A Feedback to Niantic - A Reason for the lack of reviewers.

Dear Community,

Some of you may be concerned that some areas are having a low volume of reviewers. There are other reasons as well, but I will provide one important point to be taken into consideration:

  • It is true we have Guidelines to follow which strictly guides Us for a proper reviewing. However, this may not be followed by many reviewers, in some cases, there are Nominations that shouldn't be approved but they have been. As a result, a disagreement is counted against your profile. We have an issue, affecting mainly our Reviewers with high ranking due to lack of seriousness from others reviewers.
  • I do believe, we have influencers, unfortunately, there is no way to detect them but it is very obvious when a POI does not meet a criteria but they do get approved, I will give you some Examples; Photo Quality , POI location ( being moved away from the original point to another area to fill the empty cell ) , Nominating the same Volleyball Court ( Multiples, right next to each other, referring them as North and South, being on same cells or barely on the next cell, but being the same POI ).

This issue has become persistent causing excellent reviewers Rank to drop due to a high volume of Disagreements. As a Result, We have decided to reduce our amount of reviewing per day, to allow the current decisions to catch up. I used to review a High volume of Nominations for a year or, and maintained the highest Rank during that time. This discussion is for Feedback purpose only. Hoping this feedback is taken into consideration.


Thank you

Comments

  • WandHerring-PGOWandHerring-PGO Posts: 139 ✭✭✭✭

    Oh the reason can be easily boiled down to:

    Reviewing is a unrewarding activity they tried to offload to the community to convert our good will into free labor. Either because of a lack of design, but most likely a lack of allocated budget, the whole system has been stripped to the most functionally bare-bone version possible, where playing by the (unclear) rules gets you way less reward than cheating in one way or another so anyone a bit unscrupulous will try to push the boundaries to get the most out of the system. The few people who still wants to engage with the community are frustrated and the ambiance has turned sour, turning away new reviewers. Now, they're back at hiring people to do much of the review.

    If Niantic wants to stir things for the better, they need to start investing significantly to improve quality of life and filter coal before it hits the reviewers queue. For instance, they could reject all submission where the main an supporting picture are the same, or make some word analysis between the submission title and nearby stops to spot potential duplicates, and reroute them to internal reviewing. They also need to start cracking down on abuse by using some serious data analysis to determine abusive communities. People keep reporting that their upgraded nominations are getting rejected at a much higher rate, that's something that can be easily verified both globally, and locally; see if some area have a tendencies to reject nomination much further from them. You can also compare spot density/approval rate, places with an already dense spot concentration should have less POI to submit, but if things continue to get submitted and approved at an above average rate, maybe a local community is coordinating themselves to approve coal. Likewise, you can use word analysis to see if there are submissions that they would typically want accepted, but is getting rejected at an abnormal rate, that might indicate that people are ill-informed about the criteria and they can improve their doc...

    Solutions are there.

  • BattleTARDIS-PGOBattleTARDIS-PGO Posts: 46 ✭✭✭

    Well, the game is trending towards the ridiculous when it comes to nominations now. I know that everyone thinks the garden gnomes and lawn sprinklers, or worse yet, the nonstop dog poop station nominations are just quick and easy 1*s to help everyone get their upgrades but are upgrades really worth it? Especially when time and time again we see the nonsensical posts about how unfair reviewers are because we didn't approve a piece of wood that someone placed over a drainage ditch and then claimed is a historic bridge. To make matters worse, if you respond to the abusive posts from these people you get a warning from the moderators. Its bad enough the moderators are allowing people to make posts that are generally abusive to the reviewers but then to jump in and send an email that is insulting, condescending and down right disrespectful if you respond to any of those posts, that's not geared towards promoting participation. I don't know what is going on at Niantic but they are rapidly turning a game that used to be fun, and had some festive events into an increasingly toxic experience that fewer and fewer people seem to be taking part in. I remember when hundreds of people would show up at parks for community day. Those days seem gone and while people may blame the quarantine, Niantic deserves most of the blame. They've done a lot to abuse and alienate their fan base, including those who take the time to review nominations. Oh, and for the moderator who will inevitably send me a nonsensical email about how my criticism is not tolerated in the "safe place" Niantic is creating, don't worry. This is probably the last comment that I will ever post in Niantic's ironically named, Wayfarer Forum. In fact I will probably never even log into it to even read what ever silly little email you end up sending.

  • MysticisHito-PGOMysticisHito-PGO Posts: 6 ✭✭

    Some, not all of them, may be due to an Existent Wayspot in the same cell, or the POI that they have been trying to nominate, has been already approved but wont showing up in the game, due to an existent Wayspot in the same cell or within 20 meters. ( This is one of the most commons reasons I have seen so far, talking about that, I Just finished reviewing one Nomination, which already has been nominated and approved, it's on the system, but not on the game, due to multiple wayspots within 20 meters.

    Yes, you are right! many communities are coordinating throughout multiples platform to get wayspots approved, which a small groupd of those Nominations shouldn't be. I am one of those people that believes, we shouldn't receive cases from our local community, anything within 0-50 Kilometers from your Gaming Zone, shouldn't be able to receive a case from. Anything after 51km+ should be good to go, just my opinion.

  • 26thDoctor-PGO26thDoctor-PGO Posts: 4,922 ✭✭✭✭✭

    From the FourSquare incident to the in house reviews done by Niantic to many other minor incidents over the last few years it has become pretty clear that any ideal that Niantic have about wayspot quality doesn't match up to the reality.

