You do realise Niantic employees, minus Danbocat and Tintino who have broken this mold, have been wrong in the past and continue to be wrong in the present?
That's your opinion and you are entirely entitled to it. Where do you draw the line between Isn't there and Might be there? Do you not read the forums? With the ammount of abusive and fake nominations that exist, if your submission is borderline risky when it comes to validating it, and you're not taking every step you can to prevent it from being rejected, that's entirely on YOU.
We had an individual who submitted over 300 Trail Markers by now, all of them with a photosphere, all of them went through. What seems to be the common denominator here?
I do photospheres for some of my nominations, but often I find that there's a map online that I can link to to give my nominations enough support. Having done photospheres many times, though, I can at least hazard some guesses at some pretty understandable reasons people might not do them:
It can be difficult to get photospheres to properly stitch together depending on your phone and the app in use. For example, on my Pixel 2 XL, the Street View app doesn't seem to track my rotation properly. I have much better results using the photosphere feature in the default camera app, and even then, the compass orientation of the result usually seems a bit off.
It can be difficult to get Google to display photospheres on StreetView. I am in the group of people who have apparently been "approved" to post photospheres without them being reviewed, but I imagine most people aren't so fortunate.
It can take quite a while to actually photograph the photosphere.
And the biggest one:
There might be people around and they don't want to look like a ****. (Taking wayspot photos can be difficult enough when other people are around!)
(Hint at the censored word: it's a well-known Radiohead song.)
No one is saying you should blindly accept nominations: they're saying that you should follow the published criteria for reviewing nominations. If there is no street view or satellite imagery to confirm the nomination, I obviously can't give it 5 stars. So I need to decide whether it is plausible that the nomination exists at the given location (3 stars), or that it likely doesn't at that location (1 star).
It isn't unusual to find walking trails in a forest. I would then do a web search of the trail name to see if there's any evidence of a trail by that name in that area. With that evidence, I'd feel fairly confident about giving the nomination 3 stars for location.
Wayfarer works by having multiple people review a nomination against a common acceptance criteria, and then waiting until a consensus forms to accept or reject the nomination. If you are instead using your own private acceptance criteria, you're reducing the likelihood of consensus and wasting everyone else's time.
Certainly. I have never created a photosphere for any of my candidates.
Why? I've seen enough fake photospheres that I don't trust them, and if I wouldn't trust them as a reviewer I won't create them as a submitter. Instead, I use my supporting photo and text to give the maximum possible support for my submission. To be fair, the vast majority of my location verification issues are because street view is out of date and I can use my supporting photos to provide context for reviewers. I shouldn't jinx it but in the last year I'm 100% on acceptances.
I submit on a lot of trails and nature areas, so I find that Photospheres are extremely helpful. It's hard to accurately demonstrate proper location using the supporting photo for these: basically, everything has a tree behind it. If you're lucky, it's a really weird tree.
In an urban or semi-urban location, better physical markers exist and photospheres are more widely used for fraudulent purposes.
I have a decent track record for acceptances, myself, although not 100% by any means. I'm gonna resubmit that "inappropriate activity" restaurant with all those great reviews again, anyway. I don't imagine a photosphere would be helpful there, though.
I know of people who don't photosphere because they don't want their personal details/Name associated with their Google account shown on Google maps.
Someone also has a second Google account to create photospheres to hide their details as the other team was rejecting his submissions knowing it was him from the name on photospheres. As soon as he started the spheres with the second account his stuff started getting through. Theres so many types of rampant OPR Abuse but that's another story...
I never photosphere but try to show a perspective that can be matched with Google earth view as much as possible. It's 50/50 wether a tree covered trail marker goes through. I doubt being visible makes a difference when so many people wrongly think they should be rejected based on what they are or 1* for not seen rather than 3*
For me it's dependent on how busy it is. Like if I'm in a busy park that streetview doesn't show what I want to submit, I don't want to do a photosphere then because it looks and feels weird to do it with people about.
First, I can't take good photospheres. I've tried many times in a secluded location (in the garden of my workplace) and the stitching is always faulty, regardless of how careful I am with the positioning. I don't know if it's a technical issue (maybe my camera isn't compatible with the app or something) or it's my own incompetence, the fact remains that my photospheres are terrible. And I'm not going to litter Google Maps with terrible photospheres. I've seen enough horribly stitched together whilebreviewing to know this problem is not unique, but apparently others don't care about the quality enough to stop them. I'm not one of those people.
