Right on, how are you guys so fast? But I don’t see a need for it anyways. Just use the S2 level 14 cells and level 17 cells and you should be good to go. I got a normal area with 30 gyms. And cities seems to always have a surplus gyms to be honest. (Unless you are taking about Singapore for example)
What is the intended purpose of the automated censoring software, why are some words permitted in certain places only e.g.:Title, why doesn’t the ‘bot tell us which words it objects to?
I'm learning that for some nominations to succeed I need the sign as the wayspot rather than the incredibly cool thing that it might represent. One thing I'm not going to do is as a player is explore "a sign" when a freaking cool photo of what's actually there would make me so much more interested.
It would be lovely to have a wayspot photo that reflected the interesting spot even though the sign might be what nails down the wayspot.
It is the same whether you ask for the park sign or not, as the community of reviewers is today, you can request the same sign for the park 20 times and have it rejected 20 times for any absurd reason even if it is a valid proposal that complies with all niantic standards and guidelines.
"Don't upgrade it, upgrades are more likely to be rejected"... Well this is interesting; upgrades only boost the chances that your nomination appears in someone’s review page. It doesn’t affect the rate at which your nomination gets resolved, or whether it is accepted or rejected.
@NianticTintino upgrades boost the range that a nomination is visible. If I, as somebody who lives in Iowa, USA names a nomination, only other people who live in Iowa review it. When I "upgrade" it, folks from New York City and LA will review it, as well. While upgrades remain in your country, the range of cultural significance or what constitutes as safe pedestrian access can be great across regions.
#8: How do you explain rejection reasons that are a direct result of those 2 categories and not a 1* rejection?
#9 What about non small communities? Los Angeles turn around time is approaching 2 years. Some of the stuff I review has since been gone, painted over or closed due to covid. 2 years is a long time and unacceptable. Everyones response is always "why don't you upgrade it?". Soon we will have the ability to potentially nominate 40 POIs at once, i wanna see anyone try and upgrade all 40 of those in a timely manner.
8) There is a persistent rumor that rating a candidate 1* or 2* in any category is a rejection of the whole submission. In other words, any 1* or 2*, even for something like "Historical or Cultural Significance", is the same as voting 1* or 2* for the "Should this be a Wayspot?" question. Can you confirm or deny this?
Let’s get this rumor all ironed out. So, yes, a 1* rejection on the first question “Should this be a Wayspot” will trigger the list of ineligible reasons, which is also you marking it as a rejection. The 2* is not. For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision. But the scores may matter for our other products built on the platform.
@NianticTintino This didn't answer the full question most people has about this. It confirms that 1* in "Should this be a wayspot" is a reject, and 2* isn't a reject, which we already knew. We wanted to know about other categories, not just the historic one. I really wish the question could have been phrased clearer like I had done it here instead of the incredibly specific example used in the original question.
And if "Historical/Cultural significance" doesn't matter, then how come it's included as a rejection reason in rejection emails? And if 2* isn't a reject, how come previous AMAs clarified a nomination with 2* ratings for all it's categories would be rejected? This is just gonna cause more wayfinders to argue about what the ratings actually mean and lead to less consistency.
Can an official specific criteria page be made on the Wayfarer website for the many clarifications/directives that come up on random threads in this forum?
It sounds like the community is looking for a binary response to this; is a thing in or out, but with our last Criteria refresh we wanted to be clearer that community mapping decisions aren’t always binary. One shouldn’t reject/disqualify something based on the category alone. In other words, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Your idea isn’t lost on us though, and we’ll think again on how to redesign this page and content. One thought we have is that the concept of ‘acceptance’ and ‘rejection’ criteria is not helpful. If we want to work toward a feedback culture, these should really be ‘contribution guidelines’ (except for the truly abusive cases of course!).
@NianticTintino a lot of clarifications are missing, though. Private residential property used to be considered all the way to the street, but now there is no Niantic clarification supporting that. Anywhere on a military base (even residential areas) used to be considered ineligible, but now that is nowhere on the criteria pages, despite @NianticCasey-ING having promised soon™ updates years ago.
