Thats exactly how i look at it, I have played all Niantic games available to me, and plan on playing any future games, I dont nominate for PoGo specifically even though thats my main game and the game that intruduced me to Niantic. I nominate because I know my nominations will be enjoyed by players of any Niantic games... these days my nominations are for waypoint i will probably never personally use.
I can empathise with how daunting it must feel from your end and you are obviously trying to convey information for which you are not responsible, which is not comfortable. and I do hope you got a good nights rest.
There are lots of positives however regarding the database of POI….
What you have announced is very significant, and it is important that you try to take the community with you. A key part of that will be about conveying information and taking on the perspective of the community which is very diverse.
This is a change. The original system all came through Ingress and it was that database that we all understood.
So now there is one single database of approved POI owned by wayfarer.
Can you confirm that when we review, the feed that we are seeing for reviewing duplicates is from that database and it will always be complete? It’s a simple question that appears to have been ignored.
You enter the wayfarer system via a game. It will be very difficult to decouple the impression that a lot of the community will have that you are doing anything other than trying to contribute to that game.
The expectation will be, as it always has been, that the person will be able to interact with their approved POI. That is one of the great joys of creating POI which is an otherwise thankless task.
Washing your hands at this point and saying it is up to the various games, as to how, when and if a POI appears is not helpful or realistic. I understand why you want a hard line, but as your volunteer staff it leaves us in a complete state of limbo.
Some good examples have already been given. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who has nothing in their area, reaches the correct level, puts the self through a test, submits 2 or 3 obvious good candidates that are not close to each other, does photospheres, waits🙄 , is told they are acceptable and nothing appears in the game they play. They are going to be very disheartened and probably never engage with wayfarer again. I haven’t even mentioned how much this is if you worked for an upgrade.
I have an autistic player I support. They have a submission in wayfarer, I helped so it is good. They are likely to have a meltdown if told it’s accepted and they can’t see it - there is a duty of care to those that are neurodiverse.
All of these outcomes which are due to games, have an impact back on wayfarer so to ignore that is not being realistic. If the volunteers see no reward they will disengage. Wayfarer needs to keep its community happy and wanting to do the work if it is to survive.
What you have announced has the opposite effect.
Trying to distance Wayfarer as a brand from the rest of the Niantic family is strange. You each depend on each other so why create artificial divisions. I know it’s Niantic, but can’t you speak to each other and cooperate?
Due to the clogged up system I have to do lots of reviews in order to upgrade to get a resolution. Until it becomes clear what will happen to those submissions if approved I am stopping the reviewing. There is currently no incentive. The impact is not on the games but on wayfarer, so you shouldn’t ignore it.
It used to be great to be there for the birth of a gym having walked miles, done a huge amount of research, reviewing etc to find 13 new points ( my record) to create a 3rd gym. Taking control and throwing a link from a new POI I had found. That was my reward, but now it seems impossible.
I'm a huge fan, within discussions or negotiations, of both sides putting all their cards on the table. It always allows for better, longer lasting, sustainable outcomes, and no one feels like they got railroaded.
For some reason Niantic has not liked to discuss "the cells who shall not be named" (that's for the one HP fan in here) when discussing wayspots. But the player bases and community is smart, figured it out and now its all over the internet accept on Niantic sites. I for one base all my nominations, especially in public parks and rail trails around maximizing wayspots that will translate to PoGo. That's the game I play, that my community plays and there is no advantage for me to nominate something that I will never see in game. Especially if nominating that item in one cell that will never load in my game will block another nomination (because of the 20 meter rule) in a free cell that my PoGo community could take advantage of and enjoy. I don't view it as abuse, its the game within the game. Submitting a baseball field behind one dugout in a free cell, vs putting it behind the opposing dugout which is blocked isn't abuse, its smart submission/wayspot management. I don't view it as gaming the system its maximizing the system.
It would be phenomenal if this was no longer a dirty little "secret" here.
On that note, I suppose we should let them fix the system first and then we can talk about our wish list stuff.
I'm not sure why the complaining here about "this wayspot isn't in my game of choice", I submit things regardless whether they are in game 1, 2, or 3, if it's unique, interesting, and something worth submitting, the submit it. I've submitted plenty of things that I know are 100% only in Ingress before submitting them (and yes, I play PoGo too), but I still did it, a new wayspot benefits everyone in the end, doesn't matter what the game is. Your post just reads as "this doesn't directly benefit me and only me, so I'm not doing it"
Human nature means that deep down we are all a little bit selfish. I work for a medical technology company that helps train future MD's, PA's, and RN's that will help keep people healthy. But I don't work there for nothing. I do it to get paid, there is a value for me to work there as well as a value to my customers and my company.
