Bug squashing
NianticDanbocat
Posts: 91Niantic › admin
Hi everyone,
Just catching up on a few things here and wanted to share an update before the work week begins.
- [FIXED] Upload later bug swapping your main and supporting photos
We pushed the fix on Friday afternoon. Please reset the Pokémon GO app at your earliest convenience. Note that both your main and supporting images already submitted were not lost. If your nomination was already decided on based on the swapped images, and you feel that decision was unfairly influenced by the swapped images, please contact @NianticTintino and @NianticGiffard with the nomination details so that we can review and fix.
For those who are reviewing noms with obviously swapped images, please judge them fairly and comprehensively, do not reject them based on the swap. We keep all the supporting images of the accepted nominations, as they have sometimes been much better than the main (even prior to this bug). We are able to swap them retroactively as necessary. Really sorry about this issue. I am going to hold a retrospective with the team to understand how we missed this during our testing.
- [FIXED] The blank rejection reason "." and nominations disappearing from your management page
This was indeed a bug. As most of you know, we have a team of staff that also review nominations alongside you. They get assigned quasi-randomly to Niantic staff. When that happens, the nom disappears from your management page. If it is rejected by staff, you would have received an email with a blank rejection reason.
I dug into this with the team and the temporary fix will be to include a string that completes the sentence, and to keep this nomination displayed in your nom page. This might take a couple weeks to wrap up. The email will only say that it was a Niantic review decision. We won't rework this email further because we are actually in the midst of deprecating it -- All emails will soon be sent from a Wayfarer email and not game-specific emails. Emails notifying you of a decision will point you to your Nominations page to review the decision details, which we are working on updating hopefully by the end of the year.
- [FIXED] Pokémon GO and Ingress Wayspot sync issues
We acknowledge the reports of edits not sticking or accepted Wayspots not appearing in one or both games. We have notified both game teams and their community managers. This seems to be entirely a game server issue, and the Wayfarer team is on standby to support. We hope to continue looking into this early this week.
- [FIXED] Nominations summary page map in Pokémon GO has missing map marker
We noticed that in the latest build of the game that the map marker denoting your nomination location is missing in the nominations summary page. We hope to patch this on Tuesday September 28.
That's it for now! Thanks again for your patience and understanding.
We'll aim to update you all again in a few days!
Comments
If your nomination was already decided on based on the swapped images, and you feel that decision was unfairly influenced by the swapped images, please contact @NianticTintino and @NianticGiffard with the nomination details so that we can review and fix.
@NianticDanbocat
Wouldnt it be better to make a collective discussion in order to prevent the Forum to get spammed with discussions? Also, it would be easier for Niantic to check the nominations in question.
[In Progress] The blank rejection reason "." and nominations disappearing from your management page
My rejected nomination here - https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/86805
Yeah, isn't it possible to detect all affected nominations and just fix all of them? A lot of submitters don't even know what Wayfarer is, so they will never contact you.
I'm assuming that there isn't a fix in the works for the number of us that had our Wayfarer stats reset then?
For those who are reviewing noms with obviously swapped images, please judge them fairly and comprehensively, do not reject them based on the swap.
All well and good saying that here on the forums but many reviewers won’t see this message/use the forums and will reject based on low quality photo. Is it possible for the team to add an announcement into Wayfarer so people see it when they log on?
So every rejection with "." Email was Niantic staff? Because I saw some solid subs rejected in this way... Grade II listed heritage sites etc. If this is the quality of reviewing from niantic staff then im no longer eagerly anticipating the appeal function.
Given @NianticDanbocat's comment that the majority opinion of reviewers get to determine what is acceptable, I doubt that there will ever an appeal function.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticGiffard @NianticTintino
Hi this has messed up my submission here
http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/GubiNY5Eu_8DrBHyWtIQ-C6TMoQ7BPNZ6idviRpww_KGBNHkoKtU4P2oYXR2m7I7kenMpdX9Wz_FHezbVP7z1JHGqZjHI_SlTm_sjm2N
Nomination ID: LR126zBNm5Bp2Zk6x1w8OUKuLWfFpugZJkekyhKj8hM=
Can you please swap the images around. I cant just go back and resub and i'll lose a nomination for it.