Lack of including these clarifications cause significant disagreement - here and in voting procedures. While it's true that not all criteria needs to be binary, there are clarifications that need better addressed. There is also unbalance when your team jumps into the Wayforum to express opinions that things like little free pantries are categorically ineligible and dog waste stations can be considered categorically eligible.
Unless you wish to say than private residential property, what constitutes as k-12 grounds, and military bases should be considered a gradient. Please respond.
Regarding the response to question 8, when you say, "For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision," does that mean that this category has no impact whatsoever on the overall decision, or just that 1/2 star in this category alone is not enough to cause a rejection in an otherwise well-reviewed nomination.
If it's the former, then is this true of other categories? I've had reviews where an otherwise good nomination was unsafe or not accurately placed, where I would 1 star these categories instead of going back to give an overall 1 star review, under the impression that the two actions were comparable. Would a 1 star for safe pedestrian access be enough to disqualify something?
This question had significantly more likes than the last two questions you answered, and has been a hot topic for months.
This issue also harkens back to question 6, and why AMAs are our only form of clarification. You see, on top of the posts that @tehstone-ING referenced in this question, this discussion about military bases went on for literal months recently, and was clearly noticed by Niantic because they closed the topic, however, they failed to make what should have been an easy clarification to settle the argument when doing so. This should have been such a simple clarification to make and Niantic swept it under the rug. This is why people are so bent out of shape about communication from Niantic. I want to believe that we will see the level of communication that is needed to make AMAs invalid, but major changes would be required for that to truly be possible and for the community to feel comfortable with it.
In the mean time while you work on improving that communication, can you please take the time to answer the question about Military Bases that should have been answered during the AMA?
All the others above have asked the same clarifications to the curated questions that I want a real question to.
2... Well this is interesting; upgrades only boost the chances that your nomination appears in someone’s review page.
There is a lot of science around upgrades. Yes, it is true that their review priority is increased dramatically but it doesn't address that the upraded nomination becomes available for people across a huge space (i.e. the rest of the country) and also for people who have selected the area as a bonus location. The location scope was missed.
8... For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision.
That does not explain the aforementioned reject reasons that we receive in emails. We are not reviewing on "uniqueness or significance" anymore, we are going by the three core criteria of S.E.E.: socialise/explore/exercise. Maybe it's a bug somewhere (especially when random other wayspots in the vicinity are probably duplicated), but this answer is insufficient.
9/11... We are really into this idea of having a smaller group of Explorers who are ranked to be our map stewards who get to help out smaller communities.
This small group/top tier of Explorers should also be able to help out and impact the communities they are also in as well. I would love to have a rolling changing bonus location, yes, but as a "top tier" explorer there's more that we can do. Escalating trash wayspots for quick action to the team with priority. Reporting and fast-tracking abuse. Having more of a say and impact with our actions (i.e. if we reject something, it has more weighting than a regular wayfinder) or possibly even sending an abusive nomination to the shadow realm (i.e. so no one else can review it in the meantime before Niantic looks at it and confirms that it should be rejected there and then action directly taken on the Wayfinder) rather than just slapping their wrist with an email that says "nomination was flagged for targeting other players with the purpose of abuse, ridicule, trolling, or harassment".
...
At the end of this though, I hope maybe you will consider some of the missed questions that you should personally curate and not just leave it at the whim of the community vote where "year-long queues" run rampant. Instead of you know, leaving it to voting and completely disregarding any previous questions asked in this AMA and having people ask the same questions in the December AMAs.
Seriously though, this point needs to be answered. It had more votes, and it made this AMA not have any criteria clarification at all. Any reason it was skipped?