Second, most of the time when I nominate something in a remote location, I'm usually on a hike or doing field work, and I almost never do these alone. I don't want to (and in the case of work trips, I cannot) waste the time of my companions by dropping behind and spinning around taking a photosphere. Just taking a good main photo and supporting picture can sometimes take more than enough time.
Third, if the nomination is in an urban location with old or non-existent street view, I don't want to look like a crazy creepy person spinning around and taking photos - especially in the case of playgrounds. Taking good photos without faces or license plates in them can be tricky in itself, photospheres would be a nightmare. (Not to mention the legal implications of posting a photo of a person online without their consent.)
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
I would be worried that it might crash the app a lot due to the large file size of photospheres. A lot of people's apps (notable PoGO) would crash often trying to take photos. The upload timeout might also have to be extended. But mostly, it would have to be designed in a way to prevent people from uploading fake/misleading photospheres compared to ones they do for google, which could present a challenge. And would possibly not have many advantages compared to a good supporting photo. So I guess, as long as it's optional and not mandatory, it could be helpful.
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
Vehement NO from somebody who has submitted over 500 nominations and only had 1% denied for location verification. Too much data drain, not always enough time, not always a good situation for making good spheres.
As someone who actually enjoys sphere-ing, I’m still going to have to say no to that suggestion.
Today, I specifically chose to go to breakfast at a restaurant that opened 2 weeks ago because I knew there was a mural inside. I got great pictures to submit but having to sphere inside of a new busy restaurant with families all around me? No, thank you.
Requiring a photosphere for every nomination seems to put Wayfarer users at a much higher risk for confrontation from capturing someone in our “photos” in my opinion.
@NianticDanbocat Personally I dislike the idea of creating photospheres as part of a submission. I'm uncomfortable altering a third-party service (Google maps) in order to achieve a goal in the games that I play. I've also never found it necessary to do so.
I think most of the people here understand that Location Inappropriate means adult entertainment, but the way the workflow is designed causes many reviewers to choose that reason for other reasons. Pretend you're a relatively naïve reviewer, start a review, 1* it, and then go through the workflow for selecting that reason. It goes like this:
"Why is this an ineligible Wayspot nomination?" "Wayspot Criteria", "Location", "Photo Quality", "Text Quality", "Abuse". Let's say I choose Location because I have a vague notion that this is a bad place for a Wayspot.
(OK, what about the location is bad?) "Location Inappropriate", "Location Sensitive", "Mismatched Location", "Obstructs Emergency Services", "Pedestrian Access", "Private Residence or Farm", "School (K-12)" are my choices. Everything but the first two are very specific, so the two potential options are Inappropriate or Sensitive. I'll pick Inappropriate.
Now, on the next screen there's some text that says "Use for Nominations whose real-world location appears to be explicit or inappropriate."
There are lots of things wrong with this workflow. The first is that the first two choices for Location use language that bears very little relation to the way Niantic intends them to be used. If you want a rejection reason for adult entertainment then there's certainly clearer language to be used-- perhaps "Location / Adult Entertainment" would solve the problem nicely? Similarly, "Sensitive" does not mean "grieving" to most people.
What else is wrong? When I choose Location Inappropriate I get a screen that has the text Location Inappropriate highlighted in a box. There's some text under it describing what that means, a textbox, and CANCEL and SUBMIT buttons. The text "Use for Nominations whose real-world location appears to be explicit or inappropriate" is there but everything else in the popup draws your eye and that explanatory text just sort of fades away. Even if it didn't, "explicit or inappropriate" does not mean adult entertainment unless you've memorized that association already. Similarly, Location Sensitive gets you the description "Use for nominations whose real-world location appears to be sensitive." which does nothing to suggest grieving/mourning. If I read that text without having already spent a lot of time with the details of Wayfarer I'd probably think that meant something like a protected wildlife habitat.
What else is wrong? The explanatory text only shows up after the reviewer has made their decision. If you want to explain the meaning to reviewers you should do that before they make a decision, not after. By the time they get to that final screen where the explanation lives they're just looking for the SUBMIT button so they can get on with it.
