After reading a few older threads, I have a little more context and understanding about why the regulars in here are so skittish about this kind of thing: Niantic takes basically no action, while cheaters come back twice as hard once they find out who’s after them.
That said, stop jumping at shadows. The *percentage* of cheaters manipulating the system is so small it might as well be called zero, and in the zeal of some of these reviewers to root out this evil, they’re going to ruin the game experience of one legitimate contributor after the next.
By that logic, no more photosphere, as that can be construed as influencing due to username appearing onto he photosphere, a d that appears in the review process
This happens to me more often than it needs to, actually. A photosphere with an ever-changing Google account name will often come back as 'extraneous objects or identifier not relevant to the nomination'. There are a lot of others who generate photospheres to help assist their nomination as I review, but I can only assume that their volumes are slightly lower and so they don't get done in for submitter identifiable.
Wait so by your logic, if I place a photosphere to help reviewers see my nomination where it actually exists, then that identifies me and makes my nomination ineligible? There isn't any way that I know of to place a photosphere without a name on it.
Silliness like this is why I cannot even permit myself to have any living things (or indeed shadows of living thing), except plants of course, in the supporting photograph. Sometimes it is incredibly hard not to have at least one human (or shadow of a human) in the supporting photograph because I might be in an area of high foot traffic. If my nomination is not a say, "slam-dunk", it tends to be judged rather harshly. I sometimes feel there are people who if it's not a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they will find a reason to reject it, so I have to be super careful.
Unless you have irrefutable proof or some solid evidence of insistent abuse then your point is moot due to plausible deniability.
Downright assumption of abuse without coherent evidence is idiotic and, taken to the extreme, abusive itself.
I know we've had a pandemic for the last year and a half, but seeing random people stroll in public spaces is expected.
Expecting players to be able to use the supporting photo to frame the location while avoiding ALL things that could remotely be identifiable like (but not limited to) random people, cars, license plates, shadows, reflections, objects in the area, is just silly.
Yeah, reminds of all of those people in the USA today crying and whining about so-called "election fraud" when there basically is none. There is not enough fraud in Wayfarer (or elections in the USA) to have a noticeable impact. 99.9% of people are not deliberately trying mislead people. Yet, as soon as something slightly out of the usual appears, suddenly it's as though the apocalypse has begun!
Honestly, I think this is the silliest discussion.
I could understand IF the main submission was questionable to begin with, rejecting it because the supporting info didn't hold up or contained material meant to entice a vote.
But rejecting an otherwise VALID submission because the supporting photo or info contains something that doesn't meet the criteria (car part, dog/child, whatever), just reeks of self-serving elitism. This is a COMMUNITY, the POIs enhance and enrich the community as a whole. It is our responsibility to make sure these submissions are safe, public, and not an inconvenience to those of the greater public; not to sit in judgement of completely irrelevant details that will never show anywhere beyond Wayfarer. The submitter could be standing **** in the supporting photo with a banner saying "Hi I'm FRANK. I'll give $1000 to anyone who approves this"; If the submission otherwise meets the criteria it is our duty to approve it.
Even if those children are in every single one of his photos, it doesn't matter if they identify the submitter. Outside of large cities you can almost guarantee that a spate of submissions from X town or Y park are all from the same person. You can literally identify the user from it.
Currently I'm building up the area around me, I am the only one. Everyone in the local PoGo community and some of the Ingress community knows that LITERALLY every one of the 20 some submissions that is coming through from this area is my submission. I'm sure anyone outside of the local area would think "I've seen a bunch of submissions from this park, I bet they are the work of one person!". Should this make them invalid because the "submitter is identifiable"?
I would agree with the above except for the bit about our hypothetical Frank. Frank is clearly showing evidence of undue influence, obvious attempt to get votes through bribery. Frank would torpedo a nomination.
@TheFarix-PGO While I can agree with you that I don’t like seeing people or animals in the photos at all, I recommend to review as normal unless they’re in the main photo. It is the only one that will be seen by everyone else. We (the reviewers) are the only ones seeing that supporting photo. That is the only reason. If it were represented in game, it would cross the privacy barrier but since it’s not & this person in particular probably photographed their own kids, nothing can be done unless someone were to come forward with a lawsuit. Therefore all we can do is review these as if the person isn’t there (unless they’re in the main photo)
Hi there, @TheFarix-PGO, thanks for bringing this to our attention!