You may read my post as "this doesn't directly benefit me and only me, so I'm not doing it", but the way I view it is that it doesn't help my gaming community unless I do it a certain way. Why would I submit an item in a way that has no benefit to us when I can submit the item in a way that does benefit me and my community? What if submitting a ballfield in a way covers a memorial plaque to a local town official that was instrumental in the creation of a ballfield and by doing so removes that POI from an entire game by circumstance and no longer brings attention to the memorial plaque?
I think you're reading into my post and applying a logic from perhaps past experiences into it. If you choose to submit waypoints that you know you will never use in any of your gameplay that's a personal choice and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. I choice to maximize my seven submissions every two weeks for things that myself and my PoGo community can use to enhance our gameplay.
Also I am not complaining about wayspots not showing up in my preferred game. The post was about letting go of the notion that we should not be discussing the cell rules on Niantic websites even though everyone knows them. I was simply using my own experiences as examples. Sorry if that was not clear in my original post.
I agree. Sometimes I have no idea what game or games my nomination will show up in. With more and more Niantic games coming over the years it’s going to matter less about playing just one game.
I am excited to see how the map shows up in games that haven’t fully rolled out in my area though such as Pikmin.
I'm particularly interested in how appeals would work. My concern is your bandwidth to deal what all of them. I don't know if you're aware, but there are many pending reports on invalid wayspots yet to be reviewed and answered by Niantic (some with over a year). Are you planning on adding more resources for the Appeals process?
Can you shed a light on what happens to reviewers who have intentionally or not, sabotaged nominations? At the moment, there's is no way to judge their performance.
Some examples:
Will we be able to appeal to these absurd rejections?
For several years, NianticCasey has hinted at an "upload later" or "remote nominations" feature would be made available on the Pokémon GO platform, similar to either how nominations work in Ingress or how the upload later feature for scans work. Knowing that this is likely in the hands on the PoGO platform developers rather than Wayfarer team, do you know if this still something on the horizon or something we shouldn't be too hopeful of, in the foreseeable future? This does bring some to potential issues, such as more third party photo nominations, but perhaps the system can do backend checks to verify GPS tags or content ownership to the device nominating?
Also, one feature I know I would appreciate is being able to "tag" my nominations. I may have several dozen active "in voting" or "in queue" nominations, but only 2 or 3 I plan on upgrading. Being able to tag them "future upgrades" would be a benefit for QoL. Similarly, I may have a park I'm developing/developed where the location tag in Wayfarer isn't quite correct, so I can't search for all of those nominations at once. I think this would also be a fun way to help remember trips and/or "projects" in different areas, as we continue to explore.
Thanks, again, for all your answers and involvement, @NianticDanbocat!
@Robdebobrob-ING LOL I love your sense of humour. Bugs are living things too, right. #savethebees!
@s3w2-ING I know..... we know.... the rejection reasons don't make sense. Among all the other things I have heard from the feedback mentioned in my post, this was really high on the list. The downstream solution is the appeals feature (I will share more soon), but we need an upstream solution as well. And that's a harder problem because it's party a system thing and partly a human interpretation thing, and it's impossible to really evaluate which plays more in that calculation since we can't read everyone's mind when they review something.
If I may think out loud without getting myself in trouble with myself, my team, or you all, is that the 'review' process should really be framed as a 'feedback' process. Not exam/test/score, but suggest/discuss/decide. That's going to mean big changes with the review page and the whole expectation you all currently have of the experience. For me this feels like a good direction. It'll take time to make this paradigm shift with the product but what do you think?
@Gendgi-PGO - yep upload later for nominations is coming. But as you know, the Pokémon GO team had some other higher priorities recently, so we're waiting in line to get that feature shipped to Trainers asap! For now Upload Later works for scans and photo submissions. Thanks for checking in on that!
@NianticTintino I'm in the same situation as @MamaLlama619-PGO, stuck with Russia. While you are helping her. Could you help me with my bonus location also? THANKS!!
@Danbocat-PGO Hello! I'm wondering if you can provide some insight into a serious design flaw within the Wayfarer reviewing experience that has led to hundreds of abusive Wayspots, that could easily be prevented.
