Why didn't Niantic take the chance to educate?
Taylor5636-PGO
Posts: 39 ✭✭✭
The new emails for rejections and acceptance for POI's by Niantic have started to go out. I am very grateful that the "." is gone, but WHY didn't you as a company take the chance to be able to educate people on why their POI's are being rejected? The attached email is from a recently rejected POI and everything is blacked out because this isn't an appeal. I want to know why the reason for the rejection is just "Niantic review"????? How are we to improve our nominations if even Niantic wont tell us what is wrong with it? This was an amazing opportunity to help improve not only nominations but the system as a whole and I feel like it was just skipped over.
Comments
Because Niantic can’t do something right for once. Sadly the truth.
Please don't talk like that, All I would like is a clear explanation. Even if we don't get an explanation, my hope is maybe we will see a change. This is not intended to bash, it is a genuine question on my part.
So Niantic can review everything as they like, bypassing their own criteria.
Seriously though, can't the team put their reasons properly in the email?
Because that would require that their internal reviewers would properly understood the approval and rejection criteria.
It isnt working like that
There are different steps inbetween including Nialegal and -jh that have their says, and also "N" as a say. if "N" doesnt want that, it wont happen.
In this case there are changes coming up that have different steps. In the "End" Niantic will have these information included, but sadly for a while "computer says no".
It's like they decided to just replace "\n." for "\nNiantic review decision." in the emails...
A one line "fix" for the "." bug, I guess.
I think for the phrases to be added to the email there needs to be a voting process that allows the different categories to have their scores known and if these thresholds are met it triggers a phrase.
As the Niantic staff don’t vote but make an overall decision it bypasses that whole process and so an email with reasons can’t be produced.
They can still tell you why they rejected it. Yes voting provides the reasons selected by normal reviewers but the staff members reviewing still have to have a reason they rejected it.
Yes voting provides the reasons selected by normal reviewers but the staff members reviewing still have to have a reason they rejected it.
The thing is that maybe they don't go through the same process that we do and simple give a binary thumbs up or thumbs down to each submission without having to go through all of the categories we see. In that case, reasons are probably also omitted.
Yes ….The ideal would be that they provide a reason but I don’t think the bolted on part that they do has allowed for that and as the @Ochemist-ING says it may even be a simple yes or no. What the currently are doing is a quick patch where . is replaced by a simple text string.
This bolt on approach and shortcut of the normal systems must be the root cause of the other issues.
For it to work properly it will need a new approach, which requires resources, which they evidently don’t have.
of course this is all guess work as no one will actually say what is happening so we need to fill in gaps ourselves. But it is clear the intention is to stick with this mess and we can only hope that in some where down the line a proper integrated system is created.
I hope Niantic will be confident and responsible enough to clarify the rejection reason.
I'm hoping this is temporary, and that better changes are in the works
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.
I feel like this will be clunky and not work well. Why not have the reasons in both places?
This. You can't teach something you don't know 😂
It should be easier for one reviewer to explain their rejection than for a large collective to explain theirs: just type the explanation in the e-mail.
IMO NIANTIC knows that they can't confidently review nominations worldwide... and THAT is why they won't go any further than "Niantic review". They should just check for private residence or property and then put nominations back in queue for locals to review.
Niantic seems to be going against their reasons for #11 in the September AMA. There is no possible way that ANYONE can understand community relevance for the entire world. Nor could one understand the cultural norms that may make people in certain regions nominate and approve wayspots that wouldn't fit criteria in other regions. This is where to the best of your knowledge mean "local knowledge" and not I'm 12,000km away and never even been close but will review anyway.
What I don't understand is when we ask legitimate questions over a process we are either ignored or given the run around. There are plenty of examples of this in these forums so I won't waste yours or my time listing them. But I still do not understand why Niantic as a company can't explain why they rejected a nomination. Yes I know that eventually rejections will be in wayfarer but even then a general reason should be listed in the email. SO many people will not read a whole email and therefore will miss the link to Wayfarer, which isn't even in the emails yet. If Niantic is going to internally review our nominations then just like the rest of us they can give a general reject. OR crazy thought go one step further and start educating even if it is in a small way.
Certainly beats a ".", anyway.
At least now they will own up to being the ones who are reviewing these nominations in writing.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Soooooo, we are just going to not address a clear education issue???
Can you post your nomination so we can take a guess at why they might have rejected it?
I had this happened a trail marker gets rejected when it literally says right there bicycle trails are under acceptance criteria but then they tell you it doesn't meet acceptance criteria. I feel sometimes it's not Niantic, it's just some edgy 12 year olds trolling the wayfarer
I am not going to share it, this isn't an appeal. I don't care if I have to re nominate it. I want to know why I was given NO information on how I could improve my nomination or why they rejected it. When it comes from Niantic themselves, the least they can do is give me an actual rejection reason or better yet take the time to educate people making the nominations.
No, @NianticGiffard might overturn their own reviewers' decision to your nomination.
Yes, you can appeal nominations rejected by "Niantic review decision" now.
I know you can make appeals, but here is thing, this wasn't intended as an appeal. Why is that a hard concept? I want to improve my nominations, I want them to be good. If it was rejected right or wrong I can still improve it. But how am I to improve it if I don't know why it was rejected? That is the whole point of this thread, that the reason of "Niantic review" isn't good enough.
Yeah, it doesn't help at all, but just think about the precious seconds saved by the Niantic Interns when they don't have to provide more than a one liner as a rejection reason. That Mario Kart tournament isn't going to win itself, you know?
It's not really their job to educate you. They've posted the guidelines and criteria so they shouldn't really need to. If you want to improve your nominations like you state then you can get help and advice from those of us here by showing your nomination.
That is not the point of this tread. The point is "Niantic review" is not good enough. I can and will resubmit my nomination it is completely eligible, but once again NOT the point. The rejection emails are supposed to inform you of the criteria reason as to why your nomination was rejected. Even if it was on k12(which it isnt) this "Niantic review" doesn't tell me or anyone else that. How is someone who doesn't know wayfarer exists, and there are plenty of those people, to know that is what is wrong? I am hoping the process will be improved, that is the point.
Rejection reasons are added so that we can understand why a nomination was rejected. Most of them use the rejection reasons to improve out nomination by addressing any concerns that might have not been obvious, or coming to the realization that something might not be eligible even. Yes, a lot of us have the ability to get help and opinions in this forum or elsewhere, but that's not the point of this post. Niantic COULD have used these reviews to better educate those who do not, but didn't. THEY SHOULD!
This kind of mindset really shows why the world is in a downwards spiral.
The Internal Reviewers are in a compensated position, either with pay or valuable company experience. They hold absolute power to accept or reject candidates single-handedly, and review only user submissions and not the massive drops from purchased databases. Their solo decisions have caused major glitches involving non-publication of waypoints to specific games. They need to do some kind of review to satisfy the terms of a lawsuit based upon seeded and Seer portals created before Wayfarer was even a thing, but nowhere in those legal terms does it say that they must "review" in Wayfarer terms and be responsible for a final decision on any but PRP or overtly abusive candidates.
They should be held to a higher standard and made to have specific, manually-typed rejection reasons giving rejection reasons to the submitters. Our peer review comments are never passed along to submitters because, as unpaid peons, we'd undoubtedly swear and belittle. Surely these "professional" reviewers can be trusted to craft a helpful sentence or two.