Great, I change "is" to "are" and the comment is sent to moderation, but a comment a few days ago with a single word starting with C stayed visible for hours.
You know, with all the many problems and frustrations with the crowd-sourced nature of Wayfarer, it actually does a darn good job overall. Much better than the pre-OPR portal monkeeys from all accounts and certainly much better than the current in-house reviewers.
I get the frustrations with dumb rejection reasons (sometimes for fair rejections), bad rejections (regardless of the reasons), and the difficulty of getting businesses approved, but for the most part I find the player reviewing to be fair. Not everything I submit is a slam dunk (although I do think it is all defensible), and I can accept that some things will be rejected. I'd rather have to resubmit a few things and accept that a few things I really think should be wayspots aren't going to make it than have a game board full of this sort of excrement.
@WheelTrekker-ING@TheFarix-PGO Thanks for answering my questions. I was very curious about the Starbucks one. I do believe that the “Niantic” reviewers are probably rejecting stuff only if it is literal trash. (How I would review if their wasn’t criteria. Don’t worry J follow criteria) Also, I agree that if Niantic wanted more money because more waypoints, then they wouldn’t tie it to points. However, their mission is to create a worldwide map of interesting points.
Niantic’s mission seems to be a bit confused. One head thinks WaySquarer locations don’t require review. Another thinks contract reviewers don’t need standards or goals, just numbers. A third believes the Queue to be an asset: the bigger, the better.
I’ll bet they have executives who wonder why there are so many photos of signs in their database….
Few days ago a very generic Greek restaurant showed up in Pogo. To give a brief outlook, these restaurants are quite common in our city and all over Germany. The one in question has two branches in our city itself. We had to like the photo in PoGo for it to appear in ingress. So I assume it was reviewed by NIA.
Would be really nice to know what is the stance on such generic things that are popping up while good quality stuff is getting rejected.
It does not appear in Intel, but only in the Check for Duplicates Lightship map, meaning it's probably in Pokemon GO and follows the same pattern as all other nominations above.
Well, I sometimes need to walk to an Aldi, and at times I meet fellow grocery enthusiasts along the way and we chat about coupons....so exercise and social connectivity = full marks!
We have a Morrisons that's a wayspot in our town. This is a very old wayspot from back in the very early Ingress days where pretty much anything was acceptable (and it does at least have a cafe, so you could argue it is a place to be social). The trouble is, because it exists, I've seen people in my town and the next town over trying to nominate all the other big supermarkets in the area, even going so far as to give the supporting info of "Morrisons is a gym, so why not <insert other generic supermarket name here>?". I obviously rejected them, though I'm left wondering if Niantic had reviewed them whether they'd have ended up in the database...
Yesterday I got to pass by this park near Brighton-le-sands to like not just 'pokemon park picnic', but a regular park bench adjacent with no indication of it being a "friendship bench". Both of which were not in Ingress yesterday, but after a like, now both appear in Intel.
@NianticGiffard since anyone can appeal nominations rejected by Niantic reviewers, can we also report ineligible Wayspots that are accidentally (or blindly) accepted by Niantic reviewers?
@NianticGiffard Nomination or Waypoint? That is a key question, considering how parts of the community like to dissect every comment from Niantic staff and use them to support their own personal interpretations of the criteria.
I'm assuming here you mean a Waypoint that has been approved by Niantic staff and is now sitting in the Lightship database. If this applies to Waypoints accepted by Niantic staff or contractors that clearly should not have been accepted, does this mean that the usual "Niantic removal criteria" will be applied when evaluating the request or will more "common sense" rules apply to things along the lines of some of the Waypoints above, which clearly should never have made it into the system to start with. How are we going to be able to tell who evaluated any particular nomination - staff or the community?
Do the internal reviewers ever get honeypots to review and the associated penalties if they arrive at the wrong decision? Currently, we have a problem with internal reviews not syncing to Ingress, not fixed for about three months. We've seen great candidates rejected and that decision overturned only when the submitter protests here. And we've seen some horrible junk approved by these same reviewers.
My opinion of these internal reviewers is quite poor, and my opinion of Niantic (for allowing them solo decision power and subverting the community voting process, as well as the technical glitches they cannot seem to repair) has suffered as a result.
If a Niantic internal reviewer got asked if they had seen a honey pot whats the betting the answer would be "no I didn't eat any honey" , I doubt they know what it means let alone how to review one correctly.
And while I may be doing some reviewers a disservice with that statement, the fact they have such a poor track record speaks volumes about their general competence
There is a sponsored starbucks pokestop at someone’s house in a neighborhood I used to live in. totally residential area. doesn’t show in ingress (none do right?)
They may get paid per stop, do it wouldn't be in their interest to clean-up the sponsors' databases for them. Or maybe there's some wording in the contract that they have to put a stop exactly everywhere that the sponsor indicates.
It may have originally been at the correct place, but an abusive location edit put it at someone's house. Before Niantic made a 10-meter maximum for location edits, some Wayspots were moved kilometers.
Comments
Great, I change "is" to "are" and the comment is sent to moderation, but a comment a few days ago with a single word starting with C stayed visible for hours.
You know, with all the many problems and frustrations with the crowd-sourced nature of Wayfarer, it actually does a darn good job overall. Much better than the pre-OPR portal monkeeys from all accounts and certainly much better than the current in-house reviewers.
I get the frustrations with dumb rejection reasons (sometimes for fair rejections), bad rejections (regardless of the reasons), and the difficulty of getting businesses approved, but for the most part I find the player reviewing to be fair. Not everything I submit is a slam dunk (although I do think it is all defensible), and I can accept that some things will be rejected. I'd rather have to resubmit a few things and accept that a few things I really think should be wayspots aren't going to make it than have a game board full of this sort of excrement.
