I would like to see a system that would allow us to immediately report at the review stage the act of nominating a series of abusive candidates that clearly do not meet the criteria, such as F5 attacks, and the act of nominating false wayspots (disguised objects, titles, descriptions, and location information).
Currently, the only way to do this is to deny it with one star.
In some cases, the reason for rejection may not even apply.
And since Wayfarer is a majority vote system, it will live with such candidates if their ratings are manipulated by an abusive community.
And if the reason for deletion does not apply, it cannot be deleted, and the trash will always exist in the database.
Just because the reviewers dismiss a candidate as not meeting the criteria does not mean that the nominator will be penalized.
Therefore, evil nominators will continue to attack Wayfarer, especially in the case of candidates such as the former.
This behavior is a phenomenon that was almost impossible to identify until halfway through Operation Portal Recon.
But, when some advanced Pokémon GO players started nominating through Ingress to increase the number of PokéStops (I remember that I started observing this in 2018, and the number of candidates rejected with 1 star clearly increased from then on), such attacks started to increase, and they have been increasing more and more since the system was revised from Pokémon GO to Wayfarer.
There has also been a clear increase in the number of fake wayspot nominations abusing Ingress remote nominations since that time.
These include composite photos, stolen photos, temporary borrowed items, faked 360° photo locations, etc. There are many ways to do this.
This is why it takes time and effort for us to remove them.
And now that Pokémon Go can be remotely nominated and has a maximum of 40 slots, there is a concern that this kind of behavior will increase.
This is a problem caused by Pokémon GO's unique system, which allows unlimited spins every five minutes and makes Pokémon more likely to spawn when Pokéstops and gyms are present, not Ingress, which has a burnout system for portal hacks.
Wayfarer has nothing to do with the problems of this particular system itself, but it has been adversely affected.
And as HaramDingo-ING says, it doesn't take long to disavow such an abusive candidate.
But, it is extremely painful for the judges to get a cooldown if they have to disavow this in a row, and it is one of the main reasons why judges are turned away from reviewing. (In fact, many of the Ingres agents around me have quit because of the cooldowns they get when they keep rejecting things they don't care about.)
I hope that you will build a system that isolates these issues.
I've seen lots of awesome nominations from Pokemonners. Singles, like murals and statues I hadn't notice before. And clusters, showing that it really is fun to play at a park where every field has a portal.
And I can't blame anyone for not knowing rules they were never told.
What gets me are willful cheaters - Saying something exists where it does not. Slapping a sticker somewhere without permission, and calling it "art". Forming groups, with a goal of getting everyone a couch Pokestop.
Someone nominating a plain brick neighborhood sign, a terrible waypoint but they honestly think it's OK - is not as bas as someone nominating a statue from 100 miles away, saying it's on the corner near their yard. And the cheaters keep hammering the system, coming up with new ways to cheat, feeling just fine that they might get 99 rejections before one finally slips thru.
It would help to have some kind of scheme, like if you get 10 rejections in a row, you can only nominate one per day until you get 10 accepted.
I'd like some clarification on the upcoming appeal feature. Will it be possible to appeal decisions where a submission was incorrectly marked as duplicate? If yes, what will the result of a successful appeal be? Will the submission be approved?
I'd quite like to know this as well. There's a block of flats near me that has 5 small play parks at it, they are clearly seperate from each other and have different equipment in them, 1 I had submitted 2 years ago and was in games, I then submitted the other 4, 1 passed, one is duplicate, I'd rather get that duplicate appealed. I could accept the visual uniqueness argument, but they are clearly not the same play parks
Yeah, that's why I'm asking, too. A sports field I submitted was wrongly marked as duplicate. The other Wayspot is for a completely different sport, and they're not even that close to each other - reviewers just refused to look at the map or read the supporting information, apparently. I hope I don't have to resubmit.
Thanks for your reply! With all due respect, it remains important to your community for it to feel like our voice is heard and taken seriously. The abuse reporting and appealing that should be coming very soon have been on the forefront of many of our minds, but there are so many QoL "low hanging fruit" that maybe should get focused on during some of the release notes. There are folks who have already developed plugins that address the requests of that thread, but they really should be headed into the native client.
Comments
I would like to see a system that would allow us to immediately report at the review stage the act of nominating a series of abusive candidates that clearly do not meet the criteria, such as F5 attacks, and the act of nominating false wayspots (disguised objects, titles, descriptions, and location information).