@NianticTintino Please explain how I get a rejection for a reason that is not listed in the 1* options on the first question if this is how it works:
"There is a persistent rumor that rating a candidate 1* or 2* in any category is a rejection of the whole submission. In other words, any 1* or 2*, even for something like "Historical or Cultural Significance", is the same as voting 1* or 2* for the "Should this be a Wayspot?" question. Can you confirm or deny this?
Let’s get this rumor all ironed out. So, yes, a 1* rejection on the first question “Should this be a Wayspot” will trigger the list of ineligible reasons, which is also you marking it as a rejection. The 2* is not. For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision. But the scores may matter for our other products built on the platform.
But my rejection email stated:
PORTAL REVIEW COMPLETE: STAINED GLASS CROSS
Your Portal nomination has been reviewed, and we have decided not to accept this candidate.
Your nomination is rejected due to the following reason(s):
The nomination does not appear to be historically or culturally significant.
Note that we will not be overturning this decision.
***
Please note that there is NO option to reject for "Historic or Cultural Significance" on the first question. It has a separate category.
And I also believe this one fell victim to the curse of the upgrade you said does not exist. I resubmitted the same photos but let it sit for over a year without upgrading and it finally came back approved today.
Too much "We'll be thinking", "We'll consider", "we'll look into..", not enough "We have done this...", "we have this...", "we have this to show you", etc. It's the classic deflection to show consideration, but not give any real action. I sincerely hope future AMA's are better.
Question 2 missed the point and seems to indicate the person answering is unfamiliar with the Wayfarer experience. Personally I agree and don't have issues with upgrades, what cannot be ignored is the large number of threads/posts where people express that upgraded nominations frequently see more rejections than non-upgraded submissions. It's this perception that people were wanting solid insight on. Better upgrade management might alleviate some of that, but it's still a bandaid solution, as the core issue will still be there - which ultimately leads to requiring better reviewer education.
Question 4 is a total non-answer, ie. "we are looking into this and daydreaming", but no actual action provided.
Question 8: The same question was answered in the February 2019 AMA and in that answer we were told that 2* is a rejection. So the answer given now is a contradiction. Also it doesn't shed any light on the rejections regarding "Historical or Cultural Significance" - which shouldn't be a rejection in the first place - and reality contradicting the given answer.
Question 11
When it comes to the 1 year lock, we have this in place to ensure folks aren’t reviewing in areas they are not familiar with, eliminating the community relevance of a location which would make it interesting to them but not others.
The majority of reviews we see are not local, especially for European reviewers, they will constantly get nominations from other countries with other languages. There is extremely minimal community relevance when reviewing, and frankly the criteria encourages people to showcase their nominations as best as they can, highlighting cultural or historical significance, which should be seen objectively by any reviewer anyway - regardless of where they are.
Thanks for answering some questions, but ultimately the answers do not give the community any value or assurance to move forward on any of the matters.
If anyone cares about @NianticTintino asking feedback about Q10
10. Is there any information you can provide about incentivizing players to join or be more engaged with Niantic Wayfarer outside of medal tiers and country-specific events? Stuff like in this thread or more frivolous things like cosmetic rewards for wayfarer/niantic social profiles that you can show off?
a. This one is exciting! We’ve already been thinking of different ways of making the community more engaging. Some of the ideas we’ve thought about are having events focused more on the spirit of exploration, explorer highlights, etc. All with the intention of making the community more fun. This also goes for our events, Wayfarer Challenges, etc. Shout out to those of you who have already made your suggestions. When it comes to social profile rewards, what kind of rewards would excite you?
@NianticTintino in regards to the below Given that Ingress is no longer a clear representation of the overall Wayfarer map, do you intend to make the map (+Lightship) of Wayspots available to Explorers? This ensures that players do not end up submitting things that are already in the database.
Yes, we do want to eventually add a feature that lets you see all the community contributions against yours. We agree, this would save you time and give you more info to nominate other interesting things in your community. We are still looking into the best place and format to bring this to life in a way that doesn’t violate our own internal security rules for web-based applications.
Are you considering showing nominations that are also in voting ? This seems to suggest it will only show those that are available across all platforms thus far.
