When Niantic takes your nomination within 10 minutes...
Melurra-PGO
Posts: 419 ✭✭✭✭✭
Sometimes you just have to laugh...
When this happens, it's truly a lose-lose for me. Niantic will probably reject because street view is outdated and the supporting information is incomplete. Even if they do accept, I'll have to go back and edit the description to add the interesting things I found out about the art piece. I still have description edits from a year ago undecided, and of course, we have no way to track edits at this point, even though that was supposedly a priority feature to be added. It also takes longer for me to get a Niantic decision then if I were to upgrade it.
Hold doesn't work, especially when they are taken into Niantic voting so quickly. Wayfinders have had nominations taken into Niantic voting while the nomination is on hold status. I am so wary about upload later, with wayfinders having upload later nominations disappear, be pinned at the upload location rather than the POI location, etc. It seems like this one in particular didn't even have queue time, so I don't think even a successful upload later would necessarily work.
I just feel bad for those who have had their nominations in queue for 6 months, a year, 2 years...Niantic should "quasi-randomly" take from those instead of taking our new nominations immediately as they're submitted. I, for one, can upgrade my nominations and take care of them myself. They should also probably not "quasi-randomly" take from submitters who have, say, a 90%+ nomination acceptance rate, as those wayfinders are much less likely to submit something on PRP or that is otherwise problematic.
Thoughts?
Comments
This happened to me today as well.
Fortunately, I didn't put "Bench" as the placeholder text in all three fields, specifically because I was worried it would be pulled straight into Niantic Voting.
Same. Mine was taken in a nanosecond. I agree about the futility of completing a great nomination in the field. The “hold” function isn’t reliable.
Sometimes i wonder if I should just type in the minimum (“sporty” for a sport field, e.g.). Those “descriptions” annoy me when the subject is a common approval, and there is zero thought put into how it meets criteria. Oh well. 🤷♀️
Had 3 out of my 4 new nominations went straight to niantic voting, luckily 2 of them got accepted while one is still in voting. I wish they could be this quick too when doing appeal
Now I feel bad for judging some nominations harshly (in my mind, not during the actual review) because their descriptions just said one word. Now I realize it may not have been their fault.
The nomination of which I am most proud might easily have met a similar fate. I went through numerous edit cycles to get the text just right, but only after it had been uploaded with placeholder text. Later, I showed my fellow-submitter friend the submission email so she could admire it (I'm quite proud of this one, like I said) and she laughed out loud - the original submission had "kid" for the description text, and "murder" for the supporting info. If this had been taken into Niantic voting early....and I had to drive 2 hours each way to resubmit...it would have been disappointing to the point of despair.
Please, Niantic - give us enough time to present our candidates in their best possible light.
That's really well done from the picture to the text.
It's a pretty sensitive submission ,I think, so could have come across badly. Nice job.
I think the most important thing for Niantic is to realize that anytime they make a major procedural change, we'd like them to post an announcement to let us know. Like "Attention Wayfarers: coming soon Niantic employees will be making a major push to review newly submitted nominations in target areas. These nominations may be pulled into voting much more quickly than you are used to, so be sure to create your best submission during initial upload."
That doesn't really work unless they specifically time-gate it (and actually test it works), there's no point having a HOLD function if Niantic reviewers take things within hours of being submitted.
@NianticTintino @NianticGiffard
This is a previously-requested feature, and if I remember right (I don’t have a link) somebody was going to look into it:
New nominations should NOT move into voting for a minimum of 24 hours, so that the wayfarers can have a reasonable chance to look it over for typos, or to make better write ups once they get home.
I’ve come across things that were completely unexpected before on my excursions, and if I don’t make my submission there-and-then, it can be really difficult to find the correct location later (ie “remote” submissions).
And this same consideration for a minimum time frame also needs to apply to the Niantic-staff reviews too.
Same thing happened to me as well. I would really rather they work on the massive appeal backlog rather than unnecessarily add to their workload - especially in a fashion that negatively impacts submitters.
Same, same, same. Had one taken instantly this morning that only had placeholder language in it. It was too complicated to do right in the field, but if I had known insta-voting was a possibility I would have done better. Meanwhile, well researched and carefully worded and photosphere-uploaded nominations have been sitting for months untouched.
Thanks for the tags. Like you said, a delay before a nomination can enter voting was first requested a while ago. But the problem only seems to have worsened.
