Appeal system
LukeAllStars-ING
Posts: 4,625 Ambassador
Currently, you can appeal one nomination every 30d.
But why not doing a system like this?:
Appeal accepted -> imediately able to appeal again
Appeal denied -> wait the full 30d for the next appeal.
I got quite a lot of appealable nominations and to appeal all of them, I would need around 5 years.
This system might help cleaning the "backlog" and wouldnt make stupid rejections that bad.
Comments
+1
Agreed, we are waiting over a year for a submission to clear voting without an upgrade in many areas, just to get a silly rejection reason half of the time. It's going to take too long to submit all the bad decisions that Ive already had, plus I usually earn 2-3 upgrades per month so any new bad decisions are just getting added on to the queue. You shouldnt have to wait if your appeal is valid. Just one appeal at a time and you get penalised 30 day cool-down period for a bad appeal. This will incentivise people to use appeals on the most worthy POI, improving the overall quality of POI.
If somebody thinks a sub is worth appealing then they have probably already resubmitted it. If we can get more genuine POI appealed and accepted this could also help ease the queue times as resubmissions can be withdrawn or easily marked duplicate by reviewers.
This is assuming appeals will take less then 30 days.
And how about an "Appeal next" designator? I have a mental prioritization of appeals I want to focus on, but I may forget the order of the one I'd decided on next that might be slightly more important with timing. 30 days is just long enough to forget to check back in at, too, and any missed minutes/hours/days will really add up to bit getting full use out of them.
I dont know if its worth starting a new post or just adding to this one, but a question I've been thinking about asking
Is there an expected length of time an appeal will be in for, like, does bionic see an appeal being shorter than a month? 2 months? 10 months? It woukd help with choosing what to appeal, for example, if they envisage an appeal taking a month, it would be good to use that in city centers, but if it is going to take over a year, why waste time when just resubmitting might be better
I was wondering this as well. I can pretty easily resubmit mine entirely (maybe without an upgrade so that it goes to local reviewers instead)
Also, there should be a way to withdraw an appeal. If someone else also nominates the same PoI and it gets accepted for them, I don't want my appeal making the appeals queue unnecessarily longer.
We don't know how long Niantic will take to review an appeal. It could take months.
For places I won't get to for a long time (or ever again) I'd appeal. For ones I can just do again if I'm within 10km I'd resubmit.
The backlog of appeals is growing with no reported outcomes. In some cases, Explorers worked hard to earn an upgrade, did their diligence with their nomination, and had it rejected for inaccurate/overzealous reviewers.
Shouldn't nominations that were upgraded in the review system the first time around also be prioritized in appeals?
For ones I would simply reuse my existing pics and possibly update the description? Absolutely, just a simple resubmit. And for ones I could "just" go back to in person in order to try and take fresh pictures maybe from another angle? Probably too, I would simply resubmit those too.
But I've got a few "ugly" things where I can more fully describe their relevance and importance within the 3000 or so characters in the appeals, but cannot for the life of me convince non-local reviewers of their validity inside the ~250 characters of description/supporting texts. So I'm currently reserving my appeals for THOSE submissions.
What will be expected for appeals?
"[City] Church"
"Church"
"Need more stops"
These types of nominations are common and should be accepted but sometimes get denied. The advice is always "resubmit with better text." Will this text be good enough for Niantic appeal approvals?
We shouldnt have to keep wasting time resubmitting and waiting for valid POI though, especially if we have already worked to get upgrades. I'm using my appeals on the ones that clearly meet criteria but have been rejected multiple times, either by lazy reviewers or trolls. Hopefully, Niantic plan to educate and/or reprimand the worst offenders. If they dont they will be stuck dealing with appeals forever.
Although unlikely, it would also be nice if we could get a complimentary upgrade, if one was used and falsely rejected. A speedy resolution is the only reward for all the reviews we do.
As its already voted on a d one of the top, I think this question would suit
Would niantic be willing to explain the appeals a bit more. I.e who's doing it (I k ow they said niantic themselves, but Is it workers at niantic in their free time, specific department, hiring someone), how long they expect it to take an appeal, would an upgraded nomination that was appealed get priority, will certain areas get more priority, will people with better wayfarer ratings or review counts get more priority? Really it seems they just said "appeals are here" without actually explaining what is involves
I'm starting to think that there's a bigger picture. I think that 4 things that have all been extensively discussed here are actually connected. These things are:
- appeals going live
- lots of inexplicable rejections
- faster resolution speeds in previous "only upgraded subs get resolved" areas
- an increase in the amount of submissions (only live in PoGo so far).
I believe Niantic has changed something about the settings and fewer votes are now enough to sink a submission. This has allowed areas witg long backlogs to start moving - but at the price of making things much harder to get accepted. I myself have had things rejected that would normally be easy acceptances - sports fields, community garden allotments, playgrounds, scientific institutions.
To counterbalance these rejections (which Niantic coule probably predict looking at rhe vote history of older accepted submissions), they decided to increase the number of available submissions and make appeals possible (for long-distance nominations you can't resubmit).
In the last week I've had 30 noms come back (massive difference from usual) and mostly have been accepted, even ones I thought had 50/50 chance at best. I've still had some annoying rejections like grade b listed buildings (national importance) or annoying reasons like photo quality or the dreaded "historical significance". So I think they've just dropped the thresholds
I've had a lot more nominations returned than usual, too. But my experience is much less positive. Things that should be easy acceptances are rejected. One of the latest was a public playground that's visible on Street View and the supporting picture shows the house number of the closest apartment building. As much proof as possible, and still rejected.
I think we need to be able to withdraw appeals. Similar to the issue I am having with a nomination in voting that someone else got through while mine was being decided on. If the wayspot goes live, then there is no need to tie up Niantic's time re-reviewing mine.
@NianticTintino-ING can you pass that suggestion along?
Now if I could only withdraw my nomination in voting that I know will be a duplicate if it ever reaches a decision.
I notice we cant appeal things marked as duplicates. What if something is repeatedly incorrectly marked as a duplicate?
I also think it would be good if we could upload an optional third picture to support our appeal.
But we can appeal duplicates. I have actually appealed one.
@Nadiwereb-PGO Hmmm, Theres no button next to mine when I looked today. Maybe a glitch, I'll look again tomorrow.
@Nadiwereb-PGO Indeed there is now an appeal button next to my duplicates.
Ich könnte in den letzten Tagen täglich einen Appell starten. Ist allerdings noch nichts mit passiert
Typical Niantic, the appeal system is broken the day it's released....pathetic.
I think it's safe by now to assume they won't necessarily do that :)
Probably not the right place to suggest this, but I believe the goal of having local players vote on local submissions is to have people who know the area vote on them as they have first hand knowledge of the submissions eligibility. However, some of my rejections lately show that either the local voter either does not have knowledge of the area or they do not have knowledge of the eligibility criteria. Could a selection be put in place for a voter to admit to not having appropriate knowledge to satisfactorily meet their obligation of voting? It could be used the same way as a skip. In fact, that’s generally how I use my skips anyway. Once I run out of skips, I stop voting until the next day.