"Have you looked into reducing the 1 year lock on bonus locations? What are your reasons for and against this?
Following question 9, we have thought about possibly allowing a top tier of Explorers to help out smaller, less populated communities. This could look a variety of different ways and they may get this privilege of unlocking their locations periodically in 1 year. When it comes to the 1 year lock, we have this in place to ensure folks aren’t reviewing in areas they are not familiar with, eliminating the community relevance of a location which would make it interesting to them but not others."
Well, @NianticTintino can you do something for @gazzas89-PGO ? His bonus location is stuck in the middle of nowhere while participating in Brazil Wayfarer challenge.
Additionally, while I'm agree with helping out remote communities, it's just a waste of bonus location if there are nothing left to review in that location yet the bonus location is locked until next 1 year.
What is being done to address the number of low-quality wayspots and wayspots that do not meet the acceptance criteria (for both old and newly approved ones)?
Along the same lines as the other questions and what’s been shared in the community, we are looking at improving the onboarding process which we hope will improve the quality of each nomination. Furthermore, next year we hope to cultivate a culture of feedback through improved features in the review process and now within the Wayfarer Community. When it comes to those that have already been accepted, these can be caught through edits and the upcoming abuse reporting process.
@NianticTintino what are you referring to when saying “those that have already been accepted?” The question asked about not only low quality ones (I assume this is referring to the edits), but ones that do not meet acceptance criteria. There is a distinction between abuse and existing wayspots that do not meet the criteria. Your response seems only to consider abuse, and that’s not at all what the question was about. If the answer is “we are not changing our current position that if the poi exists, it doesn’t matter if it even remotely meets acceptance/eligibility criteria” I would prefer you to state as such. And your seeming belief that improving the onboarding process will prevent wayspots that shouldn’t be accepted is…yeah no.
I feel that this rejection reason is likely to cause unfair rejection. Am I just being a worrier?
Q8
I agree with the others. Your answer was very uncomfortable.
Q:13
Furthermore, next year we hope to cultivate a culture of feedback through improved features in the review process and now within the Wayfarer Community.
In the last AMA they dodged a question of mine they didn’t want to answer. It’s frustrating when we take the time and effort to word the question carefully so the community gives it the support but it still gets annoyed.
then again looking at those answers they barely answered any of the questions they did acknowledge, looks more like a politicians interview than anything informative.
I guess the important question is “is there anyone who got their question answered happy that Niantic gave a satisfactory answer to their question?”
Question 8: The same question was answered in the February 2019 AMA and in that answer we were told that 2* is a rejection. So the answer given now is a contradiction. Also it doesn't shed any light on the rejections regarding "Historical or Cultural Significance" - which shouldn't be a rejection in the first place - and reality contradicting the given answer.
The February 2019 AMA said:
Q42: There still is a lot of confusion about the star ratings in OPR, hypothetically, if every reviewer rates every section 2*, would that portal be accepted or rejected?
A42: I was told that, “If all reviewers rated all items 2* it would be rejected. Not all answers are considered equally so just the low safety rating would be a good reason for a rejection.”
That's not saying that any 2* is a rejection, but that if reviewers said "blah" for every single category that it would be rejected. Somehow people interpreted that as saying that a 1* or 2* in any category was a rejection. I suspect that if the AMA also had a question that said, "What would happen if everyone voted 5* 5* 5* 5* 1* 5* 5*?" that the answer would be that it's an acceptance. (I didn't sanity check the number of categories there.)
As for email, the most likely explanation is that Niantic's system for generating rejection email doesn't match the reality of how the decisions are calculated. People started complaining about getting "weird" rejection reasons around the time that Niantic switched to trying to always send three different rejection reasons in email. We know that there are other bugs with the way rejection email is sent so one more wouldn't be that surprising.
