And now I am reviewing incorrectly
cyndiepooh-ING
Posts: 1,109 ✭✭✭✭✭
Woke up to this email: Re: [27154281] Message from Niantic
Philo PNovember 14, 2023, 05:51 +0000Hello Explorer,
We have confirmed that you have been incorrectly reviewing and selecting incorrect rejection reasons without properly reviewing the nominations/edits as per Wayspot criteria and guidelines.
We recommend you review the Wayspot Criteria and review guidelines (https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/21-wayfarer/) before reviewing any more contributions. Note that any further violations can lead to the suspension of your Wayfarer and Pokémon GO accounts.
Best regards,November 14, 2023, 05:47 +0000Message from Niantic
Concerning your Wayspot Reviews
You drop this new system on us, will not tell us how to use it no matter how much I beg for help in https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/categories/new-onboarding-and-review-flow and then you send me a notice that I am reviewing incorrectly without telling me what I did wrong? I have done over 70K reviews and have a "Great" rating, but this is the last straw.
Comments
my reply
Please tell me what I reviewed incorrectly. I have a great rating and take pride in my accuracy.
did get an immediate but unhelpful response
Philo PNovember 14, 2023, 12:26 +0000Hello again,
We have thoroughly reviewed your reviews and found that you have been incorrectly reviewing and selecting incorrect rejection reasons without properly reviewing the nominations as per Wayspot criteria and guidelines. Please review the aforementioned Wayspot details and context shared in our previous message. As a result, we have notified you about it after our investigation. Please review the Wayspot Criteria before reviewing any further nominations.
Best,
So you're in a country that had a lot of "coal" but Wayfarer disagree with your views because need more accepted POIs in your zone or your community had an excessive zealot rejecting nominations making exploits of the old system and the new one it's designed to stop those type of practices that hurt communities to grow up fairly.
@cyndiepooh-ING
please accept a virtual hug from me. I know that this sort of things feels utterly rubbish. I am also fully aware that you have been quite rightly seeking clarification, and I am sure you have been using your best judgement ( based on considerable experience).
thank you so much. you care way more than anyone from niantic does. i am done until they start showing they care at all.
@cyndiepooh-ING I know we don’t have a proper comments box now, but in the past we’re you, like me, in the habit of giving reasoning?
It's absurd that you are getting that and also ridiculous given the new system is borked, confusing and many times I've seen Niantic push the idea that we are supposed to use our own judgement on each individual submission.
How can you be incorrect if that's what you saw in the submission?
This is appalling, the fact that they refuse to give a reason, or indeed any useful feedback shows how little respect they have for us.
yes, and i still write explanations if i get a text box. i made a post asking if i should check the comments box in order for them to see it, or if that was labelling it as a different unlisted reason, but of course they didn't answer me. so idk if they are seeing my comments or not. and i can't make them for a lot of the boxes.
i am fairly certain that i got this because i used "Abuse" as a rejection reason. but i used it accurately and per guidelines. i think what happens is the person complains when they get this rejection and then help chat sends an email to everyone who used it. even if we are right. i strongly recommend not using the "abuse" rejection on the review form in the "Accurate and High Quality" section. i don't use that lightly, so i remember using it.
The joke starts with "We have confirmed".
I do miss having a comments box when rejecting. My comments weren't always super detailed, but I would always leave them if I was using Other Rejection Criteria.
If Niantic wants to publicly address what I reviewed incorrectly that solicited this email on this forum post, I welcome that. It would be educational for everyone. I don't know who to tag about that, but consider my privacy a non-consideration.
oof! @cyndiepooh-ING I'm so sorry this happened to you!
For me, using wayfarer there is a balance between wanting to be productive and being just incredibly fearful. I am always asking myself if I want to continue participating when there is this ever present paranoia that I might get a ban.
And I don't see it as a Niantic problem, it's a community problem....if I speak up and voice my opinion will someone report me? If I post a photo of a nomination will voters who see it reject it because I've upset them somehow?
Literally, my hands are shaking a little while I'm typing this because I view this forum as so retaliatory that I worry I'll get in trouble for having a different opinion from the status quo...and I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way.
I believe we should all take a moment to reflect on how we are complicit in what is happening with wayfarer.
