Wonderful, now the appeals are finally being processed (albeit sluggishly) and what is Niantic doing, rejecting a theme bike path! Who or what examines the appeals!?
See, I did say people would want to appeal appeals................
(All across Germany, there are now Reddit threads saying "See - we told you these sorts of signs were not acceptable a Trail Markers - Niantic won't accept them on appeal).
I'm not overly confident Niantic will do a great job with the appeals in non-English-speaking countries. I'm expecting my appeals to be rejected due to Niantic reviewers not understaning my language.
Niantic reviewers are humans and make mistakes. Nominators pointing out those mistakes and inconsistences (correct word?) is natural. But there needs to be a larger amount of finished appeals to make claims of "what Niantic deems acceptable"
Anecdote about infoboards and reviews by Niantic from the last year.
What kind of statement is that please? For the rest, it was a rhetorical question as to who examines the appeals. With this kind of evaluation, the sense of an objection is lost. Why should I suggest a bike path again, earn a new upgrade for it & possibly waste it because the reviewers are not able or use bots to rate it in order to get a rejection and then make an appeal again? sry...don't know what you're thinking, but Niantic can't set criteria and NOT stick to them. First of all, it's pointless to even get rejections for nominations that a blind person would have to accept. and then getting a rejection for a bike path from Niantic itself is just plain stupid. And then to get such a suggestion from someone in the forum instead of supporting crystal clear cases is incomprehensible to me.
But in that case, the first submission was rejected because of the photo, not because it was an invalid submission (according to the rejection message). It wasn't a case of Niantic being inconsistent about their criteria. The second photo is much better than the first, so that's why the second was accepted.
I do agree with your larger point that the community should wait for a larger batch of appeals before reaching conclusions. In addition, it would be very helpful if Niantic could post some updated guidelines as they see what is being appealed. This would include a list of both things that are often wrongly rejected as well as a second list of things that are often wrongly appealed.
Is it possible it was rejected by Niantic for not being able to find the location or because it is a duplicate? Without the rejection reason being included, it's possible it was rejected for something other than not meeting the criteria.
The rejection reasons are not shown, so that's just speculation from you. For all we know, the reviewer might have been a different one. (And as a sidenote, photo doesn't fill the rejection criteria.)
Lack of transparency and unavoidable language & cultural barriers are the biggest reasons I don't have high expectations for the appeal process.
So when it's rejected by other reviewers "the reviewers are not able or use bots to rate it" because "nominations that a blind person would have to accept" and suddendly "and then getting a rejection for a bike path from Niantic itself is just plain stupid"
Maybe if it has been rejected by both reviewers and Niantic, it's not a "nominations that a blind person would have to accept"?
It's not speculation. If you read the whole email, it says "we suggest re-submitting the Portal candidate after improving the photo". It's in the paragraph after the "."
This one is a strike against Niantic's ability to communicate clearly, but not an instance of inconsistent criteria.
Note that we will not be overturning this decision. If you believe your New Portal nomination should have been accepted, we suggest re-submitting the Portal candidate after improving the photo.
That above is just the generic part of the old rejection emails.
Well, unfortunately I can't confirm that. In addition, we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur! Otherwise there would not have to be any objections.
Because this is not my first nomination but one of many. I don't make any suggestions without checking all games (and IITC) to see if a wayspot already exists. In addition, I make a street view sphere at each of the locations to prove not only the location but also the topicality, so no. No duplicate and traceable.
For real? A named & locally well-known cycle path would not have to be accepted? You interfere in half of all posts here in the forum and now you want to tell me that the bike paths that are explicitly mentioned in the criteria and are not only confirmed as "acceptable" in a post by Niantic admins. Do you think they can be ignored ? What supports your statement? I would be interested in that! And yes, I can say that I am one of the few who is definitely not blind.
My statement is simple: you claim that everyone would have to accept your nomination, and it turns out that it has been rejected by two different sets of people. So it's not so clear that everything is OK with your nomination.