When reviewing a nomination, reviewers have the ability to suggest a new (more accurate) location for a Wayspot nomination, however, when reviewers suggest a new location they have the ability to suggest a new location that is as far away as approximately two miles away from the submitter's suggested location. Because it also appears that it takes as few as approximately 5 people suggesting a new location to get a POI moved during review (an entire different issue), this has led to massive cases of abuse where users submit an object in it's correct location, and then a small subset of users collude to move the wayspot during review, causing it to get accepted miles away, generally at someone's house.
There is pretty much zero reason a location should ever need to be moved more than a football field's length away from it's submitted location during review, and clearly, two miles is a level of overkill that only allows for abuse. In a theoretical situation where a submitted object truly is two miles away from it's submitted location, a rejection for "location mismatch" is likely far more accurate, given that most reviewers won't look two miles away or any distance remotely close to that when investigating the location accuracy of a nomination.
Is there any way that the distance that users can move a nomination during review can be severely reduced from the current approximate two mile limit, to something more reasonable (and less likely to be abused) like 100 meters? And is there some reason that this limit is currently so high, and that it hasn't been reduced already? The current two mile limit especially contrasts the changes that were made to location edits last summer, which limited them to 20 meters. It seems like fixing this should be as simple as a couple values being changed in the backend coding, but perhaps I am wrong.
I personally would really welcome a shift in reviewing away from the test/score and more towards consider/feedback.
I am a distance learning tutor, and providing feedback is second nature, and it always makes me feel better to provide comments even though I know they won’t be read.
So a change of emphasis may help to get better reviewing as some score too quickly and I think it seems to engender a “sense of power” that I see in response to some posts that leads to arguments over little things and hard lines being drawn.
It would be nice to have some interactive streamed reviewing perhaps with discussion and/or some discussion threads where good and bad points can be drawn out. Hearing the thought processes of a decision is really useful.
These educate those involved at the time and could be used as a resource for others to see later.
@AisforAndis-ING - thanks for the note - I'll check on that distance and discuss with the team. We definitely reduced the edit distance from in-game, though.
@KOWLOONsGT-ING - hmm, I don't know what Ingress's plans are for the Intel map, but maybe @NianticPooja can advise what near term plans are, if any? Also Kowloon has really great food markets :)
@holdthebeer-ING - cheers! 🍻 yep, as I mentioned in my post, we heard many times the request for a native app and we are thinking carefully about it! It gives us more flexibility to design new features beyond submissions and reviews as well. For the Upload Later feature in Ingress, we've (Wayfarer and Ingress team) heard that request many times as well but Ingress will be deciding when :) (FYI @NianticPooja)
@Gendgi-PGO - forgot to ask, when you say 'tagging' your noms, do you mean just for managing how your Upgrades get applied? or for other purposes?
@Elijustrying-ING - thanks for your insight - yep exactly. In parallel to shifting toward more of a feedback environment, we also want to create safer spaces for the community to have authentic and respectful discussions. That is why we are so excited to have @NianticTintino's expertise and experience within the Wayfarer squad.
@NianticTintino - here's some feedback from a fellow educator!
@Gendgi-PGO - forgot to ask, when you say 'tagging' your noms, do you mean just for managing how your Upgrades get applied? or for other purposes?
Think of it like how tagging works in PoGO. I think it would be a positive interface to be able to create unique "tags" that you can apply to your nominations/contributions menu - the "future upgrades" was just an example.
Another example would be a recent trip I made to a specific part of the US Northeast Mountains. I made nominations that span several states, plus I made a similar trip 1 year ago. There's no current search that I can do that would pull up every nomination I made in these areas. If I could create a tag, I could call it "Fishing Trip 2021."
It may not be the most value added update, just something I was thinking of when you'd brought up the other updates to the UI, especially when you want to showcase specific nomination sprees you made.
@Gendgi-PGO - really exciting to hear these ideas! Agree, you really SHOULD be able to track your adventures via your contributions. I read this kind of feedback a lot from the survey responses this past spring. Your "adventure archives" 📝 I'm still working with designers to think on what these experiences should look like but I'm enthused by this. Thanks!
what kind of spaces are you envisioning? this forum exists but it has always felt very undermoderated to the point that it has a bad reputation elsewhere on the internet. conversations about what makes a great waypoint, what aspects of a particular nomination are good or bad, etc very often get derailed here. do you see some future system in which this kind of discussion could reasonably happen for some nominations? tough to scale of course but it could create some great outcomes that the existing review system could never match.
this is sort of a tangent and maybe I'm **** for the moon here, but do you think we could potentially see some means of earning bonus nominations or have a system that allows periodic or occasional higher limits? so many of us have encountered a time where we're on a trip and exploring a place we won't soon return but there are far more great candidates than we can nominate.
the limitations in each of the two games suggests that this may be partly a decision beyond the wayfarer team but I hope that someday we can see some sort of bonus system.
ps you're gaining a ton of favor and support by being so responsive! this is the kind of relationship the community at large has long asked for. please keep it up!
