What would you tell the new Wayfarer Product Manager?
PkmnTrainerJ-ING
Posts: 5,138 Ambassador
Assuming that @NianticDanbocat ’s replacement is either lurking in the forums or not yet been found, what would you want to tell them (outside of the survey) about Wayfarer & the Wayfarer Community?
Comments
don't quit your day job
Ask John Hanke to distribute more resources (money & employees) into Wayfarer
Please do not go into hiding or keep us in the dark after a comment or new news is announced with "more information to come". Keep us updated after making an announcement instead of disappearing with no followup on what is going on with the new announcements. No one likes to get excited about a new feature or change with no follow up or results. Respond to the community.
Actually listen to and interact with the community. Listen to the issues that have been identified, and the strategies we are suggesting for how to improve the system. And respond genuinely to the concerns raised by the community, as opposed to ignoring them or treating experienced submitters and reviewers as if they don’t understand the system.
I would tell them that the wayfarer review page is broken, and it keeps dragging people to the bottom of the browser screen. I would ask them to have their team fix the code after lunch.
Geez .. where to begin
Fix the review jumping to photosphere bug/feature that has existed for 2 months now.
Sort the multitude of issues like this and don't just ignore and leave them lingering with no replies.
Find a way to engage the interested many rather than just the dedicated few to speed up review times etc.
Do in house reviews properly and give the submitter a reason on how they can improve if they are rejected.
Take the How to Make A Survey class for beginners.
The vast majority of people I see post here are pretty clued up on the actual reality of the workings of Wayfarer, not just the gobbledygook messages we currently get from Niantic, it seems myopic to not involve them more.
Fix the nonsensical trigger word list.
There's many,many,many more things I can't recall at the moment but feel free to add.
Look for somewhere with better job security... Seriously, you want to come in as the new product managed with the past of Niantics recent firings hanging over your head... Don't work at Niantic.
You're very brave.
Wouldn't you like to work on something easier and safer like a fireworks factory that hasn't passed security checks in 30 years?
Review some of the ideas that have ALREADY been discussed here on this forum (or heck, even on Reddit) to see what we want and have ALREADY been promised.
Yes/No/Maybe and getting rid of or clarifying the voting points during review is MAJOR! We all want it.
Force someone higher up to understand that Wayfarer is the FOUNDATION of all games so if you determine that something in the submission process needs to change, don't ignore your team as some weird branch of the company. Without Wayfarer, NO GAMES exist.
Why have Ambassadors if you're not going to use them as QA or beta testers or at least sounding boards for new ideas or surveys? Seriously, it's a joke that every new thing your team has rolled out in the last few months has been wrong or broken because it wasn't tested properly or because y'all don't understand how we use WF.
Maybe the best idea of all is to meet up with someone who knows what they are doing to watch how they review. Maybe you just pop in on a Twitch stream or you have to connect with someone on a Discord stream. I know plenty of people who would be happy to let you watch us review so that you see how we do it instead of making assumptions that we all do it the same way or that you know it all. Meet up with lots of people and keep an open mind. Browser extensions should not be seen as bad things. Most of us would not be doing this AT ALL without the assistance those extensions give us. Ask questions and LISTEN to the answers.
Please give us updates on upcoming projects.
For example; we still haven't gotten the Edit Contributions page yet nor any updates on it in quite awhile.
Go for some low-hanging fruit, to improve morale quickly.
1) On all game nomination screens, change PokeStop/Trainer and Portal/Agent to Wayspot/Explorer. This has to be the hugest cause of confusion and frustration, and the fix should be so easy.
2) Stop lying in emails. Edit them for clarity.
Item 2.1 most clearly demonstrastes what kind of company Niantic is. Hundreds of thousands of emails have gone out with this lie, for ten months - and Niantic doesn't see it as problem enough to do a quick email form edit. That's an ethical problem, which makes us wonder about bigger ethics here.
3) Have a quarterly update. If you don't guide expectations, your users don't know what to expect, and end up disappointed and skeptical.
When something is promised to Explorers, WRITE IT DOWN. Keep it in the quarterly update, even if just to say "not scheduled for this quarter". Let people feel heard.
What would I tell the new project manager: Respect your customers. Everything else flows from there.
Sorry
Who are really disgruntled unpaid laborers on the verge of lawyering up like the AOL people did in the 90s.
https://priceonomics.com/the-aol-chat-room-monitor-revolt/
Read the results and comments of the latest "survey" running at the moment, and then take a step back and review the pigs breakfast the rollout of the survey seemed to be for the first users of it. Make a note of it, as this seems to be viewed as an acceptable standard internally in Niantic. The "Wayfarer Community" will happily tell you it's not, are hopes are regularly dashed easch time Niantic try something "new".