Go Wayfarer!
A local gem from a month or so ago. Not in Ingress (silver lining to this bug).
post that in r/FormerPizzaHuts for some sweet sweet reddit karma.
@WheelTrekker-ING @TheFarix-PGO Thanks for answering my questions. I was very curious about the Starbucks one. I do believe that the “Niantic” reviewers are probably rejecting stuff only if it is literal trash. (How I would review if their wasn’t criteria. Don’t worry J follow criteria) Also, I agree that if Niantic wanted more money because more waypoints, then they wouldn’t tie it to points. However, their mission is to create a worldwide map of interesting points.
Niantic’s mission seems to be a bit confused. One head thinks WaySquarer locations don’t require review. Another thinks contract reviewers don’t need standards or goals, just numbers. A third believes the Queue to be an asset: the bigger, the better.
I’ll bet they have executives who wonder why there are so many photos of signs in their database….
Don't forget they're also dumping Wayspots from Foursquare database without filtering.
Today's beautiful gem: someone has noticed today in the duplicates screen that "pokemon park picnic" has gone through.
It should be in the red circle, but it doesn't appear in Ingress. Atrocious.
Few days ago a very generic Greek restaurant showed up in Pogo. To give a brief outlook, these restaurants are quite common in our city and all over Germany. The one in question has two branches in our city itself. We had to like the photo in PoGo for it to appear in ingress. So I assume it was reviewed by NIA.
Would be really nice to know what is the stance on such generic things that are popping up while good quality stuff is getting rejected.
Another gem from our city is this Pokestop, which must have been approved at least a month ago internally:
As you can see, no portal:
Here's another insightful gem, an Aldi.
It does not appear in Intel, but only in the Check for Duplicates Lightship map, meaning it's probably in Pokemon GO and follows the same pattern as all other nominations above.
Well, I sometimes need to walk to an Aldi, and at times I meet fellow grocery enthusiasts along the way and we chat about coupons....so exercise and social connectivity = full marks!
(no no no no no I am not serious)
We have a Morrisons that's a wayspot in our town. This is a very old wayspot from back in the very early Ingress days where pretty much anything was acceptable (and it does at least have a cafe, so you could argue it is a place to be social). The trouble is, because it exists, I've seen people in my town and the next town over trying to nominate all the other big supermarkets in the area, even going so far as to give the supporting info of "Morrisons is a gym, so why not <insert other generic supermarket name here>?". I obviously rejected them, though I'm left wondering if Niantic had reviewed them whether they'd have ended up in the database...
Yesterday I got to pass by this park near Brighton-le-sands to like not just 'pokemon park picnic', but a regular park bench adjacent with no indication of it being a "friendship bench". Both of which were not in Ingress yesterday, but after a like, now both appear in Intel.
pokemon park picnic: https://intel.ingress.com/?pll=-33.952889,151.152159
the friendship bench: https://intel.ingress.com/?pll=-33.952575,151.152303
Since I have a nearby key, I'm going to make extensive edits to this once my edits are back. Because this just gave me one cancer.
Adding this building material shop into the coal:
@NianticGiffard since anyone can appeal nominations rejected by Niantic reviewers, can we also report ineligible Wayspots that are accidentally (or blindly) accepted by Niantic reviewers?
Good question! Yes, you will be able to report any nomination that you feel is ineligible, even though the decision was made by us.
Sorry, obviously I missed something, but where can we appeal the rejected nominations?
Actually in this thread:
Note: only work for nominations rejected by Niantic reviewers (or you got "Niantic review decision" in the rejection email).
You can't as yet, though we are told Niantic will be addting this ability at some point.
@NianticGiffard Nomination or Waypoint? That is a key question, considering how parts of the community like to dissect every comment from Niantic staff and use them to support their own personal interpretations of the criteria.
I'm assuming here you mean a Waypoint that has been approved by Niantic staff and is now sitting in the Lightship database. If this applies to Waypoints accepted by Niantic staff or contractors that clearly should not have been accepted, does this mean that the usual "Niantic removal criteria" will be applied when evaluating the request or will more "common sense" rules apply to things along the lines of some of the Waypoints above, which clearly should never have made it into the system to start with. How are we going to be able to tell who evaluated any particular nomination - staff or the community?
Do the internal reviewers ever get honeypots to review and the associated penalties if they arrive at the wrong decision? Currently, we have a problem with internal reviews not syncing to Ingress, not fixed for about three months. We've seen great candidates rejected and that decision overturned only when the submitter protests here. And we've seen some horrible junk approved by these same reviewers.
My opinion of these internal reviewers is quite poor, and my opinion of Niantic (for allowing them solo decision power and subverting the community voting process, as well as the technical glitches they cannot seem to repair) has suffered as a result.
If a Niantic internal reviewer got asked if they had seen a honey pot whats the betting the answer would be "no I didn't eat any honey" , I doubt they know what it means let alone how to review one correctly.
And while I may be doing some reviewers a disservice with that statement, the fact they have such a poor track record speaks volumes about their general competence
There is a sponsored starbucks pokestop at someone’s house in a neighborhood I used to live in. totally residential area. doesn’t show in ingress (none do right?)
Correct. Unfortunately my experience of this kinda thing is that Niantic refuse to remove sponsored locations that are invalid.
They may get paid per stop, do it wouldn't be in their interest to clean-up the sponsors' databases for them. Or maybe there's some wording in the contract that they have to put a stop exactly everywhere that the sponsor indicates.
It may have originally been at the correct place, but an abusive location edit put it at someone's house. Before Niantic made a 10-meter maximum for location edits, some Wayspots were moved kilometers.
Sponsored Starbucks have never been able to be edited through the games or Wayfarer.