I wondered about something like this. when I was on holiday in a rural area I kept seeing churches, village halls, pubs that were in POI deserts but went through my 14 submissions very quickly.
Perhaps for every so many nominations accepted you could get a bonus submission to use anywhere.
Or if you were in an area with low POI density you could get bonus submissions for that area.
Have you talked to the PoGo and Ingress teams about changing the language on the submission screens, away from specifically nominating "Pokestops" or "Portals"? Until that happens, submitters will be confused and the problem will remain.
Also, a huge bug that you haven't mentioned is the lack of ability to withdraw in-voting candidates. This is very important for preventing the queue from being clogged even more. I've had to do it several times for reasons very legitimate reasons, such as:
The same thing having been approved while mine was in voting because somebody else submitted and upgraded it .
A submission went into voting very quickly before I was able to write a necessary full description (this can easily happen while one is traveling, for example). Now we have to wait for that submission to be rejected, which could take years, or waste an upgrade in order to resubmit properly.
In October 2019 around the time Wayfarer was rolled out, a big bug ate many submissions for days to months (a confirmation email literally appeared 4-5 months later for something I'd submitted and later resubmitted and had approved). At the same time, the photos disappeared from some submissions. I had to withdraw one of those submissions after it went into voting because the photo never appeared.
Could you clarify if this is a permanent change or on the list of bugs to be fixed?
@Ochemist-ING - Yep. It's also already flagged by Niantics as well. I have to coordinate with each of their game schedules get the right approvals etc before you'll see anything though.
@tehstone-ING - I will do my best to stay engaged with y'all! I can't promise to follow every thread/post though. But I have been enjoying discussing things with everyone these past few days as my energy allows. For "spaces", I meant a couple things (1) literal places (besides the forum) and (2) a community culture where there isn't prejudice based on what game you play or toxicity around decisions. I recognize that creating that culture has mostly to do with how the product/system is designed. While I inherited the Wayfarer we have today when I joined Niantic, I am so excited for the future of it and of this community! Like just being able to record cool places you saw during your trip is a no brainer, right? It needs to be designed and scoped etc...but that is entirely within the spirit of where I see Wayfarer fitting into your lives. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that.
@Elijustrying-ING - I'll think about the rate limits again, change here might come much later though, since the limit have multiple purposes for us so all the scales need to balance.
Thanks for the update, I linked your comment to a Bug Report thread I made.
I think you've mentioned in various posts a lot of things we've mentioned as Bugs, but is there any way somebody can focus on cleaning up that channel? And not just the Wayfarer 4.0 bug reports, but there's many, many outstanding reports that we never got Casey to circle back to. I know it's a lot to dig through, but @Roli112-PGO has curated what we think is a semi-comprehensive list going back that he could share with you.
Here in the UK we still have submissions stuck in limbo, and I don't mean just super long review times because of density-based areas, or lack of reviewers etc, this is a "blanket ban" on submissions, a handful of years ago, a specific area was rife with fakes/abuse cases/people trolling submissions, Nia's answer was to just blackhole everything and anything from that area, we've been trying to get a response on this now for many months with nothing seemingly done about it, and every answer we had from Casey just danced around the issue because whoever provides the real answers don't want to expose the inner-workings of how Nia made this happen in the first place, we can provide documented and detailed evidence in private if this is something you would be willing to communicate with myself.
Based on not just my, but our experience with Wayfarer and Niantic as a whole (country and worldwide users), while the bar set is fairly low given Nia's previous standards, the expectation for you Dan is quite high, I wont lie, but I'm trying to remain positive about things.
Comments
Thats exactly how i look at it, I have played all Niantic games available to me, and plan on playing any future games, I dont nominate for PoGo specifically even though thats my main game and the game that intruduced me to Niantic. I nominate because I know my nominations will be enjoyed by players of any Niantic games... these days my nominations are for waypoint i will probably never personally use.
Hello @NianticDanbocat
Thanks for quick response…..
I can empathise with how daunting it must feel from your end and you are obviously trying to convey information for which you are not responsible, which is not comfortable. and I do hope you got a good nights rest.
There are lots of positives however regarding the database of POI….
