80K wayfarer reviews and now I quit
I've never been so frustrated before.
I've played PokemonGo since 2016/08/06. That's the day PokemonGo was available in Taiwan. My love to Pokemon can be traced from my childhood. I played Pokemon since it was announced on Gameboy. I remember it was 1996 and I was about 12-year old. That's really a good old time. After entering high school, I stopped play pokemon because I have to spend time studying. When the first day PokemonGo was announced, I was really excited because I love Pokemon so much and now I have time to play again.
This game give me many good old memories. I adventured to catch Snorlax and Dragonite when they showed on the right lower corner of the in-game radar. The happiness to find a new pokemon to fulfill my Pokedex. And I get lots of friends when playing PokemonGo and now we still dine together sometimes.
In 2018, I started to be an agent. Ingress walked into my life and I was deeply attracted to this game. Ingress has a great storyline. Everything I do in Ingress would influence the whole story. Furthermore, I learned the CORE Values that NIANTIC want to bring to us in this game.
What is the core values of Niantic's games? Explore, Exercise and Social culture. Both PokemonGo and Ingress are designed with these core values.
1, To Explore the world.
Thus, in Ingress, we have to walk and explore 20K new portals to earn the onyx medal. In PokemonGo, we have to bring our buddy to new pokestops to earn the heart.
2, To Exercise and stay in health
Thus PokemonGo trainers has to walk to hatch eggs. Ingress agents has to walk 2500 km to earn the onyx medal, and now we have the kinetic capsule.
3, To Learn the knowledge and social with others
Thus, Ingress has First Saturday to let the players gather and social with others. PokemonGo has community days also.
In addition, Ingress has the rich "mission" system. Agents can explore and learn the local culture during completing missions. For example, I just completed the official Mission Day missions in Chiayi county last month. The mission "日式洋風的記憶" bring me to learn the local old buildings with more than 100-year old. I would never know these beautiful buildings except complete this mission.
Furthermore, I created my own missions in my hometown, Chiayi. In mission "探訪陳澄波", agents can learn and explore the footprints and life of the local famous artist Chen Cheng-po after complete 30 missions in a series. That is why Ingress touched me so much. I truly love the mission system.
Okay, let's get down to the origin topic. The whole wayfarer system should be built on the Niantic core values. So, what is eligible? To exercise: exercise equipment, gyms, basketball courts; To Explore: historic architecture, museums, zoo, libraries; To social with others: parks, post offices, trials...etc.
Few months ago, a malicious abuser create a FAKE kingdom in his township, Yongjing. He use multiple accounts to accept his low quality or fake nominations to let them published. These wayspots are totally against the core values of Niantic's games. This abuser built 3 PokeGym near his house in order to earn Pokecoins easily every day. Detail story in this post below.
According to the @NianticGiffard 's reply, 37 low quality or fake wayspots were removed and 6 accounts get some warning. 3 months later, the fake kingdom multi-account king start his revenge. We believed that he reported all the wayspots in Chiayi area. About hundreds of wayspots in Chiayi are removed due to misleading information: almost all of them are reported as no pedestrian accessible. But in fact, in Taiwan rural area, there are seldom sidewalks. People can walk easily and safely without dangerous on rural roads, even without sidewalk.
@phi2458-PGO has posted some discussions explain about this situation
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/106783/#Comment_106783
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/105235/#Comment_105235
We, @aeromycity-ING and me have to appeal these wayspots one by one, some village take us more than hours to go in order to take photos to provide the evidence. Some wayspots are restored, some are not. And even some restored wayspots are removed again. It is really exhausted and spend a lot of our time and passion. I can understand some situation @NianticGiffard concerned thus some wayspots are still retired. It's totally okay. If the whole system running well, the wayfarer world would be kept in order.
