October News
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[Deleted User]
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Hi everyone, hope you have been well and enjoying your adventures out there! Has anyone discovered any new places lately?
I wanted to bring you some fresh updates from the cabin.
HOT TOPICS --
- Wayspot sync issues in games: These are both still under investigation by the Pokémon GO and Ingress teams as it has to do with their sync pipelines. I understand it's frustrating, but we're pushing for a resolution asap.
- Niantic in house reviews and the "." rejection reason: We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibrating our team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house. // However, I completely acknowledge that we don't always get it right. I've reviewed a few of your reports as well to confirm. I've been speaking with our team lead to ensure we get another recalibration session going. Thank you in advance for your patience. // As for these nominations disappearing from your nominations page, we want to fix that too. It should be totally transparent that they're under review by a Niantic teammate. // We've recently patched the emails to tell you that it was a Niantic decision rather than seeing the "." reason.
- Nomination missing the map marker on your summary page has been fixed.
- New abuse reporting system: We're so close and we really need to ship that to you! Working with @NianticTintino to get this done!
REST OF YEAR --
Good news is we are on track to deliver some updates to various parts of the Wayfarer experience. Stay tuned for specific dates coming from @NianticTintino !
- A new welcome flow in Pokémon GO that invites you to visit Wayfarer when you reach eligibility level.
- A new flow on the Wayfarer website for first time Wayfarer users (i.e. you've never logged in before), which orients you through the site and eventually to the criteria and quiz. Passing the quiz unlocks the Wayfarer features in Pokémon GO and Ingress. This does not affect folks who already have a Wayfarer account.
- Pokémon GO Nominations Duplicates check, where you'll be able to see a map of existing live Wayspots not in the game alongside those that are, during the nomination flow.
- New Wayfarer branded emails to replace the game branded emails. This is to make it absolutely clear that even a nomination in-game is a nomination to the Niantic platform, NOT to a specific game. This has always been the case but the emails were just misleading. // We also want the language to be clearer with respect to how your contributions would be used. Note that the new emails will not include rejection reasons. Rather, emails will link back to Wayfarer and we aim to display those reasons in your nominations page.
- New limits for your contributions will be active on October 26 (we posted about this before, where instead of "you get X in 14 days", you now accrue X on a daily basis.
- Adding the ability to upload nominations later, and upload management page in Ingress.
Tough news is that we are facing unplanned reduction in our engineering team. This means that there are several other website improvements that we had planned but won't be able to deliver by end of year (like displaying your rejection reasons on the nominations page). We're working on hiring - check out Niantic's job board if you're interested! I am really excited about these features, and hope to drop some more news once we have more certainty around our team size and new roadmap.
P.S. Sorry for the radio silence! As I mentioned in my very first post, I'm the Product Manager for Wayfarer, so won't be able to check-in as often as @NianticTintino @NianticGiffard or @NianticAaron . I'm usually squirreling away to meetings with various teams across games and the platform to brainstorm, write, design, and execute on new features to improve Wayfarer and the platform that our games are built on. I am sure I've missed a ton of pings and threads, but I get great insight from the rest of the team who are more active here. I thank you for your patience with us, and your continued dedication to the best community map in the world!