First of all, we had to close this thread because of contentious comments made by some users and to avoid further toxicity.
Secondly, as long as the people shown in the photos are not intentionally/ purposefully posing such types of nominations should be fine for consideration.
I'll reopen this thread however I request a proper and healthy discussion.
Thanks for re-opening! It's often difficult to tell intentional posing in those supporting photos, though - so I can see the OP's point a bit. If people or animals are in the supporting photo, at what point should we cease giving the submitter the presumption of innocence?
Thank you for the comment and for removing the comments that felt the need to directly attack me for bringing the topic up—though it appears you need to remove yet another post that feels the need to personally attack me. I will note that this is not the first time this person has attacked others for reporting abuse.
The fact is that I've been seeing several nominations where a person directly beside the object, either facing to the side or behind so as not to be identified. While one such nomination may seem innocently coincidental, the fact that this was a repeated pattern made me think that this was a new way to signal to reviewers to "approve this nomination". So for future reference, how should review go about handling suspected messaging in nominations, whether it be in the main photo, supporting photo, title, description, or supporting information?
You yourself said that it wasn't the same poeple on the supporting pictures, so without further information, I fail to see how this could be seen as a pattern. If it was the same children or they were in the same pose, I'd say you're right that there's something there, but without any actual visible pattern, I'll just say this is nitpicking.
Also, "messaging" this way would only makes sense if the nomination is ineligible or highly suspicious. This doesn't seem to be the case in the nomination in your original post. But if it makes you feel better, I'd suggest you collect screenshots of "suspicious" nominations and if you can see an actual pattern (same pose, same people), report it as a compilation.
This ain’t a place to attack people. Anyone who is here for that purpose just needs to leave. The door is wide open. We are here to better the ENTIRE community. I understand where you’re coming from entirely @TheFarix-PGO. If avoidable people should’t be in photos. If people attack someone for an opinion, how will they treat them in real life.
I have to agree it would be the best practice. Judge the nomination on its own merits, there's no reason to reject a good nomination because there is a very slight possibility that it has a "approve this" sign. You are doing more harm by rejecting it than approving it if it's a good nomination.
Of course, I do agree that personal attacks and toxicity are unnecessary and I am completely against that. However, "bettering the entire community" also means - at lest to me - that we shouldn't reject otherwise perfectly good nominations based on baseless suspicions. Having people in the supporting photo is not a reason to reject it.
Many of us have argued this, and there have been several arguments brought up. I'd like to see those answered instead of of personal attacks.
Before I get into this, I'm not attacking you or anyone. I'm just pointing out.
You yourself said these arent the same people that you have seen before. You admit it's a perfectly viable nomination. So it seems, because you've seen a couple of times people doing this (bearing in mind, this is children, chances are this was the best the person could do with them) you created a scenario without any proof. If it was things that weren't acceptable or were borderline, sure, but there is no reason to reject, so it seems you concocted one
I may disagree with the OP's handling of the issue, but understand that this is a possible vector for abuse and would like some polite discussion on the matter. I would feel badly if the thread was shut down again because of comments directed at individuals.
I don't think a line can really be drawn between posed/not posed unless the person is staring at the camera directly and waving. I don't mind seeing the occasional kid or dog or rabbit in supporting photos, myself, and think they can show safe access or size/perpective. That being said, as long as the OP is using a 1* rejection reason, I don't consider it abusive on their part: It then comes down to reviewer opinion with ratings at stake.
@Shilfiell-ING It sounds like your answer is ‘yes, no, and maybe’, or I don’t understand correctly.
Some instances have come to light of local ‘cabals’ tagging their submissions by adding initials to the end of an entry, or including an acronym like “NWC” while faking a submission.
Reviewers here seem to agree that extra content in the supporting photo would have to be rather blatant to merit any abuse flag.
You, yourself don’t mind an occasional animate thing being in the support photos you create or review.
It seems to require fewer NO votes to tank a submission than YES votes needed to pass review.
When, where and why is it okay to one-star something that should be acceptable?
Some instances have come to light of local ‘cabals’ tagging their submissions by adding initials to the end of an entry, or including an acronym like “NWC” while faking a submission.
So, this is my problem with this idea of rejecting something because it might have been "marked for approval". If it's a fake submition it should be rejected for... Well... Being a fake?
Detecting fakes can be quite challenging, and I don’t want to write out anything that could be used to tutor future fakers, but we’re supposed to be on guard against gaming the review system.
