Our goal is to try new educational formats over time to more effectively reach more Explorers more strategically, so please do share with us what you think! Here’s the latest we produced.
The infographic is garbage. When it starts off “Submit your Wayspot for review” rather than “Review the criteria to ensure your Wayspot meets the eligibility/acceptance” you should have known you were on to a loser.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
This however is something we, as reviewers, have been asking for, for some time and Niantic have been so against it in the past so I’d be curios to know why it’s changed.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
Nomination Management: Big improvements are coming to the nomination management experience including (drum roll…) the ability to appeal rejections! Stay tuned for more details as we’re still working them out.
Africa should definitely be the where the next Challenge takes place. Preferably not a single country but a larger area. I've had my bonus location in Africa for more than half a year now (Guinea before the India challenge and now in Sudan) and it's horrible to see so many eligible things (like churches, mosques, sports fields) on Google Maps but barely any Wayspots.
I am exited about the rejection appeals. Im sure a lot of trash nomination will destroy this option quite fast, just like the location edits.
I really hope that the new representation of Wayfarer will increase, especcially the sources for new wayfarers. Maybe work them out with long time reviewers from the community.
The "Test" you need to do is the most needed changing in my opinion. I really hope it will decrease the rate of trash nominations and maybe decrease queue times.
I'm very sad to see no mention of the better "report abuse" and rejection appeals (for reporting invalid Wayspots) and no mention of a "submit later" for nominations.
"Im sure a lot of trash nomination will destroy this option quite fast, just like the location edits."
Only if it's unlimited. If it has to be earned - lile an upgrade -, I can see this as a potentially great improvement to the system.
I'm also very happy that Pokémon Go players will soon be able to see Ingress-only portals during the nomination process. This could drastically reduce duplicate nominations and "Where is my Pokéstop?" threads.
Nomination Management: Big improvements are coming to the nomination management experience including (drum roll…) the ability to appeal rejections! Stay tuned for more details as we’re still working them out.
I'm interested to see how this will be worked out without EVERY person sending their rejections in for appeal. Hopefully it has some high cost and the possibility for users to lose appeals if abused. Maybe something like costing an upgrade to appeal the rejection with the upgrade only be returned if it was originally wrongfully rejected.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
Hopefully this means ALL players need to pass the wayfarer exam before submitting, and not just newly eligible ones. Otherwise, the coal is going to keep coming in as there are probably hundreds of thousands of players who already meet the current requirements. If Niantic still wants to give them the ability to submit, they should at least greatly limit their submission abilities before passing the wayfarer test.
Team expansion: We’re growing! Expect us to engage with you more often in the coming months through the forum and social media.
I hope this means a more active voice on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, etc. I miss how Ingress/Niantic used to have a stronger presence on reddit and G+. HPWU has staff active communicating with players often, and it does wonders. Would help a lot with social media mods with no professional affiliation with Niantic making up their own rules or giving faulty advice.
I like most of the news that we got, I hope they will be added this year, and won't be just a future plan forever.
Seeing all nominations while nominating in PoGO is definetly good idea, as it should help a lot with decreasing the amount of unhappy people that got duplicate on POI that they didn't see in game. Test for submitters is definetly good idea too, the improvement of reviewing system sounds amazing!
But some of these news don't sound so amazing, at least until we will get more information about them, for example:
Changes and improvements of forum - I hope it really be some nice addons and not only getting dark mode (or worse, replacing current look with dark mode and leave us with no choice of how we want to see forum, that would be really bad idea).
The ability to appeal rejections - sounds good, and that's what many people wanted, but I hope it won't be another thing that will be dropped on reviewers to review (and clog the system more). Niantic workers should take part with reviewing these appeals - or just do this work alone, so reviewers won't take part in it, maybe like in Invalid Wayspot part of forum? IDK, but definetly it shouldn't be dropped just for reviewers to review. I hope we will get some more information on it, as it will be amazing improvement, if it will be done correctly.
I agree with it. I would love to help getting more POI in Africa too, but with how current location setting allow to review only small area near your chosen location, it might be impossible to review many POI in Africa. If Niantic would allow getting POIs from much larger area for chalenges - maybe adding second bonus location just for challenges that would prioritise giving you nominations from a whole country you chosen to help in challenge (and maybe some area near border of this country) it would be much easier to help reviewing many POIs. I hope there is idea to give more area to reviwe during these chalenges and we will hear something more about it.
Team expansion: We’re growing! Expect us to engage with you more often in the coming months through the forum and social media.
