Gonna be honest, not too jazzed about the reduction in engineering team right before the launch of increased nominations with nothing else to get nominators to learn criteria ready yet.
A new flow on the Wayfarer website for first time Wayfarer users (i.e. you've never logged in before), which orients you through the site and eventually to the criteria and quiz. Passing the quiz unlocks the Wayfarer features in Pokémon GO and Ingress. This does not affect folks who already have a Wayfarer account.
Do current players who have reached the level to nominate/review but not done so, or those who have made nominations but have never logged into the wayfarer site, have a Wayfarer account that would let them forgo the quiz?
Okay, breaking this down with thoughts and questions.
Wayspot sync issues in games: These are both still under investigation by the Pokémon GO and Ingress teams as it has to do with their sync pipelines. I understand it's frustrating, but we're pushing for a resolution asap.
Is “as soon as possible” the new Soon™️? There’s been issues with it for months, especially in Ingress. Can we get some update once fixed about why it happened, and what the teams are doing to stop it in any future games? Harry Potter: Wizards Unite had months where new Wayspots didn’t sync at all (it has tons of other non-Wayfarer related bugs but 🤷)
Niantic in house reviews and the "." rejection reason: We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibrating our team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house. // However, I completely acknowledge that we don't always get it right. I've reviewed a few of your reports as well to confirm. I've been speaking with our team lead to ensure we get another recalibration session going. Thank you in advance for your patience. // As for these nominations disappearing from your nominations page, we want to fix that too. It should be totally transparent that they're under review by a Niantic teammate. // We've recently patched the emails to tell you that it was a Niantic decision rather than seeing the "." reason.
I’ve seen that the “.” rejection reason now says “Niantic review” instead. That’s a good change. Can Wayfarers re-submit these, or is that a final decision as it’s been reviewed by Niantic?
We all know that the Niantic team have rejected some eligible & acceptable nominations, and also let some plain garbage through. Is there a plan to have someone more senior within the Niantic review team re-review these accepted/rejected nominations and make a decision on them?
Nomination missing the map marker on your summary page has been fixed.
New abuse reporting system: We're so close and we really need to ship that to you! Working with @NianticTintino to get this done!
Not too much to say on these. Good that you’ve fixed it, and that we nearly have the new abuse system ready. We certainly need it.
A new welcome flow in Pokémon GO that invites you to visit Wayfarer when you reach eligibility level
Please tell me that this encourages the person to read the criteria. Is this also planned for Ingress too? I don’t recall one, when I levelled up to the right level there. Just a “New Portal” button appearing when I held down on the map.
New Wayfarer branded emails to replace the game branded emails. This is to make it absolutely clear that even a nomination in-game is a nomination to the Niantic platform, NOT to a specific game. This has always been the case but the emails were just misleading. // We also want the language to be clearer with respect to how your contributions would be used. Note that the new emails will not include rejection reasons. Rather, emails will link back to Wayfarer and we aim to display those reasons in your nominations page.
This is a welcome change. As you’re doing this, will the submission language be game neutral across Pokémon GO & Ingress? That is, no nominations Portals & PokéStops but nominating a Wayspot for inclusion in Wayfarer? (Realised I’ve gone out of order. Never mind)
A new flow on the Wayfarer website for first time Wayfarer users (i.e. you've never logged in before), which orients you through the site and eventually to the criteria and quiz. Passing the quiz unlocks the Wayfarer features in Pokémon GO and Ingress. This does not affect folks who already have a Wayfarer account.
Sounds good in theory. However can we re-test people every so often? Or if they’re getting repeated abuse rejections, then the system should ask them to retake the test. If you fail it, as someone who is already “qualified”, perhaps a small ban from Wayfarer related activities for 30 days?
Pokémon GO Nominations Duplicates check, where you'll be able to see a map of existing live Wayspots not in the game alongside those that are, during the nomination flow.
As not everything shows in Ingress now, it is also needed there. Will that also be on the way this year?
New limits for your contributions will be active on October 26 (we posted about this before, where instead of "you get X in 14 days", you now accrue X on a daily basis.
Unlike other sections, this one doesn’t call out the golden child of Pokémon GO specifically. Does this mean it will also roll out to Ingress on 26th October too? I wonder how some would cope with 80 nominations later this month
Adding the ability to upload nominations later, and upload management page in Ingress.
This is great to know it’s coming this year, especially for photo uploads on Ingress.
For Ingress, Pokémon GO & Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, there’s monthly newsletters via email. Perhaps one could be done for Wayfarer? Details of changes, upcoming challenges, Wayspot/Wayfarer User highlights? Would help to get people involved.
