Clarify "Abuse" options
cyndiepooh-ING
Posts: 1,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is clearly abuse of the system.
I want to reject it with an Abuse option so that it does not slip through and go live without someone from Niantic looking at it. But these are the abuse options/descriptions
Fake Nomination: Use for nominations that are clearly fake, and do not actually exist at the submitted location. - doesn't fit, the grass is clearly there
Abuse: Use for nominations where the text or photo is used to abuse, ridicule, target, or **** specific people or groups. - okay maybe they are harassing us reviewers?
Explicit Content: Use for nominations where the text or photo has explicit content. - not that one
Offensive: Use for nominations where the text or photo is offensive. - it's just grass, so no
Personal Info: Use for nominations where the text or photo includes player codenames or real names.- not that either
So for everyone who is going to tell me to just reject for "Doesn't meet criteria" or "Private residential property" you have missed my point that I want to flag as abuse so someone at Niantic looks at it and we don't get these groups approving Wayspots that should not be in game. Would love for someone at Niantic to weigh in.
Comments
Whilst yes, it's obviously a poor submission, how do you determine whether it's just someone who has literally no idea what they're submitting is bad vs someone who is intentionally submitting something they know is poor? The latter scenario is abuse, but is the former scenario also abuse, or is it just a case of someone genuinely not knowing the rules?
Whilst I will not argue that the submitter needs feedback to let them know that this submission is not acceptable, there is no way for us to realistically determine whether it's someone who is being a little too naïve and optimistic or whether it's someone being a troll/submitting with malicious intent.
This exactly. So many cases people label as abuse are not abuse per the rejection options, yet the term is flung around just for things that simply don't meet criteria. This is why we have the reviewing process in the first place - to weed out things that simply aren't acceptable. Even for obvious things like this, you can't call it abuse without knowing the intent. You can't even call continuous submissions of poor POIs abuse. That doesn't fit actual abuse criteria either, and it's easy enough to reject based on the standard options.
This is where Niantic needs to make available as feedback the extra text you might choose to write as a reason for rejecting. But they don't, so they perpetuate all their own problems.
Easy 1* rejection agreement, though!
Maybe the name of the section should be "Flag for Review" instead of Abuse. I am not reading any intention on the nominators part into this rejection reason. I simply want to use a rejection reason that will make someone at Niantic look at it closely before allowing it to go live.
I am really hopeful that these types of submissions will abate, given Niantic's claim that "Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them."
But I am all in favor of adding an abuse option for "Flagrant Disregard of Criteria" that kicks the worst of the worst up for Niantic review. Regardless of whether the person creating this particular submission did so out of malice or ignorance, I believe they have demonstrated that they do not understand Wayfarer criteria and thus should not be eligible to submit or review in future.
For this kind of thing I just use "fake nomination"
Obviously whatever thing they're taking a picture of is most likely "real" but it isn't a real attempt at a nomination that even comes close to meeting any of the criteria. The intent is almost certainly to create a pokestop (or other game poi) where one should not exist, hence fake.
Yeah, my thinking is for things like these, maybe we need to add a section under this or Abuse for... Complete waste of time/Trash/Troll/Couch Stop nomination? Theres too many of these that aren't blatant abuse... But are a complete waste of everyone's time to even be ALLOWED to be submitted into the system these folks need a slap on the wrist email/strike system so they don't keep doing this.
Nothing DRASTIC... As its not a straight up "fake" abuse submission... It just super low effort ****.
There was some sort of email that said "We have confirmed that you have been nominating wayspots that do not meet criteria" or something like that with a risk of suspension, it was on the Facebook page or I think Reddit but I can't see it.
While it can attest to spam nominations, you don't know whether it is their first and only, or their first of many. So perhaps further investigation on the Wayfinder of whether or not they have other related nominations that are equally trash and outright rejecting them on the spot before they can impact other Wayfinders or waste other people's time can be beneficial.
Nominations submitted by accounts with a history of spamming inappropriate nominations
If we believe you are spamming nominations inappropriately, you will receive a warning and may lose nomination privileges for repeat offenses.
Just like the legendary Today's "I want a PokéStop at my house" reviews thread, a lot of coal was posted there and Niantic seemed to action those periodically. I know by personal experience that when I've posted clear fakes such as the nomination/edit abuse in Sydney thread, once Niantic has said that they've taken action, I haven't seen others reporting see the same thing. So they are removed from the voting queue.
Equally this needs to apply to truly and outright ineligible nominations such as Grass. Yeah sure, it's an easy 1* agreement, case closed, but there will definitely be others who will think something like this is a fun joke and vote highly for it anyway in an attempt to get it to "slip through". Yeah, perhaps it could be those so-called "honeypots" but what good are they if the only thing they do is either give the dreaded 4-day cooldown or cause a large yet still insignificant hit to a Wayfinder's rating? Such of these does not need 20+ Wayfinders to waste their time giving this a one-star to be rejected.
