Ineligible Nomination on reddit shows Wayfarer criteria still misunderstood by majority of players
Yesterday, this nomination attempt was posted to r/PokemonGO
What do you all think the chances are of my PokéStop Nomination being approved? 😁
As of posting this here, the post has over 7000 upvotes. While I'm sure it's popularity has to do with the very witty description (I got a good chuckle out of it!) it's unfortunate that such a popular and highly visible example of a nomination is something that was often the topic of debate here, and clarified many times as ineligible in the past.
Some of the comments on the post also show how the ambiguity of the criteria leads to misunderstanding it.
I strongly disagree with that, they encourage walking and exploring your community. Pet waste stations are usually along high traffic, well lit, walking paths around communities and along hiking trails and are usually fairly spaced out.
While ya, it's a poop station, literally see no better place for a spin while walking.
Yeah I don't understand how they'd classify that as a bad PokeStop. Get you and your dog some exercise in and some PokeStop items on top of it.
counterpoint: what is exactly so bad about this being a pokestop? if anything, this could be useful to let nearby players know about it in case they are playing the game while walking their dogs.
generally speaking, i dont see the point of 1*'ing a properly photo'd and described location in wayfarer anyway. more pokestops = good.
These are genuinly good arguments as to why the dog poop station meets criteria. If I wasn't more familiar with the criteria and clarifications made about it, I'd probably be following that advice. If you dig through the rest of the thread you'll find more examples of misunderstanding the criteria, some people saying pretty much anything should be approved, and other common confusions about the wayfarer process and what does and doesn't make good wayspots.
I brought this up because I found it to be a great clustering of a lot of attitudes across the Niantic Games communities about wayfarer. And why going forward, Wayfarer is going to need more clear guidelines, better examples to show how to apply the guidelines, and some way to get the current nominators to either view or pass some kind of nomination test. (A large amount of the queue clog is from nominators who have been around a long while who were never made to look at the constantly rewritten criteria).
tl;dr
This post is a good example of why we need criteria to be less ambiguous and more accessible to nominators.
Comments
This is definitely a growing sentiment I've seen pop up on Facebook, as well. When some of those users show up here asking why their dog waste stations, generic benches, or neighborhood signs are denied, they complain about the "toxic" Wayfarer community.
I also find it unhelpful that there can be arguments made for eligibility of such stations, making edge cases when they may be acceptabled.
Thats without mentioning that people posting and quoting actual criteria get downvoted so hard. Trying to be truly helpful in there goes nowhere.
You misspelled "banned from Facebook."
Don't you know that adhering to the criteria is "toxic"? That is why I'm often labeled the most toxic person here because I won't budge on following the criteria and will tell people in no uncertain terms that their nomination is ineligible.
No wonder, since the criteria is so broad. Niantic messed up with the criteria refresh. They could've/should've made a simple "catalogue" of acceptable and unacceptable nominations. Also, Niantic should let us report those wayspots because they never met criteria in the past.
There was even an article written on it here;
Where it’s noted:
But, as the old adage goes, you miss all the shots you don’t take.
For dog owners everywhere, this would certainly be a nice perk and a way to pick up some extra loot. And, who knows, with more submissions like these rolling in, Niantic may eventually change their stance on the matter.
Please ensure this doesn’t go through folks.
There’s often jibes at the Pokémon GO community that all they care about is “moar stopz”, but now I wonder if those jibes are more justified than I thought after this.
Exactly.
Us Ingress players get maligned and have our wayfarer rating downgraded because, generally, we are more picky.
This is the general criteria we try to adhere to.
"a location with cool story, place in history or education value"
"a cool piece of art or unique architecture"
"a hidden gem or hyper local spot"
Not that there are not a lot of ahh, poor, locations submitted by Ingress players.
However, in Ingress dense waypoint clusters are less useful, unless they are at a pub :)
We like lines of waypoints, for fielding with, remote waypoints, (harder to take down). It gets harder to play well in really dense areas.
@NianticTintino @NianticDanbocat
Since this nomination is gaining so much traction that news sites are encouraging people to submit ineligible nominations and say it will help change Niantic's minds about the criteria, is there some form of official announcement you can make about this somewhere? Somewhere more far-reaching than the forum? Contact the news site and get them to issue a retraction or something?
Depends on your play style to an extent as well, large clusters can be helpful for spines and the ones you don't use be filled with turrets (and the other one thay I always forget) to make killing the spine that much more annoying.
The concept of micro-fielding would like to talk to your manager.
I had this article recommended to me by Google via a push notification to my phone. The misinformation is out of control, and the gullible people who don't know better, or don't care to know better, will continue to ruin Wayfarer if they are not addressed. We saw this happen on Facebook last week and now we see it with a much wider audience this week. It is a constant problem and Niantic does not seem to care.
Look at Turkey, Russia, Brazil, ...
What do you think that those who live there think is a valid wayspot?
Hate micro fielding lol, I don't have the patience to walk round grabbing keys in a wee circle lol
Yeah, but that's you, not every Ingress player... Some of them love a lot of close portal for micro-fielding, flash farming and other stuff I don't even know.
Yeah.. Let's just roll out the Submission test to ALL that haven't taken the normal Wayfarer test... ASAP!
