Will it be possible to report reviewers?

Hi!

This is my first post on this forum. I am not a native English speaker, therefore I apologize if I make grammar mistakes.

After having several proposals rejected, I would like to ask Niantic if it would be possible to REPORT REVIEWERS, because lately it seems that a lot of them don't care the least bit about the time spent making wayspot proposals.

Let's have a look at the "reasons" raised in my last REJECTED proposals:

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18 August

Mirador de Sant Antoni

Reasons:

(a) Photo of the nomination appears to be of a person or group of people instead of a valid object,

(b) The real-world location of the nomination appears to have explicit or inappropriate activity,

(c) Photo appears to be tilted, sideways, or upside down.

But no person can be seen in the photo, the place is just a viewpoint with some stone banks (is it inapporpriate to regard the sea?), and the photo is correctly taken.

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10 August

Cafe Tropical

Reasons:

(a) The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm

(b) Nomination is fake and does not exist at the submitted location,

(c) The real-world location of the nomination appears to be sensitive

Again the three reasons are false. The place is a very popular music bar (not private residential), obviously exists in that place (Street View shows this) and of course is not sensitive.

Notice also the contradiction between (b) and (a) or (c). If the nomination was fake, how can one even say that it is residential or sensitive?

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4 August

Embarcador de s'Alqueria Petita

Embarcador i palanca situats al costat de la platja de s'Alqueria Petita.

Reasons:

none.

So?

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24 July

Cucurutxo gegant

Reasons:

(a) Photo of the nomination appears to be of a person or group of people instead of a valid object,

(b) Nomination does not appear to be permanent or appears to be a seasonal display that is only put up during certain times of the year,

(c) Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria.

Is there any person in the photo? No!, the image is just a huge ice cream cone figure, permanent since many years (see Street View). The only thing that could be debated if it meets the acceptance criteria, which does, in my opinion, because is a very unique element in the village's coast.

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16 July

Mirador de ses Oliveres

Reasons:

(a) Nomination is fake and does not exist at the submitted location,

(b) Photo appears to include a recognizable license plate,

(c) Nomination appears to be a natural feature (waterfall, mountain, lake, etc.) that is not connected to a man-made object.

But the image of Street View shows exactly the same place of the proposal. How can anybody say it's a fake? And there is no license plate, of course. There are trees and rocks in the photo, but also some old stone banks, which are the subject of the proposal.

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11 July

Hotel S'Aguarda

Reasons:

(a) Photo is low quality (e.g., pitch black/blurry photos or photos taken from a car),

(b) Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria,

(c) Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views.

Well, the photo is objectively well taken and the hotel is exactly at that place (Street View shows it clearly). I think it meets the acceptance criteria, because is a very special hotel with some significance, but this could be debated.

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So, I repeat it, could anybody check that most of these "reasons" are completely imaginary and that their reviewers should be banned? I wonder if there is still anybody not realizing that the Wayfarer system is not working. Why should I spend sometimes up to 20-30 minutes to make proposals that (almost) no one cares about? And why should I review other people's proposals, if many reviewers evaluate randomly?

I know other Wayfarer users who are also fed up for the same reasons. Is there anybody in the Wayfarer team concerned with these disgusting experiences? Are you going to reform this system?

Thank you for your attention.

Comments

  • CipherBlakk-PGOCipherBlakk-PGO Posts: 309 ✭✭✭✭

    Let us all hope that it is never possible to easily and directly call out and ban users, because that would result in abuse on another level entirely ... nevermind that people keep trying to do exactly that about situations like this that don't warrant anything of the sort.

    We have only your word to go on that your submissions are as good as they seem to be. This community can only help with whatever the issues might be if you post the screenshots of your submission details. And yeah, some of the rejection reasons are mindboggling and probably objectively wrong, but it doesn't do any good to fixate on any particular reason because who knows how Niantic picked those out of the pile to spit back at you. The only thing worth focusing on is the rejection itself and how you might improve it.

    But that belongs in the Nomination Improvement section. Sometimes your rejections are just a matter of bad luck and the answer is to simply try again, but nominations are often not as clearly acceptable as most people like to think.

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've been calling out Niantic to have SOME better way of educating bad reviewers, from the wayback days when it was still only called "OPR". Unfortunately @soloredcup never did answer my pointedly directed questions.

    I would still ask that our new Wayfarer staff @NianticTintino or perhaps our faithful @NianticGiffard keep this in mind. It is beyond frustrating when nominations come back and it is obvious that the reviewers are abusing the process by giving back reasons that are so far incorrect as to leave our heads figuratively spinning.

    I've got my own share of horror stories of bad reviewers, including how they continue to refuse that a paintball course is somehow less valid a nomination than a baseball diamond or any other group-based exercise-inducing activity.

    Some particularly egregious examples of rejections (old and new) that continuously irk me:

    • "I think the object is too ugly to be a wayspot" (ie. my submitted trail marker happened to be defaced with graffiti) becomes "Photo is low quality (e.g., pitch black/blurry photos or photos taken from a car)."
    • "The location requires an entrance fee and/or is at a place of business" becomes "The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm"
    • "It's a boring object" (ie. another trail marker) becomes "The nomination does not appear to be visually unique"
    • "It's somewhere in a park or otherwise not near a sidewalk" becomes "The real-world location of the nomination could not be confirmed to have an acceptable pedestrian pathway leading up to it" (bonus points: it's a hiking trail)
    • "I just plain don't like it and feel the submitter is wasting my time" becomes "The real-world location of the nomination appears to have explicit or inappropriate activity"

    Over. And over. And over.


    I was so happy when they finally retired the reason "The real-world location of the nomination appears to represent a generic store or restaurant", which was over-used simply because its wording included "generic".