I agree with other people that these reasons are misused, but I think almost all of that comes from the workflow encouraging that misuse. Niantic could solve this problem by using unambiguous language and revamping the workflows so that important information lives at the right decision-points.
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
Submit? tl;dr: NO
tl;ra: Like @Hosette-ING said above, Google’s mapping service is a third-party system, and while Wayfarer/reviewing makes a pretty good use of it for verifying locations, forcing or strongly encouraging submitters to use it every time is akin to requiring forcing people to submit a Yelp review every time one orders from McDonald’s via SkipTheDishes. Just ew.
Not to mention how onerous the process is, even with a high end device. Just the amount of data alone eats through an enormous chunk of any non-unlimited data plan.
At worst, a single screen during the nomination process where is merely shows you the nearest photosphere to the pinned location? “Maybe”. But even then, for the most part, the only submissions that don’t already have workable Streetview imagery for reviewers to work against are in the middle of nowhere (ie trail markers), or in Germany.
I do a fair number of photospheres, and have the technique down to a fine art. 😀
I will even do some now if it’s just a great view or interesting place.
For me it’s essential that I can upload later, the data drain is too high. So IF it was an option in wayfarer it would need to be uploaded later.
Would there be a way to tick a box in the submission to say a photosphere has been done.?
Or a reminder/encouragement to consider doing one to help determine location. The wording for the supplementary photo is all about safe access and not about helping determine where it is.
I use them when in rural areas but also in my normal urban environment to clearly show changes ( new housing developments for example) and in larger parks.
You can hide your details ( or give a neutral name to display) on the public site.
Is there a need for a separate wayfarer system when one is available?
I might get funny looks sometimes but hey I play mobile games, so I get funny looks sometimes. 😛
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
A big, big "no" from me. To the point where I will most probably stop nominating (and maybe reviewing) things altogether if it becomes a requirement. For my reasons, please refer to this comment I made about this:
Photospheres are often the thing that breaks my nomination in the first place.
For example, this rejected nomination that had an inaccurate location and didn't meet criteria (it does, it is a tourist map that guides people and helps people explore the area... not the topic of this though).
There are numerous inaccurate photospheres by the general public littered all over the place, especially in tourist places such as Manly Beach. The successor of WayFarer+ which was killed off during the accidental release of 4.0 simulates the exact photosphere in the Nominations tab that reviewers will see. As you can see below, the photosphere severely misplaces the wayspot in question.
Whereas the Street View along the road N Steyne has the pin exactly on the board.
Some reviewers aren't the brightest of the bunch. They will often assess and rate the location according to what they exactly see in the Map Accuracy screen, and if they see the red pin is completely inaccurate, they will always mismatch location. This is what frustrates me the most with photospheres. It's not my photosphere I worry about (actually I do), it's anyone else's in the area. So I use this Street View preview to anticipate any issues the photosphere might cause and address them comprehensively in the Supporting Statement (for example, sign is NOT in the middle of the beach, please refer to Street View along N Steyne... etc etc).
On the other end of the spectrum of dealing with other people's photospheres, there are several instances where I have submitted a photosphere and the nomination is rejected for 'Submitter Identifiable'. There are many reviewers who believe wayspots that have specifically added photospheres for (well that's their purposes duh) are abusive and because the submitter's name is usually on the photosphere, they reject it for submitter identifiable. It's blatantly wrong and often incorrect, but that's the nature of some reviewers when it comes to photospheres. So I avoid them, just as the same reviewers often reject things for URL even if it is in the supporting statement only. If they are really necessary, I will just keep changing the name that appears on the photosphere. If only there was way to anonymise the photosphere in question, but since it uses Google's platform, that's pretty difficult to work with.
Hope that answers your question (before moderation makes this answer irrelevant!)
WELL aware it is a 3rd party system :) My question was whether you want to continue creating and submitting them to Google, or would you rather (optionally) submit the photosphere to Wayfarer as part of your nomination (alongside photos and supporting photos).
If I had the choice between the two, I would personally keep uploading them to google. I can often use one photosphere to show off mutiple things in an area like a park, and wouldn't have to re-take the photosphere if something was rejected the first time around. Plus, reviewers are going to use google maps/satellite to verify the location anyways.
Plus I get google contributor points for photosphere uploads.
