Would love more actual answers regarding some wayspots not finding their way back to Ingress, specifically ones nominated from Ingress initially. We understand not all wayspots will be accepted into any given game, but wayspots that met traditional criteria are not showing. Please explain.
There is a persistent rumor that rating a candidate 1* or 2* in any category is a rejection of the whole submission. In other words, any 1* or 2*, even for something like "Historical or Cultural Significance", is the same as voting 1* or 2* for the "Should this be a Wayspot?" question. Can you confirm or deny this?
Why is the standard for removal of Wayspots significantly higher than approval, even for Wayspots that clearly do not meet current eligibility & approva criteria? Especially for old Wayspots that also lack any description and are generally poor quality. Not all Wayspots show up in all games, with priority of which is shown determined by age. So I could submit and get approved a fantastic new Wayspot that is exactly what Niantic says the purpose of this system is, but it doesn’t get seen because of a 5 year old poor quality one that would never get approved were it submitted today but also doesn’t meet the removal criteria.
Unfortunately, many urban areas are currently facing long backlogs. In fact, many areas are now approaching 2 years of In Voting. My oldest submission has been In Voting since November 2019! Submissions are simply not completing without an Upgrade. What is the Wayfarer team doing or planning to do to address the disparity between regions and to speed up the completion of urban submissions? In more rural/suburban areas, the turn around time can be a matter of days. Meanwhile, an adjacent urban area can take years. This not only affects submissions, but they also affect various Edits that are also still stuck in the system for years. What is being done to make sure these Submissions and Edits are actively being voted on so they don't linger in the system for years?
A previous ama regarded “residentially focused” pools as ineligible, but community/apartment pools are great places to both socialize and exercise. If private residential property refers to single family homes, and if shared spaces in apartments, multifamily homes, etc. can be eligible, why should these community pools considered bad candidates?
If it’s a liability/safety concern near water, would a qualifier that the pin should be placed at the entrance gate rather than in the water help with this?
Another area of contention is whether all restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, pubs, etc. should be eligible as places to socialize with others. Popular restaurants and favorite coffee shops are listed among the examples, but several nominators believe that the adjectives used in the examples should have no bearing on eligibility and that merely existing is enough for eligibility. This topic is just one example where a nominator believes that proving anything beyond mere existence is "abusive" and an example of a broken system. So the question is, do these adjectives define what reviewers should look for in a restaurant/cafe/coffee shop/pub/etc nomination or are they purely superfluous?
Multiple copies of Rodin's "The Thinker" were made from a single mold, and the same mold exists as a work of art all over the world. Officially, the number is controlled by the French government.
So my question is, what does Niantic define as "mass production that should be rejected"? Can you please clarify that line?
I would appreciate it if you could also answer "generic" and "visually unique or interesting" in the same place.
If necessary, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with photos of similar types of objects so that we can compare what is OK and what is not.
Nevermind, I will split this into multiple questions...
When looking at removal appeals, some decision making by Niantic seems very inconsistent. Can you guys clarify the removal criteria (and considering it should be the same as the rejection criteria, clarify it as well) for situations such as:
In cemeteries everything is removed, even relevant stuff or things that are far from personal gravestones (even though officially there's no removal criteria for that).
In industrial plants, POIs are removed even when they clearly don't obstruct anything. Suff such as playfields, gazebos and chappels have been removed from industrials areas just because players were unhappy they were in a restricted area. Are we considering anything in restricted industrial areas inelegible for approval and fitting for removal?
For military zones, POIs are not removed, even if strictly it could fit the Emergency Services removal criteria more than the industrial plants (that are removed).
What exactly should be considered to be affecting Emergency Services when it comes to Hospitals or Fire Stations? Something that is away from entrancies/emergency bays should be ok, or anything close is to be removed?
In K-12 there's a lot of gray zone when we have a church or shopping complex that has a school or daycare services inside. There are situations when they were in different buildings in the same property and Niantic decided to remove everything, while in others they were in the same building but Niantic decided not to remove the POI saying the curch and the daycare service had "different entrances". Where should we draw a line regarding this?
Given that Ingress is no longer a clear representation of the overall Wayfarer map, do you intend to make the map of Wayspots available to the wayfarers?
