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Wayfarer effectively dead due to mass & random invalid rejection reasons

bruegae-PGObruegae-PGO Posts: 2 ✭✭
edited March 2022 in Report a Bug

Dear Ninatic, @NianticDanbocat , @NianticGiffard , @NianticTintino ,

 

Over the few years I got hundreds of wayspots successfully accepted via OPR and Wayfarer. But since the time you changed the maximum nominations to 40 in PoGo a few weeks ago me and others from my area are experiencing the following:

  • Duration until a nomination is reviewed dropped from 2-4 months to 1-2weeks
  • Quality of the results dropped massively. E.g. dozens of meter² big football yards or playgrounds are rejected with completely invalid reasons e.g. „location not found“ or „unsafe location“. The mentioned reasons can be proven wrong by looking 1 second at google maps.
  • My personal approval rate of my nominations dropped from ~75%+ to ~10% since things changed.

To prove my statements I attached some examples as images:


 

I suspect

  • That a bug has found its way into the voting algorithm on your side AND/OR
  • that voters are using false rejections reasons for an unknown reason. These people should be automatically detected by your system and banned.

 

Under these conditions Wayfarer is effetely dead in our area. So I beg you: Do something about it!

 

Thanks & Regards

bruegae

Post edited by NianticGiffard on
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Comments

  • ForzaComo-INGForzaComo-ING Posts: 187 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2021

    The voters have been using false rejection reasons for ages - there is nothing new about that behaviour. That is most likely because that is the easiest and fastest way to get an upgrade for your own nomination.

    Also abuse can be used to get your edit requests approved, to move PoI's for example. Many people spamming rejections and voting a spesific way to certain edits is not a new thing either.

    This is usually a local problem (concerning the cell where your nominations are). We had it in Finland where I live, it took some time, abusers got their home PoI's and things got back to normal - no excessive abuse in here now.

    I agree, abusers should be dealt with more harshly. Just a warning or ban from Wayfarer is not enough, they should be given bans in games they play to make it effective.

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

    i dont know how often i said it on this forums - wayfarer is broken -

    the nu-crew did it again; it is even more broken.

  • Nadiwereb-PGONadiwereb-PGO Posts: 1,119 ✭✭✭✭✭

    These look like good nominations that should've been accepted. (Except for the fountain, I'm not sure about that.) Unfortunately, valid things being rejected has been an issue for a long time, and that's why many of us are looking forward to the upcoming rejection appeal feature.

    That being said, the thing that caught my eye in your post was that "Duration until a nomination is reviewed dropped from 2-4 months to 1-2 weeks". That is new information to me and I cannot confirm it - my non-Upgraded nominations remain firmly In Queue. Last week, Niantic decided to snatch all my pending submissions and review them (badly, just look at my appeals in my post history), but both before and after that, nothing moves in Budapest unless it's upgraded.

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

    @Nadiwereb-PGO yes i can confirm that voting in certain places has sped up. This wont apply to areas like London, Budapest or New York, Rio, Tokio. These places are just filled up to the brim with wayspots and Niantic certainly has no interest to have this areas reviewed.

    They are likely "off".

    In "normal" cells the duration certainly has come down to 1-3 weeks for the rejection. Yes, the rejection. maybe @NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino still wont believe it, but yes, theres another bug in the system.

  • Nadiwereb-PGONadiwereb-PGO Posts: 1,119 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I see. I haven't seen any difference in my rural nominations, either, though. Maybe the two things are connected.

  • Juleswtal-PGOJuleswtal-PGO Posts: 32 ✭✭✭

    I can confirm what has been written earlier. I've had more submissions rejected during the last 7-10 days than during the 2.5 years. I used to have 70-80% of my submissions accepted before. I know that some of my submissions are 50/50 or even less, but most of them are playgrounds, information signs, memorials, football fields, sculptures etc, so POIs that usually are accepted 80% or more times. The reasons are totally random as well.

    @Nadiwereb-PGO the voting/queue times have reduced here (Ingolstadt, Bavaria) as well. Most of my submissions used to be stuck in queue or voting for months or even over a year, but now many of my recent submissions have already been rejected, and also most of my old submissions that were in voting forever have all been rejected within a few days, which I don't think is usual or normal.

    I have made similar experiences with my submissions from Innsbruck (AUT), Hall (AUT) and San Sigismondo (ITA), as shown below. I really hope Niantic will look into this soon, it's a shame how many countless great Wayspots have been wasted the last days..


