End of Summer Lookback (long update!) - Discussion Thread

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  • oscarc1-INGoscarc1-ING Posts: 366 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Welcome, the post provided some good insight on what is happening. Looking forward to being able to manage edits and photo submissions, it's painful trying to do this manually lol

    Just some feedback on the post, keep in mind Wayfarer is global, it is winter here, not summer. Plus the date format can confuse people outside of America ("(target release date 9/8/2021)"), is that 9 August? It already passed! Oh wait, it's September 8th. So perhaps keep the language geographically neutral so it makes sense no matter who is reading it.

  • Roli112-PGORoli112-PGO Posts: 2,236 Ambassador

    New Features for Contribution Management: The “Nominations” page will be renamed “Contributions”, and will see many new features that we think you’ll love. In particular, more control over how your Upgrades are applied, appealing your rejected nominations, and tracking the status and impact of all your contribution types (e.g. edits, nominations, photo submissions). Think of this as your Explorer archives and your one-stop-shop for tracking your impact across Niantic games. We’re actually really excited about the concept of an archive of your adventures and are already researching more ways to evolve the Contribution Management experience next year. 


  • Gazzas89-PGOGazzas89-PGO Posts: 2,619 ✭✭✭✭✭

    From a personal standpoint, I think it eas mostly positive. Bit vague knt he what's to come in terms of how long it's anticipated being, like i would really want to know when the upgrades bei g auto assigned will be changed and when we will be able to see our edits in queue (though, do t know how tjat will help if edits still take a year to get voted on) but good to k ow those are coming (at least the didn't say soon tm)


    The one negative I have is the very copy and paste answer for wheres my waypoint, I know they can't admit to the cells (though it's like the worst kept secret ever) but at least say something about the portals not coming online

  • Grogyan-INGGrogyan-ING Posts: 133 ✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat

    “Make Wayfarer an app!” 🤳

    We know there’s room for improvement when it comes to addressing how psychologically different it can feel when using a responsive web-app vs. a native app. Most of you experience Wayfarer on your mobile phones and expect more of a native app experience. We’ve heard this request in the wild for some time, so we’re assessing it very carefully, including possible new features that would be better supported by a native app, making it an indispensable companion for your real-world adventures. 


    The irony here is, I am tired of "just another app" syndrome in today's modern age, when Operation Portal Recon came out, prior to Wayfarer, the web interface has, and is a preferred method for reviewing.

    However, a BIG problem that Wayfarer brought was the inclusion of pokemon go players into a central system, some, and by some, a very large group, are still continuing to manipulate the system, which has seen increased damage in how Wayspots are are Loaded in other games, such as Ingress and Catan World Explorers Transformers Heavy Metal.

    How can us honest Nominators and Reviewers from both Ingress and Pokémon GO trust that a separate app will curtail the significant and blatant manipulation of the system?

    Sure in Operation Portal Recon there was some manipulation at the time from some Ingress players, however it was still better than Wayfarer, even now.

  • Grogyan-INGGrogyan-ING Posts: 133 ✭✭✭
    edited August 2021

    @PkmnTrainerJ-ING the thread on why no fix for some wayspots are not appearing in the Other Games, still seems to be ignored.

    A pokestop goes, no Portal

    A portal goes live no pokestop

    A wayspot from either game, doesn't appear in games which have no access to nominations or Wayfarer.

    Keeping in mind that we are stating, that all other reasons why it might not, are not valid, some no other wayspot for 50m in said game, the other game does

    These are the common complaints that I regularly see in local chat, reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc

  • Shilfiell-INGShilfiell-ING Posts: 1,559 Ambassador

    Welcome, @NianticDanbocat - it was a pleasure indeed to read your post, written in delightfully clear and vivid language with no hint of a script in sight!

    I do hope that the stars aren't the only thing fixed in the Wayfarer visual display: the font size also got smaller, fields are confined to tiny tiles with lots of blank space left over, and there's the flash-effect issue that's actually a physical danger to the photosensitive among us. I hope that accessibility issues such as these are taken into effect, although they may not be a problem for all reviewers. I'm one of the ones that generally reviews on a larger computer screen, and still I squint. I'm old, of course, but still capable of some great submissions and reviews!

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    Hi @rodensteiner-ING , @Grogyan-ING , @Elijustrying-ING

    I thought I'd poke my head in to the forum tonight in case there were more questions I could respond to (I'll be pretty swamped tomorrow otherwise). I'm sorry to have caused deep concern and feeling like I was brushing you off...😅 I wasn't. Please let me try again without my inner copy-paste robot manifesting!

    Wayfarer has always been purposed as a program to welcome the community to voluntarily and collectively decide which Wayspot nominations get accepted into Niantic's geodata platform, alongside Niantic's additions from time to time. The platform hosts other types of geographic data for all of Niantic's game developers to access. I think of it as a kitchen pantry for creative chefs. We are working together to keep this pantry stocked with fresh ingredients, such as Wayspots. Game developers ultimately decide on how to use the Wayspot database as they see fit, and at what time they schedule any syncs to the platform, as you have aptly observed. I would not say this is random at all. I'm just saying it was never Wayfarer's purpose to make that call. At this time, I don't believe that enforcing which Wayspots to use across all Niantic games gives the game developers the creative freedom they need.