But, but, but. The multi-account king still influence the whole system in Taiwan. Besides making fake wayspots, besides removing wayspots in Chiayi, he still use his multiple accounts to disrupt the wayfarer system. We believed he intentionally refuse all the new nominations in Chiayi. We have some reports that temples (absolutely eligible, neat and clear photo, with google streetview viewable) were refused in Chaiyi area recently. That is a big problem because those reviewers who accept these refused wayspots would downgrade their wayfinder rating. And those who refused those published FAKE and low quality waypots in Yongjing would downgrade their wayfinder rating too! Seeing what is the biggest problem now?
In Taiwan folk there is a famous sentence "劣幣驅逐良幣". It means bad money drives out good money. If the abuser make his success more and more times. Those who spend time to review seriously would get the bad result, downgrade their rating, frustrated, and quit. And the abuser will success more and more easily! That is the biggest problem that Niantic team should consider and fix. Multiple accounts can damage the wayfarer system so easy!
After the months of appeal and fight with this abuser, I'm really frustrated. I believe that Niantic is working on this issue. But time still goes on. Our games are ruined and my passion is exhausted. 80K of wayfarer reviews maybe means nothing to other senior reviewers, but means my 3 years of lifetime devoted to the wayfarer system. I wish there is an ordered world that follows Niantic's rule and core values, but in vain.
Goodbye, and thank you Niantic that you have bring me good games before.
Comments
30K wayfarer reviews and now I quit ,too. LOL
I will continue to provide panoramic photos and any interesting information about this land that I love so much.
Not to provide a game data that will be deleted for unknown reasons.
The original intent of the Ingress game was ruined.
Agent - aeromycity
Point of order
"The original intent of the Ingress game was ruined" is totally untrue.
The intent of Ingress was to use it as a proof concept to see if an ARG was feasible and if it could prove interesting, payable and at the same time be used to add more POIs.
It was never expected to last more than a couple of years and it was meant to be nothing more than a prototype game.
To say that the intent of Ingress has been ruined is just elitist game snobbery and doesn't belong on these forums
Have you ever participate one XM anomaly? Have you ever join the tessellation event during 2019 to 2020 in ingress forum? If not, you don't understand this game. Ingress has a great storyline as I mentioned in the above post. It's not just a prototype game or just testing for AR. It is old, but still works fine and bring players much fun.
Took you long enough man. Why would you even waste your time like that...
I must admit I had a great time in Denver, testing out possible gameplay for future games and proving the viability of AR. Oh, and hacking the van, meeting some great agents and Niantics, and derp-linking downtown. :)
Come on, Niantic. This is a part of your fault.
This single abuser reported those many Wayspots, and by your (Niantic) judgement of safe pedestrian access, you've decided to remove them even thought these players told you the situation in their country.
They have appealed some of these removed Wayspots, but only few are being successful while the others are either rejected or ignored.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21637/more-and-more-temples-were-removed-due-to-malicious-revenge#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21515/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0809-2-%E7%A2%91%E5%89%8D%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80%E5%B0%8E%E8%A6%BD%E5%9C%B0%E5%9C%96#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21747/appeal-portals-removed-evidence-provide-0813-2-%E5%BB%A3%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%AE%E6%9D%B1%E7%87%9F-%E5%BB%A3%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%AE%E8%A5%BF%E7%87%9F#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21267/huge-statue-was-removed-due-to-misleading-information#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21944/trail-milestone-marks-are-removed-due-to-malicious-revenge#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21577/maps-and-introduction-signs-with-art-on-the-bicycle-way-were-removed-due-to-misleading-information#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21511/more-temples-were-removed-ridiculously#latest
And so on.
I have read another post that @TinyGG-ING posted in the local forum. It is written in Chinese. I think what OP means is the "spirit" of Ingress.
Ingress is a game that helps you to explore the world. While playing Ingress, you also learn about the local culture and enjoy the beauty of the city. I think it is the spirit of Niantic.