Once you're able to find out why it has been rejected (without insulting other people), you might have better luck, specially with the Niantic appeals as you can't blame them to be bots that reject everything.
" Niantic can't set criteria and NOT stick to them"
Oh, I think you will find out they can. We have seen all sorts of confusion caused by unclear Niantic staff comments made in these forums that seem to imply that previously stated criteria can be bent, or ignored or revised under certain circumstances or whatever. This is a particular issue as there are some people who seem to want to analyse the Niantic criteria like a legal document and argue over the slightest difference of wording so as to support their own opinion of eligability.
We also see Waypoints that are clearly ineligible and clearly meet the Niantic removal criteria being reported as such, having the report rejected and, when appealed in here, Niantic saying they will not be removed. At least on a few occasions enough people have asked Niantic to look at some of these for the 3rd time and have actually got them to make a decision that follows their own giudelines.
Part of the problem is that Niantic deliberately leave a lot of "wiggle room" in some of the criteria, if they were more definite about certain things (This one - Yes, that kind on marker - No) then there would be fewer arguments. The continued lack of feedback to reviewers on where they are going wrong on those 30+% of submission they review which don't agree with the "community concensus" does not help.
As I said earlier, I'd like to see some stats on how appeals have turned out once a significant number of appeals have been processed. I agree that quite a lot of the time we see posts about rejected nominations that would appear to tick all the boxes and should have been accepted - hopefully the appeals process will pick up on those. However, i am fairly sure a significant percentage of appeals for a "5* guarenteed eligible, why wasn't this accepted by all you dumb toxic reviewers" submission won't actually be found acceptable, despite a proportion of submitters thinking everything they submit should be accepted.
It's certainly a steep learing curve for any new hires Niantic have taken on to do this task. I presume they are being trained - it would be good if Niantic could share their thoughs along these lines with the review community too.
I don't know if it's because of my bad English, but I didn't blame Niantic for using these bots, but that a large number of reviewers here use them to get points faster personally. I never claimed that "my" nominations should be accepted, but that the criteria should simply be adhered to, regardless of which party. And every time this discussion of theirs that was not asked for. You probably don't currently have a problem with waves of rejection that refer to bike paths, soccer fields or monuments? Then you don't need to get involved if you weren't spoken to, or are you responsible for the department at Niantic here? Of course I'll be unintentionally rude if it's the same with you and your comments every time. I'm smart enough to know when to do something like suggest and what to look for when submitting a suggestion. Unfortunately, there are currently no reasons for a rejection by Niantic. But if the reason is a rejection for a bike path, "Objectionable location" ..or if the reason for a soccer field, "Location not correct: is chosen, then I and other nominators definitely have a reason to get upset. I can currently through our community prove more than 50 such misconduct by reviewers so please don't lecture me that it would be up to me and/or my nominations.
Well, unfortunately I can't confirm that. In addition, we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur! Otherwise there would not have to be any objections.
Any old school Ingress player can tell you that the Niantic in-house reviewers were called portal monkeys, and that the decisions were often arbitrary and capricious.
I have no idea where you got "we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur". Human reviewers will always be fallible. What is Niantic going to do if an in-house reviewer makes a mistake... fire them? Are they going to ban every human reviewer who makes a mistake? If so the pool of reviewers will very quickly dwindle to zero.
BochumJules-PGO's wording may be a bit emotional, but I have to agree with him quite clearly:
If Niantic specifically mentions the example of themed bike paths (hiking trails and signposts as well) in their own official criteria, it is probably a mistake to reject appeals of such nominations (if everything else is correct).
In my opinion, this should be avoided by Niantic's Reviewers as good as possible and therefore it is a good right to draw attention to this issue as a submitter.
Appeals disabled for all now? If so, is that to mitigate the bug making appeals possible 1 per day instead of the intended 1 per month?