Currently, the only way to do this is to deny it with one star.
In some cases, the reason for rejection may not even apply.
And since Wayfarer is a majority vote system, it will live with such candidates if their ratings are manipulated by an abusive community.
And if the reason for deletion does not apply, it cannot be deleted, and the trash will always exist in the database.
Just because the reviewers dismiss a candidate as not meeting the criteria does not mean that the nominator will be penalized.
Therefore, evil nominators will continue to attack Wayfarer, especially in the case of candidates such as the former.
This behavior is a phenomenon that was almost impossible to identify until halfway through Operation Portal Recon.
But, when some advanced Pokémon GO players started nominating through Ingress to increase the number of PokéStops (I remember that I started observing this in 2018, and the number of candidates rejected with 1 star clearly increased from then on), such attacks started to increase, and they have been increasing more and more since the system was revised from Pokémon GO to Wayfarer.
There has also been a clear increase in the number of fake wayspot nominations abusing Ingress remote nominations since that time.
These include composite photos, stolen photos, temporary borrowed items, faked 360° photo locations, etc. There are many ways to do this.
This is why it takes time and effort for us to remove them.
And now that Pokémon Go can be remotely nominated and has a maximum of 40 slots, there is a concern that this kind of behavior will increase.
This is a problem caused by Pokémon GO's unique system, which allows unlimited spins every five minutes and makes Pokémon more likely to spawn when Pokéstops and gyms are present, not Ingress, which has a burnout system for portal hacks.
Wayfarer has nothing to do with the problems of this particular system itself, but it has been adversely affected.
And as HaramDingo-ING says, it doesn't take long to disavow such an abusive candidate.
But, it is extremely painful for the judges to get a cooldown if they have to disavow this in a row, and it is one of the main reasons why judges are turned away from reviewing. (In fact, many of the Ingres agents around me have quit because of the cooldowns they get when they keep rejecting things they don't care about.)
I hope that you will build a system that isolates these issues.
I've seen lots of awesome nominations from Pokemonners. Singles, like murals and statues I hadn't notice before. And clusters, showing that it really is fun to play at a park where every field has a portal.
And I can't blame anyone for not knowing rules they were never told.
What gets me are willful cheaters - Saying something exists where it does not. Slapping a sticker somewhere without permission, and calling it "art". Forming groups, with a goal of getting everyone a couch Pokestop.
Someone nominating a plain brick neighborhood sign, a terrible waypoint but they honestly think it's OK - is not as bas as someone nominating a statue from 100 miles away, saying it's on the corner near their yard. And the cheaters keep hammering the system, coming up with new ways to cheat, feeling just fine that they might get 99 rejections before one finally slips thru.
It would help to have some kind of scheme, like if you get 10 rejections in a row, you can only nominate one per day until you get 10 accepted.
@NianticTintino @Danbocat-PGO
I'd like some clarification on the upcoming appeal feature. Will it be possible to appeal decisions where a submission was incorrectly marked as duplicate? If yes, what will the result of a successful appeal be? Will the submission be approved?
I'd quite like to know this as well. There's a block of flats near me that has 5 small play parks at it, they are clearly seperate from each other and have different equipment in them, 1 I had submitted 2 years ago and was in games, I then submitted the other 4, 1 passed, one is duplicate, I'd rather get that duplicate appealed. I could accept the visual uniqueness argument, but they are clearly not the same play parks
Do you know what time the new features will be active? If that's like in Pokemon, it won't be here in Germany until tomorrow ;-)
I was thinking the same thing even though I only 6 hours niantic time.
Yeah, that's why I'm asking, too. A sports field I submitted was wrongly marked as duplicate. The other Wayspot is for a completely different sport, and they're not even that close to each other - reviewers just refused to look at the map or read the supporting information, apparently. I hope I don't have to resubmit.
Thanks for your reply! With all due respect, it remains important to your community for it to feel like our voice is heard and taken seriously. The abuse reporting and appealing that should be coming very soon have been on the forefront of many of our minds, but there are so many QoL "low hanging fruit" that maybe should get focused on during some of the release notes. There are folks who have already developed plugins that address the requests of that thread, but they really should be headed into the native client.
Thanks, again!
@Danbocat-PGO channeling their inner Thirteenth Doctor here.