However, this spirit is totally ruined by the Wayfarer abusers. They have caused serious damage in Taiwan, including
Please refer to this discussion:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/16806/someone-use-multi-accounts-to-aduit-the-wayfarer
Please refer to this discussion:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21500/intentional-wayfinder-maliciously-used-multiple-accounts-to-abuse-wayfarer-system
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21504/help-we-are-suffering-from-massive-removing-attacks
Please refer to the discussion on the local forum. It should be a perfect nomination, but it was rejected three times in a row for random reasons:
https://forum.gamer.com.tw/Co.php?bsn=29659&sn=241793&subbsn=1&bPage=0
Please refer to the discussion on the local forum:
https://forum.gamer.com.tw/C.php?bsn=29659&snA=41827&tnum=30
They have abused Wayfarer for a very long time. And we also provide some evidence that shows a secret group has taken over the system.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/106970/#Comment_106970
But We don’t see Niantic take any action against them, not to mention repairing the damage that they have done. We have to propose restoration appeals one by one.
We feel frustrated.
@NianticTintino @NianticDanbocat any commentary for this?
It's much like "I love this game, so I will, to devote my time to make this game better."
Volunteers are all from the passion to whom they loved.
Hi @TinyGG-ING
Thank you for sharing your experience with the community and Niantic. I am deeply sorry about this experience, which we know exists in so many communities around the world and across all of our games. We are working across multiple teams (platform and game teams) to tackle this widespread very sticky complex issue of multi-accounters, which as you know is completely against our Terms of Service.
Our team that looks into reports of abuse and cheating will probably reach out to you for more information for your specific case, if they haven’t already. The more forensics we have the better.
Also, it’s totally understandable if you want to leave the community right now. You felt on your own for a long time trying to grapple with this individual’s actions. We were not there. And I am sorry for that. Please do what you need to for your mental health and well-being. In the meantime, I will be following up internally with the team that helps us with this specific issue. Hopefully to generate momentum on creating real solutions here. I hope you join us again, and if you do, I hope you will find a much emotionally safer, honest, and supportive community here.
-d
Hello @NianticDanbocat
This is the kind of answer that you and your team should aim to in order to develop a good relationship. Read it, and then reply as a human, not stay silent for months or copy/paste the same sentences even if they don't make sense.
Although you're new in these forums, you can check in the linked posts that the problem in that area has been going on for quite some time, and it's not good that you defer this to find some kind of magical solution from the whole Niantic against multi-accounters.
These people have posted about the many wayspots that have been removed using false claims, why can't YOUR team put someone to look at some of those restore requests, check if they have something in common and then find out if there is a small group of accounts that have been requesting removals through all that region and revert them as a whole if you find that they have been abusing wayfarer?
We know that totally preventing cheaters is almost impossible, but you should be able to put some counter measures when you find that someone is deliberately trying to hurt a whole group of players or the data in your system. Apply extra checks in that zone looking at the bigger picture, in the same way whenever a nomination is sent in a "risky area" (we're all thinking about St. Cloud), let it go first to one person in your team to check if it's abuse and in that case ban that account straight away.
If you want to get back control of Wayfarer you'll have to act swiftly against abusers.
what i always say, be true to yourself, be true to your customers.
if your customers say "theres something iffy, the fish stinks", then the fish if off. there is something wrong.
Do not pretend that "this is fine".
We had very bad few weeks with Wayfarer this summer, and i think alot of us need some time off, to reflect on the last months.
As we are technically not beign paid for our work, we cannot go on a strike. we even dont pay for the union. i am thanking everyone that stops reviewing for the next forseeable time.
I'm actually speecheless. This is the first time someone with a Nia tag actually READS a thread and replies accordingly, with actual human speech.
Unfortunately, your predecessors have already tarnished the trust from the community by doing the exact opposite. I, however, wish you the bestest of luck in the world in trying to regain this trust and control back. You my friend, are the chosen one!
@kekw09-ING - I for one believe in this community and that trust can always be rebuilt! But we’re not that interested in “control” LOL. If we were, Wayfarer wouldn’t exist as a program. Plus, I don’t think control is needed if there is trust and respect, right?
