Insane Rejections picking up again in Germany - trolling reviewers, abuse, bot networks?

kawin240-INGkawin240-ING Posts: 803 Ambassador

In spirit of the following posts, I will analyze rejections on my latest nominations that, while you might find a few flaws, are rejected with reasons not fitting at all, and often the nomination in question should not have been rejected anyways:

Trolling by reviewers in Göttingen area:

https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/164043#Comment_164043

Research: Supposedly rejections with reasons that don't exist according to Niantic (but are often use in German abusive rejection waves)

https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/34064/research-about-the-effect-of-low-ratings-1or-2-stars-during-review#latest

Abusive rejections picking up in Germany again:

https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/34097/3rd-bot-wave-or-simply-the-most-stupid-reviewers-and-a-still-not-fixxed-issue#latest

So let's start with something easy, right? Wrong! It's trail marker time!

Over and over again, in various comments by Niantic officials, and also in the guidelines, it is clear that trail markers SHOULD NOT BE REJECTED (this saying is abit over the top), with Niantic even providing examples when exactly trail markers are acceptable. The ones I'll show here are all fitting into the example @NianticGiffard made in that small clarification, some of them even got accepted after some tries, others were even wrongly rejected on appeal and then overturned (https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/32559/inconsistent-niantic-appeal-review-trail-markers#latest)

Here you can see a typical trail marker in the region in Baden-Württemberg, southern Stuttgart area. It's usually a wooden plate showing on which trail you are. They've been put up by the hiking club "Schwäbischer Albverein", in most cases in cooperation with the city, maintaining the trails together.This nomination got rejected for Natural Feature and Inaccurate Location. Let's see if those are fitting!

Natural Feature: The sign and trail are man made. Signs, even wooden ones, don't naturally grow out of trees. The trail itself was as some point not there since trees and other plants where there, humans have cut a way through and made that path walkable for pedestrains. So, in fact, this whole trail and the sign itself are man made and therfore not a natural feature.

Inaccurate Loaction: This is one of the rejection reasons officially not existing, triggered by a low star rating in the location category. The satellite imagery, as you may have already expected with the trail leading through the woods, shows trees only, with the path barely visible. Since the guidance from Niantic for obscured nominations that are still most likely there, where the location is still reasonable despite not being visible, is to 3 star it according to old guides, and not reject it. To further assist reviewers, I included a link in the supporting information to the official map of the city, where you can find all the playgrounds, town halls, and even trails!

So in conclusion, the photo might not have great lighting, the sign could be a bit better centered, maybe write a little more in the description than "Trail heading in these directions", but still this is ver far from being rejectable at all. If you think that this is the only trail marker/sign being wrongfully rejected, and even with entirely false reasons, you're sadly mistaken, as the trail marker section will be the biggest one of this post. Let's see with what reviewers have come up with, with the other trails (also including the neighbouring city) around this one!

All these trails were submitted in similar style as you have seen above: descriptions at least telling in which directions this trail points to, supporting info having a link to an official trail map, and all satellite imagery being obscured by trees. My personal favourite is the last one here, where somone rejected for having a URL markup in title or decription, despite the url being in the supporting information, which is completely fine. If you look closely, you'll also find other non existing rejection reasons according to Niantic like historically or culturally not relevant. Also, some of these were marked as temporary or seasonal display, that was also very funny and I had a good laugh that trails officially maintained by 2 parties could be temporary. As we have now seen a lot of unjustified rejections on trails heading through woods, it is time to go back to the cities and continue to explore them! How about we stop for some delicious ice cream?


  • This is the most visited cafe in town, with a lot of people coming over from the neighbouring ones. Now, as we know, we are supposed to reject businesses that have nothing to do with the 3 big criteria: socializing, exploration, exercise. 2 examples listed for acceptable candidates under "A place to socialize" are popular restaurants and favorite coffee shops. So in spirit of those 2 exapmples, an ice café should fit in as long as it is a local gathering spot. The hard thing is to rpove it, which I tried by mentioning it's popularity, providing the ratings of various websites like tripadvisor, Google and more, which I have to show off in a 2nd part to this post since the image limit has been reached.
  • Other rejection criteria: Does not apply, cafés can be eligible and acceptable as explained above
  • Private residence or farm: A café is not a private residence or farm. Duh.
  • So, supposedly people not keeping up with guidelines and trolls have rejected this café. This one shares the fate of 2 other ones well known around town and beyond, that I nominated an awful amount of times before getting them accepted on appeal. We take a break at this café for now as the image limit of this post has been reached, and continue in the comment section with a 2nd part.
  • Before we head off, as per the Göttingen post mentioned at the beginning, Niantic CAN take measures against these reviwers not following criteria or blatantly trolling, with small things like sending them E-Mails that they should review the criteria to big things like placing warnings and restrictions on their accounts. The behaviour of these reviewrs is hugely damaging to the wayfarer platform, especially if they are not uneduacted reviewers, but trolling ones or even bot networks like in the previous German Abuse cases. @NianticGiffard @NianticSC it would be great if you could act upon these, I can provide coodintes of the nominations and more if you'd need it. Please also look into the 2nd part of this post once I have finished it.