I've already seen a (thankfully minority) minority number of reviewers make claims of always rejecting nominations without photospheres. "If they can't be bothered to create one, I can't be bothered to approve." "If they don't take the time, they don't care."
What we have asked in the past is for the ability to upload multiple supporting photos, or a dedicated field we can add weblinks (speaking of which, since the 4.1 update, weblinks have been terrible to see in reviews - they tend to "stretch" the page in an awkward way).
How about an option to "add more context" that allows for an additional photo or a photosphere? That way more context can be added even if you are unable to use a photosphere for whatever reason, or can skip it if it isn't necessary.
This. I feel that giving a field to upload photospheres would make people feel it is required, no matter how optional you claim it is, which would then "require" people to have to go through extra steps to get their candidates approved, which isn't always possible due to either technological limitations or time constraints. If I'm nominating a trail marker in the woods, I am very lucky to have good enough signal to submit the nomination itself while on-site since nominating already requires better signal than actual gameplay does, if you wanted me to do a photosphere there as well then the odds of me being able to successfully submit anything while on-site go from 50% to less than 10%.
Also, photospheres are far easier to misplace in my experience than a wayspot pin, and therefore VERY easy to abuse. The last time I made one the default location was several miles away (farther than I'm allowed to nominate a wayspot from my current location, in fact) and I had to fix it manually to be where I wanted it to be. So I am another person in the "photospheres aren't as awesome as everyone likes to think they are" camp.
Photospheres are great, and I'd estimate I've made them for at least 30-35% of my submissions, but their locations are easily faked and they prove very little just by existing. I consider them to be a more comprehensive supporting photo and when I see one in the woods that is likely to have been made by the submitter I typically give 3* for location anyway.
There are exceptions, of course. For example, there is somebody in my area who seems to have made it his mission to put all of the local trails on Google Street View. When I see a trail submission that is also visible on one of his images, I'm thrilled and 5* the location with great pleasure.
While I agree with you overall, signal shouldn't be an issue with photospheres; they don't require an internet connection to even make and can be uploaded later. If I were to do something like that, I'd take a screen shot of Google Maps showing my current location and use that to correctly position the photosphere in the Street View app.
Comments
You do realise Niantic employees, minus Danbocat and Tintino who have broken this mold, have been wrong in the past and continue to be wrong in the present?
That's your opinion and you are entirely entitled to it. Where do you draw the line between Isn't there and Might be there? Do you not read the forums? With the ammount of abusive and fake nominations that exist, if your submission is borderline risky when it comes to validating it, and you're not taking every step you can to prevent it from being rejected, that's entirely on YOU.
We had an individual who submitted over 300 Trail Markers by now, all of them with a photosphere, all of them went through. What seems to be the common denominator here?
I do photospheres for some of my nominations, but often I find that there's a map online that I can link to to give my nominations enough support. Having done photospheres many times, though, I can at least hazard some guesses at some pretty understandable reasons people might not do them:
And the biggest one:
(Hint at the censored word: it's a well-known Radiohead song.)
Whoa, there. The discussion has shifted from Location Inappropriate/Sensitive to Location Accuracy.
@NianticTintino any comments for wrong rejection reasons or location accuracy problem? Since these are related for educating reviewers, I guess.
No one is saying you should blindly accept nominations: they're saying that you should follow the published criteria for reviewing nominations. If there is no street view or satellite imagery to confirm the nomination, I obviously can't give it 5 stars. So I need to decide whether it is plausible that the nomination exists at the given location (3 stars), or that it likely doesn't at that location (1 star).
It isn't unusual to find walking trails in a forest. I would then do a web search of the trail name to see if there's any evidence of a trail by that name in that area. With that evidence, I'd feel fairly confident about giving the nomination 3 stars for location.
Wayfarer works by having multiple people review a nomination against a common acceptance criteria, and then waiting until a consensus forms to accept or reject the nomination. If you are instead using your own private acceptance criteria, you're reducing the likelihood of consensus and wasting everyone else's time.
Certainly. I have never created a photosphere for any of my candidates.
Why? I've seen enough fake photospheres that I don't trust them, and if I wouldn't trust them as a reviewer I won't create them as a submitter. Instead, I use my supporting photo and text to give the maximum possible support for my submission. To be fair, the vast majority of my location verification issues are because street view is out of date and I can use my supporting photos to provide context for reviewers. I shouldn't jinx it but in the last year I'm 100% on acceptances.