Isn't First In, First Out sufficient method to handle the backlog? I've only made one appeal, in December. I want to see the verdict on that one before I decide whether I have more similar cases to appeal or nominate again.
Nobody I've talked to has been able to piece together any logic to the order, but it's definitely not FIFO and doesn't appear regionally based to address low or high density areas.
Maybe they're reviewing by oldest submission date. The rules have GREATLY changed since Sept 2017 (the oldest kept on this system), so there will be a higher percentage of wrongly-rejected to look at. Those nominations have waited the longest time, to see the light of day. For the first year, the reviewer didn't even have to say why they were rejecting, and nothing measured how long they took - you could give 1* to 120 reviews in a minute.
I got an appeal accepted today in Italy. It was a portal first rejected on January 30. The appeal wasn't the first I ever sent, but definitely the first from this city, and it was sent either the same day or within the first week of February
So now that @NianticDanbocat has been let go, who is in charge of this list of items?
I’m interested in this being implemented;
Also in the backlog is displaying the other types of contributions you have made in addition to your nominations. This would be title, description or location edits, or photos you've submitted for review
If it does, it'll be towards the end of the year, look at it this way. Danbo is gone, no replacement happening currently, too busy money printer season, and on the to-do list... if you look waaaay down the list, somewhere near the bottom in very very tiny text, you'll find "Wayfarer".
Comments
Right - no email. 😥 And I don't expect anything to happen with appeals over the weekend.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino @NianticGiffard
Wonderful, now the appeals are finally being processed (albeit sluggishly) and what is Niantic doing, rejecting a theme bike path! Who or what examines the appeals!?
See, I did say people would want to appeal appeals................
(All across Germany, there are now Reddit threads saying "See - we told you these sorts of signs were not acceptable a Trail Markers - Niantic won't accept them on appeal).
Niantic staff review them. You have to resubmit if they’re rejected at Appeal stage if you think they meet criteria. You can’t re-Appeal.
Then I hope you're also pointing them to the examples where Niantic approved Burger King and Starbucks with PoGO associated text.
I'm not overly confident Niantic will do a great job with the appeals in non-English-speaking countries. I'm expecting my appeals to be rejected due to Niantic reviewers not understaning my language.
Niantic reviewers are humans and make mistakes. Nominators pointing out those mistakes and inconsistences (correct word?) is natural. But there needs to be a larger amount of finished appeals to make claims of "what Niantic deems acceptable"
Anecdote about infoboards and reviews by Niantic from the last year.
At 11::00, no.
At 11:08, yes.
What kind of statement is that please? For the rest, it was a rhetorical question as to who examines the appeals. With this kind of evaluation, the sense of an objection is lost. Why should I suggest a bike path again, earn a new upgrade for it & possibly waste it because the reviewers are not able or use bots to rate it in order to get a rejection and then make an appeal again? sry...don't know what you're thinking, but Niantic can't set criteria and NOT stick to them. First of all, it's pointless to even get rejections for nominations that a blind person would have to accept. and then getting a rejection for a bike path from Niantic itself is just plain stupid. And then to get such a suggestion from someone in the forum instead of supporting crystal clear cases is incomprehensible to me.
@BochumJules-PGO If your expectation is that Niantic reviewers will be infallible then I recommend you reset your expectations.
I lived through the first round of Niantic in-house reviews. The results were slightly better than what one would get from monkeys throwing darts.
But in that case, the first submission was rejected because of the photo, not because it was an invalid submission (according to the rejection message). It wasn't a case of Niantic being inconsistent about their criteria. The second photo is much better than the first, so that's why the second was accepted.
I do agree with your larger point that the community should wait for a larger batch of appeals before reaching conclusions. In addition, it would be very helpful if Niantic could post some updated guidelines as they see what is being appealed. This would include a list of both things that are often wrongly rejected as well as a second list of things that are often wrongly appealed.