Tagged:

Comments

  • kawin240-INGkawin240-ING Posts: 803 Ambassador

    So, we get to part 2 of this post. Here's the promised supporting info and image of the café we just left:

    As you can see, plenty of proof that it is neither generic nor a private residence.

    We now visit the cultural meeting hall in the neighbouring town, the kids can hangout at its playground. While it's not the most charming one, well, see for yourself what the reviewers came up with:

    Other rejection criteria: Playgrounds can be accepted

    Private Residence or Farm: This is located at the cultural hall, a very public space despite being fenced in.

    Personal Info: There are no Adresses, Player Names or informations baout the author in the texts. I suspect someone has choosen this beacuse the supporting info says "the brdige in the background can help verifying the location".

    School: There's a daycare center neighbouring the cultural hall, but they don't belong together, they are also clearly seperated by the pathway you see in the 2nd picture.

    Location Inappropiate: A cultural hall is not a **** club. Unfortunately, the German translation is very misleading for the rejection reasons Location Inappropiate and Location Sensitive. Niantic has chosen to ignore this very much reported issue for a long time now. Players who visted GO Fest Berlin asked @NianticTintino-ING if they have even read the bug reports, and have word from him that this is on their to-do list, just with a low priority, which is very hard to believe since swapping out text should be really easily done, and also fast. German reviewers wrongly use these 2 rejection reasons to say that they rejected it because they think it's wrong to have a wayspot there, despite that not being the case in 99.99 % of the cases.

    Well, no wayspot but still a fun place. Another usual meeting point in small towns are its town halls, usually they get accepted without hesitation, well unless it's a former town hall with new organizations inside, in the following case an educational centre (note: !not for K-12 kids only!) and the local sports club. Let's see what the reviewers thought of it:

    Orientation: I suspect they chose this because the tree is in the photo, which would still not disqualify it. The photo is not tilted.

    Private Residence or Farm: As mentioned above, this is a very public place.

    Other rejection criteria: I can understand people being sceptical about it since it's the "Former town hall of Stetten", but as it still has a public function and has some histroy to it, it is still acceptable.

    I'm surprised no one has choosen text rejection since there are a few typos. On our way there are more playgrounds, the reviewers were not that fond of them though:

    Now, it was hard to spot these playgrounds on sattelite view since they're obscured by trees, houses and walls. As you can see, they are in front of houses, but very much public (the town uses orange signs to mark its playgrounds). I pointed that out, tried in other tries to include links to maps, but no chance. The title "Chilliger Bär" (Relaxing Bear) was even seen as offensive, wow. Also, it's amazing how a little sunshine on your photo can trigger Low Quality Photo rejections.

    Btw, ever seen an animal breeeders club? If not, then here you go:

    I strongly suspect because this has been happening a lot in the past, that some reviewers see any club (yes, even sport clubs) as a business, a generic one to be exact, and use Other rejection criteria as a rejection reason since the former Generic business reason has been removed to make acceptance for non generic ones easier and to avoid confusion around this topic. Sadly, enough reviewers have missed it or don't care, so stuff like this gets rejected still.

    So, how about we close this out with what we started? Trail markers:

    Apparently naming trails after it's location "Mittlerer Birkenweg" - Middle Birch Way is offensive now.

    @NianticGiffard @NianticSC

  • dustinyeeaah-PGOdustinyeeaah-PGO Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Trail marker - the coordinates are at the bottom of the plaque...


    There's nothing inappropriate about it. The next building is 600m away.



    Third-party photo - That's just a GeoTag in the supporting information.

    Inappropriate as always, every trail marker in germany is inappropriate.

