Is randomly choosing rejection reasons is an acceptable behaviour?
Homesearching-PGO
Posts: 7 ✭✭
there are complaints over the social platform, reddit, facebook, this forum etc., about their nominations were rejected by non-sense reasons.
But we usually can see someone commenting that it is ok for using any rejection reason (live animal to a generic bus stop, which is not eligible to be a wayspot) to reject something if that nomination does not meet criteria. Some would also say just ignore it and move on.
As far as I know, the reason why we can see rejection criteria in not accepted nominations is to help us know better about the wayfarer criteria. Unrelated reasons may gated newcomers to understand things about wayfarer.
So, my question is, is the community opinion correct, using unrelated rejection reasons is find?
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I believe Niantic itself chooses the random answers, to confuse bots.
In 2017 there were no rejection reasons, just 1* and done. In 2018 reviewers had to select a rejection reason. We begged Niantic to pass it off to educate nominators. Niantic resisted, but finally agreed with the caveat that they'll send random reasons sometimes.
It would be nice for Niantic to explain this again.
Do you have a link to where they said anything like this? "but finally agreed with the caveat that they'll send random reasons sometimes."
No, it was back in G+ days.
You can trust Niantic more than you trust your fellow reviwers (including me), if you want.
Often, what we Wayfarers see as "the right thing", is not what Niantic sees as "the right thing". In this case, they worry about bots more than about us.
I encourage everyone to look at Niantic's track record, of staying in tune with Wayfarers - before assuming that what makes sense to us is what they're actually trying to do. For example the emails they send us https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/37308/all-17-wayfarer-emails-are-wrong-and-or-misleading#latest and promises they make about communicating https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/38405/in-voting-for-several-weeks-months-solution#latest
How does sending random rejection reasons confuse bots?
I have seen reviewers brag about trolling nominators by selecting rejection reasons that make no sense. It is way more logical that it is just bad reviewing than Niantic deliberately adding additional rejection reasons.
Why is it so hard for some people to accept that bad and abusive reviewers exist?
Answering the question: In my opinion, selecting an invalid rejection reason is abusive, and appropriate action must be taken on their accounts.
Yeah sorry I don't buy this at all. I was around for the G+ days as well and remember nothing remotely close to this.
The rejection reasons used to be in the rejection email. And gmail used to let us allow bots to read our emails.
I had an email bot/app that collected nomination title/date/etc and result date/reasons, into a chart. It was before the Contribution page existed, so very was handy to have.
Gmail stopped allowing bots to comb emails years ago, but that doesn't mean Niantic changed anything since before.
This topic question "Is randomly choosing rejection reasons is an acceptable behaviour?" is a great question, no matter who is randomly choosing.
Same. I combed through the wayback machine archive of the G+ page, and don't see anything mentioning it.
I believe that Niantic should integrate their existing tools to deal with reviewers as well.
1) multiple/majority has chosen a particular rejection reason.
then: the reviewers gets a boost to the Wayfarer Rating (even a new category for normal voters), Upgrade, and other things like a "Appeal Fast Track"
Thus if the particular troll have chosen abuse or live animal alone, then they get penalised with a weight system similar to how the Upgrades work. Because they are alone in their reasoning or the random reason do not stick.
2) Acceptance of a nomination already works like this I believe.
3) Submission Abusers could work in a similar manner. In my opinion however it is as hard already. However the number of nominations that could be made could easily be negatively be influenced by multiple "Abuse" voting.
Not having been around during the G+ days, I can't speak to that. What I can say is that I've heard the prevailing (bad) understanding from many reviewers is that they will get a cool down if they use the same rejection reason too many times in a row.
We used to see cool downs over "voting patterns." But I believe Niantic changed that a long while ago. I personally end up using the same rejection reason quite a lot ("other") and haven't had a cool down in ages.
I think it would be amazing for Niantic to clear up some of these rumors and bad assumptions that have a REAL WORLD impact on people. Some things are just rumors and they don't cause too much harm if a noob believes them. But bad rejection reasons is one of those things that confuses new contributors and causes them to quit engaging with Wayfarer. Niantic needs to address the rumor that using the same rejection reason over and over won't cause a cool down.
I believe they haven't done so in their effort to make it more difficult to write VOTING BOTS. Niantic seems to work under the assumption that the more information they give out, the easier it will be for people with bad intentions to exploit the system. The truth is that bad actors are going to do what they're going to do no matter what. By keeping information unnecessarily hidden, they're only hurting people who are TRYING to participate in good faith but encounter problems.
Occasionally I'll misclick the incorrect rejection reason. Like I'll want to hit one-two-six for private residential property but then accidentally hit three for mismatched. Or I'll hit one-one-two but hit one a third time and accidentally select body part.
Thus if the particular troll have chosen abuse or live animal alone, then they get penalised with a weight system similar to how the Upgrades work. Because they are alone in their reasoning or the random reason do not stick.