Is it possible it was rejected by Niantic for not being able to find the location or because it is a duplicate? Without the rejection reason being included, it's possible it was rejected for something other than not meeting the criteria.
The rejection reasons are not shown, so that's just speculation from you. For all we know, the reviewer might have been a different one. (And as a sidenote, photo doesn't fill the rejection criteria.)
Lack of transparency and unavoidable language & cultural barriers are the biggest reasons I don't have high expectations for the appeal process.
I hope I'm wrong.
So when it's rejected by other reviewers "the reviewers are not able or use bots to rate it" because "nominations that a blind person would have to accept" and suddendly "and then getting a rejection for a bike path from Niantic itself is just plain stupid"
Maybe if it has been rejected by both reviewers and Niantic, it's not a "nominations that a blind person would have to accept"?
Or everyone is blind but you?
It's not speculation. If you read the whole email, it says "we suggest re-submitting the Portal candidate after improving the photo". It's in the paragraph after the "."
This one is a strike against Niantic's ability to communicate clearly, but not an instance of inconsistent criteria.
Note that we will not be overturning this decision. If you believe your New Portal nomination should have been accepted, we suggest re-submitting the Portal candidate after improving the photo.
That above is just the generic part of the old rejection emails.
Well, unfortunately I can't confirm that. In addition, we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur! Otherwise there would not have to be any objections.
Because this is not my first nomination but one of many. I don't make any suggestions without checking all games (and IITC) to see if a wayspot already exists. In addition, I make a street view sphere at each of the locations to prove not only the location but also the topicality, so no. No duplicate and traceable.
For real? A named & locally well-known cycle path would not have to be accepted? You interfere in half of all posts here in the forum and now you want to tell me that the bike paths that are explicitly mentioned in the criteria and are not only confirmed as "acceptable" in a post by Niantic admins. Do you think they can be ignored ? What supports your statement? I would be interested in that! And yes, I can say that I am one of the few who is definitely not blind.
My statement is simple: you claim that everyone would have to accept your nomination, and it turns out that it has been rejected by two different sets of people. So it's not so clear that everything is OK with your nomination.
Once you're able to find out why it has been rejected (without insulting other people), you might have better luck, specially with the Niantic appeals as you can't blame them to be bots that reject everything.
" Niantic can't set criteria and NOT stick to them"
Oh, I think you will find out they can. We have seen all sorts of confusion caused by unclear Niantic staff comments made in these forums that seem to imply that previously stated criteria can be bent, or ignored or revised under certain circumstances or whatever. This is a particular issue as there are some people who seem to want to analyse the Niantic criteria like a legal document and argue over the slightest difference of wording so as to support their own opinion of eligability.
We also see Waypoints that are clearly ineligible and clearly meet the Niantic removal criteria being reported as such, having the report rejected and, when appealed in here, Niantic saying they will not be removed. At least on a few occasions enough people have asked Niantic to look at some of these for the 3rd time and have actually got them to make a decision that follows their own giudelines.
Part of the problem is that Niantic deliberately leave a lot of "wiggle room" in some of the criteria, if they were more definite about certain things (This one - Yes, that kind on marker - No) then there would be fewer arguments. The continued lack of feedback to reviewers on where they are going wrong on those 30+% of submission they review which don't agree with the "community concensus" does not help.
As I said earlier, I'd like to see some stats on how appeals have turned out once a significant number of appeals have been processed. I agree that quite a lot of the time we see posts about rejected nominations that would appear to tick all the boxes and should have been accepted - hopefully the appeals process will pick up on those. However, i am fairly sure a significant percentage of appeals for a "5* guarenteed eligible, why wasn't this accepted by all you dumb toxic reviewers" submission won't actually be found acceptable, despite a proportion of submitters thinking everything they submit should be accepted.
It's certainly a steep learing curve for any new hires Niantic have taken on to do this task. I presume they are being trained - it would be good if Niantic could share their thoughs along these lines with the review community too.