I check in here and on various social media sites fairly regularly. And so much of what I read is negative and divisive. Abuse is a very serious allegation yet it's thrown around for what I perceive as arbitrary reasons.
I feel like we complained and we got what we asked for.
The nomination I marked as abuse was a fifth (or sixth? I lost count) instance of receiving the exact same photos submitting to nominate the exact same Wayspot. Help Chat did remove the duplicate photos that had been added this way. (I had rejected the original nomination for low quality photo, and easily recognized that it was the same photo: https://intel.ingress.com/intel?pll=36.113531,-79.475627)
Looking for that guideline to quote here, it was difficult to find "spamming nominations" in the help menu as abuse. I found the statement that "Attempts to intentionally add unrelated photos to the location" is abuse, and I would argue that duplicates of the same photo should fall under that: https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/help/reporting-abuse-in-wayfarer
And to further back up my calling this abuse, there is also this statement about what counts as abuse: https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/criteria/rejection
Other type of abuse
Any other type of abuse that you feel is not in keeping with the spirit of Wayfarer's mission to create the most interesting, family-friendly, and accurate representation of the real-world.
And then I finally found the statements I was looking for about spamming nominations being abuse here: https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/criteria/guidelines
Nominations submitted by accounts with a history of spamming inappropriate nominations
If we believe you are spamming nominations inappropriately, you will receive a warning and may lose nomination privileges for repeat offenses.
Nominations that are duplicates of existing Wayspots
Check to make sure that the Wayspot you're nominating or reviewing doesn't already exist. If it does, the Wayspot will be marked as a duplicate during the review process, and the image you submitted will be added to the live Wayspot.
And I am saying all this without even knowing if this is the nomination in question.
So it's:
'use your best judgement' (and remove the box where you could explain your decision)
You use your best judgement
'You've made the wrong decision'
What did I do wrong
'You've made the wrong decision, but we're not going to explain why'
---
I think Niantic based their procedures on Kafka, or a guide on how to alienate people.
Maybe in the future just mark it as a duplicate and move on? I’ve seen other instances where a reviewer marked something as abuse then got a warning for marking that.
Agreed. Choosing duplicate or some other rejection criteria seems to be safer.
OH! I got a reply from @NianticAaron
### Do not reply below this line ###AaronNovember 14, 2023, 16:40 +0000Hey,
Sorry for the confusion.
This email was sent to you because of your review of the submission titled "Coach’s Logo". You rejected this submission which should have been approved.
Thank you, but I still don't know what I did wrong.
This is BS. If a certain nomination “should have been accepted” then why do they tell us to “use our best judgement”, or why do they have us do reviews at all if they know what should and should not be accepted?
Okay the ambos did some detective work for me. This was a restaurant I reviewed before the update, and I rejected it as just being a regular restaurant and not having enough story told as to why this was significant to the town. I am sorry my opinion did not match yours but I do not think this is an open and shut case of reviewing incorrectly.
I understand your fears about speaking in the forum
Sometime ago one wayfarer from Japan started reporting wayspots in Germany because he didn't like/disagreed with the comments from other people.
Now that I know what this is let's just see:
"imageUrl": https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/noSO5hQ1cP7vnqiwI5Jo0Kvm-ReY1em3tSbGXhkYRYncEmPLNqmM88Co6YgXmreBM5LCc0psK1Avn0kWhezpVIMZL2DvC2iyXmewScZW
"title": "Coach’s Logo",
"description": "American grill food with sports theme and games",
yawn and fits a ton of other places. let's see what the supporting was
"statement": "Established in 2008, they play every sports college game here, very popular huge hang out spot for all families and friends"
yawn. let's see how unique it is
https://www.coachsneighborhoodgrill.com/locations.php
it is a chain. and they didn't even submit it as a restaurant, they submitted the logo. i think i got this one right. please tell me why i was incorrect @NianticAaron
If I am going to get warning emails that my OPINION is wrong when the only guidelines I have are to use my "best judgement" that something is a "GREAT" place to explore, exercise, and/or be social, but I am wrong if I don't think it is GREAT, then I can't review. You can't tell me to use my "best judgement" then tell me my best judgement is wrong and expect me to continue.