What I really don't like is that they say they are removing the rejection reasons from the emails, and later they say they won't be able to add them to the wayfarer page for now... I hope I'm misunderstanding this, but you can't remove them from the emails before you add them to the page. Or is it an "ultimate fix" for the "." problem?
Niantic in house reviews and the "." rejection reason [...]I've reviewed a few of your reports as well to confirm. I've been speaking with our team lead to ensure we get another recalibration session going.
@NianticDanbocat Does that mean you won't be taking any more "." rejections for re-evaluation? A bunch of people (including myself) have sent you their rejections as you've requested.
We've recently patched the emails to tell you that it was a Niantic decision rather than seeing the "." reason.
Does that mean that submitters still won't get specific rejection reasons for their submissions? I feel like "a Niantic decision" is just a longer version of "." if it doesn't explain why the submission was rejected.
New abuse reporting system: We're so close and we really need to ship that to you!
Is this still expected to ship this month (seeing as it isn't listed under "the rest of the year")? I really hope so, seeing as this is already very delayed.
In any case, thanks for the update post, it's much appreciated.
My biggest disappointment with the "."/"Niantic rejections" is that they don't use these with proper rejections in addition to the "Niantic" text. This could have been a real good opportunity for Niantic to educate submitters... I've basically resubmitted everything I got a "." rejection on, since I assumed this was some sort of bug, and I had no information on how to improve my submissions. Some of them were objects considered sure things in our community, so I really didn't understand why they got rejected...
Would love something like this. Currently all we have are email announcements for forum posts that we have to turn on. Would be cool if once you make a wayfarer account, you get an email blast about wayfarer stuff that you can opt in/out of. And some more social media presence like a related account on twitter.
We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibrating our team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house.
Concerned that eliminating rejection criteria from email with plans to add to wayfarer page at some later date when enough staff is hired will severely impact the backlog of nominations and frustrate the novice trainer.
Novice trainers get a smattering of info from reading the criteria and taking a quiz. However the most important education is the real world. They desperately need feedback on real time to improve the validity of their nominations.
There are already too many blatantly ineligible wayspot nominations out there. If the novice submitter does not get good feedback, they will not understand what they are doing wrong and continue to submit ineligible nominations to a system that will even be more bogged down with increased nomination being awarded.
Wayspot sync issues in games: These are both still under investigation by the Pokémon GO and Ingress teams as it has to do with their sync pipelines. I understand it's frustrating, but we're pushing for a resolution asap.
asap™️
To add to in due course™️ And soon™️
I don’t quite see how in one breadth it is pushed to the other teams and then you are pushing. If ever a problem needed a co ordinated approach and teamwork this is it.
Sorry but I don’t think anyone is truly interested or this would have been resolved by now we are fast approaching 3 months or 25% of the year.
We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibratingour team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house.
Imagine that with proper coding and work, you could have an algorithm up in less than a year, evaluating proposals better than the staff that's been here since the start 😂
The internal reviewers aren't alongside me. They're given much more power than me as far as accepting and rejecting portals (I am but one vote out of many while theirs is the voice of finality), they are not apparently accountable to cooldown periods, 30-day bans, or any penalties existing for reviewer/submitters, and they don't have to specify any reasons for their decisions. They don't work with Wayfarers as a team: they have less experience than many, and they may possibly even get a paycheck.
If Internal Reviewers were working "alongside" me for a long period of time, why has their presence become so very obtrusive only recently? Is it because only now have the glitches exposed this internal effort? Has staff increased so that there are MORE internal reviewers, and if so why onboard on this one team while the communications teams clearly need more help? @NianticDanbocat - I look forward to your response.
I'd like to see a list of nominations I have disagreed with Niantic reviewers in the past. Most interested in time period when a lot of old reviewers fell to poor rating. The negative effect can still be seen in my area, less (active) reviewers, dropped motivation etc.
@NianticDanbocat you could aswell give that Magic Finger to the top reviewers. WE would Produce better Results and the backlog would be resolved quickly. I dont Know why 24 Other Reviews have to be done
Originally, a reviewer just gave 1* without having to give a reason.
Then. the reviewer was required to give a reason, but the nominator had no idea what reasons were given.
Finally, reasons were added to the email to the nominator.
IOW: removing the reasons from the nominator's rejection email is going back one step, to a state that was/is OK with Niantic. It is totally fine with Niantic for nominators to have no idea what's going on, and keep resubmitting.
Comments
Gonna be honest, not too jazzed about the reduction in engineering team right before the launch of increased nominations with nothing else to get nominators to learn criteria ready yet.