This ensures that players do not end up submitting things that are already in the database (but invisible to the game they submit in).
Have you looked into reducing the 1 year lock on bonus locations? What are your reasons for and against this?
This seems like a great way to spread around reviewer whales and adress the issues of remote areas with few reviewers. Many experienced reviewers like to vote and want places where they will have lots to vote on because helping out a small pool will result in less to do. Not being stuck in place for a year would change this. Ideally I see this situation being something like after 2,000 agreements you unlock the ability to change your bonus location every 4 months and after 10,000 you can change every month.
Do Niantic have any plans to try to provide any sort of feedback to reviewers so as to help them improve their assessment of nominations. We review, and we watch out rating and counters click onward, but we have no real idea of which ones we have voted on are not accepted. Particularly for reviewers with a lot of reviews under their belt, thats a lot of waypoints. It seems pointless to plan to provide "nomination appeals" when reviewers have no chance to improve.
Would Niantic consider a system to replace lower quality wayspots with better ones, probably influenced by community votes? There are some areas where art or interesting nature signs are pre-empted in game by something that is borderline or not acceptable in current guidelines (like "generic" memorial benches). Would love to have the wayspots feature more interesting items if they're available
Will Niantic give us a way to report invalid things, not necessarily the nomination itself but abuse that gets incidentally revealed in the course of other reviewing, such as a way to report bad things you see in the duplicate checking box on normal reviews. If you're checking for dupes and find the middle school mascot painting on the middle school grounds is an active poi, you should be able to flag that.
What should a reviewer do when a duplicate comes up for review when the existing wayspot is badly misplaced (several blocks away or in a potentially unsafe/PRP area). Would be great to be able to flag the new one as the proper location.
What is being done to address the problem of low-quality wayspots and wayspots that do not meet the acceptance criteria dominating the wayspot network (For both old wayspots and newly approved ones)?
The wayspot network is full of wayspots that should not be accepted by modern standards. This is in reference to the thousands of neighborhood signs, non-notable memorial plaques, generic businesses and other trash that generally, Niantic opts not to remove. These wayspots do not meet the criteria, and set a horrible example for what should be a wayspot.
I understand that many of these were accepted into the network during a time when the criteria was much different, and they were grandfathered into the system, but these wayspots are so prevalent and the misconceptions about many of these wayspots eligibility is so strong that they still continue to get accepted. And even when new ineligible wayspots get accepted Niantic neglects to remove them.
There are many cases where low quality or outright ineligible wayspots block the creation of newer, high quality wayspots, or in the case of Pokemon Go, the limitation on wayspot density often causes higher quality nominations to be hidden in favor of lower quality ones, even when high quality Wayspots could be shown.
Is it abuse to report wayspots in the forum claiming that they are part of abuse, without following the requested steps of reporting first in game, and after review by the abuse team they don't find such issues?
This is becoming important given the attack today from one person to another member of this community doxing him from the other side of the world and reporting several wayspots based only on looking at the maps and quickly proven wrong by players with knowledge of the local culture.
You've announced that we'll have the ability to appeal rejected nominations. Whilst the feature is being worked on and I don't expect all the beans to be spilt right now, I am curious if these appeals will go directly to a Niantic staff member, or whether they'll go back into review by other wayfarers? I'm also curious if we'll be able to appeal rejections from before the feature was introduced, or whether it will be limited to new rejections?
I didn't "vote" either way, but it does come off as a demand that Niantic make a specific change to the criteria instead of ask a question about the criteria or how it is interpreted.
Well, my main question is why they are banned. I just had a lot of additional back story on there also from the thread discussion.... Which I suppose could come across as a demand. I guess I'm just passionate about that topic, and annoyed even with the previous thread when I'd say "military bases are safe" and then id get buried in disagrees with no comment on why they'd even disagree with that statement.
OH, can we get some clarification on what doing a 1* abuse rejection reason actually does?
It seems that choosing abuse from the menu doesn't actually count as a 1*... Because so many things that I (and others) that have reviewed things with an "abuse" reason still get approved.