This is a concern to some extent. What if everyone else has chosen 'other rejection criteria' but the general majority doesn't notice that the nomination was in fact, a third-party photo? It's may be difficult to detect and notice third-party photos but not everyone has a keen eye. Or the fact that some reviewers equate seeing people in photos as live animals and they vote as such as a joke?
Also I've been told that I've been incorrectly reviewing nominations for the third time now. Does a Niantic staff member from the United States know the intricacies of the Australian Wayfarer climate? Absolutely not. They don't see the patterns abuse because they don't review. Their appeals to an extent also have random reject reasons as well.
The rejection reason “Other” is not helpful to submitters as it can be used as an umbrella scapegoat. It can be easily be absorbed in the cultural significance and visually unique tabs.
Third Party photos is difficult to spot and amount to abuse. That could also be easily be routed to a entity to review that matter.
Miss clicking a reason could be illuminated by confirmation option.
I have never been subjected to a clear cool-down message, thus I doubt it’s continued existence.
The fourth time I saw a bench ($50 at Walmart) nominated because kids gather there for a school bus stop, I realized they were never going to understand "Other Rejection Reason". So I switched to "k-12 school" hoping to communicate that having children does not make it valid - it makes it invalid.
We need a rejection reason: "Does not meet any of the 3 criteria: explore, exercise, socialize".
I choose Other Rejection Reason when I believe that this thing does not qualify to be a POI and no amount of resubmitting it will make it better. That does not always boil down to cultural significance or visually unique.
I use this for a lamp in someone's bedroom, the family tv, a half-eaten apple on the ground, a telephone pole, the car in someone's driveway, a gas station, etc.
By choosing PRP or bad photo or another similar reason, I think that tells the submitter, "Hey, this lamp/tv/car/light pole/apple/gas station is worth submitting but you need to take a better photo or just find one that's not on PRP."
That is not true. I won't approve anything like the things on the above list no matter how good the photo is or where they are located. (You found a lamp or a tv in a museum? Fine, I'll approve that, but not a generic one just out in the world.)
It is why I would prefer that we had a rejection reason that clearly states "This does not meet criteria" instead of the generic "other" we currently have.
Never choose an invalid rejection reason to communicate something. The nominator will never understand what you mean and will just think it was a bad reviewer and resubmit.
This explains all of niantic's baffling decisions over the years better than anything else, it's all been an elaborate ploy to confuse bots.
I think the three most likely reasons we see bad rejection reasons tend to be:
1: Someone has had a lot of bad nominations in a row of a certain type & they’re afraid they’ll get a cooldown if they don’t change it up a bit. Depending on the circumstances I’d think that’s the most likely reason. In that case you may see a rejection reason that makes sense and one that doesn’t. That is probably because everyone else that rejected it had the same and probably correct reason for doing so, and that weird one was the only other one.
2: Certain reviewers, usually the ones I refer to as the purists, reject more than they approve; and they’re definitely trying to avoid a cooldown. These folks believe it’s up to them to save the POI database from anything that’s not the highest quality, and they often believe that Niantic & the player base have lost their way and need saving from themselves. They’re the, you don’t need every pavilion in your park sort. I wouldn’t include people that are often upset about coal being approved in that group; those people have a good point.
3: multiaccounters/bots often will have some sort of scraping apparatus and will have matching rejection reasons to speed something towards rejection; which also probably has enough accounts using that particular reason for it to end up in the email. The second weird reason would probably be a result of group 2.
There are ways to fix these issues though. Personally I’d start with group 3. But, in order to eliminate the elephant in the room variable, I’d rewrite the guidelines in the least ambiguous way possible and try to make teaching what is & isn’t valid(ie what Niantic wants & why) a big priority along with keeping everyone on the same page by putting any changes front and center on the login page. That would hopefully cut down on coal so that people don’t fear cooldowns for putting down the correct rejection reasons(I’d also change the 1 star rejection reason to all that apply so that it helps people learn faster how to make better nominating decisions). I’d also recommend closely monitoring the forums to ensure as much as possible that only correct information about validity is being shared. Then I would make the value of your review be based on your agreement percentage. This would hopefully minimize the effects of group 2 and abusive reviewers. Overall I think that would greatly increase efficiency and get everyone, including Niantic, what they want out of Wayfarer.
Then look at this desperate submitter:
"Please help accepting this guys, this marketing gallery [of residential housings] has been rejected 3 times with weird reasons. Please help us develop Pokestops here. Real object and visible at the Maps and GSV."
I would assume the said nomination has been rejected by incorrect reasons such as fake, inappropriate/sensitive location, or whatever else while the submitter has absolutely no idea what Other Rejection Criteria mean. How do we inform submitters like this one that their nominations are simply not meeting criteria? And how to address reviewers not rejecting nominations they don't like using reasons like inappropriate/sensitive/whatever else?