge. (NO, this isn't "I didn't get my reward!") :)
You can go back and find my post after the Russia challenge for my long plea then. My issue was that my daughter and I both participated, loved the event, but we mis-read the initial post's "guidelines" that only HOME town should be reset - the statement was ambiguous and mentioned both Home and Bonus location reviews would be eligible. Again, please see my former post which I hope you will find well-stated my position. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18983/please-reconsider-letting-us-reset-bonus-location-after-russia#latest
So now I'm stuck with Russia as my Bonus location - I really don't like it but can live with that for a year. But many people were in the same boat as me and my daughter. I'm concerned that due to this mistake that I argue was never made clear in the "rules" - now I won't be able to participate in Brazil, unless I change my Home location and now the majority of my reviews will be Brazil and Russia, and not my own home area.
The ideal solution for MY particular situation would be that for Brazil, allow us to change either Home or Bonus, and then reset it back after. That way I could change from Russia to Brazil, and then back to an area of my own language afterward.
No matter what, I encourage you, warmly, to put out a very specific list of rules at the start of the event. In the Russia challenge, some of the very key "rules" were written NOT in the Russia thread, but in the India thread where it was specifically stated to use the Bonus location. I didn't participate in India, so I wasn't even following that thread.
Thank you very much again for that awesome update - it all sounds awesome!!
This is all great news! All I'll say is keep people in the loop. Radio silence isn't cool so even if things keep getting delayed its better to keep everyone updated on progress instead of saying nothing at all or "soon".
@NianticDanbocat you mention email text with "eligible" and "accepted"... previously ingress emails had the "unfortunaltely your nominatios was too close..." will emails get back to that or something similar? This was the best indicator to know if we needed to resubmit because the nomination was blocked from all games, or if it was ok to appear at least in Ingress.
I'm glad the next challenge is in Brazil. For those who will participate and help us, please consider carefully, there are many regions that have Street View 2011 data or just satellite data.
@NianticDanbocat is anything being done to address the backlog? Currently the system seems to prioritize upgrades and whatever the system uses to define rural areas... meanwhile regular nominations are taking longer and longer each day... currently in Los Angeles nominations are taking over 18 months without an upgrade... Is there any way that the system can also prioritize nominations that meet a certain age threshold?
In general, I'm glad we got this update. It sounds like there is indeed some good stuff coming. I definitely have some feedback, though:
Recent Infrastructure Work
There are a couple important issues that are not mentioned here, which include:
Team, Events, Features
[...]
More educational content in more places: We shared a lightweight new infographic on what makes a great Wayspot. What infographic should we work on next?
The very next infographic needs to be a revised version of the previous infographic that doesn't basically tell players "submit whatever you want, then maybe eventually look up what the rules are." I suppose that will work itself out once the enforced submission quiz is in place.
“Fix the system!” ⚙️
I'm glad to see these two issues are both high on the list. I am concerned that the extreme wait times, which vary wildly depending on location, are lower down in the "eventually" section, but at least they're on the list.
“Show me my impact!” 👀
This section is good to hear. I'm not sure that "fixing typos" really belongs in "an archive of [my] adventures," but as long as we get to see/control our edit submissions, I'll certainly take it.
“Help me succeed!” 🙌
Again, sounds good, especially the part where the company is acknowledging the need for more staff to take on these tasks.
“Make Wayfarer an app!” 🤳
As long as it isn't exclusively an app, this would be fine. I've tried reviewing on mobile before, and the screen is just too small to adequately check location, among other things.
Continuing to collect your feedback
Already mentioned this above in my comments on "Fix the System," but it's good that these issues are at least on the radar, even if there are no concrete plans at this point.
Final Note - Where is my Wayspot in the game?
Good luck with this! Also, I know that @NianticGiffard has addressed the current Ingress sync delays in the Bugs section, but it might have been useful to acknowledge these ongoing issues instead of relying mostly on the standard "not every Wayspot appears in every game" language.
A very thorough post indeed... yet absolutely no mention of the long-promised update to the abuse report system.
Sigh.
Weirdly, I can't seem to tag you SilverLyra-PGO (I'm still a Vanilla forum noob) but thank you for pointing out what's missing. You're totally right. It is one of the things @NianticTintino and the Community team will be working on and you'll hear more once we've landed on a better method for this! Thanks for your patience as we onboard them as our new Community Manager!
That's a great question. Let me get back to everyone on this with more details in a separate post so it doesn't get lost in thread. Plus I do want to finalize a few product details before replying as well. Hope that's ok with you!
Thanks for commenting on that! You can probably understand why the long silence on this matter is really discouraging for some of us.
I do understand that you guys have got your hands full at the moment (and best of luck to all new team members) - it was just worrying not to see any mention of this aspect of the Wayfarer experience in your lengthy, detailed post.
