Upgrades rejection again. Let us disable auto upgrades.
WhatDoICar3-PGO
Posts: 6 ✭✭
Once again, another upgrade has caused an eligible submission be rejected. This is getting beyond a joke. Let us disable upgrades already. With the amount of submissions players can do now, the time it takes for some subs to go through take longer due to the backlog of stops. So when submissions get upgraded and rejected, what is the point. For reference this is the second time i’ve submitted this. First time it got “duplicated” when it isn’t a duplicate. Have checked ingress and iitc to see if the stop is in the game and it wasn’t. Second time this.
Comments
I totally agree with you, we need an option to disable or enable the auto update.
About your gazebo, have you seen the street view is not up to date? Your gazebo was not clearly visible.
And the only photosphere near the place is older than that.
If you want to help you submission to go through next time, you can go and add a photosphere.
It also doesn't appear in satellite view. I don't know what your supporting photo was but unless it contained really solid evidence of the location then you run a high risk of rejection because reviewers can't identify the location.
If there was a problem with the location, then "Mismatched location" would be one of the reject criteria reasons. The fact that only "Other rejection criteria" appears means it was just universally 1-starred and only that reason was chosen. Street View would have shown (as it is visible above) the construction of the frame of the gazebo was under construction, and it's great to see the finished product.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks upgrades are a joke. It would definitely have gone through without an upgrade, unless your supporting photo was not so good.
As others have said a supporting photo showing something visible on Street view will definitely help (even though it's painfully obvious that it is being built on Street View). Photosphere will help if you are near enough but honestly the original Street View should have been fine.
@HaramDingo-ING That experience of upgrades is far from universal. In the last 18 months 100% of my candidates have had upgrades and 100% have been successful. That includes three different pieces of street art that were so new the paint probably wasn't dry.
Stop. You say this every time I say upgrades are trash. "Oh, I don't get upgraded things rejected, so the situation does not exist."
What we're asking is for people to choose to either have their things auto-upgraded once their agreement percentage reaches 100% or not to. Give the option to those who are experiencing this issue like the OP in Victoria, just because you're someone who has seemingly immaculate candidates. You and this other person, who continuously laughs at me every time I clamour about getting the option not to have auto-upgrades.
You only have the liberty of saying that "100% of my candidates have been successful" because you're curating your submissions to be extremely safe nominations or real shoe-ins (i.e. piece of new street art, or things that you would only be "delighted to find while playing"). In fact, you probably aren't even using your 14 Ingress nominations once they accrue.
Would you be delighted to find a gazebo by the beach? That's probably not your cup of tea. Maybe a fountain, but you'd want to make sure that you prove its eligibility iteratively, right? I have my fair share of street art and mural nominations that I wish I could just continuously upgrade one by one because they will certainly get through, no doubt (unless they're indoors, then upgraded nominations will almost always be rejected for pedestrian access). But the accrual of upgrades through natural reviewing make that difficult, so upgrades will fall onto unsuspecting nominations and boom, their chance of approval is severely lowered.
Take your upgrade heaven and pickiness elsewhere. Ask anyone else from New South Wales, Australia and most of them will tell you the same thing. Upgrades lead to garbage rejections. Maybe fellow American reviewers and people who have selected Oakland or anywhere near there as their bonus location have their heads turned on, but New South Wales (and frankly, Altona in Victoria) is a whole different story. We call it "upgrade lotto", which is perfectly described in this post. You. Are. Fortunate. Upgrades are demonspawn Down Under, because all of a sudden, upgrades turn the space around a nomination into a magical forest full of explicit activities! Yay!
Niantic has already said that they're looking into implementing into the second half of 2021. But given we're just 6 weeks out until the end of the year... I am not hopeful. So it's a necessary evil for us. But you do know that I know that this so-called "upgrade-curse" is not universal, right? No need to repeat yourself like a broken record over and over again.
Upgrades are a curse/trash or should have more manual control as discussed (with various... mileage) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. In fact, 94% of wayfinders believe they should have the decision rest on them as to when to use an upgrade. If there was a way I could get rid of upgrades (or at least have better manual control over them), even at my own expense, I'd trade them all away.