@rodensteiner-ING - I don’t know that anyone has ever said that everything is fine, else I wouldn’t be here right now... We wouldn’t be surveying the community, we wouldn’t be designing improvements and fixing bugs etc. I also don’t totally comprehend the “union/strike” analogy. If you were in a free to use public park where a park sign said “we request that you please throw litter in the trash bins and keep our parks clean!” and you go about voluntarily picking up litter because you care about the park experience for yourself and others, would you go on strike because the city didn’t pay you to do so?
I don’t know of any other large studio that enables users to literally shape their free-to-play games through a voluntary global community mapping project. Yes the experience doesn’t always feel fun, but that’s what we’re trying to fix bit by bit. But look, if the Wayfarer program isn’t floating your boat right now, if it’s not actually helping you explore the real world with your friends, and move about, please do what is right for you and your well being! I really mean it. We aren’t trying to trick folks into gluing their eyes to a screen reviewing stuff till the cows come home. No one is forcing you to keep that park clean. There’s so much of the world to enjoy out there and that is our core goal. If this isn’t helping you do that, then just get out there and play! I personally appreciate all that you have done for the community thus far and that you have been staying engaged with us here. Know that you’re welcome back into the Wayfarer community whenever you’re ready.
d
@NianticDanbocat :
@rodensteiner-ING has, for multiple years, been trying to get the Team to address a fundamental bug whereby rural parts of an S2 cell are totally disenfranchised. Please search out and read his threads. He tries to put spots out where explorers can find truly interesting things that are a little off the beaten path.
They never get a disposition.
This is the thread in question
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/15078/no-submissions-are-going-thru-in-our-s2-9-cell#latest
@Elijustrying-ING @rodensteiner-ING @Eneeoh-PGO
yes, will do! I am away next week but will look when I am back. We don’t have any S2 rules in Wayfarer so if this is related to pogo it may take a tad longer to sort out since it then involves more teams.
There’s also the “.” rejection reason I have an investigation scheduled for first though (cc: @Gendgi-PGO).
thanks
d
Yes!
thanks
Hello @NianticDanbocat
Are you really claiming that the pool of nominations that each wayfarer reviews is not related to S2 cells?
maybe we could do a Webmeeting, where we could tell him about it.
We don’t have any S2 rules in Wayfarer so if this is related to pogo it may take a tad longer to sort out since it then involves more teams.
S2 cells control the pool of reviews we see for non-upgraded candidates: the also dictate which portals are displayed in the Showcase. My local showcase shows nominations from the same town and same submitters repeatedly, while in reviews it's the big cities that get all the priority in review while the suburbs languish.
S2 cells play into every Niantic game - my home Ingress cell, AM01-LIMA-11, did not have its borders drawn up by a treaty or delimited by a geographical boundary like a river. It's a cell, like any other.
Thank - you for progressing these.
This is gospel.
In July, we had a super fast month of nominations being approved in Sydney and it was very satisfying to see how the queues moved once more and there were little new submissions being made due to lockdowns. It also explains why one corner of an S2 cell is heavily prioritised, while another corner is super slow. For instance, I've nominated things recently which are approved in mere days, but I still have a pair of nominations which are over a year old. I done quite a bit of research and have my theories, but I'm more than happy to post my findings if there is any interest. Nominations which moved into voting moved around within an S2 cell (specifically, smaller cells within an S2 Level 9 cell).
There was a report on reddit regarding the process speed with a good amount of nomination.
The finding is, Nominations in a level 9 cell (hopefully i'm right with the number of cell) will process faster or slower based on the density of the surrounding eight lv9 cell.
So, if the cell in question has lower density than its surrounding eight level 9 cell, the nominations inside has faster process rate than other cell. Hence the higher density one has lower process rate than others.
This could be the post: https://www.reddit.com/r/NianticWayfarer/comments/fuuhsq/the_9cell_voting_theory_and_why_some_nominations/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
while the discussion was done more than 1 year ago, there might be some changes. Like one theory where an in voting level 17 cell block the surrounding eight lv17 cell one is overthrown with upgrade & possibly normal submit(not sure about normal submit, saw upgrade one doing it)
Wait, is niantic acknowledging cells now?