  • Hitchhiker79-PGOHitchhiker79-PGO Posts: 63 ✭✭✭

    Here is an example @Nadiwereb-PGO look at the timestamp

    Submitted on November 19 and declined on 11/24

    Submitted again that day and rejected again today. And once with an upgrade and once without.

  • Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat further I'd like to add examples of me and my PGO-folks. I'm sure, that I can present you dozens of rejected nominations, that could be helpful for your investigation.

    But it wouldn't make sense, if you crawl through all of our submissions from the last few weeks. There are a lot of re-submissions of valid but weak/shaky candidates in between - these are somehow expected rejections. Examples: Unusual hiking trail markers ... medieval mineshafts, that look like natural features on 1st sight ..... very unusual candidates like medieval canal bridges in the middle of a forest (very unimpressive on 1st sight, but nethertheless UNESCO world heritage) .... stuff like this is not helpful to be examined for this issue. If the reason for this bug is a reviewing cabal or reviewing bots, then such submissions would be red herings for your staff ... and if the reason is somehow a reviewer cabal or a bot network, then these submissions could lead to wrongful actions against normal reviewers.

    So I see two types of useful nominations here:

    • rejected things, that should normally be 5* no brainers
    • big samples of similar candidates, where the success rate dropped for unknown reason


    The 5*-no-brainers

    The most crazy rejections are in this thread: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/25650/most-disgusting-rejections-of-the-last-days#latest


    The big sample

    .... that we submitted in 3 waves until now, where a big drop in the success rate could be observed.

    Where and what?

    Germany, Saxony - biking trail "Muldetalradweg". Between the town Aue and the village Wolfsgrün (part of the town Eibenstock) this biking trail replaces a removed railway. Although the rails were removed, most of the distance markers of this former railway were renewed and reinstalled along this trail.

    Example: https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=50.557185,12.689183&z=17&pll=50.557185,12.689183

    What do these numbers say? It's a distance measure to the town Chemnitz, so this one 55.8km. So the range of our submissions until now is No 53.2 up to 62.9 ..... this means we started at the towns exit of Aue (maybe there are a few more within the town, dunno) and ended at Blauenthal (part of the town Eibenstock)

    I'd like to add, that these distance markers are proxy objects for the advertising of the trail. The example from above appears very prominent at infoboards:


    More details in this thread .... since I had also a Niantic inhouse rejection for one of them, I started an appeal. I'm aware, that these stones aren't 5* no-brainers, but they are wayspot worthy. They are somehow sights along a biking trail, so they fulfill the criteria for exploration and exercising, somehow as intermediate thing between "monument object" and "trail marker" (to say it in words of your categories). There is a distance of 100m between each neighbored stones - that should be okay in front of the (outdated) rule for objects installed in a series, since they don't create strange wayspot clusters, agents can only interact with one, trainers (with the 80m range) also only with 2 of them at the same time. That's balanced for the integrity of the gameboards.

    Further: the success rate of the 1st submission wave agrees with my point of view, that they are valid candidates. The success rate is better then the success chance for eligible average hiking trail markers.


    Map with the submission waves:

    The first wave, all done with PGO ..... can't do the exact counts, since I did a few re-submits with ING, but the success rate was so high, that we even have withdrawn 2 of them. Besides that we got few rejections, because one of my folks forgot to insert our copy/paste description and supporting statements in wayfarer afterwards ....

    (Reason for withdrawing: we wanted another still pending candidate there to become a gym, and we didn't expect the high success rate of these distance markers. UNESCO world heritage is a better gym candidate than a random chosen milestone, without any doubt). So:


    1st wave - date: October 18th - estimated success rate: 70%, maybe 80% ....

    (1st submission of all the existing stones with numbers between 56.1 upt to 59.9, except 56.3 and 56.4, because they are inside a tunnel)


    2nd wave - ING-resubmits in the area of the first wave: most of them November 7th - success rate: 4 out of 14

    2nd wave - southern part: date November 9th - success: 3 out of 7

    (1st submission of 60.2 up to 61.2)

    2nd wave - northern part: date November 13th - success: 10 out of 28

    (1st submission of 53.2 up to 56.0)


    3rd wave - date: November 26th - pending (but already 2 rejections, because these two went very fast into voting, no time for editing - so rejected because of dummy texts)

    (1st submission of 61.3 up to 62.9)


    So the drop between October and November is noteworthy, and I hope you find something in our 2nd wave, that leads to the reason for this bug / reviewer cabal / bot network .....