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I would edit the above to reword "continue to refuse that a paintball course is somehow" and change "refuse" to "insist" because, well, proper English. But doing so would put my comment into that weird Limbo for an unpredictably number of hours. #Mybad

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Pafnutius-PGO well i cant comment on that, as you didnt post the "Contributions". Maybe Niantic would look into it, if these fine "Contributions" are good valid wayspots? Or maybe they are ugly old stuff?

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The way the system is designed low-quality reviewers should effectively get banned because they will fall into Fair or Poor status and their reviews won't have much impact on the outcome of a candidate.

    A lot of what you are seeing comes from Niantic's workflow being poor. "The real-world location of the nomination appears to have explicit or inappropriate activity" is what the submitter sees when people choose "Location inappropriate" while reviewing. The word inappropriate has multiple meanings, and while Niantic intends for that reason to be used for things like liquor stores and **** clubs it's easy to understand how reviewers would use inappropriate to mean that a candidate doesn't meet Niantic's criteria.

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Unfortunately due to real-world in-person harassment (against me, not by me), I'm very wary of posting anything that publicly exposes my location. This includes nominations, as they quite directly reveal my whereabouts. Maybe when Niantic finally allows us to make "removal" appeals in private that will change. In the meantime, all I can do is speak in generic terms. Su.cks for me.

    I can say that I've been able to PM both @AgentB0ss-ING and @Hosette-ING, including some of my aggravation. Usually the worst feedback is, "gee yup, that is kinda ugly". (Which, such as for the recently rejected golf driving range, was simply because I had to take the photo at a minorly awkward angle to keep people and cars out of the picture, combined with the angle of the sun coming down through the trees. If I drove, it would be easier to go back for new photos. But a bonus reminder for y'all: "ugly" isn't a reason to deny any wayspot, and all my photos are accurate representations. So meh, it's still on my "eventual resubmit" list.)

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    you can always PM me on discord, but i guess fellow colleagues have already looked at them and gave you feedback

  • HaramDingo-INGHaramDingo-ING Posts: 1,725 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Personally I have seen a lot of nominations get the rejection reasons of inaccurate location (when the pin is right on top of the candidate) and an alarming amount of abuse/offensive reject reasons.

    I clamour again and again, the Inappropriate location worthless reject reason should never have been implemented and anyone who even tries to submit brothels or stríp clubs should be the ones to be penalised, not every other honest reviewer who is weighed down by this ridiculous reason and by reviewers who do not know any better.

    I get that some people don't want to shun reviewers and try to think optimistically that they "didn't know any better" or misclicked/tapped the wrong reason accidentally and were just reviewing things that they normally would, but when they believe a playground is akin to a brothel, photos are sidewards or upside-down when it is straight on or that the location is inaccurate (mentioned above), they need that feedback relayed back to them, one way or another. Maybe the appeals system in the future might address this, but there are some real bad reviewers out there, and they need to be addressed.

  • HaramDingo-INGHaramDingo-ING Posts: 1,725 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Where on earth did my post go? Did it get automatically deleted? There were not even any images in it?!

    Well regardless, I agree with the general sentiment here. Incorrect voting reasons and being able to view a Wayfinder's voting pattern to determine whether they are actually properly reviewing or using correct reject reasons where applicable need to be addressed.

    It should be easy, there should be some backend which is accessible by Niantic to view the patterns of how a Wayfinder votes. And when you analyse their nominations, it should be a nobrainer as to whether their review style is being abusive (i.e. endlessly marking things as live animals or sensitive locations) or whether it's just a one off thing. I've worked with databases and a lot of compliance roles and it is very easy to track when there is an anomaly or someone is doing the wrong thing. I hope that with the tech debt modifications that this proof is actually embedded behind the scenes and it becomes crystal clear to determine people's reviewing patterns.

  • Luxm90-PGOLuxm90-PGO Posts: 18 ✭✭

    Unfortunately, many "Wayfinders" refuse a proposal if it does not appear on the street view ...

    Even so, the photo showing the surroundings matches the area on the street view.


    I also suffered a lot of rejection like this ...

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    If you really really want to see some of my nominations, welp, Discord requires that I already know your full username including the #xxxx suffix

  • AussieLegend-INGAussieLegend-ING Posts: 9 ✭✭
    edited August 2021

    I share the concerns about bad reviewers. I have been trying unsuccessfully to nominate one particular wayspot for some time now and it gets rejected for ridiculous reasons. Here is the latest rejection:

    The claim that the nomination "appears to be a natural feature (waterfall, mountain, lake, etc.) that is not connected to a man-made object," is ridiculous. There is clearly a building in the image (man-made of course!) with two light towers (also man-made) in the middle of the fields. The fields are clearly "connected to a man-made object". Similarly, "Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views." is also ridiculous. See the Google maps image below that shows the fields with man-made building attached:

    Oh yeah, there's even a photosphere:

    How any reviewer could make the claims in the rejection is beyond me.

  • Pafnutius-PGOPafnutius-PGO Posts: 6 ✭✭

    Thank you all for your comments.

    The main point of my post is that I felt offended (not just disappointed) by some of the rejection reasons, and that Niantic should reform the nomination system, including a better evaluation of reviewers not based just in "agreements".

    CipherBlakk-PGO, I didn't post to Nomination Improvement because I am not asking help to nominate. Of course, we all can improve our nominations, but I am not a newbie (I have about 40 approved nominations). My post is about the reviewing system. For the same reason I didn't post screenshots. If I could appeal the rejections I would have posted the corresponding screenshots, but this is not the case. Moreover, the screenshots would not help you know whether there is explicit activity or the nomination is fake...

    rodensteiner-ING, they are'nt "ugly old stuff", but as I've said, this isn't the point.

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