The Rejection Criteria include a number of ‘ineligible’ categories as well as the direct label of ‘Fake.’
I think the reason this discussion is here at all is that Niantic says animals, people, or personally identifiable elements in photos mark them as ineligible. They don’t make clear if that only refers to the primary photo.
I think the whole thing is rather unclear myself! I would not reject these candidates, but it appears the OP did. I don't think they (the candidate waypoint, not the reviewer) should be marked for abuse without stronger proof (adding initials or code words/letters to text is an obvious abuse and should rightly be flagged) and I was happy that these nominations were not treated this way. By giving a 1* rating to an acceptable, not-faked, obviously great candidate the OP is staking his/her own rating that other reviewers will agree.
I still contend that the whole point of submitting a waypoint is to influence reviewers to vote Yes. That's why I carefully consider my title and description, try to submit worthy candidates, try to get a good photo, and try to upload photospheres when location is difficult to pinpoint. I would expect my candidates to be approved for criteria only, and not rejected because my grandson is famously naughty and tends to photobomb anything possible, or because I happened to show the hood ornament of my car in a wider supporting picture. Attempt to Influence is forbidden in Edits, but is a fuzzy thing in original nominations.
I'm not proposing answers and I have no official voice here. I would like to know the views of other reviewers, and of Niantic, so that I can more accurately review - and appreciate a good conversation!
I personally don’t recommend for anyone to review based from supporting photo & I recommend for others to do the same unless there is some kind of abuse. If there’s no abuse & no person or thing that isn’t the POI in the main photo we are to review as normal. Especially as previously stated. If they are posing for the camera in the main photo, then we are to reject it. If they are placing objects or things in the photo though we are also supposed to reject. I understand what @TheFarix-PGO means but it’s just hard to tell unless you are local & notice consistencies in their photos to earmark so people know which POI to accept
Comments
After reading a few older threads, I have a little more context and understanding about why the regulars in here are so skittish about this kind of thing: Niantic takes basically no action, while cheaters come back twice as hard once they find out who’s after them.
That said, stop jumping at shadows. The *percentage* of cheaters manipulating the system is so small it might as well be called zero, and in the zeal of some of these reviewers to root out this evil, they’re going to ruin the game experience of one legitimate contributor after the next.
By that logic, no more photosphere, as that can be construed as influencing due to username appearing onto he photosphere, a d that appears in the review process
This happens to me more often than it needs to, actually. A photosphere with an ever-changing Google account name will often come back as 'extraneous objects or identifier not relevant to the nomination'. There are a lot of others who generate photospheres to help assist their nomination as I review, but I can only assume that their volumes are slightly lower and so they don't get done in for submitter identifiable.
Wait so by your logic, if I place a photosphere to help reviewers see my nomination where it actually exists, then that identifies me and makes my nomination ineligible? There isn't any way that I know of to place a photosphere without a name on it.
Silliness like this is why I cannot even permit myself to have any living things (or indeed shadows of living thing), except plants of course, in the supporting photograph. Sometimes it is incredibly hard not to have at least one human (or shadow of a human) in the supporting photograph because I might be in an area of high foot traffic. If my nomination is not a say, "slam-dunk", it tends to be judged rather harshly. I sometimes feel there are people who if it's not a UNESCO World Heritage Site, they will find a reason to reject it, so I have to be super careful.
Tut tut, having plants in your supporting photo, people might now think you are influencing the reviewers 🤣🤣🤣
Unless you have irrefutable proof or some solid evidence of insistent abuse then your point is moot due to plausible deniability.
Downright assumption of abuse without coherent evidence is idiotic and, taken to the extreme, abusive itself.
I know we've had a pandemic for the last year and a half, but seeing random people stroll in public spaces is expected.
Expecting players to be able to use the supporting photo to frame the location while avoiding ALL things that could remotely be identifiable like (but not limited to) random people, cars, license plates, shadows, reflections, objects in the area, is just silly.
@NianticGiffard , could you **** a solid, look into this thread, and pass on your judgement on this kind of behaviour? Would really make my day.
Yeah, reminds of all of those people in the USA today crying and whining about so-called "election fraud" when there basically is none. There is not enough fraud in Wayfarer (or elections in the USA) to have a noticeable impact. 99.9% of people are not deliberately trying mislead people. Yet, as soon as something slightly out of the usual appears, suddenly it's as though the apocalypse has begun!
Honestly, I think this is the silliest discussion.