The confirmation of the "dot" rejections by Niantic is the main headline of this post. If Niantic staff who are rejecting dot rejections are going to be the same staff members who are thinking of moving into the appeals business, I am going to laugh as crowds of people descend into madness and sheer disappointment.
If the photos are swapped when I review them, it's not like 90% of others knows what is happening or even know these forums exist, they'll just assume that they selected the wrong photos during the submitting process. The people here try to be diligent with Danbocat's advice to vote for them fairly and comprehensive is very likely to just stomach disagreements as everyone else rejects them for low quality photos. I'm probably going to do the same, just use another nomination to do so properly and withdraw it.
But Danbocat is a whole new level of kanban transparent agile sprint cycles with these updates and timeliness! Again, sooo refreshing to have you on board.
Good to hear the image switching has been corrected in-game, and good to have official word on what to do with these nominations. I am a bit concerned that this "fix" means that obviously invalid photos may go online as the wayspot photo (not just photos that don't show the POI, but potentially photos with license plates, photos with recognizable faces, edited photos), but that would be a small handful of instances, I would think.
I very much second @PkmnTrainerJ-ING 's notion that this needs to be a banner alert across the top of the Wayfarer website.
There was also a trend of recently accepted generic business chains like a McDonald, grocery store chain, and an auto parts store being accepted that followed the same trend of approving but not syncing into Ingress. Makes me really worried about the quality Niantic wants.
Yup. We had a mattress store with a run-on, multi-sentence title go into PoGo only. It's making a small part of me secretly kinda hope that the Ingress synch issue for Niantic-reviewed submissions doesn't get fixed. It's all so very demoralizing. Back to the good ol' portal **** days, I guess.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticGiffard @NianticTintino
I am unsure about the correct course of action with a nomination that was affected by the "swapped picture" bug.
It has not entered voting yet, nor will it in the foreseeable future unless I upgrade it (it's a very low-priority area). However, I'd hate to waste an upgrade on it like this, as I'm completely sure that it will be rejected because of this - the vast majority of reviewers in my area (Central-Eastern Europe) don't even know this forum exists. There's no way they will consider a pinned post on this forum when it comes to rejections.
So my options seem to be:
- withdraw and resubmit. This way I lose a nomination but that's it. However, others might not be able to do the same if they nominated at a location they can't simply walk back to.
- upgrade, have it rejected and appeal the rejection. My problem with this is that I don't know how long the appeal process will take or how transparent it will be. If I just throw the appeal into a black hole and I'll have to wait weeks/months for a decision to be made, I'm not sure this is the right decision for me, because I could potentially lose a nomination and an upgrade this way.
Isn't it perhaps possible for you to swap the pictures of my affected nomination (Ugron Gábor utcai játszótér, nomination ID X5EUQGBZ4Okr7aqGJrh7IhVkR5fMvL/4Twraj5/Am+s=) before it goes into voting?
What does IT mean reset the Pogo app
So, if you had your nomination vanished and accepted by Niantic, and now it fails to show in game, despite being eligible for at least one (Ingress, but not Pogo), when will that get resolved? My portal nom was about 40m from nearest (I need to stand at my nomination to get the one down the hill!), and would have been voted through pretty quick, but vanished, was approved, and now isn't in game. Do i just resubmit it and hope it doesnt get eaten by NIA again? The other one was approved and made into game, but was in its own Pogo cell.
I used the "Upload Later" function on Saturday (after the fix was theoretically pushed) and my images were reversed.
@NianticDanbocat What do you mean by "reset the Pokémon GO app at your earliest convenience"? Do you mean "Refresh Game Data"?
@NianticDanbocat
Thanks for this update on the various issues.👍
quote:
We acknowledge the reports of edits not sticking or accepted Wayspots not appearing in one or both games. We have notified both game teams and their community managers. This seems to be entirely a game server issue, and the Wayfarer team is on standby to support. We hope to continue looking into this early this week.
I do hope the team can make progress soon.
From what has been observed some of this is linked to Niantic reviews.
It has also become clear that if we trigger a sync and “refresh” of that POI in Lightship it then can be picked up by the games.
It seems to be a good example of where there needs to be a holistic approach both to resolving it and communicating the situation out to players.
looking forward to next update
My nominations I submitted today still had their photos swapped and same for my friends.
Well, in @NianticDanbocat summer update and introduction message there was this (emphasis mine).