I don't know if it's because of my bad English, but I didn't blame Niantic for using these bots, but that a large number of reviewers here use them to get points faster personally. I never claimed that "my" nominations should be accepted, but that the criteria should simply be adhered to, regardless of which party. And every time this discussion of theirs that was not asked for. You probably don't currently have a problem with waves of rejection that refer to bike paths, soccer fields or monuments? Then you don't need to get involved if you weren't spoken to, or are you responsible for the department at Niantic here? Of course I'll be unintentionally rude if it's the same with you and your comments every time. I'm smart enough to know when to do something like suggest and what to look for when submitting a suggestion. Unfortunately, there are currently no reasons for a rejection by Niantic. But if the reason is a rejection for a bike path, "Objectionable location" ..or if the reason for a soccer field, "Location not correct: is chosen, then I and other nominators definitely have a reason to get upset. I can currently through our community prove more than 50 such misconduct by reviewers so please don't lecture me that it would be up to me and/or my nominations.
👍🏻 I can't add anything to that.
@BochumJules-PGO writes:
Well, unfortunately I can't confirm that. In addition, we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur! Otherwise there would not have to be any objections.
Any old school Ingress player can tell you that the Niantic in-house reviewers were called portal monkeys, and that the decisions were often arbitrary and capricious.
I have no idea where you got "we have arrived at a point where mistakes are no longer allowed to occur". Human reviewers will always be fallible. What is Niantic going to do if an in-house reviewer makes a mistake... fire them? Are they going to ban every human reviewer who makes a mistake? If so the pool of reviewers will very quickly dwindle to zero.
BochumJules-PGO's wording may be a bit emotional, but I have to agree with him quite clearly:
If Niantic specifically mentions the example of themed bike paths (hiking trails and signposts as well) in their own official criteria, it is probably a mistake to reject appeals of such nominations (if everything else is correct).
In my opinion, this should be avoided by Niantic's Reviewers as good as possible and therefore it is a good right to draw attention to this issue as a submitter.
Appeals disabled for all now? If so, is that to mitigate the bug making appeals possible 1 per day instead of the intended 1 per month?
Isn't First In, First Out sufficient method to handle the backlog? I've only made one appeal, in December. I want to see the verdict on that one before I decide whether I have more similar cases to appeal or nominate again.
Appeals disabled for all now?
Isn't First In, First Out sufficient method to handle the backlog?
Nobody I've talked to has been able to piece together any logic to the order, but it's definitely not FIFO and doesn't appear regionally based to address low or high density areas.
Maybe they're reviewing by oldest submission date. The rules have GREATLY changed since Sept 2017 (the oldest kept on this system), so there will be a higher percentage of wrongly-rejected to look at. Those nominations have waited the longest time, to see the light of day. For the first year, the reviewer didn't even have to say why they were rejecting, and nothing measured how long they took - you could give 1* to 120 reviews in a minute.
I got an appeal accepted today in Italy. It was a portal first rejected on January 30. The appeal wasn't the first I ever sent, but definitely the first from this city, and it was sent either the same day or within the first week of February
So now that @NianticDanbocat has been let go, who is in charge of this list of items?
I’m interested in this being implemented;
Also in the backlog is displaying the other types of contributions you have made in addition to your nominations. This would be title, description or location edits, or photos you've submitted for review
If it does, it'll be towards the end of the year, look at it this way. Danbo is gone, no replacement happening currently, too busy money printer season, and on the to-do list... if you look waaaay down the list, somewhere near the bottom in very very tiny text, you'll find "Wayfarer".
Does it go;
Pokémon GO
Peridot
Campfire
Pikmin Bloom
Ingress
Transformers: Heavy MetalCatan World ExplorersHarry Potter Wizards UniteNBA All World
Unannounced Project 1
Unannounced Project 2
What to get for lunch
ᵂᵃʸᶠᵃʳᵉʳ
Pretty much nailed it there.