What you have announced is very significant, and it is important that you try to take the community with you. A key part of that will be about conveying information and taking on the perspective of the community which is very diverse.
This is a change. The original system all came through Ingress and it was that database that we all understood.
So now there is one single database of approved POI owned by wayfarer.
Can you confirm that when we review, the feed that we are seeing for reviewing duplicates is from that database and it will always be complete? It’s a simple question that appears to have been ignored.
You enter the wayfarer system via a game. It will be very difficult to decouple the impression that a lot of the community will have that you are doing anything other than trying to contribute to that game.
The expectation will be, as it always has been, that the person will be able to interact with their approved POI. That is one of the great joys of creating POI which is an otherwise thankless task.
Washing your hands at this point and saying it is up to the various games, as to how, when and if a POI appears is not helpful or realistic. I understand why you want a hard line, but as your volunteer staff it leaves us in a complete state of limbo.
Some good examples have already been given. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who has nothing in their area, reaches the correct level, puts the self through a test, submits 2 or 3 obvious good candidates that are not close to each other, does photospheres, waits🙄 , is told they are acceptable and nothing appears in the game they play. They are going to be very disheartened and probably never engage with wayfarer again. I haven’t even mentioned how much this is if you worked for an upgrade.
I have an autistic player I support. They have a submission in wayfarer, I helped so it is good. They are likely to have a meltdown if told it’s accepted and they can’t see it - there is a duty of care to those that are neurodiverse.
All of these outcomes which are due to games, have an impact back on wayfarer so to ignore that is not being realistic. If the volunteers see no reward they will disengage. Wayfarer needs to keep its community happy and wanting to do the work if it is to survive.
What you have announced has the opposite effect.
Trying to distance Wayfarer as a brand from the rest of the Niantic family is strange. You each depend on each other so why create artificial divisions. I know it’s Niantic, but can’t you speak to each other and cooperate?
Due to the clogged up system I have to do lots of reviews in order to upgrade to get a resolution. Until it becomes clear what will happen to those submissions if approved I am stopping the reviewing. There is currently no incentive. The impact is not on the games but on wayfarer, so you shouldn’t ignore it.
It used to be great to be there for the birth of a gym having walked miles, done a huge amount of research, reviewing etc to find 13 new points ( my record) to create a 3rd gym. Taking control and throwing a link from a new POI I had found. That was my reward, but now it seems impossible.
I'm a huge fan, within discussions or negotiations, of both sides putting all their cards on the table. It always allows for better, longer lasting, sustainable outcomes, and no one feels like they got railroaded.
For some reason Niantic has not liked to discuss "the cells who shall not be named" (that's for the one HP fan in here) when discussing wayspots. But the player bases and community is smart, figured it out and now its all over the internet accept on Niantic sites. I for one base all my nominations, especially in public parks and rail trails around maximizing wayspots that will translate to PoGo. That's the game I play, that my community plays and there is no advantage for me to nominate something that I will never see in game. Especially if nominating that item in one cell that will never load in my game will block another nomination (because of the 20 meter rule) in a free cell that my PoGo community could take advantage of and enjoy. I don't view it as abuse, its the game within the game. Submitting a baseball field behind one dugout in a free cell, vs putting it behind the opposing dugout which is blocked isn't abuse, its smart submission/wayspot management. I don't view it as gaming the system its maximizing the system.
It would be phenomenal if this was no longer a dirty little "secret" here.
On that note, I suppose we should let them fix the system first and then we can talk about our wish list stuff.
I'm not sure why the complaining here about "this wayspot isn't in my game of choice", I submit things regardless whether they are in game 1, 2, or 3, if it's unique, interesting, and something worth submitting, the submit it. I've submitted plenty of things that I know are 100% only in Ingress before submitting them (and yes, I play PoGo too), but I still did it, a new wayspot benefits everyone in the end, doesn't matter what the game is. Your post just reads as "this doesn't directly benefit me and only me, so I'm not doing it"
Human nature means that deep down we are all a little bit selfish. I work for a medical technology company that helps train future MD's, PA's, and RN's that will help keep people healthy. But I don't work there for nothing. I do it to get paid, there is a value for me to work there as well as a value to my customers and my company.
You may read my post as "this doesn't directly benefit me and only me, so I'm not doing it", but the way I view it is that it doesn't help my gaming community unless I do it a certain way. Why would I submit an item in a way that has no benefit to us when I can submit the item in a way that does benefit me and my community? What if submitting a ballfield in a way covers a memorial plaque to a local town official that was instrumental in the creation of a ballfield and by doing so removes that POI from an entire game by circumstance and no longer brings attention to the memorial plaque?