    And as I noted, I know the way we have branded the notification emails and the wording within them were not crisp, and conflated 'accepted into the platform' with 'accepted into the game' and you're really just concerned about your game rewards. It is totally understandable that you are frustrated, and we're going to clean that up. We know you want better ways to track your contributions, so we are designing these too. Please note that features/improvements I've listed won't affect how games decide which Wayspots to use (that has always been separate as I've explained above).

    Hope that helps!

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    Ah yes, we have all of these things noted as well and we are investigating. I'll be soliciting @NianticTintino 's help to keep you posted on this.

  • Kellerrys-INGKellerrys-ING Posts: 696 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat

    Wayfarer has always been purposed as a program to welcome the community to voluntarily and collectively decide which Wayspot nominations get accepted into Niantic's geodata platform, 

    You mentioned that you're waiting for your own nomination to be approved. May I inquire which game(s) you used for that/those? Did you get the impression you're nominating for a platform or for a game you used for nominating?

    The unclear emails are an irritating minor detail, the misleading nomination process is the bigger source of discontent.

  • Robdebobrob-INGRobdebobrob-ING Posts: 7 ✭✭
    edited August 2021

    Can you just go talk with the person that made the Wayfarer+ plug-in? Id love to see a decent dark mode and the translate button (i get to review nominations from 6 countrys here) for example.

    Also i would make a system that incetivises reviewing more. Especially the PoGO community. Its so big, but most of them dont bother with wayfarer cause the reward (1 upgrade every 100 agreements) is too small. Especially if it then gets instantly shot down for no good reason. Either offer more upgrades, or maybe ingame stuff like poffins or rare candys. COINS even. Were literally doing work for you, you might aswell pay for it.

    Post edited by Robdebobrob-ING on
  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    When i submit i do Not separate between ing and pgo. I have a backlog of hundert of wayspots that have Not Been resolved

    i.dont even Know which came from what.

    Now after years that the sync happend to ing and pgo you Tell us that this should be separate?

  • jhenstridge-PGOjhenstridge-PGO Posts: 37 ✭✭✭

    On the "Where is my Wayspot in the game?" question, the other side of new nominations not showing up in the game is that it's also easy to make new nominations that duplicate existing wayspots because there was no indication that it existed during the submission process.

    Given the review system seems to be bogged down, it'd be great if it was easier to not submit obvious duplicates. Something like the Ingress Intel map but with all wayspots and no game-specific overlays would be great. Alternatively, provide an option to display those extra wayspots in game as extra pins on the map.

  • ftzzghzuhdidu-INGftzzghzuhdidu-ING Posts: 391 ✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat how did you expand the team by exchanging Casey for Tintino? Is Tintino a big boy and counts therefore as one and a half Caseys?

  • ftzzghzuhdidu-INGftzzghzuhdidu-ING Posts: 391 ✭✭✭

    And maybe a bit off-topic, probably this won't be answered, does Giffard have any connections to Japan? Many of us believe he is playing favoritism with reporters from Japan.

  • AScarletSabre-PGOAScarletSabre-PGO Posts: 754 ✭✭✭✭✭

    This!!!!!


    Also, I would urge anybody upset with the recent Wayfarer changes to the nominations page to up-vote here, because we need to see Google Street View on our own nominations (e.g. to check if a Google Photosphere is live):


  • aleprj-INGaleprj-ING Posts: 565 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The counter argument against this is that people would be able to abuse the system more if they knew the details. But the problem here is that everyone already knows how things work, so people that want to abuse will do their cell manipulation, while people that don't know about the hidden rules are left with the frustration.

  • Aeryle88-PGOAeryle88-PGO Posts: 440 ✭✭✭

    I'm really satisfy with theses annoncements.

    Now i will just wait to see how they will implement that.

  • Roli112-PGORoli112-PGO Posts: 2,236 Ambassador

    For me, I have mostly always understood and explain that we as nominators, nominate for Niantics Waypoint Database and not for the games. But it has always been rather frustrating that ever since PoGo nominations opened up, the nomination process for PoGo has nominators nominating "Pokestops" and the full and complete language is about Pokemon. Not once is Wayfarer nor other Niantic games mentioned. Which directly affects how nominations are made using Pokemon specific terms. And actually the same goes for nominations made in Ingress.

  • Roli112-PGORoli112-PGO Posts: 2,236 Ambassador

    This has already been addressed here.

    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. 

  • aleprj-INGaleprj-ING Posts: 565 ✭✭✭✭✭

    You are actually agreeing with me, but ok.

    Anyway, there are a lot of situations where cells are manipulated in a bad way as well. People move objects far away from the real location so that they are in an empty cell (sometimes even openly saying in the nomination "object is misplaced to be in a empty cell", and the local community approves it). We also have seen situations in which reviewers moved an object to a worse place (a secundary door of a restaurant, or moving from the entrance to behind a bench in a playfield) apparently only to move it to cell that already has something else (ie: avoiding a new POI in PGO).

    It is an abuse, and there is no point in denying it, but making things "secret" and hiding information is a very inefficient way of fighting the abuse. People that want to abuse will abuse, people that are new and don't know about the rules are left with the frustration.

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