Part of the appeals experience mentioned above will include direct feedback from Niantic on Niantic’s final decision. This does mean we need more real people to work with you (no bots!) so please bear with us as we sort out what we can achieve in terms of processing time when we first launch it.
I'm really not convinced all the current Niantic reviews are made by humans. Would be nice to get confirmation.
@Kellerrys-ING - that paragraph is referring to features we are working on (Appeals) which we have not yet released to you, and saying that we expect to grow the human team to support this. Can you explain why you suspect the Niantic reviews are not done by actual humans?
@Runnerddp-PGO - honestly if you'd like to make an actual report, please share details with @NianticTintino or @NianticGiffard . Cannot verify your claim otherwise. Thanks!
@Elijustrying-ING - still digging!
@Pendergirl4-PGO @rodensteiner-ING - reset = fully close the app, then reopen the app.
On good noms being rejected by Niantic Staff: DM me your rejections, I want to review them with the team.
@Nadiwereb-PGO - DM @NianticTintino or @NianticGiffard - Wayfarer team:@NianticGiffard can you help me track?
@LukeAllStars-ING - it'd be great if the community can help collate a list of the swapped image noms in a single discussion. It's going admittedly be a bit messy in getting each addressed because we are a bit understaffed right now so anything helps!
@NianticDanbocat In short, there were a lot of nominations going through that should have been rejected (and vice versa). Propably easier to give a link to the thread.
While we are on subject. Could you confirm (or deny) that current Niantic reviews are done by actual people, not bots?
As far as I know, I, as a regular Wayfinder, do not have permission to send direct messages on this forum. By "DM-ing Giffard and Tintino", do you mean "posting on their wall"? Just because their walls are full of messages that are several days old with no responses, so I don't really see how that would solve my problem of not wanting to throw my report into a black hole.
Again, I'm sorry I have to bother you with this, but I feel this is a rather important topic that needs to be addressed.
On good noms being rejected by Niantic Staff: DM me your rejections, I want to review them with the team.
One problem there @NianticDanbocat , us regular forum users cannot DM you. Could you DM those on the “.” Rejection bug report thread and then we can go from there?
we are a bit understaffed right now so anything helps!
Separate topic. When do the Wayfarer Team job postings go up? 😆
@NianticDanbocat I second the question - how we can DM you?
I've already mentioned to you a candidate that met
eligibilityacceptance criteria being denied by your internal team, which if I recall you didn't think was happening.Here is a link where I mentioned 2 places we suspect being approved by the internal team, too. A generic grocery store chain location and a McDonald's. Niantic must be so proud of these locations.
Separate topic. When do the Wayfarer Team job postings go up? 😆
Interns. All the interns.
Also I think the method of DM'ing Danbocat is the Activity box in his profile where you can Add Comments. Direct messages mean "direct", but not necessarily hidden or 1-on-1 like Twitter's DMs.
Would you prefer a google form or a discussion in this forum? Can also create both, if wanted. :)
Hello, can you resubmit the two rejected nominations in this attachment please as well as swapping over the supporting and main images please. The other two in Queue, could you please swap the images over. Thank you
furthermore , I have a couple of friends I know who have been punished by the same issues.
The nominations were also submitted on the 25th September and titled;
”Sussex Diamond Way Trail Marker”
“Greenwich Meridian Trail Marker, The Sloop”
Could you resubmit and reverse the photos please.
Also due to a bug I was only able to use 4 of my 7 fortnightly uploads, are you able to reinstate the missing three nominations?
thank you
I created a discussion for this topic to collect all affected nominations. Please post them here:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/23632/collection-rejected-nominations-with-swapped-photos/p1?new=1
“..please contact @NianticTintino and @NianticGiffard with the nomination details so that we can review and fix.”
@NianticGiffard
As per your instructions;
Hello, can you resubmit the two rejected nominations in this attachment please as well as swapping over the supporting and main images please. The other two in Queue, could you please swap the images over. Thank you
Furthermore, I have a couple of friends I know who have been punished by the same issues.
The nominations were also submitted on the 25th September and titled;
”Sussex Diamond Way Trail Marker”
“Greenwich Meridian Trail Marker, The Sloop”
Could you resubmit and reverse the photos please.
Also due to a bug I was only able to use 4 of my 7 fortnightly uploads, are you able to reinstate the missing three nominations?
Thanks,
JoeMKetchum