It's not even new things. In the last hour someone posted this, I know it doesn't really impact much and it's just a notification error but it's the consistency and lack of care to fix these things that is baffling.
These and similar happen every day in Go along with much bigger game effecting bugs, errors and just general indifference. I know the same things were a regular occurrence in WU and most likely Ingress too. Wayfarer isn't faring any better unfortunately.
This only goes to 2019 but that's 6 years of being unable to communicate, get things correct initially or fix them afterwards.
“They’re making thousands and thousands of dollars off your slave labor, off each and every member. I’m tired of seeing all these community leaders, remote staff being treated that way and not being paid.” (Brian Williams, who reported working 3,000 hours over two years) - Aol finally ended its volunteer program in 2005 and settled the lawsuit in 2010 for $15 million. One third went to the community leaders, one third to the lawyers, and one third to charity.
Reading that I think the difference is;
make a minimum 3-4 hours a week time commitment, and follow a shift schedule enforced with timecards
Once you’ve passed the Wayfarer test, there’s no required commitment. You could review for 4 minutes and then never look at it again.
If people decide to do more they can but Niantic doesn’t force/require you to do so.
Since December 9, 2021, edit emails (received, accepted, rejected) say "Please check out the full details in your Contribution Management page". Edits have never been on the Contribution page.
This 💯 thanks @MargariteDVille-ING
Once we do, we should stop new nominations and start improving the Wayfarer database.
It would be better to improve the location information, add proper titles and descriptions, and remove low quality weayspots.
At least in countries where there are already a lot of wayspots it is time to improve the quality, not the number.
I think we are reaching a point where new submissions should be closed off again, at least for a bit.
I agree that it's not exactly the same situation. But we are the primary workforce adding to one of their primary assets in lieu of paid employees. Without the POI database that we have built, they can't sell their services to other IP (Marvel, Lucky Charms, NBA?, etc) because there would be no anchor points for those games to exist. NBA is iffy because they did an import from some other community sourced database but, at least in my area, almost all those imports ended up being duplicates of POI we'd already put in the lightship database.
So my point is that they need to acknowledge that we are a critical resource to their company and start treating us like it. We are MORE than just their customers. We are actually SHAPING the gameboards for their current and future products.
WE HAVE POWER.
I completely disagree with this idea of "removing low quality wayspots." I hate gatekeeping. If the locals (without collusion) decided to vote something into existence, let them keep it. I've nominated some fairly lame things in areas that are "dead zones" and had them approved by locals. Areas where there are long stretches of car dealerships, uninteresting shops, fast food, and chain restaurants. If I found something lame that gets us a single POI in a 10 block stretch, it needs to stay so that people have something to interact with in that part of town.
When certain areas are dying off due to economic hardship, it can be really difficult to find amazing POI. Mediocre is the best you can do and that shouldn't be taken away by gatekeepers.
I agree we do have some power. But Niantic could also just do another few Foursquare imports and then hope people (or even send Niantic staff to) fix them with photos or edits later, getting rid of a massive need for us to populate the maps.
So ultimately we could be “let go” and it wouldn’t make a huge dent to them.
I agree being against removing “low quality” Wayspots as that’s a different thing to many.
Some players don’t get why a post office is an acceptable Wayspot and may think them “low quality”. Similarly some might call my
longuniquely titled trailmarkers “low quality”.What we could do with, on Reports for Invalid Portals/PokéStops is a “No longer meets acceptance criteria”. We have a load of charity shops for example from Ingress’ #MissionForGood that I can’t see fall under any category these days.
I think that's why Niantic has kept the rejection criteria mostly to things that could cause lawsuits.Not things that are personal taste or changing - aka the current criteria as currently understood.
What if a wayspot was fine when new, but a daycare or fire station was built there since then? Or it was under trees when nominated, but the trees have been cut so now you can tell? Or the sidewalk was there, but has been removed, to widen the road?
Also, you can't assume all waypoints were a community decision. MANY were nominated in 2014-2016 before the community voted.(Also before streetview existed, so they didn't even have that tool.)
I would also tell them to thoroughly look at both Report Invalid Pokestop reports and Appeals. They have been lagging a lot in that area as of late.
This above exactly. Lagging, as well as not providing the right judgement 95% of the time. It's as if they have a dropper bird continuously pressing "Y" for the question of "Do we reject?"