I submit on a lot of trails and nature areas, so I find that Photospheres are extremely helpful. It's hard to accurately demonstrate proper location using the supporting photo for these: basically, everything has a tree behind it. If you're lucky, it's a really weird tree.
In an urban or semi-urban location, better physical markers exist and photospheres are more widely used for fraudulent purposes.
I have a decent track record for acceptances, myself, although not 100% by any means. I'm gonna resubmit that "inappropriate activity" restaurant with all those great reviews again, anyway. I don't imagine a photosphere would be helpful there, though.
Sure. Many times I don't agree with them, but disagreeing doesn't make your
It can't be found, and "likely to exist" is subjective.
stance correct. Care to point us to where @NianticDanbocat or @NianticTintino have written that @NianticAaron and @NianticAaron were wrong in this subject?
This thread continues to prove that their comment should be easier to find for a regular reviewer.
I know of people who don't photosphere because they don't want their personal details/Name associated with their Google account shown on Google maps.
Someone also has a second Google account to create photospheres to hide their details as the other team was rejecting his submissions knowing it was him from the name on photospheres. As soon as he started the spheres with the second account his stuff started getting through. Theres so many types of rampant OPR Abuse but that's another story...
I never photosphere but try to show a perspective that can be matched with Google earth view as much as possible. It's 50/50 wether a tree covered trail marker goes through. I doubt being visible makes a difference when so many people wrongly think they should be rejected based on what they are or 1* for not seen rather than 3*
i never done a single photosphere in my life. We dont even have street view here.
For me it's dependent on how busy it is. Like if I'm in a busy park that streetview doesn't show what I want to submit, I don't want to do a photosphere then because it looks and feels weird to do it with people about.
I have several reasons.
First, I can't take good photospheres. I've tried many times in a secluded location (in the garden of my workplace) and the stitching is always faulty, regardless of how careful I am with the positioning. I don't know if it's a technical issue (maybe my camera isn't compatible with the app or something) or it's my own incompetence, the fact remains that my photospheres are terrible. And I'm not going to litter Google Maps with terrible photospheres. I've seen enough horribly stitched together whilebreviewing to know this problem is not unique, but apparently others don't care about the quality enough to stop them. I'm not one of those people.
Second, most of the time when I nominate something in a remote location, I'm usually on a hike or doing field work, and I almost never do these alone. I don't want to (and in the case of work trips, I cannot) waste the time of my companions by dropping behind and spinning around taking a photosphere. Just taking a good main photo and supporting picture can sometimes take more than enough time.
Third, if the nomination is in an urban location with old or non-existent street view, I don't want to look like a crazy creepy person spinning around and taking photos - especially in the case of playgrounds. Taking good photos without faces or license plates in them can be tricky in itself, photospheres would be a nightmare. (Not to mention the legal implications of posting a photo of a person online without their consent.)
Agree with what @Hosette-ING said, there is confusion about what they really mean. Revisiting the actual rejection reasons is on the to-do list.
For what it's worth, Location Inappropriate means it's a location like for adult-entertainment, which is not allowed.
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
I would be worried that it might crash the app a lot due to the large file size of photospheres. A lot of people's apps (notable PoGO) would crash often trying to take photos. The upload timeout might also have to be extended. But mostly, it would have to be designed in a way to prevent people from uploading fake/misleading photospheres compared to ones they do for google, which could present a challenge. And would possibly not have many advantages compared to a good supporting photo. So I guess, as long as it's optional and not mandatory, it could be helpful.
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
Vehement NO from somebody who has submitted over 500 nominations and only had 1% denied for location verification. Too much data drain, not always enough time, not always a good situation for making good spheres.
As someone who actually enjoys sphere-ing, I’m still going to have to say no to that suggestion.
Today, I specifically chose to go to breakfast at a restaurant that opened 2 weeks ago because I knew there was a mural inside. I got great pictures to submit but having to sphere inside of a new busy restaurant with families all around me? No, thank you.
Requiring a photosphere for every nomination seems to put Wayfarer users at a much higher risk for confrontation from capturing someone in our “photos” in my opinion.
@NianticDanbocat Personally I dislike the idea of creating photospheres as part of a submission. I'm uncomfortable altering a third-party service (Google maps) in order to achieve a goal in the games that I play. I've also never found it necessary to do so.