Quick question about one of the points @NianticDanbocat
A new flow on the Wayfarer website for first time Wayfarer users (i.e. you've never logged in before), which orients you through the site and eventually to the criteria and quiz. Passing the quiz unlocks the Wayfarer features in Pokémon GO and Ingress. This does not affect folks who already have a Wayfarer account.
Do current players who have reached the level to nominate/review but not done so, or those who have made nominations but have never logged into the wayfarer site, have a Wayfarer account that would let them forgo the quiz?
Okay, breaking this down with thoughts and questions.
Wayspot sync issues in games: These are both still under investigation by the Pokémon GO and Ingress teams as it has to do with their sync pipelines. I understand it's frustrating, but we're pushing for a resolution asap.
Is “as soon as possible” the new Soon™️? There’s been issues with it for months, especially in Ingress. Can we get some update once fixed about why it happened, and what the teams are doing to stop it in any future games? Harry Potter: Wizards Unite had months where new Wayspots didn’t sync at all (it has tons of other non-Wayfarer related bugs but 🤷)
Niantic in house reviews and the "." rejection reason: We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibrating our team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house. // However, I completely acknowledge that we don't always get it right. I've reviewed a few of your reports as well to confirm. I've been speaking with our team lead to ensure we get another recalibration session going. Thank you in advance for your patience. // As for these nominations disappearing from your nominations page, we want to fix that too. It should be totally transparent that they're under review by a Niantic teammate. // We've recently patched the emails to tell you that it was a Niantic decision rather than seeing the "." reason.
I’ve seen that the “.” rejection reason now says “Niantic review” instead. That’s a good change. Can Wayfarers re-submit these, or is that a final decision as it’s been reviewed by Niantic?
We all know that the Niantic team have rejected some eligible & acceptable nominations, and also let some plain garbage through. Is there a plan to have someone more senior within the Niantic review team re-review these accepted/rejected nominations and make a decision on them?
Nomination missing the map marker on your summary page has been fixed.
New abuse reporting system: We're so close and we really need to ship that to you! Working with @NianticTintino to get this done!
Not too much to say on these. Good that you’ve fixed it, and that we nearly have the new abuse system ready. We certainly need it.
A new welcome flow in Pokémon GO that invites you to visit Wayfarer when you reach eligibility level
Please tell me that this encourages the person to read the criteria. Is this also planned for Ingress too? I don’t recall one, when I levelled up to the right level there. Just a “New Portal” button appearing when I held down on the map.
New Wayfarer branded emails to replace the game branded emails. This is to make it absolutely clear that even a nomination in-game is a nomination to the Niantic platform, NOT to a specific game. This has always been the case but the emails were just misleading. // We also want the language to be clearer with respect to how your contributions would be used. Note that the new emails will not include rejection reasons. Rather, emails will link back to Wayfarer and we aim to display those reasons in your nominations page.
This is a welcome change. As you’re doing this, will the submission language be game neutral across Pokémon GO & Ingress? That is, no nominations Portals & PokéStops but nominating a Wayspot for inclusion in Wayfarer? (Realised I’ve gone out of order. Never mind)
A new flow on the Wayfarer website for first time Wayfarer users (i.e. you've never logged in before), which orients you through the site and eventually to the criteria and quiz. Passing the quiz unlocks the Wayfarer features in Pokémon GO and Ingress. This does not affect folks who already have a Wayfarer account.
Sounds good in theory. However can we re-test people every so often? Or if they’re getting repeated abuse rejections, then the system should ask them to retake the test. If you fail it, as someone who is already “qualified”, perhaps a small ban from Wayfarer related activities for 30 days?
Pokémon GO Nominations Duplicates check, where you'll be able to see a map of existing live Wayspots not in the game alongside those that are, during the nomination flow.
As not everything shows in Ingress now, it is also needed there. Will that also be on the way this year?
New limits for your contributions will be active on October 26 (we posted about this before, where instead of "you get X in 14 days", you now accrue X on a daily basis.
Unlike other sections, this one doesn’t call out the golden child of Pokémon GO specifically. Does this mean it will also roll out to Ingress on 26th October too? I wonder how some would cope with 80 nominations later this month
Adding the ability to upload nominations later, and upload management page in Ingress.
This is great to know it’s coming this year, especially for photo uploads on Ingress.
I know that’s a long post @NianticDanbocat and you may not be about but I’m sure @NianticTintino can offer some clarity.
I made a comment about the abuse reporting system, but I misunderstood it, so I will delete this comment.
Do keep doing the news however @NianticDanbocat
For Ingress, Pokémon GO & Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, there’s monthly newsletters via email. Perhaps one could be done for Wayfarer? Details of changes, upcoming challenges, Wayspot/Wayfarer User highlights? Would help to get people involved.