I think you're reading into my post and applying a logic from perhaps past experiences into it. If you choose to submit waypoints that you know you will never use in any of your gameplay that's a personal choice and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it. I choice to maximize my seven submissions every two weeks for things that myself and my PoGo community can use to enhance our gameplay.
Also I am not complaining about wayspots not showing up in my preferred game. The post was about letting go of the notion that we should not be discussing the cell rules on Niantic websites even though everyone knows them. I was simply using my own experiences as examples. Sorry if that was not clear in my original post.
I agree. Sometimes I have no idea what game or games my nomination will show up in. With more and more Niantic games coming over the years it’s going to matter less about playing just one game.
I am excited to see how the map shows up in games that haven’t fully rolled out in my area though such as Pikmin.
Thanks for the feedback @NianticDanbocat
I'm particularly interested in how appeals would work. My concern is your bandwidth to deal what all of them. I don't know if you're aware, but there are many pending reports on invalid wayspots yet to be reviewed and answered by Niantic (some with over a year). Are you planning on adding more resources for the Appeals process?
Can you shed a light on what happens to reviewers who have intentionally or not, sabotaged nominations? At the moment, there's is no way to judge their performance.
Some examples:
Will we be able to appeal to these absurd rejections?
What about these people making these wrong calls?
New Features for Contribution Management
For several years, NianticCasey has hinted at an "upload later" or "remote nominations" feature would be made available on the Pokémon GO platform, similar to either how nominations work in Ingress or how the upload later feature for scans work. Knowing that this is likely in the hands on the PoGO platform developers rather than Wayfarer team, do you know if this still something on the horizon or something we shouldn't be too hopeful of, in the foreseeable future? This does bring some to potential issues, such as more third party photo nominations, but perhaps the system can do backend checks to verify GPS tags or content ownership to the device nominating?
Also, one feature I know I would appreciate is being able to "tag" my nominations. I may have several dozen active "in voting" or "in queue" nominations, but only 2 or 3 I plan on upgrading. Being able to tag them "future upgrades" would be a benefit for QoL. Similarly, I may have a park I'm developing/developed where the location tag in Wayfarer isn't quite correct, so I can't search for all of those nominations at once. I think this would also be a fun way to help remember trips and/or "projects" in different areas, as we continue to explore.
Thanks, again, for all your answers and involvement, @NianticDanbocat!
@s3w2-ING Im sure theres a bug on those pictures somewhere....
@Robdebobrob-ING LOL I love your sense of humour. Bugs are living things too, right. #savethebees!
@s3w2-ING I know..... we know.... the rejection reasons don't make sense. Among all the other things I have heard from the feedback mentioned in my post, this was really high on the list. The downstream solution is the appeals feature (I will share more soon), but we need an upstream solution as well. And that's a harder problem because it's party a system thing and partly a human interpretation thing, and it's impossible to really evaluate which plays more in that calculation since we can't read everyone's mind when they review something.
If I may think out loud without getting myself in trouble with myself, my team, or you all, is that the 'review' process should really be framed as a 'feedback' process. Not exam/test/score, but suggest/discuss/decide. That's going to mean big changes with the review page and the whole expectation you all currently have of the experience. For me this feels like a good direction. It'll take time to make this paradigm shift with the product but what do you think?
@Gendgi-PGO - yep upload later for nominations is coming. But as you know, the Pokémon GO team had some other higher priorities recently, so we're waiting in line to get that feature shipped to Trainers asap! For now Upload Later works for scans and photo submissions. Thanks for checking in on that!
re: upload later and pogo team has other higher priorities.
Hello @Danbocat-PGO !
Ingress would also benefit from "upload later" feature, and the ingress team also has other priorities.
How about wayfarer app to submit nominations, not for reviewing? There are several areas where such app could help:
Hello! @Danbocat-PGO
No mention is made, but are there any plans to offer a Wayspot map to replace the official Intel MAP (portal map)?
I want to procure new ingredients that I have never got, rather than buying the same ingredients 😋
@NianticTintino I'm in the same situation as @MamaLlama619-PGO, stuck with Russia. While you are helping her. Could you help me with my bonus location also? THANKS!!
@Danbocat-PGO Hello! I'm wondering if you can provide some insight into a serious design flaw within the Wayfarer reviewing experience that has led to hundreds of abusive Wayspots, that could easily be prevented.
