Bad Wayfarers Rewarded, Good Wayfarers Penalised
thenamelesskath-PGO
Posts: 192 ✭✭✭
For all the talk, bad Wayfarers are still skewing results for absolute rubbish to be allowed into the database while acceptable nominations are unreasonably serial rejected; making those working in good faith bear the brunt of the deeply flawed system in loss of time, energy, patience, nominations, appeals, and profile rating.
Because it's so frustrating to participate properly, good Wayfarers don't stick around, often leading the community to be overrun by participants acting in bad faith for notable periods of time, in many areas.
My concerns with the new abuse enforcement policy is that some of the latest rejection reasons being favoured by dodgy reviewers in my area (as well as "temporary") are primarily "third party photo", "abuse", and "fake nomination". Does this put genuine submitters at risk of having to constantly appeal bogus suspensions on top of the bad rejections caused by the genuinely abusive (less often, completely oblivious) Wayfarers?
Before picking apart these examples, they're just some I haven't appealed that still have the reasons showing on them, and I'll point out that supporting text is supposedly optional for submitters to explain in cases where it might be difficult to understand/identify the nomination or to verify the location, safe access, or permanence (visible bolts anchoring something into underground concrete pillars should be self-explanatory even if I hadn't pointed it out in supporting, which I did). It should not be this much of a constant uphill battle for genuine submissions, while total junk flies through somehow! 🤦♀️
If a 10 year ban is on the cards due to bad Wayfarers using the system to bully others with constant false rejections/reports, then I'd rather just pack it in now than risk the extra frustration of facing such ridiculous injustice.
And why is there no mention of action against intentionally and regularly abusive reviewers? (I'll bet my bottom dollar that they're often the same prolific reviewers and sometimes the very same submitting undeniable coal, themselves - only reviewing at all for upgrades) 😒
The primary precipitating factor for this rant is this:
After multiple complaints from other local players, I finally came across it myself and decided to report it through the help chat, in the hopes that the submitter's account might be looked at closer as well. It is a small piece of billboard branding (Total Outdoor Media) in a currently unoccupied, locked, and inaccessible car dealership lot next to PRP (couch stop?). Nobody can fathom how it got through, but I've actually seen the exact same billboard branding for review in Melbourne suburbs, so I have to wonder if it's some kind of intentional organised abuse/protest/stupidity.
The thing that irks me most is that it's in the same cell as a long-term locally significant landmark object I submitted and had rejected (it was always going to be contentious for wider community review, but I feel I explained it well and was ignored, and the culture and things that mean something in my community were kinda spat on in the process).
Alas (yeah, I know, removal criteria differs, but what message does Niantic send with this attitude toward obvious coal that slipped through all of their checks and balances?):
🤦♀️
Meanwhile, appeals of locally significant and eligible places to explore have been rejected with messaging that makes it seem as though all appeal text was entirely ignored (and this one even seemed to acknowledge it was acceptable but instead finger waggled about not doing a "hard sell" on it, despite explaining the fact it's a social hotspot and including local trivia to demonstrate the fact it's specifically unique to the area).
So what many take from all of this clusterfcuk is that Niantic doesn't care at all about truly educating anybody, upholding quality control standards, or retaining good Wayfarers that work hard in good faith; and that it would be SOOOOO much easier to mass-reject for upgrades and submit genuine cr@p to get mOaR sToPz and even protection from Niantic when people bother to complain! 🤔🤷♀️
It's little wonder so many are so bitter! 🤦♀️ For all the talk, Niantic has yet to put their money where their mouth is upholding any of their stated missions/intentions (I'll believe it when I see it, but after years of the same, I'm not holding my breath) 🤷♀️
Comments
Hello @thenamelesskath-PGO
It is very frustrating when your own nominations are rejected and you come across ones that should not have been. It also feel horrible when one has the fake tag attached.
I think you are trying to make a general point here so I don’t feel it’s appropriate to comment on the details of what you have posted - and I would hope others might take that lead as otherwise it becomes focussed on the wrong thing.
But I would have happily discussed in a constructive way the nominations included and approach to nominating in the nomination improvement section as I think there are things to improve. …….Sorry to see the Irymple Hotel again it deserves to be in the database.
All of that can distract the focus onto submission rather than a very important area reviewing. Let’s not get distracted 😃
I do think more, scrub that.I do think Wayfarer should start to provide ongoing education and put effort into ways to improve the quality of reviews that are being done. At the moment the tools used are old and crude and do not help educate anyone.
At the heart of it everyone should remember tgat reviewing is time consuming and voluntary. So in my view it should be about education to improve rather punishment. Rather some who probably review with malcious intent but those are the minority. It needs to be a good constructive and productive experience for the majority.
There is a basic rating system - there is no useful information that a Wayfinder can turn to understand exactly what it means, the impact it has or how to use it as a trigger to improve, resources to access to help get a rating moving in the right direction.
Cooldowns are also a vague part of this but are even more mysterious/not intuitive as to their role in any improvement. They are viewed most of the time as an irritant. Another unsupported flag.
There is a lack of detail about your reviewing history nothing to do some self reflection with - why is this standard education technique not encouraged. There is no simple way to find out the fate of individual reviews where you might be curious as to what happened. You might find it if accepted, but as it can take years 🙄
There is nothing to flag up to a reviewer that they might need to consider reviewing habits other than an accusatory unhelpful email that is harmful rather than helpful.
Reviewing requires keeping up to date - this needs to be pushed to reviewers rather than expect them to magically know they need to check something.
I haven’t used add on tools - so I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has used it as designed.