Oh, that email I was referring to above is found in this post (although it's the Ingress version):
Threatening someone who thinks it's probably funny to nominate the aforementioned grass after being at least Level 38 in Pokemon GO with permanent suspension will probably stop them in their tracks from nominating low-effort nominations ever again. No one would ever want to lose their account (regardless of whether it's an alt/throwaway account/etc).
I also feel that the people that submit a blank black nomination, or grass, or street, or whatever. Also have no clue how the nomination process works (which will be hopefully partly remedied by the submitter test coming "soon") thinking that Niantic themselves approves them or something. During the "HearUsNiantic" debacle I had a small handful of "nominations" that were just people venting their grief over the reduced Pokémon Go interaction distance...
So again, I hope that these issues will get remedied slightly with the submitter test, but it may be nice to add another "abuse" section for, just straight junk submissions?
There is a very large proportion of the player base in all games who have absolutely no idea about how the POI appear in the game they play.
And this is understandable if you just want to download and play.
Even if they find the submit button they have no knowledge of what follows - the volunteer effort of a small group of players to review and rate in order for the POI to go live.
There are also instances where someone is bored and thinks I’ll submit something funny - which is subjective at the best of times, who then meets a reviewer feeling a fed up at a waste of their time.
and then there are those that are malicious.
I’m not sure what the solution is because everything is subjective. Perhaps an algorithm that picks up a very high percentage of 1* rejected nominations over multiple submissions, for a manual check. Followed by an email that explains rather than the current one.
These seems like a reasonable approach. I can very easily imagine anyone from a kid to an adult stumbling onto the submit button with no clue and then just dinking around with it, like any option in any computer game. "Let's see, it says to submit, what can I submit. Oh, grass!" And then you have this ridiculous nomination.
It just seems way over the top to immediately slam them with abuse and threaten them with a suspension or ban. What for? It's a game. Methods exist to reject the submission as it is. Not everything needs to be abuse. It doesn't even waste time for everyone who seems to be fixating on that. I'd spend more time rolling my eyes at it than I would marking it down and simply moving to the next one.
If they ended up with an explanatory email, they might realized that the submission button is a Real Thing after all, and be encouraged to investigate more, make legitimate submissions, and even review. At the end of the day, we want more of that, not just canning everyone at the first hint of ignorance or irresponsibility.
One abuse rejection does not do anything to your status. I got started really using this forum when I got an "abuse" rejection for a trail marker submission that appeared to be traffic signs. (I emailed the town and they said they were working on a new trail marker design and will replace those when they are finalized. I am still waiting.) Nothing happened to me or my account status. But the word "abuse" does seem to conjure up more emotion than just a "Flag for review" option would. I love that idea of something triggering an explanatory email, and more of those good submissions (and less bad ones) is exactly why I posted this. I did not mention punishing anyone in my original post, just not letting bad things slip through and into the network.
That's fair. It's just that these forums are littered with people plunging off the abuse deep end, and I would like to see that term limited and used only where it's truly warranted. I think the idea for an explanatory, non-abuse email triggered by some volume of 1*s on a submission is perfect. I just wouldn't settle for labelling things "abuse" to get a certain end result when they're not clearly abuse. It's great that the email you got motivated you to come here, but the same thing might turn someone else off of the whole thing. Some kind of "suggestions for improvement" email, with links to the wayfarer site and forums would be much less aggressive or punitive sounding and I think do better in motivating in a positive way.
Hopefully when/if Niantic rolls out their updates, it will go more towards informing new users, at least ... and not banning them for life. 😂
So I was thinking, maybe these kinds of junk/lame attempt at a couch stop/troll nominations need an abuse label in 1* reject, that if the person gets maybe 2-3 rejections due to that reason, they get a month cooldown? IDK if such a thing already exists.
Because again I don't read these kinds of submissions as totally malicious vandalism of the playfield like the St. Cloud ring, and such blatant abuse that I have found myself having to expose in the forums here. They seem to be a "joke" or just someone who has 0 clue how any of this works. So although I do want to label it as abuse to get them to stop since 1* plain reject for PRP or generic reason doesn't seem to totally fit. Maybe a cooldown after enough strikes is forceful enough to quell trash nominations.
What we need for the submissions that are nonsense or just plain not eligible (e.g. Here is my middle school, we need a stop) is a "send help" option under the reject reasons that will result in a helpful email that says something along the lines of "We see that you are interested in contributing to wayfarer database, please consider reading these links and visiting the wayfarer forum to learn how to make the most of your contributions"