I was having fairly good luck, till one of mine was rejected for not being able to be found (someone on here said that there was no photosphere, so they had to reject, even though the Google steeetview showed a building g I went out of my way to make sure was prominent in the supporting photo) and then another was marked as duplicate because there was another playpark nearby, even though the equipment was clearly different and Google maps shows they were both seperate. So it's just your luck really, you've probably gotten extremely lucky but mught get bad reviewers next time
Most (not all) of my upgrades have been approved - while most of my un-upgraded nominations take months-to-years to get decisioned - so I have a hard time blaming the upgrade for a rejection. But I deliberately keep “safe” nominations coming in ahead of my upgrades and always choose an upgrade next, because I do agree that the auto-upgrade is terrible.
I see two issues with this nomination. As mentioned, the street view is not current, so noting in the description when it was built is a good way to explain the discrepancy to reviewers, if you don’t want to create a photosphere. Also, this is not a gazebo. It’s a shelter or a pavilion or a picnic area, but a gazebo has a specific design and it isn’t this.
That said, I would have voted to approve. It’s pretty clearly worthy of inclusion.
One of those upgrades earned me a false disagreement for correctly rejecting based on text.
But that aside, you typically claim having exceptionally high standards for making a nomination. I'm sure if you ventured off course and started trying more subjective nominations you'd begin to have similar struggles. When many of your nominations tend to be murals, I don't think it's really fair to come in with "well all of my upgrades pass." That isn't meant at all to be a jab at you, it's your decision to nominate as you wish. By the way, congrats on being one of the few with such a high rate of success on upgrades. Your claim that upgrades don't universally have lower success is, of course, based on your personal anecdotal data to add.
I suspect Niantic could (but probably has never) looked into the variation in voting patterns used by people. I'll admit that I'm more likely to pause when seeing my city's name on the nomination and maybe give an extra star, vs "well it's just another playground in Metro, USA, 3* and move on," and I suspect I'm not the only one. There's also the annoying
factrumor that it takes less rejections to fail a nomination, potentially causing people to reject outright rather than rating "fairly."I'm also curious if Niantic can pull the data on success of upgrades. On one hand, you typically assume that an upgrade is being made by somebody who understands criteria - they are, after all, reviewing. Then again, I have seen Starbucks, aerator fountains, etc in areas that make me believe them to be upgraded. Many of people come in with pitchforks raised and torches lit over "bad rejections" on upgrades, but I'm sure for every one of those there are hundreds of successful upgrades that nobody comes in to post about.
There are cultural differences that occur within a country. I imagine yourself, living in [redacted] may have a vastly different appreciation of things than me, in the Midwest. And that's not considering age and personal lifestyles. Being somebody who enjoys being outside exploration, I'll gladly accept almost any generic (human made) marker to designate a natural feature, and that was before the 3.1 refresh. I would (almost) never attempt upgrading them, no matter the quality I believed went into the nomination.
@The4rtfulDodg3r-ING I have never created a photosphere for a candidate, no. What I do is take my supporting photo very carefully so that reviewers can easily match the location against street view. I think about what reviewers will see when they are looking at my candidate and I make sure to give them the best information I have available. My supporting text often says something like, "This mural is brand new as of November 2021. The location can be confirmed (by aligning the supporting photo with street view.)"
@HaramDingo-ING You are right that I generally focus on high-quality candidates. I wasn't suggesting that some people/areas don't have a harder time with upgrades... I was just saying that the experience isn't universal. I think it's reasonable to let users turn off auto-upgrade.
I also think that focusing on really excellent supporting information and thinking about a submission from the reviewers' perspective can reduce the effect of the upgrade curse.
Vastly more people appear have a negative view of upgrades than a positive view, just based cursory glances around this forum. That suggests Wayfarer is in dire need of serious reform, whether people want to admit it or not. Sometimes even supposedly "slam dunk" nominations get rejected because of declining literacy rates and general inattentivness on the part of the reviewer(s). I know upgrades have disincentivised me from reviewing in the past as well, and we don't know for sure how many rejections it takes for a nomination to be "not accepted".