I could understand IF the main submission was questionable to begin with, rejecting it because the supporting info didn't hold up or contained material meant to entice a vote.
But rejecting an otherwise VALID submission because the supporting photo or info contains something that doesn't meet the criteria (car part, dog/child, whatever), just reeks of self-serving elitism. This is a COMMUNITY, the POIs enhance and enrich the community as a whole. It is our responsibility to make sure these submissions are safe, public, and not an inconvenience to those of the greater public; not to sit in judgement of completely irrelevant details that will never show anywhere beyond Wayfarer. The submitter could be standing **** in the supporting photo with a banner saying "Hi I'm FRANK. I'll give $1000 to anyone who approves this"; If the submission otherwise meets the criteria it is our duty to approve it.
Even if those children are in every single one of his photos, it doesn't matter if they identify the submitter. Outside of large cities you can almost guarantee that a spate of submissions from X town or Y park are all from the same person. You can literally identify the user from it.
Currently I'm building up the area around me, I am the only one. Everyone in the local PoGo community and some of the Ingress community knows that LITERALLY every one of the 20 some submissions that is coming through from this area is my submission. I'm sure anyone outside of the local area would think "I've seen a bunch of submissions from this park, I bet they are the work of one person!". Should this make them invalid because the "submitter is identifiable"?
I would agree with the above except for the bit about our hypothetical Frank. Frank is clearly showing evidence of undue influence, obvious attempt to get votes through bribery. Frank would torpedo a nomination.
It's always Frank. He's a bad egg.
Need a new rejection criteria: "Frank"
At least its not Bob
@TheFarix-PGO While I can agree with you that I don’t like seeing people or animals in the photos at all, I recommend to review as normal unless they’re in the main photo. It is the only one that will be seen by everyone else. We (the reviewers) are the only ones seeing that supporting photo. That is the only reason. If it were represented in game, it would cross the privacy barrier but since it’s not & this person in particular probably photographed their own kids, nothing can be done unless someone were to come forward with a lawsuit. Therefore all we can do is review these as if the person isn’t there (unless they’re in the main photo)
Hi there, @TheFarix-PGO, thanks for bringing this to our attention!
First of all, we had to close this thread because of contentious comments made by some users and to avoid further toxicity.
Secondly, as long as the people shown in the photos are not intentionally/ purposefully posing such types of nominations should be fine for consideration.
I'll reopen this thread however I request a proper and healthy discussion.
Thanks for re-opening! It's often difficult to tell intentional posing in those supporting photos, though - so I can see the OP's point a bit. If people or animals are in the supporting photo, at what point should we cease giving the submitter the presumption of innocence?
With the op picture, that doesn't seem posed as "let people know who i am", though they have probs been told to look away
Thank you for the comment and for removing the comments that felt the need to directly attack me for bringing the topic up—though it appears you need to remove yet another post that feels the need to personally attack me. I will note that this is not the first time this person has attacked others for reporting abuse.
The fact is that I've been seeing several nominations where a person directly beside the object, either facing to the side or behind so as not to be identified. While one such nomination may seem innocently coincidental, the fact that this was a repeated pattern made me think that this was a new way to signal to reviewers to "approve this nomination". So for future reference, how should review go about handling suspected messaging in nominations, whether it be in the main photo, supporting photo, title, description, or supporting information?
You yourself said that it wasn't the same poeple on the supporting pictures, so without further information, I fail to see how this could be seen as a pattern. If it was the same children or they were in the same pose, I'd say you're right that there's something there, but without any actual visible pattern, I'll just say this is nitpicking.
Also, "messaging" this way would only makes sense if the nomination is ineligible or highly suspicious. This doesn't seem to be the case in the nomination in your original post. But if it makes you feel better, I'd suggest you collect screenshots of "suspicious" nominations and if you can see an actual pattern (same pose, same people), report it as a compilation.
This ain’t a place to attack people. Anyone who is here for that purpose just needs to leave. The door is wide open. We are here to better the ENTIRE community. I understand where you’re coming from entirely @TheFarix-PGO. If avoidable people should’t be in photos. If people attack someone for an opinion, how will they treat them in real life.
I have to agree it would be the best practice. Judge the nomination on its own merits, there's no reason to reject a good nomination because there is a very slight possibility that it has a "approve this" sign. You are doing more harm by rejecting it than approving it if it's a good nomination.