    Few wishes, if you do inhouse re-reviews

    .... for a nice PGO gameboard, if you do the Thanos snap for accepting the dozens of markers:

    Imho they are in PGO perfect stops, but shouldnt be prefered to become gyms. If there are other objects available as gym candidates, please take care, that other wayspots will be upgraded to be a gym. There are two, that are somehow important to me:

    One of them is already a gym. I don't know which one, but .... I'd like to see the other one as a gym too. I don't know, whether someone followed my invocation to prepare both of them as gyms. So when the 2nd gym in this area will be created, then these two are better gym candidates than the 4 milestones in that area, where one of them could be randomly chosen .....


    Besides that a Nia review for another 5* no brainer would be nice, but the problem is partially my fault, partially the fault of sloppy reviewers, and partially the fault of reviewers, that push up too far special rejection reasons ....

    (Location: 50.484523,12.622695 )

    This memorial stone is normally a 5* no brainer, but I missed it during my submission tours during summer 2020 and also spring 2021. I found it accidentally few weeks ago, when I visitted the wayspots, that I already created around there. Problem: it was roughly 5pm and twilight. So the photo needed flashlight. Memorial stone looks nice, but surroundings pitch black. Nethertheless the location can be verified by coordinates, that are listed in wikipedia .....

    so I get bad photo again and again. But plot twist: this stone is in a deep dark spruce forest on the rainy side of the mountains. The location is dark, whenever you might visit it. I guess the main photo is better than evry "daylight" photo there thanks to the flashlight.

    Please release me from this crux with this candidate - at least it was also rejected multiple times within the timeframe of the issue of this thread xD

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

    @NianticDanbocat thank you for your reply, and i hope you had a great turkey time.

    just hand over the rights to investigate to someone from the community.

    you have already outsourced the review process itself to unpartaking thirds, you now could do the

    same with investigating. If you worry about Data Security, just let people see randomized Names like SnakePlizken or LukeSkywalker0123.

    In the end, your NianMinions will do the same, they look at the contribution and see who voted what.

  • Tamadri-INGTamadri-ING Posts: 17 ✭✭

    For information collection. Here is another post. I am very welcome to submit everything that I submitted or that I received rejected in the past month via a screenshot. But it will be a lot, roughly 80 suggestions.

    I apologize again for the double and triple and so on postings in this post. The contribution did not want to be sent and I clicked several times on "Post". And at some point, hours later, I saw what I had done.

  • Hitchhiker79-PGOHitchhiker79-PGO Posts: 63 ✭✭✭

    Maybe that will help a little with the search for clues. This proposal went into the voting today at around 11 a.m. and about 4 - 5 hours later it was rejected. And that's been going on for days.

    @NianticDanbocat

  • dustinyeeaah-PGOdustinyeeaah-PGO Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Here you can see a screenshot how the map looks like right now:


  • Husta2016-INGHusta2016-ING Posts: 41 ✭✭✭
    edited November 2021

    I recently discovered that even stuff that would require an update under regular circumstances has gone into voting and of course it got rejected (within like 24 hours, hardly more). I've seen a lot of cake taking, but this really takes the cake....................................

    Edit: Eastern Zürich area btw.

  • Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2021

    My interpretation of this data with a look at S2 level 6 cells:

    What we know: reviews are distributed mainly by the last locations, where the reviewer was playing the games. So the reviewer will get mainly stuff from their own cell and the 8 surrounding ones. Exceptions are upgraded candidates. They don't count for this and are spread further.

    If the problem is a reviewer cabal or a boting network, then lets try to find plausible regions, where it could be located. What we know until now:

    • The cell of Stuttgart is highly impacted, while the cell of Freiburg im Breisgau (at the left edge of the screenshot) is not affected according to different reports from our community. Same for Zürich in switzerland, only the eastern part is affected. So there is a hard border. That means, that the reason is somewhere in the cells, that include Innsbruck, Munich (=München), Nuremburg (=Nürnberg).
    • For North-South things it's more difficult to locate. My own stuff from the Western Ore Mountains (north end of the cell above Nuremburg) is effected, but not as hard as for example Stuttgart. Then there are reports from northern Italy (the cells around Bozen). That's in north-south direction a range of 4 cells. There is no hard border......