Honestly, this is probably the most significant announcement. It has been obvious for quite some time that the Wayfarer "team" has been hopelessly understaffed, and it sure seemed like no one in a position to change that really cared (even though the wayspot database is supposedly one of their most valuable assets). So I'm glad to hear something is being done about that.
New features: We’re innovating the contribution experience in-game, including the ability to see what Wayspots have already been approved during the Wayspot nomination process in Pokémon GO.
I would still like the ability to also see what noms have been submitted and are still in queue or in voting. When it takes a year or two for noms to go through that leaves it open to something being nominated multiple times and that just wastes noms and adds noms to the backlog that don't need to be there.
In theory, this update is very exciting. But considering past experience with Roadmap updates, my general feeling can be encapsulated using the press X to doubt meme.
Largely because no date was given for any of the changes - not even a vague "X quarter of 202X". (Not that that would've meant a lot - looking at you, promised revamp to the abuse report system - but it'd have been something.)
Speaking of which - like Gendgi said above, I was really discouraged to see no mention of the better abuse report system, despite it being promised for many, many weeks now.
But other than that...
RE: Support materials - as mentioned before, the previous "how to submit a nomination" infographic was deeply flawed. I'm hoping that future educational material will learn from that past mistake.
RE: Team expansion - this is actually something I'm very happy to see. I've always had a very strong feeling that the Wayfarer team is severely understaffed (and generally under-resourced). I really hope Niantic is starting to invest more in this product, and taking it more seriously in general.
"...the ability to see what Wayspots have already been approved during the Wayspot nomination process in Pokémon GO" - absolutely fantastic, thank you.
"Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them." - sounds promising, interested to see how exactly that'll be implemented.
"Nomination Management: Big improvements are coming to the nomination management experience" - nice! - "including (drum roll…) the ability to appeal rejections!" - ...ah. Obviously, the concept itself is extremely exciting. But I'm worried about how exactly any rejection appeal process would manage to be operational at all... we shall see.
"Reviewers: A new product design for the reviewer’s experience" - that's extremely vague, NIA. Any kind of additional information on that would be welcome.
Yes, now we can safely say that not only your humble servants KNOW that the system is broken, YOU seem to be in the know, too.
Sadly your "What’s in store for the next few months" does not list asingle thing that would FIX THE SYSTEM.
There are several things in the "wiring on the floor" that are broken and need to be replaced NOW.
The S2-Lvl 9 Cells that are already filled up to the burst with wayspots in ONE corner still do not get A SINGLE wayspot in the other empty three corners. There is NO wayspot there that will move out on its own into acceptance/rejection
The System still is not first IN first OUT. Our submissions from 2 years ago are still IN QUEUE!
in Central Europe there is a big BABEL problem with people that do not understand the language that is in the countries next to them. Still WE have to vote on everything. Even if we do not understand it or the cultural value.
Thank you, maybe it was a bit of a rant this time, but sometimes that is needed.
I hope the next event will be in Brazil, far from the big urban centers and laterally a desert in many regions, especially the northern region of the country. I hope Niantic will redesign the quiz to become a rater, unfortunately it is possible to find the correct answers even within YouTube. Another change I would like to see is the possibility to change the location within the Wayfarer to fix it before it goes into a vote. And greater transparency in results.
What should have been done in the last six-twelve months?
A thirty minute animated cartoon series about Wayfarer: learning to review, finding spots, nominating them, dealing with disappointments, fakes and troublemakers, earning agreements.
A Stand-alone Wayfarer app.
Rejigging of the entire motivation/rewards/punishment system.
Streamlining and clarification of the various reporting and appeals processes to bolster confidence and increase transparency.
Niantic should not remain mute, nor should they reply to distressed Wayfarers perceptions with “That random punishment, time-delay, or resource denial was simply our system working as intended!”
Believe it or not, we are a pretty small team within Niantic
I literally laughed out loud when I read this. First time during my stay on this forum. The expansion of team staff is the biggest news for the future IMO.
Some other nice promises, but I'm nowadays in a state of "I believe it, when I see it". Sorry.
Are people interested in an appeal in the version of a button that would send the same nomination through the system again but to different reviewers(prior reviewers wouldn't be able to see it) and cost an upgrade? These would be most useful in borderline submissions that a resubmission usually works.
Or Are people interested in Niantic review if it cost multiple upgrades(yes multiple upgrades considering the garbage that people rage about not being accepted)? This would be most useful in situations where it needed supporting documentation.