I think most of the people here understand that Location Inappropriate means adult entertainment, but the way the workflow is designed causes many reviewers to choose that reason for other reasons. Pretend you're a relatively naïve reviewer, start a review, 1* it, and then go through the workflow for selecting that reason. It goes like this:
There are lots of things wrong with this workflow. The first is that the first two choices for Location use language that bears very little relation to the way Niantic intends them to be used. If you want a rejection reason for adult entertainment then there's certainly clearer language to be used-- perhaps "Location / Adult Entertainment" would solve the problem nicely? Similarly, "Sensitive" does not mean "grieving" to most people.
What else is wrong? When I choose Location Inappropriate I get a screen that has the text Location Inappropriate highlighted in a box. There's some text under it describing what that means, a textbox, and CANCEL and SUBMIT buttons. The text "Use for Nominations whose real-world location appears to be explicit or inappropriate" is there but everything else in the popup draws your eye and that explanatory text just sort of fades away. Even if it didn't, "explicit or inappropriate" does not mean adult entertainment unless you've memorized that association already. Similarly, Location Sensitive gets you the description "Use for nominations whose real-world location appears to be sensitive." which does nothing to suggest grieving/mourning. If I read that text without having already spent a lot of time with the details of Wayfarer I'd probably think that meant something like a protected wildlife habitat.
What else is wrong? The explanatory text only shows up after the reviewer has made their decision. If you want to explain the meaning to reviewers you should do that before they make a decision, not after. By the time they get to that final screen where the explanation lives they're just looking for the SUBMIT button so they can get on with it.
I agree with other people that these reasons are misused, but I think almost all of that comes from the workflow encouraging that misuse. Niantic could solve this problem by using unambiguous language and revamping the workflows so that important information lives at the right decision-points.
Absolute no for photospheres via Wayfarer. And this coming from a nominator who occasionally creates photospheres.
@GearGlider-PGO
The upload timeout might also have to be extended.
Oh man. See my recent bug report thread: it’s a literal timer, not a timeout.
@NianticDanbocat
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
Submit? tl;dr: NO
tl;ra: Like @Hosette-ING said above, Google’s mapping service is a third-party system, and while Wayfarer/reviewing makes a pretty good use of it for verifying locations, forcing or strongly encouraging submitters to use it every time is akin to requiring forcing people to submit a Yelp review every time one orders from McDonald’s via SkipTheDishes. Just ew.
Not to mention how onerous the process is, even with a high end device. Just the amount of data alone eats through an enormous chunk of any non-unlimited data plan.
At worst, a single screen during the nomination process where is merely shows you the nearest photosphere to the pinned location? “Maybe”. But even then, for the most part, the only submissions that don’t already have workable Streetview imagery for reviewers to work against are in the middle of nowhere (ie trail markers), or in Germany.
I do a fair number of photospheres, and have the technique down to a fine art. 😀
I will even do some now if it’s just a great view or interesting place.
For me it’s essential that I can upload later, the data drain is too high. So IF it was an option in wayfarer it would need to be uploaded later.
Would there be a way to tick a box in the submission to say a photosphere has been done.?
Or a reminder/encouragement to consider doing one to help determine location. The wording for the supplementary photo is all about safe access and not about helping determine where it is.
I use them when in rural areas but also in my normal urban environment to clearly show changes ( new housing developments for example) and in larger parks.
You can hide your details ( or give a neutral name to display) on the public site.
Is there a need for a separate wayfarer system when one is available?
I might get funny looks sometimes but hey I play mobile games, so I get funny looks sometimes. 😛
@NianticDanbocat
BTW, how does everyone feel about submitting photosphere's via Wayfarer as part of your nomination?
A big, big "no" from me. To the point where I will most probably stop nominating (and maybe reviewing) things altogether if it becomes a requirement. For my reasons, please refer to this comment I made about this:
Photospheres are often the thing that breaks my nomination in the first place.
For example, this rejected nomination that had an inaccurate location and didn't meet criteria (it does, it is a tourist map that guides people and helps people explore the area... not the topic of this though).
There are numerous inaccurate photospheres by the general public littered all over the place, especially in tourist places such as Manly Beach. The successor of WayFarer+ which was killed off during the accidental release of 4.0 simulates the exact photosphere in the Nominations tab that reviewers will see. As you can see below, the photosphere severely misplaces the wayspot in question.