Comments
I'm sorry. I think I was short
Understandable that you bring the query here as there’s no Pokémon GO forum. You can raise that issue about a forum being made for these queries here;
Right on, how are you guys so fast? But I don’t see a need for it anyways. Just use the S2 level 14 cells and level 17 cells and you should be good to go. I got a normal area with 30 gyms. And cities seems to always have a surplus gyms to be honest. (Unless you are taking about Singapore for example)
For whatever reason I have email notifications on this topic and was checking my emails whilst making lunch. 😆
What is the intended purpose of the automated censoring software, why are some words permitted in certain places only e.g.:Title, why doesn’t the ‘bot tell us which words it objects to?
Is there a certain time you have planned for posting the answers tomorrow @NianticTintino ?
Wayfarer team... TEACH US WHAT YOU WANT BY SHOWING US WHAT YOU WANT.
Instead of "which photo is acceptable" type posts give us choices AND TELL US THE ANSWERS!!!
Make us better reviewers by showing us what the correct choice is according to the Wayfarer team.
I'm learning that for some nominations to succeed I need the sign as the wayspot rather than the incredibly cool thing that it might represent. One thing I'm not going to do is as a player is explore "a sign" when a freaking cool photo of what's actually there would make me so much more interested.
It would be lovely to have a wayspot photo that reflected the interesting spot even though the sign might be what nails down the wayspot.
Definitely ready, good luck to @NianticTintino!
It is the same whether you ask for the park sign or not, as the community of reviewers is today, you can request the same sign for the park 20 times and have it rejected 20 times for any absurd reason even if it is a valid proposal that complies with all niantic standards and guidelines.
HAHAHAHA @PkmnTrainerJ-ING, Love it!
Without further ado! Check out the responses to the Sept AMA HERE!
"Don't upgrade it, upgrades are more likely to be rejected"... Well this is interesting; upgrades only boost the chances that your nomination appears in someone’s review page. It doesn’t affect the rate at which your nomination gets resolved, or whether it is accepted or rejected.
@NianticTintino upgrades boost the range that a nomination is visible. If I, as somebody who lives in Iowa, USA names a nomination, only other people who live in Iowa review it. When I "upgrade" it, folks from New York City and LA will review it, as well. While upgrades remain in your country, the range of cultural significance or what constitutes as safe pedestrian access can be great across regions.
#8: How do you explain rejection reasons that are a direct result of those 2 categories and not a 1* rejection?
#9 What about non small communities? Los Angeles turn around time is approaching 2 years. Some of the stuff I review has since been gone, painted over or closed due to covid. 2 years is a long time and unacceptable. Everyones response is always "why don't you upgrade it?". Soon we will have the ability to potentially nominate 40 POIs at once, i wanna see anyone try and upgrade all 40 of those in a timely manner.
8) There is a persistent rumor that rating a candidate 1* or 2* in any category is a rejection of the whole submission. In other words, any 1* or 2*, even for something like "Historical or Cultural Significance", is the same as voting 1* or 2* for the "Should this be a Wayspot?" question. Can you confirm or deny this?
Let’s get this rumor all ironed out. So, yes, a 1* rejection on the first question “Should this be a Wayspot” will trigger the list of ineligible reasons, which is also you marking it as a rejection. The 2* is not. For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision. But the scores may matter for our other products built on the platform.
@NianticTintino This didn't answer the full question most people has about this. It confirms that 1* in "Should this be a wayspot" is a reject, and 2* isn't a reject, which we already knew. We wanted to know about other categories, not just the historic one. I really wish the question could have been phrased clearer like I had done it here instead of the incredibly specific example used in the original question.
And if "Historical/Cultural significance" doesn't matter, then how come it's included as a rejection reason in rejection emails? And if 2* isn't a reject, how come previous AMAs clarified a nomination with 2* ratings for all it's categories would be rejected? This is just gonna cause more wayfinders to argue about what the ratings actually mean and lead to less consistency.
Can an official specific criteria page be made on the Wayfarer website for the many clarifications/directives that come up on random threads in this forum?