I don't know what people generally have that they really want to appeal. Borderline or complex stuff.
Small indie company raking in Billions. This is the perfect example on how even the most understaffed team can make heavy sums of cash, if you just latch onto an iconic name (PoGo in this case) and straight up ignore issues that could take forever to be resolved.
I don't even know why they'd consider us not believing their team is small. You don't pay Yatches and wine if you're paying employees 😂😂😂
Absolutely not interested in appeals that are handled by the community. If I make an appeal, I want effort to be put into the review. And I have zero faith in the community to do that. If an appeal can't be expected to be handled with high quality, it is not worth it.
It's not even about borderline or complex stuff. Let's handle the obvious candidates that keep getting rejected first. Borderline and complex stuff can come in a later phase.
I am happy to earn a review rejection challenge to be done by Niantic.
If these could be earned separately from upgrades it would be great. So either via reviews or via having a submissions agreed. Other than the satisfaction of putting something in the game ( which is pretty awesome) I don’t currently get any recognition for having made successful nominations. By having some successful ones it should show that you don’t normally submit trash and so consideration of a reject is likely to not be a waste of effort.
Ok but what are people actually thinking about appealing? "Obvious candidates" is highly subjective.
And it appears people are willing to review but don't want to spend more than one upgrade and are demanding it back if successful (occasionally demanding the all reviewers that rejected initially be punished in some way). Or want the reviews for appeals to be separate from upgrades.
If an appeal is successful I don’t want to punish those that got it wrong straight off but to educate them very specifically as to what was wrong.
I would like them to have a mark against their name and if they repeatedly are found to reject when it turns out to be acceptable to get a cooldown etc. Especially if having been issued with a warning they continue to get it wrong.
there are all sorts of B and C candidates, that might be accepted if the reviewers would review after a guidebook (that does not exist). I think appealing these would be a great idea instead of re-re-submitting.
Any "appeal system" which can reverse the community vote needs to bring with it some sort of reviewer feedback for those who made the "wrong" decision the first time. Not just an e-mail saying "we reversed this" but full details of the nomination and a valid reason from Niantic as to why the POI was accepted so reviewers can learn. Currently, after doing over 55k reviews, I'm running at a "correct" rate of 65-66%, and that's been like that for a long time. Based on that, I've got it "wrong" 16k times. Why? How? What am I not reviewing correclty? If you are going to have an appeals system, you need to provide sensible review feedback, particulalry to those of us with a lot of time in the system who would like to improve.
OK, so there is an appeal system coming. Will it work both ways, will we be able to appeal acceptances that should have been rejected as well. At the moment, the reluctance of Niantic to remove anything from the game unless it meets a limited set of very strict criteria rewards people for getting rubbish through, once it's in its very hard to get rid of it and Niantic don't accept "should never have passed the current criteria and been accepted" as a reason for removal.
Comments
Here’s my thoughts:
Our goal is to try new educational formats over time to more effectively reach more Explorers more strategically, so please do share with us what you think! Here’s the latest we produced.
The infographic is garbage. When it starts off “Submit your Wayspot for review” rather than “Review the criteria to ensure your Wayspot meets the eligibility/acceptance” you should have known you were on to a loser.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
This however is something we, as reviewers, have been asking for, for some time and Niantic have been so against it in the past so I’d be curios to know why it’s changed.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
Nomination Management: Big improvements are coming to the nomination management experience including (drum roll…) the ability to appeal rejections! Stay tuned for more details as we’re still working them out.
Finally. Two amazing news.
Africa should definitely be the where the next Challenge takes place. Preferably not a single country but a larger area. I've had my bonus location in Africa for more than half a year now (Guinea before the India challenge and now in Sudan) and it's horrible to see so many eligible things (like churches, mosques, sports fields) on Google Maps but barely any Wayspots.
Only 50% agree. Africa has a very low number of submitters. It will be very hard to get enough submissions for a challenge.
I am exited about the rejection appeals. Im sure a lot of trash nomination will destroy this option quite fast, just like the location edits.
I really hope that the new representation of Wayfarer will increase, especcially the sources for new wayfarers. Maybe work them out with long time reviewers from the community.
The "Test" you need to do is the most needed changing in my opinion. I really hope it will decrease the rate of trash nominations and maybe decrease queue times.
That's why I think the review radius should be increased to include most of the continent. This could kickstart Niantic games in Africa.
I'm very sad to see no mention of the better "report abuse" and rejection appeals (for reporting invalid Wayspots) and no mention of a "submit later" for nominations.