Hoping to hear more on this sooner rather than later, as the community's already been waiting for quite some time.
absolutely, I appreciate the back in forth, a lot of posts in the past, although great for being updates, feel lost because any feedback seems ignored. This is different and very appreciated, thank you :)
thanks @flatmatt-PGO for the line by line feedback - love it
@Roli112-PGO - yes, long wait times are definitely something to fix (my own nomination is still pending LOL). It's a surprisingly pretty complex. But yes...
@TrevorAlan-PGO - word. sorry about the silence. we literally didn't have enough humans. Niantic is....busy 😅 now we have @NianticTintino and myself added to the mix. I wont be posting as often as the others, but I will do my very best!
@MamaLlama619-PGO - So sorry to hear that got lost in the forum. @NianticTintino - can you reach out and we can get this sorted. And yes, we learned from that and are pulling together a much more specific listing of the rules.
Alright, time for me to walk my dogs and have some dinner. I love that I'm in the mix with y'all!
Stay safe and happy exploring!
@NianticDanbocat question about this one part.
New User Orientation: We’ll be funneling all new users to the Wayfarer website first, where they’ll experience a simple stepwise orientation of the program that eventually leads to the Wayfarer quiz. Once folks pass the quiz, both the in-game submission and website review features will be unlocked for them. This will only affect new or lapsed Explorers (e.g. 6 months from the date this feature is shipped). Also note that, following several other improvements noted below, we will be reconsidering the use of a quiz for orientation purposes.
Does this mean Nominations/Contributions will be locked for players until they take the wayfarer quiz, or that the Contributions List will be locked for them?
Also, I understand wanting to grandfather in players who are already eligible, but a large amount of the backlog is by players who met the milestone over 6 months ago, but barely checked the wayfarer site (the the criteria has changed a lot since Wayfarer was first announced). Could you consider some players recever some kind of quiz/refresher even if it's been more than 6 months? We've talked about in threads before about some kind of continuing education for submitters and reviewers who's ratings mught not be up to snuff.
I'm really curious. In this thread (https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/13319/day-1) NianticCasey had said on April 22 that the abuse reporting tool would be ready May 1, but after missing that deadline came back and pushed it further down the road. How did the scope shift so much that at least a Beta couldn't be released to help remove reporting from the Wayforum, that continues to put targets on many of your users?
@NianticDanbocat
The changes to the Nominations/Contributions view sound great and I can't wait to see them. I've previously resorted to some pretty hack ways of trying to aggregate my portal edit data and it is a lot of work.
Can we expect changes to how edits are reviewed as well? A common request is for some means of supporting information for edits as often it is unclear to the reviewer what has changed and what is currently most accurate (especially if google maps is not up to date). I understand that to a certain extent, edits that fall into this category don't align with Niantic's view of the process as outlined in the past (ie the new thing may not be a great waypoint and folks should remove the old and nominate the new) but this isn't reflected in the current system either.
Having photo reviews split from all other edits further complicates the process. It's very common to see a title and description edit and then a while later a photo edit corresponding.
Photo edits on their own are a bit of a problem. We are instructed to "select those which do not meet criteria" but quite often there are some that are poor enough quality to make this uncertain. Perhaps instead we could rank photo quality from the options presented? Also it is common to see duplicate images among the selections, are we to select both of the duplicates? just one? In short, photo reviewing is very confusing.
I often hear people want to withdraw their edits. It would be nice to be able to withdraw them on the Contributions page, but I guess it's difficult.
NianticDanbocat, hitting the ground running! I am charmed and hope renewed, seeing sentences like "my own nomination is still pending LOL" and the fact that you're walking numerous dogs and your super quick responses to everyone here, it's lovely, you're a real breath of fresh air.
Will withhold my burning desires for questions until the AMA comes to town, but solid introduction. Major infrastructure projects are something I thoroughly enjoy (especially those covered by The B1M like the California HSR), and your skills in Korean, Spanish and Dutch are sweet as. But I definitely look forward to seeing you around more around these forums actively and seeing some of our pain point find acknowledgement and eventual progress towards implementation.
Keep up updated on that nomination, Is it in queue or in voting? Maybe you can join our Discord Server and we can awe at your nomination skills lol. Maybe you should review so you can earn an upgrade for it. Again, we can watch you review in our Discord Server.
https://discord.gg/xb9P2q6ysb
Was a good read. Period.
I think that it was a fresh view from the developer's side, but there aren't something new.
@NianticDanbocat will there be a feature where we can view our edits, along with its status (in-queue, in-voting, accepted or rejected), just like nominations? Also, is there any possibilities we can withdraw edits in the future?
And maybe, add some functionalities exist in Wayfarer+ (minimal text translation and nomination stats).