Hey Niantic... why not feed FourSquare imports through Wayfarer?
Hosette-ING
Posts: 3,470 ✭✭✭✭✭
We all know that the quality of FourSquare data is pretty bad.. the complaints have been nonstop. Rather than creating wayspots directly I recommend injecting the data into Wayfarer and letting player reviewers filter the garbage out. Since time is probably of the essence when you do this you can treat it all as upgraded to push it to the front of the queue. The end results would be much better than the raw data imports we've seen.
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Probably an extra expense for them. Easier to import it all and let players report and add photos I guess.
Reporting wont work, not meeting acceptance criteria doesn't meet removal criteria, so Nia wont remove them. Bad title, no description, no photo = doesn't meet acceptance criteria though.
We know we've made mistakes in the past and currently but trust me nobody is more invested in creating quality wayspots that match the vision that I know we have and I know all of you do too.
We have a lot to learn and with your help I know we can improve and create the game spaces that all of us want to see.
Quality was always a core value for us at the start of this journey. I hope we can continue together as we learn how to improve do these mistakes don't happen again.
You know that they won't do it because at least 95% of such wayspots would be rejected in wayfarer. No photo, no description, that means people would rush to hit 1*. That's for valid wayspots, without taking into account all the misplaced, non existing and non eligible imported items
I do not recommend trying to rename these pathetic POIs. I tried to rename a non-existent store to an existing new Shopping Center and received a BAN on Wayfarer and Ingress. Well done, Niantic. Here's an award for "taking care of POI quality"...
Correcting the names of things that exist is different from attempting to change a wayspot for one thing into a wayspot for a completely different thing.
I would object to a giant load of c-rap jumping line ahead of my ten-month-old nominations. The VERY FIRST thing they should do is auto-upgrade every legitimite nomination made, say, 3+ months ago.
Second, they could run the imports through a map program (OSM or Google Maps), and omit anything at schools or homes.
Third, they should be able to mass edit titles of the points in the upload. In this case, add "Basketball Court" to the end of each.
THEN, if they put what's left thru Wayfarer, it would have to be with an indicator (big star?) that it's a bulk upload, with different rules. For example, remove the photo rejection reasons.
They seem to have at least done part of this, schools seem to keep them off the board. At least locally, there are 3 that I spotted on the courts of the world that are not imported.
If it was me, I would have used a generic picture of a basketball court or a logo and imported that along with the stops. Then like you said, tag on the end of the title - Basketball Court.
Then create a specialized wayfarer line of questions and put them out to the community. First being a statement "We are preparing for out NBA All World launch and need to add basketball Courts from around the world to our database quickly. For this we have partnered with Courts of the World to nominate the locations in their database to our own. We need your help to verify some information. "
Question 1 does this location appear to be a basketball court, in any condition. Even a court in disrepair is ok here. We answer yes or no. A no answer from multiple Wayfinders will push it for an internal Niantic review to confirm.
Question 2 is this court a duplicate of an already existing Point of Interest in our database? We answer yes or no. I would limit what current PoI we can see down to probably less than 200m to prevent people putting it in as a dupe from 2 blocks away.
If it's a dupe it submits right there, no need to move on.
Question 3 does this title have any inappropriate terms? We answer yes or no. If multiple yes answers it will push to Niantic for review.
Question 4 does this location appear to be at a school or daycare facility? Note places like the Boys and Girls clubs and the YMCA where thier primary functions are after school activities are ok. We answer yes or no. If multiple yes answers again gets pushed to Niantic for review.
Would give us all I'm sure lots of agreements for these. And they could easily lower the threshold and expand review areas for these as we are just verifying info that should already be there.
Could be beneficial, especially if they would focus more on low density areas rather than populous metros.
100% this. If imported Wayspots were to go through Wayfarer, there should be a different process for them as opposed to the standard reviewing format. Maybe a simple check for location accuracy/duplicates.
While these wayspot imports have proven to be of a poor quality, I think Niantic understands that. Let's not kid ourselves and act like the Lightship database is up to date and purely composed of high quality eligible Wayspots either. It is just more noticable when new acceptances are garbage, rather than the Wayspots that have existed for a decade.
The other thing is, the areas the benefit the most from these imports are often the areas that do not have as many players, meaning less (or zero) submitters amd reviewers. Running these databases through Wayfarer might just put them in purgatory for years. Now if Niantic had the global Wayfarer community churn through these Wayspots as part of a wayfarer challenge, then maybe there would be incentive to get them reviewed.
@AisforAndis-ING Location accuracy/content accuracy but I guess they're sort of the same thing?
The slow review issue is why I suggested they should be treated as upgraded. Niantic could also reduce the number of reviewers required since these are probably a binary yes/no rather than more nuanced decisions.
Part of the problem is the lack of information though. How do you judge "content accuracy" when many of the imported wayspots are just a title and they include no picture or no description? It would definitely need to be more binary, possibly similar to what we do for photo reviews.
All this for a game that will be gone in 18 months.