Niantic also took an unfinished nomination from me one week ago today. I'm not sure if it was instantaneous, but it was within 3 hours. It still has not been decided, which signals to me that an algorithm is automatically sorting nominations into a staff queue or queues rather than a Niantic staff member manually plucking a nomination (or group of nominations) and not paying attention to the submission date and time. I'm no developer, but I assume this issue could be fixed with a simple if statement, as there is certainly a defined variable for nomination_date, as we can see that in our UI.
With the number of wayfinders reporting the same issue on this thread and others, and on Reddit, it's more widespread than I had thought. I wrote the supplemental info on the nomination in the main post of this thread as a joke to myself, but maybe Niantic staff will see it and it will give them second thoughts.
Has anyone had success with switching between Pogo/Ing and a word processing app to copy and paste description and supplemental info? Would leaving the Niantic game app interrupt the nomination process or erase progress? It wouldn't solve the issue for nominations stumbled upon in the field that need to be researched later, but for those written ahead of time, it could help.
For anyone curious, here is what the description and supplement were supposed to be for the nomination in the main post:
Description: 2019 piece painted by muralist Ryan Tova Katz and designed by Michelle Lytle. The juxtaposition of the deteriorated brick and money-bearing branches is intentional, as is the mural's positioning near the sidewalk: the designer intended for passers-by to interact with the bills floating over the fence and take photos. Part of the Lytle House Art Initiative.
Supplemental: Streetview is out of date. The mural is on the wall of a business and faces a small-scale apartment building (note the multiple mailboxes on the fence in the supporting photo). The supporting photo also shows the address above the door. Link to artist's website showing this mural in its year of completion: https://ryantovakatz.com/ii7wwghbpub7f5r3ewts0tz38tn2qo The Lytle House Art Initiative website also has a blurb about the mural (scroll down to "EdgewaterMoneyTree"): https://www.thelytlehouse.com/art-initiative.html#completed
I just tried copying and pasting from Google Docs, and it worked, but it was a little finicky. The text didn't appear at first after being pasted, but if I tapped outside the box, it would then appear. Pogo didn't close during the nomination process, so it seems the RAM on my phone could handle it. Although it's a nuisance to do in the field, I will do this with all planned nominations until this issue is rectified. Unplanned nominations will still be at the mercy of the Niantic voting sorter algorithm.
Woah. This is really terrible, it's unfortunately that Niantic has recently backflipped on their 'pseudo-random' configuration of only taking nominations into Niantic-voting after the grace period (or mandatory delay) of 24 hours. I had a very similar experience back in October last year, this thread below kind of summarises my experience.
But now it seems like it's impacting far more wayfinders since the middle of July 2022 it seems? That's annoying. You might have some luck with Niantic-voting, given they were happy to accept my stolen nomination of a park footbridge with the description "Brifge" and the supporting statement "Jsnsnd". I laugh at it everytime, but also not when they've also accepted a Woolworths, ALDI and a random picnic bench called "pokemon park picnic".
For the record, someone's nomination (a new submitter, give or take) was swiped into Niantic voting on 6 July 2022. Since then, I've gotten over 75 nominations approved. His one is still stuck in Niantic voting.
Niantic should stay away from fast-moving queues (unless there is some evidence that it is an abuse vector) and also from freshly minted nominations not even 24 hours old.
"given they were happy to accept my stolen nomination of a park footbridge with the description "Brifge" and the supporting statement "Jsnsnd".
Hahaha. Love it. Mine has a minor typo in the description, too, dammit.
Oh yes, I do recall that thread now. And in addition to the wayspots you mentioned, Niantic staff members were accepting sooo many absurd generic ones, like a Woodman's (grocery store chain in some US states) and fast food chains. I took a hiatus in the (Northern Hemisphere) winter, so I lost track of the issue. Was it ever resolved then or were there still reports of it? Were any ever sorted into Niantic's queue instantaneously, as wayfinders have been reporting in this July/August flare-up?
I've made five nominations today, and none have entered Niantic voting. Nominating in Pogo was a bit inconsistent, with the location map sometimes not appearing, finicky text boxes, and, worst, some nominations not going through (even though my data reception was fine and other things were working normally).