Obviously I can't see the nomination, but I can't see what eligibility criteria a chainstore logo would meet.
Wow! Is this really all it takes to trigger a warning? One single review?
(editing to clarify): Not rhetorical questions. I really would like to know.
How does one send a warning to whomever send out the warning, seems more fitting.
Wouldn't of positively voted for this either as it's a chain and title already suggest the nomination is solely for the logo not for the place itself.
Giving out warnings for things like this only negatively impacts wayfarer and nothing good will come from it. Warnings are great for the things that you could group under it not being done in your best judgment or possibly being abusive. Bs warnings only devalues the meaning of them, would love to see that we can learn from our warnings so we can also improve on our judgment of nominations.
This is Ex Post Facto.
Reviewers including @cyndiepooh-ING used their judgement and reached a consensus to reject a nomination. The submitter appealed the decision (perhaps supplying additional information or perspective that was not available to reviewers.)
Somebody or something at Niantic accepted the appeal yet no one withing Niantic was willing to divulge anything except the Kafkaesque finding of wrongdoing.
Eventually, they informed @NianticAaron that this logo 'should have been accepted'.
I don't understand why their team doesn't collect and publish their findings to shape our consensus. They could illustrate how the original submitter could have bolstered the nomination in support of guidelines, or added to the guidelines to reinforce some tenet of Wayfarer. e.g.: A somewhat fuzzy photo can be replaced later if the candidate represents an interesting, attractive, or fitness-abetting object, place, or concept.
Who would wish to review at all if we're only going to be scolded? Perhaps they could save up until they have three similar infractions, and then email a reminder that photo quality must be egregiously bad if it is to warrant rejection of an otherwise good submission?
Please make the dings understandable, and let us know per issue: This is your First Strike on photo-quality. Please consider the Content Guidelines section on Photo Guidelines.
Of course, in this case, the guidelines say you should reject if the photo is blurry....
Without moderation because of a quote 🙄
If that came up for me
Title - Fits
Description - Fits
Support - Doesn't really show me why I should be seeing it as a great place to socialise etc . What's there is fine, adequate for a multitude of similar places that offer exactly the same. I would have received a warning too.
First this is what I call a non- education email. It is not part of the abuse ladder. So there are no implications about that.
Second @cyndiepooh-ING i would have reached the same conclusion.
Third
think it’s reasonable to say that if it had been posted in Nomination Improvement the consensus would be it is not surprising it was rejected, but let’s see if we can help you present a much better case, but be warned it may still fail.
This is all about judgements and it’s perfectly ok to have differences in opinions between wayfinders and staff are human too and can reach different judgement calls. However with a finely balanced system I don’t think these emails as they stand are appropriate Or helpful to the individual, and as someone who has received one in the past, they do put you off the process of reviewing.
It is not about the individual people and their different judgements, but about a system that is not effective.
Dear @NianticAaron @NianticTintino-ING,
I cannot even begin to express how outraged I am about this "educational warning" email Cyndie and her co-reviewers that also got this email along with her. Even after seeing the nomination in question I cannot in good faith say I would review it any differently than how she did. I don't see how making this judgement call warrant a warning meanwhile you are out there sending bans for people submitting legit trail markers that you deem "not good enough" for some reason... again another judgement call. Stop banning and warning people for using their honest and sincere judgement.
I am in the same boat. Received the same warning e-mail early this morning from Philo. 18000 reviews under my belt and a GREAT rating means nothing. I e-mailed Philo back and asked him to please give me specifics. Got this generic response instead.
>>We have confirmed that you have been incorrectly reviewing and selecting incorrect rejection reasons without properly reviewing the nominations/edits as per Wayspot criteria and guidelines.
We recommend you review the Wayspot Criteria and review guidelines (https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/21-wayfarer/) before reviewing any more contributions. Note that any further violations can lead to the suspension of your Wayfarer and Pokémon GO accounts.<<
The Coach’s Logo submission looks familiar, I bet I reviewed it. I’m sure I would have rejected it, maybe because corporate logos meet no criteria? Maybe because Niantic has never given us any specific guidance on how exactly to rate restaurants?! I do know I was USING MY BEST JUDGEMENT as directed. This is an absolutely terrible test case to use to see if reviewers are judging properly! @NianticAaron