I think it's tricky to try to remove automatic upgrades, as some people might wish to keep all their submissions in voting at a local level because they have an agreement or can communicate with local voters to give their candidates an advantage. If even non-upgraded candidates were presented to a small percentage of out-of-area voters, this might help alleviate any Niantic concerns. I think that earned upgrades should be used, to ensure that people aren't voting solely in local blocks - but it would be great if people had a three-day grace period to choose which candidate should receive the upgrade. During this grace period any agreements would count towards their next upgrade accrual.
I agree, though, that the "other rejection criteria" in the OP's example is profoundly unhelpful. Maybe it's Noun Purists expecting to see a hexagonal or octagonal, solid-roofed Gazebo instead of the fancy Pergola shown? The street view clearly shows its construction, and the rejection was not for Location. This rejection was unfortunate, and unexplained by the reason given. I don't know if local voting results would have been different in any way.
Wait, I thought you said you stopped reviewing for months? Twice? So either you're not nominating enough to have comparable numbers, or you don't earn enough upgrades to have comparable numbers to us who have bad experiences with upgrades. I don't think anyone claimed upgrades are bad universally either. But it's bad enough that enough people complain and Niantic should address ASAP.
I think it's tricky to try to remove automatic upgrades, as some people might wish to keep all their submissions in voting at a local level because they have an agreement or can communicate with local voters to give their candidates an advantage.
This already happens. I started to type a reply to @AScarletSabre-PGO's message about how I usually enjoy upgrades, I just have to be emotionally prepared for whatever outcome I get. I love finding "sure fire" nominations that I can upgrade and still leave nominations near & dear to me in the local voting area longer. I believe I'm doing this with genuinely good intention, however I'll admit that it sounds abusive. The need for some nominations needing "hyper-local knowledge" has been recognized by Niantic in the past. The alternative would be I simply stop reviewing, which harms my local area and other areas I contribute to far more.
Now, back to "this already happens." I've admitted to doing this with "good intentions," but we've also seen "upgrade deflectors" posted from an area well known on the Wayforum by the local group that nominates random trash to use upgrades on to keep their abuse clusters local and in more control.
I would rather participate in a system set up encourage and reward people playing by the rules and maybe give them a few perks than one set up poorly to catch bad actors (and then do seemingly nothing about them).
I definitely think the application of upgrades should be completely optional. I, however, in the United States have over the course of around 230 upgrades gotten pretty much the same acceptance rate for upgraded vs. non-upgraded submissions. I’m not super-picky about what I submit and in each case I’ve had borderline stuff accepted and what should have been gimmes rejected. I can’t discern any kind of pattern.
Lots of people, of course, feel that upgrades are cursed, so obviously there is a wide range of experiences. What I don’t understand is the mechanism in a large, homogeneous area. I don’t buy for a second the hyperlocal thing, in the US, at least. The vast majority of my “local” submissions are from places a long way away that I know nothing about. I have about as much invested personally or personal knowledge about them as I do for something on the other side of the country.
@HaramDingo-ING What is going on in Australia? Does a large percentage of people outside your area somehow want to stick it to you guys? (If so, that’s awful and bizarre.) Are there true cultural differences that make a big difference? Do other areas in Australia have the same problem?
@AScarletSabre-PGO Forums are almost always going to have a negative bias because people will complain regularly and vociferously about things that don't work, but people rarely come in and say, "You know, everything's working fine, life is awesome, no issues." It's just the nature of the beast. Certainly there are cases where an upgrade will reduce the chances of it being accepted but I think that in at least some cases those happen because the submitter didn't do a thorough job of creating the submission.
@Roli112-PGO I submit on average one thing per month and the majority of what I submit is street art. Looking backward, I see the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, a pennyfarthing-shaped bike rack, a plaque on a walking/biking trail about protecting water quality, a block-long mural, three pieces of artwork in a brand new Las Vegas casino, six urban murals, a playground (which I'd normally ignore, but it contributed to a frack cluster) a **** mall church that I only submitted because it made a drone route easier, and a fountain on the patio of an apartment complex. That's my streak of acceptances.