It sounds like the community is looking for a binary response to this; is a thing in or out, but with our last Criteria refresh we wanted to be clearer that community mapping decisions aren’t always binary. One shouldn’t reject/disqualify something based on the category alone. In other words, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Your idea isn’t lost on us though, and we’ll think again on how to redesign this page and content. One thought we have is that the concept of ‘acceptance’ and ‘rejection’ criteria is not helpful. If we want to work toward a feedback culture, these should really be ‘contribution guidelines’ (except for the truly abusive cases of course!).
@NianticTintino a lot of clarifications are missing, though. Private residential property used to be considered all the way to the street, but now there is no Niantic clarification supporting that. Anywhere on a military base (even residential areas) used to be considered ineligible, but now that is nowhere on the criteria pages, despite @NianticCasey-ING having promised soon™ updates years ago.
Lack of including these clarifications cause significant disagreement - here and in voting procedures. While it's true that not all criteria needs to be binary, there are clarifications that need better addressed. There is also unbalance when your team jumps into the Wayforum to express opinions that things like little free pantries are categorically ineligible and dog waste stations can be considered categorically eligible.
Unless you wish to say than private residential property, what constitutes as k-12 grounds, and military bases should be considered a gradient. Please respond.
Regarding the response to question 8, when you say, "For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision," does that mean that this category has no impact whatsoever on the overall decision, or just that 1/2 star in this category alone is not enough to cause a rejection in an otherwise well-reviewed nomination.
If it's the former, then is this true of other categories? I've had reviews where an otherwise good nomination was unsafe or not accurately placed, where I would 1 star these categories instead of going back to give an overall 1 star review, under the impression that the two actions were comparable. Would a 1 star for safe pedestrian access be enough to disqualify something?
@NianticTintino It seems you skipped a question that should have been in the top 15, specifically in relation to military bases:
This question had significantly more likes than the last two questions you answered, and has been a hot topic for months.
This issue also harkens back to question 6, and why AMAs are our only form of clarification. You see, on top of the posts that @tehstone-ING referenced in this question, this discussion about military bases went on for literal months recently, and was clearly noticed by Niantic because they closed the topic, however, they failed to make what should have been an easy clarification to settle the argument when doing so. This should have been such a simple clarification to make and Niantic swept it under the rug. This is why people are so bent out of shape about communication from Niantic. I want to believe that we will see the level of communication that is needed to make AMAs invalid, but major changes would be required for that to truly be possible and for the community to feel comfortable with it.
In the mean time while you work on improving that communication, can you please take the time to answer the question about Military Bases that should have been answered during the AMA?
All the others above have asked the same clarifications to the curated questions that I want a real question to.
2... Well this is interesting; upgrades only boost the chances that your nomination appears in someone’s review page.
There is a lot of science around upgrades. Yes, it is true that their review priority is increased dramatically but it doesn't address that the upraded nomination becomes available for people across a huge space (i.e. the rest of the country) and also for people who have selected the area as a bonus location. The location scope was missed.
8... For the rating on Historical and Cultural Significance, it does not actually affect the final decision.
That does not explain the aforementioned reject reasons that we receive in emails. We are not reviewing on "uniqueness or significance" anymore, we are going by the three core criteria of S.E.E.: socialise/explore/exercise. Maybe it's a bug somewhere (especially when random other wayspots in the vicinity are probably duplicated), but this answer is insufficient.
9/11... We are really into this idea of having a smaller group of Explorers who are ranked to be our map stewards who get to help out smaller communities.
This small group/top tier of Explorers should also be able to help out and impact the communities they are also in as well. I would love to have a rolling changing bonus location, yes, but as a "top tier" explorer there's more that we can do. Escalating trash wayspots for quick action to the team with priority. Reporting and fast-tracking abuse. Having more of a say and impact with our actions (i.e. if we reject something, it has more weighting than a regular wayfinder) or possibly even sending an abusive nomination to the shadow realm (i.e. so no one else can review it in the meantime before Niantic looks at it and confirms that it should be rejected there and then action directly taken on the Wayfinder) rather than just slapping their wrist with an email that says "nomination was flagged for targeting other players with the purpose of abuse, ridicule, trolling, or harassment".