Maybe a global challenge where all nominations older than 6 months get pushed out to the masses? Let's reduce the backlog.
"Im sure a lot of trash nomination will destroy this option quite fast, just like the location edits."
Only if it's unlimited. If it has to be earned - lile an upgrade -, I can see this as a potentially great improvement to the system.
I'm also very happy that Pokémon Go players will soon be able to see Ingress-only portals during the nomination process. This could drastically reduce duplicate nominations and "Where is my Pokéstop?" threads.
Exciting news! I have a few thoughts.
Nomination Management: Big improvements are coming to the nomination management experience including (drum roll…) the ability to appeal rejections! Stay tuned for more details as we’re still working them out.
I'm interested to see how this will be worked out without EVERY person sending their rejections in for appeal. Hopefully it has some high cost and the possibility for users to lose appeals if abused. Maybe something like costing an upgrade to appeal the rejection with the upgrade only be returned if it was originally wrongfully rejected.
Rewiring the onboarding flow: Newly eligible Explorers will soon be required to learn the Wayfarer criteria before being allowed to submit contributions as well as review them.
Hopefully this means ALL players need to pass the wayfarer exam before submitting, and not just newly eligible ones. Otherwise, the coal is going to keep coming in as there are probably hundreds of thousands of players who already meet the current requirements. If Niantic still wants to give them the ability to submit, they should at least greatly limit their submission abilities before passing the wayfarer test.
Team expansion: We’re growing! Expect us to engage with you more often in the coming months through the forum and social media.
I hope this means a more active voice on Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Discord, etc. I miss how Ingress/Niantic used to have a stronger presence on reddit and G+. HPWU has staff active communicating with players often, and it does wonders. Would help a lot with social media mods with no professional affiliation with Niantic making up their own rules or giving faulty advice.
I like most of the news that we got, I hope they will be added this year, and won't be just a future plan forever.
Seeing all nominations while nominating in PoGO is definetly good idea, as it should help a lot with decreasing the amount of unhappy people that got duplicate on POI that they didn't see in game. Test for submitters is definetly good idea too, the improvement of reviewing system sounds amazing!
But some of these news don't sound so amazing, at least until we will get more information about them, for example:
I agree with it. I would love to help getting more POI in Africa too, but with how current location setting allow to review only small area near your chosen location, it might be impossible to review many POI in Africa. If Niantic would allow getting POIs from much larger area for chalenges - maybe adding second bonus location just for challenges that would prioritise giving you nominations from a whole country you chosen to help in challenge (and maybe some area near border of this country) it would be much easier to help reviewing many POIs. I hope there is idea to give more area to reviwe during these chalenges and we will hear something more about it.
Honestly, this is probably the most significant announcement. It has been obvious for quite some time that the Wayfarer "team" has been hopelessly understaffed, and it sure seemed like no one in a position to change that really cared (even though the wayspot database is supposedly one of their most valuable assets). So I'm glad to hear something is being done about that.
I am excited to see official communication on improvements and I look forward to seeing most of these implemented sooner than later!
It does sound like Africa would be a great option for an upcoming challenge, maybe just a 1 day or weekend thing if there aren’t enough submissions?
I would still like the ability to also see what noms have been submitted and are still in queue or in voting. When it takes a year or two for noms to go through that leaves it open to something being nominated multiple times and that just wastes noms and adds noms to the backlog that don't need to be there.
In theory, this update is very exciting. But considering past experience with Roadmap updates, my general feeling can be encapsulated using the press X to doubt meme.
Largely because no date was given for any of the changes - not even a vague "X quarter of 202X". (Not that that would've meant a lot - looking at you, promised revamp to the abuse report system - but it'd have been something.)
Speaking of which - like Gendgi said above, I was really discouraged to see no mention of the better abuse report system, despite it being promised for many, many weeks now.
But other than that...
"Believe it or not, we are a pretty small team within Niantic"
*surprised pikachu face"
Thank you @AnsonNIA-PGO for your information.
Yes, 55% believe that you need to fix the system.
Yes, now we can safely say that not only your humble servants KNOW that the system is broken, YOU seem to be in the know, too.
Sadly your "What’s in store for the next few months" does not list a single thing that would FIX THE SYSTEM.
There are several things in the "wiring on the floor" that are broken and need to be replaced NOW.
Thank you, maybe it was a bit of a rant this time, but sometimes that is needed.