With Lightship taking over as the master map for all Niantic games, will Wayfarers have a means of accessing it prior to submitting a nomination? Will Wayfarers be able to submit edits for POIs that don’t appear in their primary game?
Comments
Will Niantic acknowledge map cells and the formula for Wayspot appearance in game?
Would love more actual answers regarding some wayspots not finding their way back to Ingress, specifically ones nominated from Ingress initially. We understand not all wayspots will be accepted into any given game, but wayspots that met traditional criteria are not showing. Please explain.
There is a persistent rumor that rating a candidate 1* or 2* in any category is a rejection of the whole submission. In other words, any 1* or 2*, even for something like "Historical or Cultural Significance", is the same as voting 1* or 2* for the "Should this be a Wayspot?" question. Can you confirm or deny this?
Why is the standard for removal of Wayspots significantly higher than approval, even for Wayspots that clearly do not meet current eligibility & approva criteria? Especially for old Wayspots that also lack any description and are generally poor quality. Not all Wayspots show up in all games, with priority of which is shown determined by age. So I could submit and get approved a fantastic new Wayspot that is exactly what Niantic says the purpose of this system is, but it doesn’t get seen because of a 5 year old poor quality one that would never get approved were it submitted today but also doesn’t meet the removal criteria.
Unfortunately, many urban areas are currently facing long backlogs. In fact, many areas are now approaching 2 years of In Voting. My oldest submission has been In Voting since November 2019! Submissions are simply not completing without an Upgrade. What is the Wayfarer team doing or planning to do to address the disparity between regions and to speed up the completion of urban submissions? In more rural/suburban areas, the turn around time can be a matter of days. Meanwhile, an adjacent urban area can take years. This not only affects submissions, but they also affect various Edits that are also still stuck in the system for years. What is being done to make sure these Submissions and Edits are actively being voted on so they don't linger in the system for years?
A previous ama regarded “residentially focused” pools as ineligible, but community/apartment pools are great places to both socialize and exercise. If private residential property refers to single family homes, and if shared spaces in apartments, multifamily homes, etc. can be eligible, why should these community pools considered bad candidates?
If it’s a liability/safety concern near water, would a qualifier that the pin should be placed at the entrance gate rather than in the water help with this?
- when will Niantic star to Look for Bad reviewing and punish the people that constantly Vote against Niantics Rulebook?
We have the Recon medal for reviewers, wouldnt be logical to reactivate the Seer medal then for submiters ?
Was this subject already decided permanently, or is ther a chance to get it back in the near future?
How'd you know that? I think there's no way to display anyone who hitting disagree even in the desktop version.
Please give us a Wayfarer app. This would improve the whole process of submitting and reviewing keeping it all in one app.
How far has this been discussed internally?
Another area of contention is whether all restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, pubs, etc. should be eligible as places to socialize with others. Popular restaurants and favorite coffee shops are listed among the examples, but several nominators believe that the adjectives used in the examples should have no bearing on eligibility and that merely existing is enough for eligibility. This topic is just one example where a nominator believes that proving anything beyond mere existence is "abusive" and an example of a broken system. So the question is, do these adjectives define what reviewers should look for in a restaurant/cafe/coffee shop/pub/etc nomination or are they purely superfluous?
Multiple copies of Rodin's "The Thinker" were made from a single mold, and the same mold exists as a work of art all over the world. Officially, the number is controlled by the French government.
So my question is, what does Niantic define as "mass production that should be rejected"? Can you please clarify that line?
I would appreciate it if you could also answer "generic" and "visually unique or interesting" in the same place.
If necessary, we would appreciate it if you could provide us with photos of similar types of objects so that we can compare what is OK and what is not.
Nevermind, I will split this into multiple questions...
When looking at removal appeals, some decision making by Niantic seems very inconsistent. Can you guys clarify the removal criteria (and considering it should be the same as the rejection criteria, clarify it as well) for situations such as:
Given that Ingress is no longer a clear representation of the overall Wayfarer map, do you intend to make the map of Wayspots available to the wayfarers?
This ensures that players do not end up submitting things that are already in the database (but invisible to the game they submit in).
Have you looked into reducing the 1 year lock on bonus locations? What are your reasons for and against this?