Following problems arising out of the Spanish Challenge https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/44633/issues-with-spain-challenge-rewards-an-independent-analysis-by-the-wayfarer-ambassadors
and taking a deep dive into my own data (GDPR information) I am currently not reviewing as I think there are issues with transparency. I think we should all be clear about what is happening when we review.
Accessing my data - which is not then straightforward to interpret and frustratingly probably needs the add on tools to be very useful - has proved challenging. I enjoy being curious so for me there is interest in there but it’s not in an accessible format.
So it has made me think about the whole review process (doing, output, feedback) as a total package. I think the pieces of the jigsaw are there, they need building into a clear and supportive package so that reviewers can do the work with confidence about what is happening with their work and those submitting can feel confident in the outcome.
Those are my initial thoughts…. Which yet again is a lot longer than intended 🙄
I must be more concise and stay focussed. 😂
I do absolutely agree that the strategy should be education>punishment, up to a point, and that the process needs to be streamlined to reduce confusion.
I understand the perspectives of the larger majority of Wayfarers, who haven't read all the criteria/guidance pages or done extra research, incorrectly assuming the functions of certain ratings and rejection reasons (even many veteran reviewers have missed the memo on the purpose of some of these).
I'm quite confident that there is some biased rejecting going on in some areas, as a means of targeted bullying; based on some observations and testing of the theory. While I agree that these are most likely in the minority, they do have the ability to make the system very difficult to use appropriately in the areas where they're operating; particularly if it's perpetrated by voting cabals, for various reasons. This in turn results in loss of good Wayfarers in those areas, as it's just not worth the time and frustration to most.
However, I don't believe that Wayfarers who vote unfairly, but not necessarily with particular malice, are in the minority. We see these excessively stringent attitudes regularly amongst those that do engage more in online Wayfarer communities, and should know better, but openly admit to expecting more than asked by Niantic in any criteria or guidance. It's a regular complaint in places like this forum and it's a culture issue that's not exactly helped by Niantic's lack of clarity and transparency 😬 There's obviously various degrees and reasons for this behaviour. I think confusion is commonly the primary driver, but it sometimes boils down to a power trip, and very often just jaded bitterness. In fact, I suspect the latter two may be the same reasons many try to get coal into the database to begin with; meaning that improving the system and culture could reduce some of the temptations to engage in abusive behaviour.
While I agree that individual reviewing feedback is lacking, I think there is actually some useful general information available to Wayfarers to help them understand their duties, but much of it is hidden in the help section; where most only go if they encounter a specific issue. In general, I think much of the information there is better quality than that contained under the more obvious 'Criteria' menu and it should be merged for easier access and to reduce conflicting information and confusion 🤦♀️
At the end of the day, my post was just a rant, but one which I had hoped would illustrate some of the issues that have been ongoing frustrations to many dedicated Wayfarers for years (some of which still seem to be overlooked or even completely ignored in favour of blame-shifting).
Realistically, my main points were those made at the end of said rant:
What message does Niantic send with this attitude toward obvious coal that slipped through all of their checks and balances?
And:
What many take from all of this is that Niantic doesn't care at all about truly educating anybody, upholding quality control standards, or retaining good Wayfarers that work hard in good faith; and that it would be SOOOOO much easier to mass-reject for upgrades and submit genuine cr@p to get mOaR sToPz and even protection from Niantic when people bother to complain.
I honestly believe this illustrates some causes of the systemic abuse problems.
Why play by the rules when it's easier to do the wrong thing? Depending on your personal morals and motivations, it could arguably be more rewarding, as well 😬
Under the current system, if these people keep their abuse smaller-scale they'll probably never be detected or stopped. The problem with this becomes that others catch onto this and suddenly abusive behaviour pops up all over the place, until suddenly the system is overrun by more people doing wrong (which, in turn, forces many doing right to quit) and it becomes an overwhelming systemic issue that's practically impossible to overcome (like playing wh@ck-a-mole). And yet, small changes to discourage those early forays into abusive behaviours, like properly examining and removing obvious coal when it's reported, could have averted much of the problem; by removing the rewards and incentives from those doing so.
I think Niantic has put the cart before the horse in attempting to manage many of these issues and now they're closing the gate after the horse has well and truly bolted 🐎😬😅
PS: My primary concern about the new abuse enforcement remains. Do those rejection reasons (abuse, fake, etc) put genuine submitters at risk of bogus suspensions?
Also that forum filtering is wh@ck lol 😅🤦♀️
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Join the many voices complaining about the issues and trying to improve the system.
Expect the same voices thst like to reject everything possible with ridiculous reasons to try and defend their actions and blame everyone else.
Same ****, different day.
Locally my subs are all rejected and or later submitted by the other faction and then accepted.
So, subbing locally is not happening because bullying is an actual thing they don't see nore care to even discuss. After a decade of abuse, being abused, thought I would've learned by now.....
Reviews....I did one about 6 months ago, that was all I needed for the next 5 years. Didn't see the tick on the badge lol. Yes, it's been 5 since my last review, sorry, not sorry.
Submitted 15 three weeks ago, 3 made the game. I'll have to be standing there with time, lots of it, to want to keep participating because the payoff......?????
It's kinda on the spectrum
Yeah, this "bad wayfarer" is losing agreements because she keeps reviewing fakes and marking them as fake, but other people fall for them so they get approved. Admittedly they're high-quality fakes, but still...
How do I know they're fake? I've visited about half of them in person and a friend has visited the other half.
There's too much for bad wayfarer at this now. We need paused for new wayspot because this is can be bot or fake reviewers.
@yohaneseric30-PGO Pause them and then... what? If you were The High Poobah of Wayfarer what would you do?