I'd be inclined to agree, except Niantic has a history of not listening to its customers. Know this history, a certain percentage of people will become (or have become) apathetic and reason (rightly or wrongly) it is not even worth complaining. I understand there will be people who don't come along and say "hey, great job" and this is certainly true in other industries. I simply believe there is too much apathy for that to be the case.
Normally I would agree about people regularly complaining, but all these complaints are not isolated to the forums, they're in the various groups, and don't come from people who just come in to complain, they come from seasoned members and from people with various levels of involvement and from all over the world. With that list of nominations its hard to compare your experience from everyone elses frustrations.
@Ochemist-ING, Australia is pretty standard cultural-wise all around. What I'd expect to find in New South Wales would be similarly the same in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, and so on, albeit some naming variances. Due to the proximity of the Australian Capital Territory, we get nominations from there too. I have no issues with reviewing nominations interstate (bar the occasional mining offices) because each nomination is reviewed on its own merit and supporting information. One of my previous assumptions were that interstaters were displeased with the outcome of geodetic markers being approved en-masse in NSW, but maybe that's not the case.
This statement from an ol' friend (because m.a.t.e is censored) of mine below probably really sums up the situation:
While it might seem that Australia is an isolated case, here is another user's experience from the West Coast of America (although only at night):
One of my Upgrade strategies is to avoid upgrading late at night. I feel there's a real drop in reviewer quality late at night. And since I'm on the West Coast, my submission gets sent to the East Coast as reviewers there are waking up. If I'm forced to Upgrade at night, I try to send in the most obvious bullet proof 5 star submission I can submit. Night reviewers really suck. However, you can also use it to your advantage. If your local reviewers suck on your sub, you can strategically send it over to the East Coast for review.
But as Gendgi has said, I have to be emotionally prepared for an upgraded nomination to get rejected. Yeah sure, get it rejected and I can resubmit it and get a response in a similar timeframe anyway, but the fact that this is a normal function that something has to be potentially sacrificed to the upgrade wolves is dampening. The other core thing I forget are the people who select Sydney as a bonus location for whatever unknown reason.
Upgrades are a double-edged sword, but they had excellent functions especially a year ago when the queues were super slow; if you saw a nomination in-voting in a slow area like the Sydney CBD, you could go to that nomination on the weekend, submit it and get it upgraded, and bypass proximity waiting queues within the nomination already in-voting and boom, success nomination, because nominations on average took at least 30 days in voting across the Sydney area. Albeit, the nomination HAD to be perfect and particularly curated.
@Roli112-PGO My apologies for being unclear. I wasn't suggesting that other people weren't struggling with upgrades. I was merely pointing out that the experience of upgrades being a curse is not universal.
I think it's absolutely true that there's a negative bias in forums because people who have problems will post about them, but almost nobody ever pops in to post that everything's working fine and they don't have problems. We only see the problems. That doesn't mean that the people posting aren't having problems, and I'm not trying to suggest that their problems aren't real. It's just that if your only information comes from this forum it would be easy to believe that an upgrade means a near-certain rejection. I'm quite certain that's not universally true.
I received a notification that I was mentioned in this post, but don't see anything?
Kindly, I ask that you stop speaking on behalf of all of Australia, your experiences are your own, not all of Australia's. You may have issues with upgrades, I, as another Australian, do not. Furthermore, blaming others and other states is not going to achieve anything, especially when there is no evidence for one way or another. Even this topic refutes your previous claim blaming other states, since it is a Victorian nomination, does that mean people in NSW are rejecting? Nobody knows and it's not fair to play the blame game.
Anyway, it would be nice to see more control of upgrades (ie. when and what they can be applied to), but if that does happen, I would like to see more accountability on the submitters. Having to rely on "local reviewers" just means the nomination is generally not seen as an objective point of interest and instead relies on locals to be favourable to each other. If a submitter does a good job explaining why the nomination meets criteria and has merit, then there would be no issue with upgrades (most of the time anyway).
We've all had our fair share of rejections, but it's also an opportunity to think about what can be improved. In the topic starter's case, perhaps a better photo or more updated street view / photosphere could help. Or even stating that the gazebo is a place to socialise and gather - link it with the acceptability criteria. To me it would be acceptable, but if it's been rejected twice, it needs to be fine tuned in some way.