This seems like a great way to spread around reviewer whales and adress the issues of remote areas with few reviewers. Many experienced reviewers like to vote and want places where they will have lots to vote on because helping out a small pool will result in less to do. Not being stuck in place for a year would change this. Ideally I see this situation being something like after 2,000 agreements you unlock the ability to change your bonus location every 4 months and after 10,000 you can change every month.
Do Niantic have any plans to try to provide any sort of feedback to reviewers so as to help them improve their assessment of nominations. We review, and we watch out rating and counters click onward, but we have no real idea of which ones we have voted on are not accepted. Particularly for reviewers with a lot of reviews under their belt, thats a lot of waypoints. It seems pointless to plan to provide "nomination appeals" when reviewers have no chance to improve.
Would Niantic consider a system to replace lower quality wayspots with better ones, probably influenced by community votes? There are some areas where art or interesting nature signs are pre-empted in game by something that is borderline or not acceptable in current guidelines (like "generic" memorial benches). Would love to have the wayspots feature more interesting items if they're available
Reporting existing waystops related questions:
What is being done to address the problem of low-quality wayspots and wayspots that do not meet the acceptance criteria dominating the wayspot network (For both old wayspots and newly approved ones)?
The wayspot network is full of wayspots that should not be accepted by modern standards. This is in reference to the thousands of neighborhood signs, non-notable memorial plaques, generic businesses and other trash that generally, Niantic opts not to remove. These wayspots do not meet the criteria, and set a horrible example for what should be a wayspot.
I understand that many of these were accepted into the network during a time when the criteria was much different, and they were grandfathered into the system, but these wayspots are so prevalent and the misconceptions about many of these wayspots eligibility is so strong that they still continue to get accepted. And even when new ineligible wayspots get accepted Niantic neglects to remove them.
There are many cases where low quality or outright ineligible wayspots block the creation of newer, high quality wayspots, or in the case of Pokemon Go, the limitation on wayspot density often causes higher quality nominations to be hidden in favor of lower quality ones, even when high quality Wayspots could be shown.
Sounds like my good friend @Hotwheeeel-PGO @Reistan-ING @TravorAlone-PGO @Alantrovist-ING @Kitty001TDM-PGO @cukooo-ING @DoraemonKHOI-ING etc etc... Who has like 28 accounts and keeps making more to **** me, and @NianticGiffard.
Anyone wanna speak up and clarify why you're burying me in "disagrees" about this question???
Is it abuse to report wayspots in the forum claiming that they are part of abuse, without following the requested steps of reporting first in game, and after review by the abuse team they don't find such issues?
This is becoming important given the attack today from one person to another member of this community doxing him from the other side of the world and reporting several wayspots based only on looking at the maps and quickly proven wrong by players with knowledge of the local culture.
You've announced that we'll have the ability to appeal rejected nominations. Whilst the feature is being worked on and I don't expect all the beans to be spilt right now, I am curious if these appeals will go directly to a Niantic staff member, or whether they'll go back into review by other wayfarers? I'm also curious if we'll be able to appeal rejections from before the feature was introduced, or whether it will be limited to new rejections?
I didn't "vote" either way, but it does come off as a demand that Niantic make a specific change to the criteria instead of ask a question about the criteria or how it is interpreted.
We're on the same page here! I just posted a similar question.
Well, my main question is why they are banned. I just had a lot of additional back story on there also from the thread discussion.... Which I suppose could come across as a demand. I guess I'm just passionate about that topic, and annoyed even with the previous thread when I'd say "military bases are safe" and then id get buried in disagrees with no comment on why they'd even disagree with that statement.
OH, can we get some clarification on what doing a 1* abuse rejection reason actually does?
It seems that choosing abuse from the menu doesn't actually count as a 1*... Because so many things that I (and others) that have reviewed things with an "abuse" reason still get approved.
With Lightship taking over as the master map for all Niantic games, will Wayfarers have a means of accessing it prior to submitting a nomination? Will Wayfarers be able to submit edits for POIs that don’t appear in their primary game?
I responded with how to show disagrees and apparently it was deleted, lol
Apologies, it was in error. I believe I cleaned it up now. Thanks for calling me out on it. 😳