When reviewing a nomination, reviewers have the ability to suggest a new (more accurate) location for a Wayspot nomination, however, when reviewers suggest a new location they have the ability to suggest a new location that is as far away as approximately two miles away from the submitter's suggested location. Because it also appears that it takes as few as approximately 5 people suggesting a new location to get a POI moved during review (an entire different issue), this has led to massive cases of abuse where users submit an object in it's correct location, and then a small subset of users collude to move the wayspot during review, causing it to get accepted miles away, generally at someone's house.
I have documented cases of this extensively: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3, Example 4, Example 5, Example 6, Example 7, with yet another report soon to come.
There is pretty much zero reason a location should ever need to be moved more than a football field's length away from it's submitted location during review, and clearly, two miles is a level of overkill that only allows for abuse. In a theoretical situation where a submitted object truly is two miles away from it's submitted location, a rejection for "location mismatch" is likely far more accurate, given that most reviewers won't look two miles away or any distance remotely close to that when investigating the location accuracy of a nomination.
I reported this exploit as a bug several months ago and it was seemingly ignored, despite the proven track record of people utilizing this to abuse the system.
Is there any way that the distance that users can move a nomination during review can be severely reduced from the current approximate two mile limit, to something more reasonable (and less likely to be abused) like 100 meters? And is there some reason that this limit is currently so high, and that it hasn't been reduced already? The current two mile limit especially contrasts the changes that were made to location edits last summer, which limited them to 20 meters. It seems like fixing this should be as simple as a couple values being changed in the backend coding, but perhaps I am wrong.
(And a side note while on the topic, the same group discussed in my examples above also exploits the Wayfarer algorithm's "rural prioritization" of their town to easily get ineligible Wayspots accepted. This would clearly require a larger rework to fix, but is a common issue seen very often on this forum that is generally ignored.)
I personally would really welcome a shift in reviewing away from the test/score and more towards consider/feedback.
I am a distance learning tutor, and providing feedback is second nature, and it always makes me feel better to provide comments even though I know they won’t be read.
So a change of emphasis may help to get better reviewing as some score too quickly and I think it seems to engender a “sense of power” that I see in response to some posts that leads to arguments over little things and hard lines being drawn.
It would be nice to have some interactive streamed reviewing perhaps with discussion and/or some discussion threads where good and bad points can be drawn out. Hearing the thought processes of a decision is really useful.
These educate those involved at the time and could be used as a resource for others to see later.
@AisforAndis-ING - thanks for the note - I'll check on that distance and discuss with the team. We definitely reduced the edit distance from in-game, though.
@BlameJamal-ING - OK I believe @NianticTintino, @NianticGiffard or @NianticAaron will be able to help you!
@KOWLOONsGT-ING - hmm, I don't know what Ingress's plans are for the Intel map, but maybe @NianticPooja can advise what near term plans are, if any? Also Kowloon has really great food markets :)
@holdthebeer-ING - cheers! 🍻 yep, as I mentioned in my post, we heard many times the request for a native app and we are thinking carefully about it! It gives us more flexibility to design new features beyond submissions and reviews as well. For the Upload Later feature in Ingress, we've (Wayfarer and Ingress team) heard that request many times as well but Ingress will be deciding when :) (FYI @NianticPooja)
@Gendgi-PGO - forgot to ask, when you say 'tagging' your noms, do you mean just for managing how your Upgrades get applied? or for other purposes?
@Elijustrying-ING - thanks for your insight - yep exactly. In parallel to shifting toward more of a feedback environment, we also want to create safer spaces for the community to have authentic and respectful discussions. That is why we are so excited to have @NianticTintino's expertise and experience within the Wayfarer squad.
@NianticTintino - here's some feedback from a fellow educator!
@Gendgi-PGO - forgot to ask, when you say 'tagging' your noms, do you mean just for managing how your Upgrades get applied? or for other purposes?
Think of it like how tagging works in PoGO. I think it would be a positive interface to be able to create unique "tags" that you can apply to your nominations/contributions menu - the "future upgrades" was just an example.
Another example would be a recent trip I made to a specific part of the US Northeast Mountains. I made nominations that span several states, plus I made a similar trip 1 year ago. There's no current search that I can do that would pull up every nomination I made in these areas. If I could create a tag, I could call it "Fishing Trip 2021."
It may not be the most value added update, just something I was thinking of when you'd brought up the other updates to the UI, especially when you want to showcase specific nomination sprees you made.