What I really don't like is that they say they are removing the rejection reasons from the emails, and later they say they won't be able to add them to the wayfarer page for now... I hope I'm misunderstanding this, but you can't remove them from the emails before you add them to the page. Or is it an "ultimate fix" for the "." problem?
@NianticDanbocat any chances the long awaited submitter test will drop along with nomination limit update in October 26?
Niantic in house reviews and the "." rejection reason [...] I've reviewed a few of your reports as well to confirm. I've been speaking with our team lead to ensure we get another recalibration session going.
@NianticDanbocat Does that mean you won't be taking any more "." rejections for re-evaluation? A bunch of people (including myself) have sent you their rejections as you've requested.
We've recently patched the emails to tell you that it was a Niantic decision rather than seeing the "." reason.
Does that mean that submitters still won't get specific rejection reasons for their submissions? I feel like "a Niantic decision" is just a longer version of "." if it doesn't explain why the submission was rejected.
New abuse reporting system: We're so close and we really need to ship that to you!
Is this still expected to ship this month (seeing as it isn't listed under "the rest of the year")? I really hope so, seeing as this is already very delayed.
In any case, thanks for the update post, it's much appreciated.
My biggest disappointment with the "."/"Niantic rejections" is that they don't use these with proper rejections in addition to the "Niantic" text. This could have been a real good opportunity for Niantic to educate submitters... I've basically resubmitted everything I got a "." rejection on, since I assumed this was some sort of bug, and I had no information on how to improve my submissions. Some of them were objects considered sure things in our community, so I really didn't understand why they got rejected...
Would love something like this. Currently all we have are email announcements for forum posts that we have to turn on. Would be cool if once you make a wayfarer account, you get an email blast about wayfarer stuff that you can opt in/out of. And some more social media presence like a related account on twitter.
We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibrating our team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house.
Concerned that eliminating rejection criteria from email with plans to add to wayfarer page at some later date when enough staff is hired will severely impact the backlog of nominations and frustrate the novice trainer.
Novice trainers get a smattering of info from reading the criteria and taking a quiz. However the most important education is the real world. They desperately need feedback on real time to improve the validity of their nominations.
There are already too many blatantly ineligible wayspot nominations out there. If the novice submitter does not get good feedback, they will not understand what they are doing wrong and continue to submit ineligible nominations to a system that will even be more bogged down with increased nomination being awarded.
With all due respect, Please reconsider
asap™️
To add to in due course™️ And soon™️
I don’t quite see how in one breadth it is pushed to the other teams and then you are pushing. If ever a problem needed a co ordinated approach and teamwork this is it.
Sorry but I don’t think anyone is truly interested or this would have been resolved by now we are fast approaching 3 months or 25% of the year.
No point in me doing any wayfinder work yet.
We've always had staff alongside you to help process the Wayspot nominations and we are constantly calibratingour team to ensure consistency. We do not use robots to review in house.
Imagine that with proper coding and work, you could have an algorithm up in less than a year, evaluating proposals better than the staff that's been here since the start 😂
The internal reviewers aren't alongside me. They're given much more power than me as far as accepting and rejecting portals (I am but one vote out of many while theirs is the voice of finality), they are not apparently accountable to cooldown periods, 30-day bans, or any penalties existing for reviewer/submitters, and they don't have to specify any reasons for their decisions. They don't work with Wayfarers as a team: they have less experience than many, and they may possibly even get a paycheck.
If Internal Reviewers were working "alongside" me for a long period of time, why has their presence become so very obtrusive only recently? Is it because only now have the glitches exposed this internal effort? Has staff increased so that there are MORE internal reviewers, and if so why onboard on this one team while the communications teams clearly need more help? @NianticDanbocat - I look forward to your response.
I'd like to see a list of nominations I have disagreed with Niantic reviewers in the past. Most interested in time period when a lot of old reviewers fell to poor rating. The negative effect can still be seen in my area, less (active) reviewers, dropped motivation etc.
Spot on 👌
@NianticDanbocat you could aswell give that Magic Finger to the top reviewers. WE would Produce better Results and the backlog would be resolved quickly. I dont Know why 24 Other Reviews have to be done
Originally, a reviewer just gave 1* without having to give a reason.
Then. the reviewer was required to give a reason, but the nominator had no idea what reasons were given.
Finally, reasons were added to the email to the nominator.
IOW: removing the reasons from the nominator's rejection email is going back one step, to a state that was/is OK with Niantic. It is totally fine with Niantic for nominators to have no idea what's going on, and keep resubmitting.