    To be fair why should they expend time, money and work hours having fewer but higher quality wayspots. They can just issue another localised challenge which you may or may not get the rewards for and have 20,000 new poi over a couple of weeks.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @The26thDoctor-PGO have you thought that your view of "reality" doesnt match up to the ideal that Niantic has?

  • 26thDoctor-PGO26thDoctor-PGO Posts: 4,922 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Possibly, potentially, probably most likely.

    I'm ok with having brothels, McDonalds, Starbucks etc as poi. It would have been nice to know from the start though and I wouldn't have spent my time searching for postboxes and stinkpipes...

  • URWhatUKnow-INGURWhatUKnow-ING Posts: 84 ✭✭✭


    Please, do continue your stay here, but change your mindset. You are obviously caring way too much about WF and the quality of portals, when Niantic who owns the IP doesn't.


    You will find these boards can be heavily entertaining 😂

  • Emoji7B-PGOEmoji7B-PGO Posts: 32 ✭✭
    edited October 2021

    The biggest problem I see today is the simple and pure lack of standardization of wayspots. It doesn't make much sense for you to have several Games, play only one to reach the level and ask for that point that will only appear in the game you don't play.

    If there were simply no "s17 cells" and only a fixed space for not appearing 2 points in the same place, the problem would end and the precision of the points would increase a lot.

    90% of site exchange requests are for cell groups. Eradicating them and balancing the receipt of items would solve a big problem of accuracy that exists in the game.

    Post edited by Emoji7B-PGO on
  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The main problem is still that most of the reviewers think they are reviewing wayspots for a database that has some sorts of value to the society.

    -> Some think their main goal is to have "posh" Portals in Ingress (Pls dont move them! They are anchors!)

    -> Some think their main goal is to have "as much as possibl pokerstopz" (Pls dont move that pokestop! Theres gonna be an ex-raid eligible Gym soon (maybe!))

    -> Some think their main goal is to have a Homespot/and/or homegym in Pokemon Go/Home-Portal in Ingress to cling to like the last floating part of the Titanic

    Reality Check: None of this has any cultural value to the society. These are just photos of things that are out there in Reality. Adding these to a Metauniverse might be entertaining playing a game on a smartphone while sitting on the loo, AFTERALL this is just entertainment.

    For this purpose only, just check the places that Pikmin Bloom has (that your pikmin bring you stuff) - THESE ARE JUST ENTRIES FROM THE PHONE BOOK. You might as well get used to the idea that Niantic just adds gyms and portals and pokerstops depending on the size of your local Yellow Pages !

  • Shilfiell-INGShilfiell-ING Posts: 1,560 Ambassador

    Individual game spacing and design are not Wayfarer issues, and Wayfinders are submitting and reviewing a shared database only. Most games are partnerships (with Nintendo, WB Games, The Pokemon Company...) and those game partners design things to the scale that works for their concept.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That may be the case, @Shilfiell-ING - in the end, there are 2 people here that submit and play the WB Game, and maybe 5 that do Ingress, and 50.000 that are here because of the Nintendo-Game.

  • Emoji7B-PGOEmoji7B-PGO Posts: 32 ✭✭
    edited October 2021

    Yes, there is a DESIGN problem.

    When you create different games with the same database and players, the community will manipulate it to help a single game, not to help the database itself.

    A question for you. When you are reviewing a local edit on wayfarer. Why these edit exists? To put the poi on right place ir to move to a free cell?

    Both ingress and Pogo players tends A LOT to move a poi to Benefity themselfs or local community. Try to fight this is Like walking on a wall you can't break, And if someone manages to put the dot in the right place, someone will again go there and move it back to the wrong place because of cell. Creating an endless loop, if this isn't a design issue then I don't know what is.

    I DON'T KNOW WHY NIANTIC CREATED ANOTHER GAME WITH DIFFERENT POINTS, IF PIKMIN BLOOM HAS HOW TO MAKE NEW NOMINATIONS IN THE FUTURE, IT WILL ONLY MAKE THE PROBLEM WORSE, KEEP MY WORDS.

    Post edited by Emoji7B-PGO on
  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    the problem only intensifies with PIKMIN GO Eh Bloom having a different system. Ppl will start trying to manipulate the game board again for different reason.

  • Roli112-PGORoli112-PGO Posts: 2,236 Ambassador

    Pikmin has the same spacing Transformers does.

  • PlutoIsSad-PGOPlutoIsSad-PGO Posts: 188 ✭✭✭

    A lot of the repeats in nominations are by people who don't know a wayspot has been approved but is in another game or too close to another wayspot to appear in game. Seeing the pokestop beside pokestop in some places makes people think they can still be done like that. I'm assuming that it's "still" because I was downtown and thought "wow, some pokestops are so close together".

    As to not reviewing with 50km locally that would mean people in Hong Kong couldn't review anything there. People in smaller countries would be getting more reviews from outside their countries, possibly in other languages. People on islands in the Pacific couldn't review their own area. People in very rural areas would have to rely on people hundreds of kilometres away to review for them.

    There will always be people trying to game the system by cheating on nominations. It can be infuriating to people who see a lot of it. One would hope that local players would identify and report these. This is where Niantic could improve. More internal review of reported abuse.

Sign In or Register to comment.