I hope the next event will be in Brazil, far from the big urban centers and laterally a desert in many regions, especially the northern region of the country. I hope Niantic will redesign the quiz to become a rater, unfortunately it is possible to find the correct answers even within YouTube. Another change I would like to see is the possibility to change the location within the Wayfarer to fix it before it goes into a vote. And greater transparency in results.
What should have been done in the last six-twelve months?
A thirty minute animated cartoon series about Wayfarer: learning to review, finding spots, nominating them, dealing with disappointments, fakes and troublemakers, earning agreements.
A Stand-alone Wayfarer app.
Rejigging of the entire motivation/rewards/punishment system.
Streamlining and clarification of the various reporting and appeals processes to bolster confidence and increase transparency.
Niantic should not remain mute, nor should they reply to distressed Wayfarers perceptions with “That random punishment, time-delay, or resource denial was simply our system working as intended!”
A shiny post to distract from their Russia challenge rewards deception.
Let's see if they actually learn and do any of this, or is it just more talk from Niantic.
Believe it or not, we are a pretty small team within Niantic
I literally laughed out loud when I read this. First time during my stay on this forum. The expansion of team staff is the biggest news for the future IMO.
Some other nice promises, but I'm nowadays in a state of "I believe it, when I see it". Sorry.
Appeals:
Are people interested in an appeal in the version of a button that would send the same nomination through the system again but to different reviewers(prior reviewers wouldn't be able to see it) and cost an upgrade? These would be most useful in borderline submissions that a resubmission usually works.
Or Are people interested in Niantic review if it cost multiple upgrades(yes multiple upgrades considering the garbage that people rage about not being accepted)? This would be most useful in situations where it needed supporting documentation.
I don't know what people generally have that they really want to appeal. Borderline or complex stuff.
Small indie company raking in Billions. This is the perfect example on how even the most understaffed team can make heavy sums of cash, if you just latch onto an iconic name (PoGo in this case) and straight up ignore issues that could take forever to be resolved.
I don't even know why they'd consider us not believing their team is small. You don't pay Yatches and wine if you're paying employees 😂😂😂
Absolutely not interested in appeals that are handled by the community. If I make an appeal, I want effort to be put into the review. And I have zero faith in the community to do that. If an appeal can't be expected to be handled with high quality, it is not worth it.
It's not even about borderline or complex stuff. Let's handle the obvious candidates that keep getting rejected first. Borderline and complex stuff can come in a later phase.
I am happy to earn a review rejection challenge to be done by Niantic.
If these could be earned separately from upgrades it would be great. So either via reviews or via having a submissions agreed. Other than the satisfaction of putting something in the game ( which is pretty awesome) I don’t currently get any recognition for having made successful nominations. By having some successful ones it should show that you don’t normally submit trash and so consideration of a reject is likely to not be a waste of effort.
Ok but what are people actually thinking about appealing? "Obvious candidates" is highly subjective.
And it appears people are willing to review but don't want to spend more than one upgrade and are demanding it back if successful (occasionally demanding the all reviewers that rejected initially be punished in some way). Or want the reviews for appeals to be separate from upgrades.
And yet no mention of a way to resolve nominations that have been in the system a year or more. Why isn’t this a top priority?
If an appeal is successful I don’t want to punish those that got it wrong straight off but to educate them very specifically as to what was wrong.
I would like them to have a mark against their name and if they repeatedly are found to reject when it turns out to be acceptable to get a cooldown etc. Especially if having been issued with a warning they continue to get it wrong.
there are all sorts of B and C candidates, that might be accepted if the reviewers would review after a guidebook (that does not exist). I think appealing these would be a great idea instead of re-re-submitting.
Any "appeal system" which can reverse the community vote needs to bring with it some sort of reviewer feedback for those who made the "wrong" decision the first time. Not just an e-mail saying "we reversed this" but full details of the nomination and a valid reason from Niantic as to why the POI was accepted so reviewers can learn. Currently, after doing over 55k reviews, I'm running at a "correct" rate of 65-66%, and that's been like that for a long time. Based on that, I've got it "wrong" 16k times. Why? How? What am I not reviewing correclty? If you are going to have an appeals system, you need to provide sensible review feedback, particulalry to those of us with a lot of time in the system who would like to improve.
OK, so there is an appeal system coming. Will it work both ways, will we be able to appeal acceptances that should have been rejected as well. At the moment, the reluctance of Niantic to remove anything from the game unless it meets a limited set of very strict criteria rewards people for getting rubbish through, once it's in its very hard to get rid of it and Niantic don't accept "should never have passed the current criteria and been accepted" as a reason for removal.