Most importantly, I realized two more reasons why we as wayfarers MUST be given time to access and edit our nominations from the contributions page before the nomination goes into voting.
#1. The app limits characters in the description in supporting info more severely that the contributions page does. We are allowed 512 characters for the description and 3000 characters for the supporting information. For one nomination, I copied and pasted the pre-written description from my Google Doc, and the app truncated it at about 265 characters. The supporting info was also truncated at slightly more characters. Here is an example. I made minor tweaks to each in Pogo so that they didn't cut off in the middle of a word, but within about five characters, here are the character limits in the app. It's almost like we are supposed to go into our contribution page to expand on the nomination after submission.
#2. The app does not allow links in the supporting information. I copied and pasted pre-written supporting information as well, which contained a link for location confirmation. However, both the upload now and upload later buttons were grayed out, with no error message or other indication as to why. I removed the link, and then they were available. Links are allowed (and are often needed) in the supporting information. If we can't submit links in the initial nomination through the app, we must needs be allowed to edit the nominations before they go into voting.
These issues were encountered in Pokemon Go. Anyone up for testing them in Ingress?
These are in addition to the reasons established previously in the thread: wayfinders need more time, it's a nuisance to input fleshed-out information in the app while afield (and, with the reasons above, impossible in some cases), and "stumbled upon" nominations need time to be researched.
#HearUsNiantic - give us time to access and edit our nominations before they enter any voting queue!
how long did it take for the first acceptances? three of my recent noms went into to niantic. two after i made edits, to employ proper terminology and provide links.
i figured they were going to take forever, since my appeals have spent so long, untouched.
this is ridiculous. i hope niantic looks into this and makes some changes. they really have no clue how their own system works.
Niantic takes nominations to review? I've had the appeal review, but never niantic just taking something to review, is this only in certain areas of the world?
The first two took only a few days to be resolved, as for the third nomination, it was taken last Friday, so we'll see how it fare this week
UK Wayfarer
@Gazzas89-PGO
I had several when they first started doing this.
Over past month or so I have had a steady flow of oldest in queue / in voting go to Niantic to resolve.
The 2 groups are different. The later about clearing out those over 2 years old.
The other group that are taken from top of the deck I think are about demonstrating that it is doing due diligence regarding POI on PRP - all of mine taken in the first batch were in dense residential areas. None of mine were taken as quickly as is happening now - the current situation is ridiculous.
I use the in voting Niantic filter to check if any taken.
I haven't been nominating for 'years', so I do not have nominations that have been in queue for anywhere near as long as many in these discussion fora.
Even with the near half year I have been nominating, the longest I have is now 28 days. Even to me it's an 'iffy' one, so it's not a surprise to me it's taking so long.
What I have noticed is a sudden jump in the past couple of weeks (for the better) in how fast nominations are getting 'Accepted'. And, compared to others' experiences in these fora, it was right quick to begin with. It's like someone hit the review version of a NOS button
This one was nominated during the mid to late afternoon of 25 July, was promptly 'Upgraded', went into voting somewhere around 3.00am on 28 July and reached 'Accepted' before 3.00pm the same day; approximately an hour or two shy of four days.
Now, okay, I think the fact it's a permanent metal sculpture that's clearly a permanent fixture, has existed for quite some time, has plenty of access to it and is surrounded by a path to enable pedestrian access would pretty much indicate this would be... as the Americans would say... a 'slam dunk' of a nomination.
But... four days?? Daaammnn!
Hoewever and after recovering from the shocked surprise of that, there's this one:
As you can see by the date, I nominated it two days ago (at about 6.00pm); and promptly 'Upgraded' it, just as with the first one.
As of approximately 5.00am this morning it was still 'In Queue'. Then I checked about an hour ago and it was marked 'Accepted'.
I thought four days was freakin' quick; but less than TWO?
Holy Pokeballs, Batman! What, on Earth, has gotten into the Wayfarers of my locale? Are they 'mainlining' Redbull, or something!?
Now I've not posted this to brag (though I do feel pretty chuffed about it). I've posted it to show there really should be no reason nominations are waiting 'In Queue' or 'In Voting' for so long. It would help if Niantic would have the Wayfarer reviews go to a wider audience if they've reached a certain 'days long' point without moving to the next.
Yes, there may be a language issue with nominations going to someone for review who doesn't speak the language. And, yes, there are cultural issues that differ from one locale to another. However, these are issues that can be catered for in the programming of the review distribution system.