That's not true at all! Niantic themselves have stated MANY times that they want "local knowledge". And upgrades contradicts that immensely. In many criteria clarifications, they also state "locals should know". Impossible in many areas with upgrades. Add to that language barriers and culural differences, specially in Europe, and you can see why theres a higher rejection rate for upgrades in a lot of areas.
Though it works both ways... locals might be aware a nomination is in a military base and rightfully reject, while upgrading it pushes it to people not familiars with the area and it being within an invalid military base and accept.
Maybe it should just all go to internal reviews, what can go wrong there 🤣🤔
Well Niantic themselves just approved a nomination on a US military base. Sooooo...
First off, do you have some sort of script that notifies you whenever the term "military base" is mentioned in a thread on here? 🤣
Secondly, given that Niantic internal reviews have been... questionable... at best, I assume you'd be happy to let someone like Giffard have another look at that submission? If it passes that check, then I guess you've got official confirmation that you can submit on base despite the rejection criteria saying otherwise.
No just bad timing that somehow tortures myself.
Also FYI that post is gonna pop up like 2 more times because first time I thought my page refreshed, second time it went into review for replying to someone. ugh that moderator review thing is so broken
Clarifying that I did not state anything on behalf of all of Australia (jfc), just "New South Wales, Australia" in case people was wondering if there was another New South Wales anywhere in the world (not possible). Context, then followed by a mention of Altona in Victoria. Looking through the local Pogo communities across NSW which also submit, there are numerous groups that just want to avoid upgrades altogether. It is a widely shared sentiment.
"Hopefully no upgrades left to auto apply!" "upgrade is probably for the worse atm xD people are more harsher" "im about to gret my upgrade too so its gonna get wasted waaaaaa" "What do you guys do if you're almost at an Upgrade but you don't want any of your current nominations to get Upgraded?"
The fact that you disagree with people wanting to have at least some form of manual control over manually applying their upgrades makes such statements moot. Let's assume that the OP did have a good enough supporting statement "good place to gather along the beach". Regardless of noun purists, it is by no doubt a gazebo. If someone submitted something called "Gazebo", the description says "Gazebo", and the supporting statement says "need more pokestops in the area", did they link that to acceptance criteria? Most probably not, as don't most others. But it's likely to be approved anyway, regardless of whatever is in the supporting statement unless it had something stupid like D.S or something. Endless gazebos and shelters in newly developed parks and estates are being approved even without photospheres, and they shouldn't be a means for approval. But that's a whole different story.
The OP wants to disable auto upgrades. Is that so bad?
Personally, I think that the current system of upgrading is not so good.
Therefore, the system for both reviewer and nominator in upgrading should be modified.
In my opinion, the reviewers should be able to review in the country of their current location or in the language of their choice, like the currently upgraded recommendations, instead of the 200km or so around their current location and home & bonus locations.
And I think that upgraded nominations should be reviewed more by the reviewers who currently hold the GREAT rating.
I would also like to see nominator ranked by POI approval rate, with "GREAT" being all upgraded, "GOOD" being the same as it is now (I think we can get rid of the automatic), "FAIR" having no upgrade applied, and all "POOR" being delayed.
This would inevitably reduce the number of poor quality nominations, which would benefit the players who make good nominations and reviews.
Just clarifying that my third sentence did start with "Anyway, it would be nice to see more control of upgrades (ie. when and what they can be applied to)", so please don't misconstrue my opinion by saying "The fact that you disagree", when I clearly do agree.
As Roli said before, local knowledge may help, especially in cases of restaurants and such. However, improving a nomination to be objectively perceived as significant is always going to help the chances of a nomination being accepted, upgrade or not. As I said in my last post regarding the thread starter's Gazebo nomination, "if it's been rejected twice, it needs to be fine tuned in some way." - goes with the saying "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." It's easy to blame the faceless mass of reviewers, but the only thing we can control is what we submit, so if it gets rejected, then adjustments should be made. For a gazebo it should be easy, for other things, it may require a bit more effort.