Whereas the Street View along the road N Steyne has the pin exactly on the board.
Some reviewers aren't the brightest of the bunch. They will often assess and rate the location according to what they exactly see in the Map Accuracy screen, and if they see the red pin is completely inaccurate, they will always mismatch location. This is what frustrates me the most with photospheres. It's not my photosphere I worry about (actually I do), it's anyone else's in the area. So I use this Street View preview to anticipate any issues the photosphere might cause and address them comprehensively in the Supporting Statement (for example, sign is NOT in the middle of the beach, please refer to Street View along N Steyne... etc etc).
On the other end of the spectrum of dealing with other people's photospheres, there are several instances where I have submitted a photosphere and the nomination is rejected for 'Submitter Identifiable'. There are many reviewers who believe wayspots that have specifically added photospheres for (well that's their purposes duh) are abusive and because the submitter's name is usually on the photosphere, they reject it for submitter identifiable. It's blatantly wrong and often incorrect, but that's the nature of some reviewers when it comes to photospheres. So I avoid them, just as the same reviewers often reject things for URL even if it is in the supporting statement only. If they are really necessary, I will just keep changing the name that appears on the photosphere. If only there was way to anonymise the photosphere in question, but since it uses Google's platform, that's pretty difficult to work with.
Hope that answers your question (before moderation makes this answer irrelevant!)
WELL aware it is a 3rd party system :) My question was whether you want to continue creating and submitting them to Google, or would you rather (optionally) submit the photosphere to Wayfarer as part of your nomination (alongside photos and supporting photos).
Noted on device limitations, though.
If I had the choice between the two, I would personally keep uploading them to google. I can often use one photosphere to show off mutiple things in an area like a park, and wouldn't have to re-take the photosphere if something was rejected the first time around. Plus, reviewers are going to use google maps/satellite to verify the location anyways.
Plus I get google contributor points for photosphere uploads.
I've already seen a (thankfully minority) minority number of reviewers make claims of always rejecting nominations without photospheres. "If they can't be bothered to create one, I can't be bothered to approve." "If they don't take the time, they don't care."
What we have asked in the past is for the ability to upload multiple supporting photos, or a dedicated field we can add weblinks (speaking of which, since the 4.1 update, weblinks have been terrible to see in reviews - they tend to "stretch" the page in an awkward way).
How about an option to "add more context" that allows for an additional photo or a photosphere? That way more context can be added even if you are unable to use a photosphere for whatever reason, or can skip it if it isn't necessary.
This. I feel that giving a field to upload photospheres would make people feel it is required, no matter how optional you claim it is, which would then "require" people to have to go through extra steps to get their candidates approved, which isn't always possible due to either technological limitations or time constraints. If I'm nominating a trail marker in the woods, I am very lucky to have good enough signal to submit the nomination itself while on-site since nominating already requires better signal than actual gameplay does, if you wanted me to do a photosphere there as well then the odds of me being able to successfully submit anything while on-site go from 50% to less than 10%.
Also, photospheres are far easier to misplace in my experience than a wayspot pin, and therefore VERY easy to abuse. The last time I made one the default location was several miles away (farther than I'm allowed to nominate a wayspot from my current location, in fact) and I had to fix it manually to be where I wanted it to be. So I am another person in the "photospheres aren't as awesome as everyone likes to think they are" camp.
Photospheres are great, and I'd estimate I've made them for at least 30-35% of my submissions, but their locations are easily faked and they prove very little just by existing. I consider them to be a more comprehensive supporting photo and when I see one in the woods that is likely to have been made by the submitter I typically give 3* for location anyway.
There are exceptions, of course. For example, there is somebody in my area who seems to have made it his mission to put all of the local trails on Google Street View. When I see a trail submission that is also visible on one of his images, I'm thrilled and 5* the location with great pleasure.
While I agree with you overall, signal shouldn't be an issue with photospheres; they don't require an internet connection to even make and can be uploaded later. If I were to do something like that, I'd take a screen shot of Google Maps showing my current location and use that to correctly position the photosphere in the Street View app.
There is a part of me that might be interested in doing it all on one app, but I would want the same functionality especially upload later.
So a maybe from me