Niantic are clearly banking on making quite a bit of money from Lightship. I would hope they'd dedicate more time/effort to it than perception otherwise indicates.
I actually never submit in the field and I always prepare text upfront so I can easily copy and paste it anyway, though that probably can misbehave if you have low spec device (game getting unloaded in background)
Obviously that's merely a workaround, not a systematic solution, but can be helpful
It is becoming popular for games to send a large number of the same candidates for review by Niantic.
I've only been at this a month or so and this matches my experience. I've done about 12 nominations, 4 have been accepted, 2 rejected, others are still in queue/in voting. When I do reviews, they are often from outside of my immediate area. Many times they are located on the other side of US.
I have a theory, but it kind of feels like I'm being paranoid to even say it out loud.
Along with my 400+ accepted nominations, I've had a LOT of rejections along the way. While obviously not everything can be shiny 5* golden bits of perfection, I'm not in the habit of dumping 1* garbage/coal into the system. SOME of the things I've been trying to push through are... subjectively ugly, and quite difficult to sell to non-locals, but they are indeed historic artifacts. (Due to previous harassment and threats from local players I am loathe to publicly show off my location, but via PM @Hosette-ING knows of what I speak, and after getting through the appeals process they're fiiiinally starting to get accepted now, if still slowly.)
So I've done a lot of resubmissions too. That gave a lot of opportunity for reviewers to "report" me. Most of my resubmissions are from what we all know to be "stupid" rejections -- trail markers, union halls, places for group activity or exercise.
One day I found myself with THREE nominations all claimed by Niantic for review. But in the end, all three ended up getting accepted: a mural, a parkette, and a building designated "historic" by the local historical societies.
There's NO way that this would have been a randomized selection, at least not on a per-nomination basis. There are thousands of backlogged nominations, all three of mine were recent, and were all grabbed at the same time. My best guess is that after having met some threshold of complaints/rejections, Niantic decided to review "me".
Reminds me of how a while back there was talk of Niantic reviewing all of someone's submissions in house if they were caught abusing the system. In areas with slow reviews, that was actually a desirable punishment.
I'm not sure if it will help you feel better, but I've had almost the opposite experience. I had a nomination taken on July 30 and another on Aug 6. I have over a 90% approval rate and around 50 total nominations at the time I submitted the nominations taken by Niantic. To me, 2/50 is just as weird as 3/400+, if not weirder. I'm not trying to outdo you or anything, just showing that rejection rate and number of submissions don't seem to play a role, at least in our small sample. Since nominations for in-house reviews are "quasi-randomly" selected, a factor could be rejection rate, but that doesn't seem to be the case currently, comparing our recently experiences. Even if it were, I'm sure you would be off Niantic's "list" now with all your in-house approvals.
To bring this back around the original topic, I was concerned about Niantic taking nominations into their voting very quickly or even immediately after submission, as I had experienced this twice in a week's time and other people had also reported it happening to them around the same time. Incidentally, both of my nominations taken by Niantic were submitted on a Saturday morning, around 5:30-6:00 PDT. My first Niantic-taken nomination was on July 30, and that morning, someone else had started a thread about Niantic taking a nomination of theirs within a couple hours that same morning (maybe afternoon or evening depending on their time zone), and one or two others besides me replied with the same, and it was also mentioned on Reddit. My second taken nomination was pretty much exactly one week later, on a Saturday morning in the same time frame. This leads me to wonder if Niantic's nomination-taking routine runs every Saturday at 6:00 PDT and takes X number of nominations from each Ingress-level cell, skimming from the top of a list sorted from newest or oldest, or something along those lines. So a nomination made at 5:55 PDT on Saturday is highly likely to be grabbed by the routine. Definitely just a theory (a game theory) based on very limited anecdotes. If I'm close to the mark, I (and many others) would like Niantic to modify this routine: maybe sort the list from oldest to newest, and/or add an if statement that would avoid nominations that were received less than 24 hours before runtime.
@0X00FF00-ING do you remember or know approximately when you nominations went into Niantic voting?
Also, still wondering if in-app Ingress nominations and description edits truncate the text around 250 characters or if it allows the full 500 and 3000 for description and supporting, respectively, from the Wayfarer contributions page. Anyone willing and able to test?