    Putting this together: A possible cabal/botting network is sitting somewhere around the cell border at Munich (=München) ....

    To proof this deeper, we would need some reports from the cells east of Munich. But we have no reports at all from their - neither about being affected nor not affected.The region seems to be underrepresented in our Telegram group ....

    Post edited by Raachermannl-ING on
  • bennet85-PGObennet85-PGO Posts: 3 ✭✭

    After the home adress can be set freely in wayfarer, the bot can be sit anywhere. I think the bots home adress is set to ULM. Another spicy thought I have is that Niantic testing out a AI (whiteout telling someone) who is doing the ratings at the moment.

  • Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That's exactly, why I'd like to see reports from east of Munich .... but even without them your theorys problem is my stuff from the Ore mountains. That wouldnt be effected, if it would be a bonus-location-related thing ...

  • T1gerschaf-PGOT1gerschaf-PGO Posts: 9 ✭✭

    I am playing in south-west Germany too and am experiencing the same problem.

    Waypoints that would meet the criteria get rejected within just a couple of days,

    often with very strange reasons for the rejection.


    4 named trails meet at this bridge. Got rejected 3 Times (I tried to improve the description each time)

    reasons: place not found / bad quality of the photo /doesent meet acceptance criteria


    Nicht akzeptiert

    Upgrade erhalten

    2021-11-25

    Ablehnungskriterien

    Sonstige Ablehnungskriterien

    Beschreibung

    An dieser Stelle treffen der Paneuropa-Radweg, Württemberger Weinradweg, Burgenstraße, Kraichgau-Hohenlohe-Weg und die 4-Täler-Tour aufeinander.

    Fußgängerbrücken, welche Teil eines Rad- bzw. Wanderweges sind, erfüllen

    die Akzeptanzkriterien (siehe:

    https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/9479/bridges).

    Hier treffen 5 Rad- bzw. Wanderwege aufeinander. Diese sind am Wegweiser

    ausgezeichnet.









    After those failed attempts i tried it with the signpost of the named trails but still got rejected for not meeting the acceptance criteria and for not being of historical or cultural importance.













    A very popular café (4,8/5 star rating) got rejected for

    being not temporary/ seasonal

    not meeting the acceptance criteria

    indecent or inappropriante activities are taking place at this location

    not being of historical or cultural importance


  • Xmacke7x-INGXmacke7x-ING Posts: 220 ✭✭✭✭

    The last three nomination are wrongfully rejected. But they are Not rejected because of the same reasons of the other rejections.


    In Germany cycling trails, footbridges and restaurants get rejected all the time because of reviewers not knowing the criteria.


    The other nominations in this thread would normally been approved in Germany.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2021

    @T1gerschaf-PGO yes, these samples you provided are rejected because the majority of reviewers in germany STILL think that the world is flat and that they dont need to be vaccined.

    The mass rejections that occur since a while are a different thing than ppl rejecting bridges and trailmarkers. you can see that by the rejection reasons.

  • Hitchhiker79-PGOHitchhiker79-PGO Posts: 63 ✭✭✭

    I'm just testing around a little. I submitted a new proposal yesterday and upgraded it straight away. This is still in the queue and not put into the vote. That has actually been faster the last few days. I don't know why but I keep watching.

  • Nadiwereb-PGONadiwereb-PGO Posts: 1,119 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'll add some observations, even though I'm not even in a country that neighbours Germany.

    Last weekend/earlier this week, 2 of my nominations went into voting and got accepted within a few day in an area that usually doesn't see any progress without upgrades at all. Non-upgraded nominations in this cell usually take 1.5 years or more to get through the system.

    However, since this happened, I've noticed something silimar to what @Hitchhiker79-PGO is describing. Upgrades don't seem to work any more, or at least not in the same way they previously did. I have two upgraded nominations currently that haven't entered voting in days.

  • Hitchhiker79-PGOHitchhiker79-PGO Posts: 63 ✭✭✭

    Test completed. After the proposal had been waiting in the queue for 2 days with an upgrade, it went quickly again today. Voting at around 12:00 p.m. and rejected at 3:00 p.m. Are there any news? @NianticDanbocat @NianticGiffard @NianticTintino

This discussion has been closed.