@Gendgi-PGO - really exciting to hear these ideas! Agree, you really SHOULD be able to track your adventures via your contributions. I read this kind of feedback a lot from the survey responses this past spring. Your "adventure archives" 📝 I'm still working with designers to think on what these experiences should look like but I'm enthused by this. Thanks!
what kind of spaces are you envisioning? this forum exists but it has always felt very undermoderated to the point that it has a bad reputation elsewhere on the internet. conversations about what makes a great waypoint, what aspects of a particular nomination are good or bad, etc very often get derailed here. do you see some future system in which this kind of discussion could reasonably happen for some nominations? tough to scale of course but it could create some great outcomes that the existing review system could never match.
this is sort of a tangent and maybe I'm **** for the moon here, but do you think we could potentially see some means of earning bonus nominations or have a system that allows periodic or occasional higher limits? so many of us have encountered a time where we're on a trip and exploring a place we won't soon return but there are far more great candidates than we can nominate.
the limitations in each of the two games suggests that this may be partly a decision beyond the wayfarer team but I hope that someday we can see some sort of bonus system.
ps you're gaining a ton of favor and support by being so responsive! this is the kind of relationship the community at large has long asked for. please keep it up!
@BlameJamal-ING I have reset your bonus location. You should be able to set it to a location of your choice now. Thanks!
I wondered about something like this. when I was on holiday in a rural area I kept seeing churches, village halls, pubs that were in POI deserts but went through my 14 submissions very quickly.
Perhaps for every so many nominations accepted you could get a bonus submission to use anywhere.
Or if you were in an area with low POI density you could get bonus submissions for that area.
Have you talked to the PoGo and Ingress teams about changing the language on the submission screens, away from specifically nominating "Pokestops" or "Portals"? Until that happens, submitters will be confused and the problem will remain.
Thanks so much for the detailed post!
Also, a huge bug that you haven't mentioned is the lack of ability to withdraw in-voting candidates. This is very important for preventing the queue from being clogged even more. I've had to do it several times for reasons very legitimate reasons, such as:
Could you clarify if this is a permanent change or on the list of bugs to be fixed?
Good morning from the SF Bay Area!
@Ochemist-ING - Yep. It's also already flagged by Niantics as well. I have to coordinate with each of their game schedules get the right approvals etc before you'll see anything though.
@tehstone-ING - I will do my best to stay engaged with y'all! I can't promise to follow every thread/post though. But I have been enjoying discussing things with everyone these past few days as my energy allows. For "spaces", I meant a couple things (1) literal places (besides the forum) and (2) a community culture where there isn't prejudice based on what game you play or toxicity around decisions. I recognize that creating that culture has mostly to do with how the product/system is designed. While I inherited the Wayfarer we have today when I joined Niantic, I am so excited for the future of it and of this community! Like just being able to record cool places you saw during your trip is a no brainer, right? It needs to be designed and scoped etc...but that is entirely within the spirit of where I see Wayfarer fitting into your lives. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that.
@Elijustrying-ING - I'll think about the rate limits again, change here might come much later though, since the limit have multiple purposes for us so all the scales need to balance.
@Ochemist-ING - just confirmed that we've got the fix coming in the 4.1 release!
Wonderful — thanks so much for checking and replying!
Thanks for the update, I linked your comment to a Bug Report thread I made.
I think you've mentioned in various posts a lot of things we've mentioned as Bugs, but is there any way somebody can focus on cleaning up that channel? And not just the Wayfarer 4.0 bug reports, but there's many, many outstanding reports that we never got Casey to circle back to. I know it's a lot to dig through, but @Roli112-PGO has curated what we think is a semi-comprehensive list going back that he could share with you.
Hi @NianticDanbocat
Please can I raise attention to this? - https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18976/2-years-in-limbo-niantic-system-fixes-dont-work
Here in the UK we still have submissions stuck in limbo, and I don't mean just super long review times because of density-based areas, or lack of reviewers etc, this is a "blanket ban" on submissions, a handful of years ago, a specific area was rife with fakes/abuse cases/people trolling submissions, Nia's answer was to just blackhole everything and anything from that area, we've been trying to get a response on this now for many months with nothing seemingly done about it, and every answer we had from Casey just danced around the issue because whoever provides the real answers don't want to expose the inner-workings of how Nia made this happen in the first place, we can provide documented and detailed evidence in private if this is something you would be willing to communicate with myself.
Based on not just my, but our experience with Wayfarer and Niantic as a whole (country and worldwide users), while the bar set is fairly low given Nia's previous standards, the expectation for you Dan is quite high, I wont lie, but I'm trying to remain positive about things.