Trashy submissions and unreasonable rejections: Time for a Wayfarer-Clean-Up?!

Every Ingress-player with lvl 10 or PoGO-trainer with level 38 can be part of our Wayfarer-system, they can submit POIs and they can review submissions. Good?

Here's what I see:

1.) There are so many garbage submissions, e.g. "Nice old tree". This is not only enerving, but all the acceptable POIs are hold back in the system for month. Personally, I've got some submissions in queue for over a year, now. Ridicilous!

2.) There are so many acceptable submissions, that recently got rejected in our community. Some of my submissions got rejected with some of the weirdest reasons, e.g. a mosque and a youth center/concert hall (public places) got rejected, because they should be on a private property; a giant city map for hikers and cyclers should not forfill the criteria; fotos that are perfectly shot by daylight with a clear, centered object got rejected, because of bad foto quality; and in Germany, Wayfarers can't see a difference between "Ort ist unangemessen" und "Unangemessener Ort".

And the list continues.


Here's my critic:

The Level of a player and an easy test at the beginning (one can even see the solutions in "How-to"-videos on Youtube) are not enough to ensure both, quality within submissions and quality within the review process. The consequence is, that one has to wait at first month until a submission leaves the queue and then the chances are good, that it gets rejected for no reason, because of the wrong reasons.

And after all this, what can a submitter do, when a good submission gets wrongfully rejected? He/she can re-submit it, wait and pray, that's it. And that's ****. We need a total clean-up in our Wayfarer-system: Just keep those Wayfarers, who know the criteria and who can and want to apply the criteria correctly. Get rid of all others. We don't need them.


What must be done:

1.) We need higher expectations than just the pure level. And we need a harder test.

Just keep out these people, who have no real clue about the games and those who don't want to cope with our POI-criteria.

2.) We must get rid of those Wayfarers, who already passed the test, but still don't know about the criteria or who just don't want to apply them correctly. How?

Give us an option to directly complain about a rejection, that one thinks, that doesn't fit with a correct application of the criteria. Let a Niantic-member review this complaint. In case the complaint is profound, give the reviewer a strike. In case the complaint is not right, give the submitter a strike. If one gets three strikes in a month, you can't review/submit for a year. Enough time to learn about the criteria and to let the good wayfarers do their jobs.


What do you think about this theme, my critic and my solutions? I think, we have to discuss this, as the problem seems to get worse.

Thank you, have a nice day and good luck for all of your submissions. :)

Comments

  • 8rick80-PGO8rick80-PGO Posts: 5 ✭✭

    They already have the great to bad rating and i think thats all to be done right now. however i dont come across lonely trees that often i get nore the "lets place a pojestop ob every sign you see" on a tree education trail or so.

  • phi2458-PGOphi2458-PGO Posts: 164 ✭✭✭

    I agree with your observation. Currently, there exists a lot of garbage submissions in the system, and there are a lot of good submissions that get rejected. Those problems indicate that there is something wrong with the system. I also agree with your analysis of the cause. Current tutorials for newcomers are not enough. However, I don’t think getting rid of Wayfarers is a good idea. Instead, Niantic should provide better tutorials and design a quality assurance mechanism.

    Wayfarer always lacks contributors so that a lot of nominations must wait for over a year. Getting rid of contributors would make the situation worse. I’m not saying that I don’t care about the quality. My point is that education is important. Reviewers may make mistakes, but that does not mean that those reviewers will never understand the criteria. In most cases, it is because reviewers are not aware of their mistakes, and no one tells them about their mistakes.

    The entrance barrier of Wayfarer is high. Newcomers not only need to memorize the criteria but also understand the hidden criteria that only exist in this forum. It is common for newcomers to make mistakes. Once they overcome the entrance barrier, they will become valuable long-term contributors. I don’t think getting rid of someone who makes mistakes is a good idea. If the Wayfarer system deters inexperienced newcomers from reviewing, this system will reach a dead end due to a lack of contributors.


    The following are my suggestions.

    1. Survey what makes newcomers become long-term contributors.

    Several surveys of motivation were carried out in this forum before. However, survival bias exists in those surveys. In other words, most users in this forum are long-term contributors. Those who quit reviewing have no chance to take the surveys.

    I would like to suggest that conduct a similar survey in the Pokemon Go or Ingress forum. In this way, the data could be more comprehensive. Those who quit reviewing will also have a chance to take the survey. Therefore, the factors that hinder newcomers from becoming long-term contributors could be analyzed, and thus help the newcomers overcome the entrance barrier.


    2. Educate the reviewers if they make mistakes.

    We all make mistakes. Take me as an example. I didn’t know the private property rule is specific to single-family property until several months after I started reviewing. The most important thing is that we should learn through our mistakes. Currently, Niantic does little about education. Either submitters or reviewers have little chance to learn through the mistakes. Therefore, they will repeat the same mistakes. To prevent this situation from happening, education is necessary.


    3. Design a quality assurance mechanism.

    Mistakes are common in this system. I also believe that there exist some abusive reviewers who do not follow the rule. As a result, there should be a quality assurance mechanism that mitigates the impact of mistakes. And also prevent abusive reviewers from ruining the system. To achieve this goal, an analysis of reviewers’ behavior patterns is necessary. With the analysis result, Niantic can make their algorithm more accurate. Moreover, Niantic can also take further actions, such as education and punishment.

  • SNJishan-PGOSNJishan-PGO Posts: 9 ✭✭

    I agree. It's kinda frustrating how many fake or ineligible nominations are there. For a couple of I have been finding nominations where submitters are submitting photos of either themselves or people around them like it's a joke. And while rejecting them one after another they gave me a 24 hours ban for repeated action.

  • RNSaga-PGORNSaga-PGO Posts: 33 ✭✭

    There should a temporary ban for submitters who repeatedly get rejected for the same reasons like abuse.

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

    This would only work if the only issue was the wave of garbage submissions flooding the system. The problem is that there's an issue - equally bad, in my opinion - where perfectly eligible submissions are now routinely rejected without any actual reason. I've made a pretty long post about these a few minutes ago - as long as it clears the pre-review (it has a lot of pictures), it should make my stance clear on this matter.

  • ElwynGreygoose-INGElwynGreygoose-ING Posts: 244 ✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2021

    Yes your number 2 is key. We get vexatious nominators who keep submitting the same ineligible candidates over and over again because they never at any stage get a clear, official, unequivocal message saying "this simply isn't eligible because...".

    Similarly, reviewers never get a direct message saying "you really must stop (or start) accepting these".

    Post edited by ElwynGreygoose-ING on
Sign In or Register to comment.