I never said otherwise, I said that clusters were good things, just that I didn't like micro fielding
@gazzas89-PGO @aleprj-PGO @SlicedPeas-ING I'd appreciate it if you could possibly take the Ingress strategy talk to a separate, more on-topic thread.
hmm.... it is still eligible if it is a place where other dog owners frequently meet. But eligibility and accept/reject are separate things. They could have added a description that alludes to one of Niantic's mission. Or it would be nice if we could let you push it back to the submitter to say, please try a bit harder, before it gets accepted/rejected.
Wayfarer is ultimately is a community mapping project, and we admitedly load a lot of subjective decision-making into the one review chance each nomination gets. Let me just say that we are thinking about how to make the act of cartography a more democratic and fluid conversation. I'm really looking forward to bringing in new features that help you be co-operative about cartography.
It seems to me a few things.
What you've said, first, is in conflict with what Niantic has told us over time about generic & mass produced objects remaining categorically ineligible. Where I see, a dog waste station only exists you facilitate cleaning up after your dog. Might you be social there? Sure. But is it a place you go to be social? Does it encourage or facilitate social gatherings by being there? Rather, a dog park is a (typically) fenced in area that dogs are allowed to run "off leash" within the city or apartment area. Those typically are eligible since they do encourage exercise and can facilitate social gatherings. As a reviewer, I (typically) wouldn't accept just a waste post anywhere, but I might if it is used as a visual indicator next to a fenced area without other signs.
Either way, we sincerely need Niantic to actually be publishing their insight as to what types of generic mass produced objects may or may not eligible, and in what scenarios to consider.
Watch out, you're almost baiting people from TheSilphRoad. Or that Global Reviewer group.
One thing concerns me: I do not wish to engage in an endless debate over every nomination. It's the job of the submitter (and I apply these same standards to myself, as a I frequently submit) to supply the relevant detail to "sell" their candidate at the outset. If I review something I don't want to feel compelled to reach out and ask for a supporting photo that shows the candidate in place, for example, or to find the phrasing to say "please use the proper buzzwords to convince me that your <national-franchise-food-place> should appear on the map". If submitters can't make a clear case in their first submission, then a rejection is appropriate as an improved resubmission is still a possible route to acceptance.
I know Niantic has taken quite a few nominations for internal review lately: I'm sure those hours spent are on a budget line somewhere. Our compensation as reviewers is much less: an in-game medal, or an upgrade of our own stuff, plus the feeling that we're working to improve the database by judging submissions fairly. It would be difficult to find a more dedicated, cost-effective work force anywhere. Please don't make us jump through hoops to do what we've done, and done so well, in the past.
Edited for another tag: @NianticDanbocat This is my response to "They could have added a description that alludes to one of Niantic's mission. Or it would be nice if we could let you push it back to the submitter to say, please try a bit harder, before it gets accepted/rejected." as you stated above.
I think it would be more that the generic thing is an anchor for the dog park in general, rather than the generic item being the submission, like how park entrances can use a generic sign of the park name. At least, thats how I would read it.
If you have literal 💩 stations in your POI data map, the whole thing is just 💩 in itself. Please don’t be that flexible with the criteria.
I've seen plenty of dog waste stations in my area where no one hangs around them. So I don't see these as eligible. I also have a real problem with this line of thinking because this means any random street corner can be a "social gathering spot". Not too long ago, we had someone make that very claim about a mulch pile. But since there is no way for reviewers to confirm the validity of the location as a "social gathering spot", this is going to lead to a lot of confusion and rage as these locations will continue to be rejected.
And I also quesiton to motivations behind submitting these locations. Are they really submitting these locations because these are interesting places to explore or are they simply trying to maximize the number of "Pokestops/Gym" on the gameboard. I'm generally going to presume the latter unless the nominations shows otherwise.
So is the
customercommunity always right?I'll give you an example: I know of a few areas where a specific group of players have created/is creating wayspots with real names of players/usernames/nicknames/inner jokes/personal references. When confronted about it, those players say that it "brings their community together" and crucial to their enjoyment of the game.
Does every "community-significant" object override the nomination/reviewing guidelines, then? Be it the guideline about mass produced objects like a waste station, or the guidelines about nomination text like in my example?
So this thread should be renamed to
Wayfarer criteria still misunderstood by majority of players
Despite efforts to simplify criteria, there's some people that think that they know better than everyone else, including Niantic.
I don't think that's what is happening. We (finally) have somebody from Niantic willing to have an open and honest discussion. It's refreshing and hopefully @NianticDanbocat will understand better the struggles we, as submitters & reviewers struggle with.
Are you a canine? For a canine, excrement is the height of social media. Read all about it here:
But seriously, have you ever seen any humans being sociable around a poop station?
I've often thought the number one source of misinformation is the games we play as people see stops like memorial benches, think they are elgible and nominate them again.
Slightly off topic, but I wanna get on my soapbox....that said, I'd fully support making memorial plaques and benches IN PARKS AND WALKING TRAILS fully eligible again. More POI in parks/trails the more people go there and the more exercise people get.
Memorial benches were never fully eligible. Their eligibility has always been conditional based on who was being memorialized.