...
At the end of this though, I hope maybe you will consider some of the missed questions that you should personally curate and not just leave it at the whim of the community vote where "year-long queues" run rampant. Instead of you know, leaving it to voting and completely disregarding any previous questions asked in this AMA and having people ask the same questions in the December AMAs.
Stop the count!
Seriously though, this point needs to be answered. It had more votes, and it made this AMA not have any criteria clarification at all. Any reason it was skipped?
@NianticTintino Please explain how I get a rejection for a reason that is not listed in the 1* options on the first question if this is how it works:
But my rejection email stated:
PORTAL REVIEW COMPLETE: STAINED GLASS CROSS
Your Portal nomination has been reviewed, and we have decided not to accept this candidate.
Your nomination is rejected due to the following reason(s):
The nomination does not appear to be historically or culturally significant.
Note that we will not be overturning this decision.
***
Please note that there is NO option to reject for "Historic or Cultural Significance" on the first question. It has a separate category.
And I also believe this one fell victim to the curse of the upgrade you said does not exist. I resubmitted the same photos but let it sit for over a year without upgrading and it finally came back approved today.
Overall the AMA responses are pointless.
Too much "We'll be thinking", "We'll consider", "we'll look into..", not enough "We have done this...", "we have this...", "we have this to show you", etc. It's the classic deflection to show consideration, but not give any real action. I sincerely hope future AMA's are better.
Question 2 missed the point and seems to indicate the person answering is unfamiliar with the Wayfarer experience. Personally I agree and don't have issues with upgrades, what cannot be ignored is the large number of threads/posts where people express that upgraded nominations frequently see more rejections than non-upgraded submissions. It's this perception that people were wanting solid insight on. Better upgrade management might alleviate some of that, but it's still a bandaid solution, as the core issue will still be there - which ultimately leads to requiring better reviewer education.
Question 4 is a total non-answer, ie. "we are looking into this and daydreaming", but no actual action provided.
Question 8: The same question was answered in the February 2019 AMA and in that answer we were told that 2* is a rejection. So the answer given now is a contradiction. Also it doesn't shed any light on the rejections regarding "Historical or Cultural Significance" - which shouldn't be a rejection in the first place - and reality contradicting the given answer.
Question 11
When it comes to the 1 year lock, we have this in place to ensure folks aren’t reviewing in areas they are not familiar with, eliminating the community relevance of a location which would make it interesting to them but not others.
The majority of reviews we see are not local, especially for European reviewers, they will constantly get nominations from other countries with other languages. There is extremely minimal community relevance when reviewing, and frankly the criteria encourages people to showcase their nominations as best as they can, highlighting cultural or historical significance, which should be seen objectively by any reviewer anyway - regardless of where they are.
Thanks for answering some questions, but ultimately the answers do not give the community any value or assurance to move forward on any of the matters.
I was about to write a lot of what you did. Thanks a lot!
If anyone cares about @NianticTintino asking feedback about Q10
10. Is there any information you can provide about incentivizing players to join or be more engaged with Niantic Wayfarer outside of medal tiers and country-specific events? Stuff like in this thread or more frivolous things like cosmetic rewards for wayfarer/niantic social profiles that you can show off?
a. This one is exciting! We’ve already been thinking of different ways of making the community more engaging. Some of the ideas we’ve thought about are having events focused more on the spirit of exploration, explorer highlights, etc. All with the intention of making the community more fun. This also goes for our events, Wayfarer Challenges, etc. Shout out to those of you who have already made your suggestions. When it comes to social profile rewards, what kind of rewards would excite you?
I made a feedback thread here
Are you considering showing nominations that are also in voting ? This seems to suggest it will only show those that are available across all platforms thus far.
