Capitalization
Frewfrux-PGO
Posts: 26 ✭✭
I believe not using proper grammer or punctuation will (rightly) get a nomination rejected, but what about nominations lacking any capitalization at all? Should I be rejecting those as well?
(I've given 2 such cases a 2-star rating and added comments, but I figured I should probably check with the community as well.)
Comments
It's never a straight rejection, it's just... Annoying.
Non-capitilized submissions bug the ever living hell out of me, but it's not any grounds to reject.
I usually dock a star in the title section for grammatical errors. But then a month later I usually see the same submission as an edit suggestion to correct the text.
It’s a minor - and correctable - flaw and doesn’t really detract from the nomination as a whole, though I fully agree that it’s irritating.
Urk.
My I ask you what you think 3 and 4 stars are for, if you are giving such trivial mistakes like grammar and punctuation errors 2 stars?
Errors that do not mislead the reviewer or visitor should be worth just 1 star off IMO; i.e. be given 4 stars. I give 3 stars for titles that are not wrong, per se, but are entirely unhelpful; e.g. such generic travesties as "playground", "church". I reserve 2 stars only for things that are positively misleading, albeit not so bad as to constitute abuse (which would be 1 star).
When it comes to reviewing submissions its suggested to only reject because if inappropriate or irrelevant text in the title or description, like @exculcator-ING says its best to just vote accordingly to the quality of the text. If a user is attempting to mislead reviewers often the submission is misplaced or fits some other rejection criteria.
The rating system is subjective. In my personal opinion, poor grammer/spelling that is "facing the public" is a poor reflection on the developers of the software.
A single error in the text is likely an honest mistake. Two or three errors means the submitting player probably didn't review the submission before hand and hasn't bothered to edit afterwards. However, frequent errors throughout the text not only are "poor form," but they detract from the game itself.
If there's the odd error in the title/description then yeah, it's a 3-star (maybe a 4-star if everything else is perfect). If, however, it's riddled with errors that the submitter didn't care enough to fix, no, surely that's a 2-star.
But I do know that this is just my opinion. What I was wondering about is if I should be rejecting these all together, and I see from responses above that I shouldn't, so I won't.
When PokeMonGo was new, and all over the news, it did get bad press for stops and gyms with poor grammar and capitalization. Each town's newspaper's staff just had to open the game and look around a bit to find a local example.
Still, I only dock a star or two for it. BUT I submit grammar edits when I see it "in the wild".
I only bother with edits for capitalization if it's a proper name. Saying "trinity lutheran church" is incorrect and disrespectful. Saying "big fountain in the square" is casual, so close enough.
An error in the title/description can be done at any time after the wayspot has been approved, requering that everything is perfect in order to approve a nomination is not what Niantic wants
Titles and typos can and will be fixed later. Please don't be too hard when you review, and please keep in mind that some people who submit might have dyslexia or other challenges, making it very hard for them to get a submission to be absolutely perfect.
For me, part of it is the location. Is it in the middle of nowhere with few stops around or is it packed and they aren't hurting for gameplay? Is it really my intent to make someone spend more time and effort to re-submit in a process which could take months to years? Is that the kind of penalty the mistake is worth?
I try to give the benefit of the doubt and be reasonably lenient. Sure, I roll my eyes at the "lazy" submissions, but these could also be kids or people who don't have any idea about wayfarer or forums. It's not going to hurt anyone to let them be successful, and I think the question of whether it can be fixed with a simple edit is a good benchmark.
It annoys me, but I assume that it can be fixed later. What gets me are the one-word titles or descriptions, like "statue" or "park" with no name or information at all.
Yeah, these are awful. I cringe with every review.
I wish more reviewers had this attitude.
I try to not be too harsh when reviewing submissions. If I'm overly critical on something as meaningless as grammar, spelling etc then the only outcome is that it discourages others from continuing to submit and review.
You are way too strict, proper grammar and punctuation at most knocks a star off, same with capitalising, mistakes depending on the frequency can maybe get something rejected, but remember edits exist to fix these
Plain and simple, if you are reviewing correctly, then punctuate, grammar, or spelling mistakes have almost nothing to do with how valid a Wayspot is.
The one exception would be if the errors are so blatant and atrocious that a player would not know what the Wayspot was supposed to represent due to improper description/Title.
I'm glad to see that this forum has led you to not reject things based on this, but I think you need to go further. a 2 star rating on something that should be a 4 or 5 is also doing a disservice to the community. It could lead a valid stop to get rejected when it otherwise would have been accepted. As others have pointed out, maybe the spelling mistake was due to someone with Dyslexia or perhaps they intended to log in at a later time to fix it but by the time they did the submission had already moved to In Voting.
Just remember, Cambridge University proved that spleinlg deson't mttaer.
https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
I had a creative writing class in college in which everyone had to compose a couple of short stories and then meet in the classroom to discuss what they read. One of my classmates submitted a 6 or 7 page story that was almost entirely without punctuation and was full of spelling errors. In review I said, “I couldn’t read it. The grammar and the spelling were so bad I got halfway through the first page, but I was so frustrated and upset about it that I gave up.” One of the other students said I shouldn’t have done that but my instructor defended me: “That is exactly the same reaction you’d get if you submitted something like this to an editor for publication. Your work in this classroom doesn’t have to be grammatically flawless but should be proofread better than this.”
That is exactly my opinion for Wayfarer: a minor capitalization, grammatical, or spelling mistake should not stand in the way of acceptance; but an egregious disregard of any rules for written language absolutely will detract, moving the focus from the subject of the nomination to the terrible language, and when that happens it deserves rejection.
*It’s not that hard to proofread one time*