Who is actually doing the appeals?
Losifer026-ING
Posts: 188 ✭✭✭✭
I’m pretty sure everyone would like to know who exactly is doing the appeals and what training they go through.
Losifer026-ING
Posts: 188 ✭✭✭✭
I’m pretty sure everyone would like to know who exactly is doing the appeals and what training they go through.
Comments
I would guess it’s outsourced contractors who are given the guidelines as training.
That would be my guess as well. Based on what time the emails come in and the time zone stamps I’m pretty sure I know where they are too. However, I could be wrong, it might be all of Niantic’s staff that just gets to do it in a more casual and voluntold setting at their own pace; and the deciding vote for me just always happens to come from their staff at the offices in India for whatever reason. Mostly I’m curious and I figure transparency with the appeals program might help the community be less upset with the wait times and the results. As it stands it seems like a 50/50 split on people furious with the wait times and results, and people who are ok with the results but annoyed with the wait time. There’s kinda a lot of frustration with appeals and upgrades at the moment that I’ve been seeing in various chats.
I think appeal reviewers are allowed to C&p use appropriate text that us normal Wayfarers put on our review it's first time thru. "Generic business", "meets no criteria", "generic sticker", and so on. I don't think they're that creative, and I don't think Niantic gave them a drop-down.
From December AMA last year...
"What does the internal review process look like? - Can you give us any insights into the internal review process?
Our internal review staff go through an intensive training on the Wayfarer criteria and we do recalibration sessions as needed. They have a different internal tool to review nominations, edits, and abuse reports. We do realize that sometimes our team gets it wrong and so we are ramping up the recalibration sessions with the team. "
The results Ive had recently from appeals and niantic review have been very unreliable. Some wayspots have been rejected first time but accepted the second time. I submitted a group of sculptures scattered around a park, 4 accepted, one rejected 3 times with no reason given. This morning I had an exercise sign on a trail rejected with no reasoning.
We should probably be open to questioning whether the information we get from niantic, specifically there being a team that is internal or highly trained, is true.
I have also asked reated questions about the Niantic review process. I think there is more transparency needed. Appeals seem to be moving slower than other categories so maybe these are dealt with in house and other things are outsourced...
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/38574/how-many-reviewers-do-you-have-and-what-is-their-priority#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/38573/why-do-rejections-from-niantic-review-not-give-reasons#latest
I am curiosity who is actually doing the appeals.
I am wholly disillusioned with the appeals process. For anything within 200 miles of my home, it's actually easier for me to drive back and resubmit and I'll get an approval faster than the appeal. This is in spite of me lacking time and excess gas to just drive around without other plans taking me to an area. The results are also very unexpected. Some nominations that I was confident should absolutely get approved failed in appeals and with no reasons being given I am baffled as to why. These include a gazebo at apple farm/family park that has a dozen other wayspots and is very much open to the public and a large and unique sculpture in the entrance lobby to a water park. With over 700 wayspots approved and taking pride in writing good descriptions and supporting statements, I am completely baffled by the results and as both were located far from my home, I am unlikely to ever get a chance to resubmit these.
One big disconnect is that it's emotional for us, but it is not to them. To us, a nomination appeal is an appeal for justice. We appeal for respect for our time, ideas, heart, concsiousness. To them, it's data. Any particular single wayspot doesn't really matter - the big picture matters. The database grew by a million wayspots! One or two here or there is like a crumb that fell from a delicious cake you ate up and are satisfied.
I think the appealing is sometimes based on subjective criteria. 8 very similar nominations recently got in voting by Niantic (I guess because I did the nominations in August 2020, and they have been in queu for too long). Well: 5 of them got accepted and 3 of them got rejected. No further explanation etc.
Questionmarks all over the place..
it will be because of backlog clearing, so those are not appeals.
We don’t know if there is a separate “team” ( could be one person 🤔) tasked with backlog clearance.
We’re the 3 rejects solid 5 stars? We all submit hoping for acceptance, but I know some of mine are middling so not shocked if they are not accepted.
We don’t know ( and it would be good to know) if appeals don’t look at the submission from scratch but rather look for reasons and evidence presented in the appeal to overturn the original decision. That’s the basis I work on addressing the rejection reasons.
I would think appeal reveiwers look at
(*) For example: I always reseasrch church playgrounds - when they have a preschool or kindergarten, I reject as K-12 with a link to the school web page. Free research for Niantic!
I think that at least some of the time they are just looking at the title and maybe the first photo, there's been a lot of instances of things making it through that should not have but based on an incorrect or misleading title showed up. That probably only happens when they really need to whittle down a backlog though, or at least when they feel they need to.
I doubt they even looked at the photo for this one initially.
That might be one of the most cut and dry examples I've seen so far. It's funny too, even if it was a fishing area I would probably either accept it if was marked out or reject it as a natural feature if it was just an unmarked stretch of water, a generic rejection reason wouldn't really come into play.
Are they hiring? 😆