It is easy to get confused between the S2 level cell numbers - Once it gets bigger than level13 I lose track.
But this is a good example of how we can figure things out, that would make life easier if we were jsustbtold up front.
To be fair I strongly suspect that @NianticDanbocat has not been told any of the details of how the review system queues work, so it would be useful for him to find out. He was probably told about the rules about points appearing in PoGo so you hear rather phrase S2 cells and default to PoGo.
A key source of frustration and then switching off from wayfarer, revolves around the delays and problems that emerge and the S2 cells are involved.
As the other posts say the bigger cells determine the rate of flow from the pool of nominations into the general voting stream. The idea behind it is fine - it is to give priority into voting for nominations in POI poor areas. However this does not always work and I suspect the cell size is too big. You get cases all to easily like @rodensteiner-ING where places become stagnant. I think I have a similar problem from rural Cornwall in the U.K. where several surrounding cells are mainly water or moorland low density. It’s early days (only 10 weeks in) but 2 years ago these would go through in 3-6 days and so far nothing other than in voting.
Smaller cells (think it’s level 14) determine what actually goes from the nomination queue pool into the in voting pool. Again the intention is good, to stop one area flooding the voting pool. But as multiple people will be submitting and there appears to be a random factor of the order that pulls a submission from in queue pool to the voting pool once a space is available you have no idea what is happening to a submission for what can be literally years.
It’s important as this can affect the morale of the wayfinder. Why try to find and submit when nothing seems to happen. It also ends up tasting unpleasant as you then feel that reviewing feels like a stick rather than a carrot as the only way to get out of the pool (which starts to feel like a swamp) is to upgrade. Bear in mind that only if you are curious do you know this is going on to casual submitters it’s just a blank wall.
Some cells do seem to become particularly stagnant with no natural flow out. I suspect something is going wrong but getting someone to investigate that might have access to the details/data on the state of submissions and dive in to unstick it is impossible. It is all too easy for a POI or 2 that do not get resolved to end up blocking a whole cell.
These need urgent attention as the lack of flow is discouraging. An issue is that they are localised problems and when raised other areas are puzzled as all is well and someone looking at a wider picture might not appreciate these local problems.
Another level of cell that wayfarer uses is the Level 6 ( I think). These determine the area that you normally review, with a larger cell size determining review of upgraded or fast flow nominations. I don’t review any fast track ones from outside U.K. but I do get for review photo reviews from France and Belgium so perhaps some other size for these.
TL:DR S2 cells do have a key role in wayfarer
I think that we should stop talking about S2 cells in this post as it's not related at all to the OP.
This is about how a person or small group of persons can destroy the gameplay for a whole community by damaging Niantic's database and they can run rampant without anyone stopping them.
The thread by @rodensteiner-ING seems to be the proper location to talk about how nominations are prioritized, is it S2 cells or is it magic? I don't think that we would really care too much as long as people was able to nominate and get their proposals reviewed properly without waiting years for them while other nearby locations are able to nominate and get their results back in a few days.
Casey said in March that they will come back after the team was able to look at it, but there was radio silence after that.
Please, remember that high prioritization cells have been involved several times in abuse of wayfarer (St. Clouds, multiple towns in Germany, ...) as they are able to send nominations without stop so even if the fake ones are removed, they are created again in no time.
Sorry for the offtopic @TinyGG-ING
We could call them The Cells that Shall Not be Named, but it isn’t difficult to imagine scenarios that result in the total blockage the OP has been reporting.
Hi @NianticDanbocat,
A member in the local forum said that the temple nomination finally got accepted after many failed attempts. He guessed that there was an action against the abuser.
https://forum.gamer.com.tw/Co.php?bsn=29659&sn=241793&subbsn=1&bPage=0
Is there any follow-up about this case? Please let me know so that I can share it with the members in the local forum.
Thank you for your time.
You can't guarantee that, since his votes may possibly outmatched against votes from others. And that's only one example.
By the way, is there any new report of Wayspots removed by his abusive activity?