Of course, I do agree that personal attacks and toxicity are unnecessary and I am completely against that. However, "bettering the entire community" also means - at lest to me - that we shouldn't reject otherwise perfectly good nominations based on baseless suspicions. Having people in the supporting photo is not a reason to reject it.
Many of us have argued this, and there have been several arguments brought up. I'd like to see those answered instead of of personal attacks.
Before I get into this, I'm not attacking you or anyone. I'm just pointing out.
You yourself said these arent the same people that you have seen before. You admit it's a perfectly viable nomination. So it seems, because you've seen a couple of times people doing this (bearing in mind, this is children, chances are this was the best the person could do with them) you created a scenario without any proof. If it was things that weren't acceptable or were borderline, sure, but there is no reason to reject, so it seems you concocted one
I may disagree with the OP's handling of the issue, but understand that this is a possible vector for abuse and would like some polite discussion on the matter. I would feel badly if the thread was shut down again because of comments directed at individuals.
I don't think a line can really be drawn between posed/not posed unless the person is staring at the camera directly and waving. I don't mind seeing the occasional kid or dog or rabbit in supporting photos, myself, and think they can show safe access or size/perpective. That being said, as long as the OP is using a 1* rejection reason, I don't consider it abusive on their part: It then comes down to reviewer opinion with ratings at stake.
@Shilfiell-ING It sounds like your answer is ‘yes, no, and maybe’, or I don’t understand correctly.
Some instances have come to light of local ‘cabals’ tagging their submissions by adding initials to the end of an entry, or including an acronym like “NWC” while faking a submission.
Reviewers here seem to agree that extra content in the supporting photo would have to be rather blatant to merit any abuse flag.
You, yourself don’t mind an occasional animate thing being in the support photos you create or review.
It seems to require fewer NO votes to tank a submission than YES votes needed to pass review.
When, where and why is it okay to one-star something that should be acceptable?
Some instances have come to light of local ‘cabals’ tagging their submissions by adding initials to the end of an entry, or including an acronym like “NWC” while faking a submission.
So, this is my problem with this idea of rejecting something because it might have been "marked for approval". If it's a fake submition it should be rejected for... Well... Being a fake?
Detecting fakes can be quite challenging, and I don’t want to write out anything that could be used to tutor future fakers, but we’re supposed to be on guard against gaming the review system.
The Rejection Criteria include a number of ‘ineligible’ categories as well as the direct label of ‘Fake.’
I think the reason this discussion is here at all is that Niantic says animals, people, or personally identifiable elements in photos mark them as ineligible. They don’t make clear if that only refers to the primary photo.
This is why guidance is requested from The Team
I think the whole thing is rather unclear myself! I would not reject these candidates, but it appears the OP did. I don't think they (the candidate waypoint, not the reviewer) should be marked for abuse without stronger proof (adding initials or code words/letters to text is an obvious abuse and should rightly be flagged) and I was happy that these nominations were not treated this way. By giving a 1* rating to an acceptable, not-faked, obviously great candidate the OP is staking his/her own rating that other reviewers will agree.
I still contend that the whole point of submitting a waypoint is to influence reviewers to vote Yes. That's why I carefully consider my title and description, try to submit worthy candidates, try to get a good photo, and try to upload photospheres when location is difficult to pinpoint. I would expect my candidates to be approved for criteria only, and not rejected because my grandson is famously naughty and tends to photobomb anything possible, or because I happened to show the hood ornament of my car in a wider supporting picture. Attempt to Influence is forbidden in Edits, but is a fuzzy thing in original nominations.
I'm not proposing answers and I have no official voice here. I would like to know the views of other reviewers, and of Niantic, so that I can more accurately review - and appreciate a good conversation!
My issue is that the op is then posting in the forum, obviously it's not the intent, but I take the intent to be either
1. Make other people do the same
2. Make it seem like something is going on
3. Make niantic comment on it and possibly have it so even people in supporting info is no longer allowed
It's basically making somethi g out of nothing that mught impact other perfectly valid submissions
I personally don’t recommend for anyone to review based from supporting photo & I recommend for others to do the same unless there is some kind of abuse. If there’s no abuse & no person or thing that isn’t the POI in the main photo we are to review as normal. Especially as previously stated. If they are posing for the camera in the main photo, then we are to reject it. If they are placing objects or things in the photo though we are also supposed to reject. I understand what @TheFarix-PGO means but it’s just hard to tell unless you are local & notice consistencies in their photos to earmark so people know which POI to accept