    Location should be pretty accurate, as you can even see the river (Grane) on Google Maps.



    Location sensitive? Sure.

    Third-party photo? Just another GeoTag



    Since when are viewing points inaccessible. That's the whole point, that I can access it safely.

    Natural feature? There are trees in the picture, maybe that's the problem.


    Maybe people don't like the word Dreck? It's mud in german. Not my fault.

    Like every trail marker in Germany, it's an Inappropriate or sensitive location.


  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    theres too much people rejecting because they are not experienced and think "oh this is in the woods, that cannot be there". (and for everyone outside germany, yes, we know, we could do photospheres, but we would have to quit our dayjob). Wouldnt change the fact that niantic tells people to *** the ones without a photosphere - that are obviously there because, well that stuff is common in the forest.

    Id rather have it that Niantic would tell the people that rejected our contributions to stop doing that.


  • kawin240-INGkawin240-ING Posts: 803 Ambassador

    So, other fellow Germans have these too, great. I have amassed more unfair rejections in the meantime:

    Satellite view didn't help here, since the whole train station is underground. That's why I added some links to the supporting information clearly shwoing where this mural is, but apparently no reviewer bothered opening them. You can check them out here:

    https://jeroo.de/murals/

    https://www.region-stuttgart.de/news/kunst-am-gleis/

    Next up: A sign for a weekly cycling meetup, promoting exercise

    Reviewers rejected this for Temporary / Seasonal despite the sign literally being there 24 / 7 just because the meetup itself is only once a week? What a joke

    Plaques attached to street signs are not a clear 5 star across the board, and even Niantic doesn't really seem to know yet if they want these or not, since appealing and asking about them had multiple outcomes. I would at least expect people who argue that these attached plaques are ineligible, that they would reject them for Other Rejection Criteria, but rejecting for Pedestrian Access at a pedestrian crossing was another bad joke:

    The pedestrian acces rejection theme goes even further with this nomination:

    First: URLs in supporting are allowed. This common misconception to reject for web links is an age old problem with reviewers allocated to my nominations (not upgraded ones). I guess people mistook the sidewalk at the info sign for a street, if they only ever scrolled to the satellite view, they would have seen that this is indeed at a pedestrian crossing:

    As I said, attached plaques to street signs are debatable, but the translation issue of Location Inappropiate and Location Sensitive gets frequently abused by German reviewers, also a lot of people seem to reject for Low Quality photo if there's a single ray of sunshine on the photo, like in my previous posts, especially with "Chilliger Bär":

    Remember when I dared to submit an ice café? I was daring again:

    Like previously mentioned, a lot of inappropiate stuff in Germany. Also, Low Quality Photo again because I couldn't get their trash can out of the view and some rays of sunshine are visible. I'm submitting wayspots, not taking part in a photo contest.

    I was even more daring when I submitted a popular restaurant:

    Businesses are private residences now. Maybe I can rent a flat from them then? I also imagined how reviewers see this as temporary, are they convinced that they will move all chairs inside, load the house onto a truck and drive away like a circus or something?

    And for the last annoying rejection, how about rejecting a public library?

    I understand people not liking the photo, since for whatever reason the library has its only sign on its postbox (the shiny metal boxes) and weather did not allow me to at least make a better photo of it. But we see a common thing in German speaking areas, reviewers again abusing Location Inappropiate and Location Sensitive to reject things that are not even rejectable per criteria in most cases (not this one in particular, but especially no brainers like trail markers, playgrounds and churches).

    @NianticGiffard Can we see some action from Niantic on these issues? Not only for the ones posting here but in general for almost the entirety of German wayfarers, the whole thing has become a miserable experience again after the abuse rejections we've seen a few months ago

  • Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, @kawin240-ING. We have reviewed the report and taken action on the 70 Reviewers in accordance with our policies. While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account.

    Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.

  • AisforAndis-INGAisforAndis-ING Posts: 1,072 Ambassador

    We have reviewed the report and taken action on the 70 Reviewers

    Oh snap.

  • BochumJules-PGOBochumJules-PGO Posts: 498 ✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2022

    @NianticOtoStar

    Ok, that you can't give any more information about the procedure and the penalties of the 70 people is perfectly okay. But what is much more important, what happens with all the nominations and their results!? Will Niantic fix this? Because I myself have exactly the same problems + with similarly incorrect results from Niantic examiners themselves!


Sign In or Register to comment.