It would be ideal to have that function as well.
Q11
"Have you looked into reducing the 1 year lock on bonus locations? What are your reasons for and against this?
Following question 9, we have thought about possibly allowing a top tier of Explorers to help out smaller, less populated communities. This could look a variety of different ways and they may get this privilege of unlocking their locations periodically in 1 year. When it comes to the 1 year lock, we have this in place to ensure folks aren’t reviewing in areas they are not familiar with, eliminating the community relevance of a location which would make it interesting to them but not others."
Well, @NianticTintino can you do something for @gazzas89-PGO ? His bonus location is stuck in the middle of nowhere while participating in Brazil Wayfarer challenge.
Additionally, while I'm agree with helping out remote communities, it's just a waste of bonus location if there are nothing left to review in that location yet the bonus location is locked until next 1 year.
What is being done to address the number of low-quality wayspots and wayspots that do not meet the acceptance criteria (for both old and newly approved ones)?
Along the same lines as the other questions and what’s been shared in the community, we are looking at improving the onboarding process which we hope will improve the quality of each nomination. Furthermore, next year we hope to cultivate a culture of feedback through improved features in the review process and now within the Wayfarer Community. When it comes to those that have already been accepted, these can be caught through edits and the upcoming abuse reporting process.
@NianticTintino what are you referring to when saying “those that have already been accepted?” The question asked about not only low quality ones (I assume this is referring to the edits), but ones that do not meet acceptance criteria. There is a distinction between abuse and existing wayspots that do not meet the criteria. Your response seems only to consider abuse, and that’s not at all what the question was about. If the answer is “we are not changing our current position that if the poi exists, it doesn’t matter if it even remotely meets acceptance/eligibility criteria” I would prefer you to state as such. And your seeming belief that improving the onboarding process will prevent wayspots that shouldn’t be accepted is…yeah no.
Q1
I feel that this rejection reason is likely to cause unfair rejection. Am I just being a worrier?
Q8
I agree with the others. Your answer was very uncomfortable.
Q:13
Furthermore, next year we hope to cultivate a culture of feedback through improved features in the review process and now within the Wayfarer Community.
Does this mean that the plan to update the review interface has been decided to be postponed to next year?
In the last AMA they dodged a question of mine they didn’t want to answer. It’s frustrating when we take the time and effort to word the question carefully so the community gives it the support but it still gets annoyed.
then again looking at those answers they barely answered any of the questions they did acknowledge, looks more like a politicians interview than anything informative.
I guess the important question is “is there anyone who got their question answered happy that Niantic gave a satisfactory answer to their question?”
@oscarc1-ING wrote:
Question 8: The same question was answered in the February 2019 AMA and in that answer we were told that 2* is a rejection. So the answer given now is a contradiction. Also it doesn't shed any light on the rejections regarding "Historical or Cultural Significance" - which shouldn't be a rejection in the first place - and reality contradicting the given answer.
The February 2019 AMA said:
Q42: There still is a lot of confusion about the star ratings in OPR, hypothetically, if every reviewer rates every section 2*, would that portal be accepted or rejected?
A42: I was told that, “If all reviewers rated all items 2* it would be rejected. Not all answers are considered equally so just the low safety rating would be a good reason for a rejection.”
That's not saying that any 2* is a rejection, but that if reviewers said "blah" for every single category that it would be rejected. Somehow people interpreted that as saying that a 1* or 2* in any category was a rejection. I suspect that if the AMA also had a question that said, "What would happen if everyone voted 5* 5* 5* 5* 1* 5* 5*?" that the answer would be that it's an acceptance. (I didn't sanity check the number of categories there.)
As for email, the most likely explanation is that Niantic's system for generating rejection email doesn't match the reality of how the decisions are calculated. People started complaining about getting "weird" rejection reasons around the time that Niantic switched to trying to always send three different rejection reasons in email. We know that there are other bugs with the way rejection email is sent so one more wouldn't be that surprising.