Let me tell you something, when your ENTIRE PRODUCT relies on a volunteer workforce, you better LISTEN to them and MOVE FAST when they are upset. This ain't Pokemon GO where people will keep playing because they are addicted and have friends who they want to play with. This is a tedious grind that we do alone out of the pure goodness of our hearts to make the playing board better for people who don't even realize that we've done anything for them. When that army of volunteers goes on strike it's a baaaaaaaad thing. Some portion of them may never come back after this debacle.
The longer you take to resolve this (and the longer you stay quiet about it), the more people you are disenfranchising.
Well said, and I am one of those on strike until this is fixed. But all those people who never come to the forum probably will continue, and the accept/rejects are going to be more and more random.
Thanks for giving me the last reason to stop reviewing and nominating, after months (years?) of questionable "features" and decisions. At some point everyone will get tired and stop doing free work for you.
You have 12 -1 ambassadors that are under a NDA, I think that most of the wayfarers would fully agree that it would be great if they could be able to provide feedback when you plan such changes and beta test them before they are released to the rest of the community.
Would it be possible for you to comment on why you removed our ability to actively apply upgrades to in voting submissions?
This was surely not driven by a general lack of use of this feature; I'm pretty certain I upgrade more in voting than in queue submissions, and from what I am reading out there, I'm not the only one. This is a huge change for the worse and will either doom many excellent submissions to languish for years or cause queues in slow areas to become more bogged down as people resubmit things in order to upgrade them while they are fresh and still in the queue.
You have basically broken upgrades for me; everything I had hoped to upgrade in the near future is in voting.
As a result, I won't be doing any more reviewing until this is fixed. I have seen many very prolific reviewers post here and elsewhere that they will also not be reviewing until this is fixed. I don't know if enough people will make this move for you to notice it in your metrics, but this is a huge slap in the face to your community of volunteers regardless.
Thank you all for the feedback. We have been collecting all of the feedback and spoke about it with the Ambassadors in the meeting we just had. We will take this back to the team and get back to you all when there's more to share.
OK. We have heard from Niantic. I'm not super thrilled with the answer because it reads like "this is working as planned." But at least we know they have spoken with the Ambassadors (who get it). That's better than feeling like our feedback went into a black hole.
@NianticTintino-ING Can we know when we can expect an update? Is this something that is being expedited or will it be swept under the rug like the ability to withdraw nomination in voting? 3 months later and no updates on that.
It's a very lumpy rug. Remember the Nov 2020 AMA promise (after the criteria overhaul) "we are already working on reviewing past rejections starting with the Generic Business category." Remember the promise to review appeals? They aren't even looking at a cross-section of those promises: Appeals of nominations rejected 2017-2020.
Upgrade next is an essentials feature. Especially as the agreements allways lag behind and you plan ahead which one you want to upgrade next (already annoying enough to scroll through 402 queue and 130 in voting) mostly at night to have it applied by waking up next day
This is how it worked before, but with the new manual upgrade function, it's not really necessary anymore - you can just apply the upgrade after you got it. The major issue is not being able to upgrade nominations already in voting. Sure, you can just "Hold" new nominations until you get the upgrade, but that doesn't solve the problems with already existing nominations and is completely counter-intuitive.
It's not vital, but it's very nice to have. I'd like to be able to set "upgrade next" and forget it instead of having to constantly check to see if I got that upgrade and then manually apply it, which will end up slowing things down. Like others who have posted, I enjoy being able to have upgrades apply after I go to bed and wake up to an answer, for example. But, yep, the in voting thing is the true mind-boggling deal breaker.
But the automatic upgrade that hit last night before I turned it off upgraded something that has been in voting (in voting over a year, I believe).
At this point, most of the nominations I care about are in voting and now I cannot upgrade, so I will just have to re-nominate and place immediately on hold. I can release the hold when I earn a new upgrade. What a dump workaround to have to use, and one that will clog up the review system with redundant nominations.
What a mess.
Niantic, if you are listening, if you care, let us upgrade in-voting nominations just like we could do before this new so-called feature.
It would be really nice if you didn't decide that something others have expressed that they want and care about "is not necessary." Oh, maybe you work for Niantic? Cause that seems to be how they "listen."
So, did you actually read what I wrote or you just automatically decided to lash out with a nice ad hominem at the end?
I argued why I don't think it's necessary after recent changes. I do agree with @Ochemist-ING that it might have some perks that I didn't think about, but I stand by what I said: with the new (and horribly implemented) option to assign Upgrades manually after earning them, it's much less necessary than it was before.
The Ambassador group was able to bring this up with Tintino and explained what's been brought up here and in other communities we represent as the voices of the community as well as our own experiences. It will be looked at by the dev team, but this is a process that may take a while. I'm not speaking for Niantic, but this is something I felt we had a positive discussion on.
I wish I could say more at this time but wanted to share what I can.
Lightship could have easily done EASY research months ago. A query on "Upgrade Next" transactions, to get stats on what kinds of things (ages and states of nominations) it's used on. A survey emailed to people with 25+ unresolved nominations. So many possibilities.
Aren't they in L.A. - a big city, so their backlog takes years? If they'd played their own game, and nominated 40 wayspots (or even just 5), they would have seen for themselves what it's like.
Just out of curiosity, is not being able to upgrade "in voting" a bug or is it now working as intended? With the error message you get I am hoping it's a bug.
If not this really is not a good feature ony being able to upgrade nominations in queue. While I use upgrades a lot on newer submissions, usually when I find some area that needs new PoI quickly. I do sometimes go through some of my old ones and give them the nudge they need to get through the voting process.
I don't think they realize how many nominations are in backlog. Or how LONG many nominations wait. Or how many people have more than 10 awaiting decision.
If you assume all nominations complete in a week, and upgrades are only used to shave off a couple days - then this system would be fine.
I would rather they put the effort into clearing the backlog. Vs putting time into a system (upgrading) that is horrible only because of the backlog.
If that's true they really didn't think it through. Only reason something is in queue is for 2 reasons, 1) it's newly submitted or 2) it's blocked by a nearby nomination already in voting.
Comments
Let me tell you something, when your ENTIRE PRODUCT relies on a volunteer workforce, you better LISTEN to them and MOVE FAST when they are upset. This ain't Pokemon GO where people will keep playing because they are addicted and have friends who they want to play with. This is a tedious grind that we do alone out of the pure goodness of our hearts to make the playing board better for people who don't even realize that we've done anything for them. When that army of volunteers goes on strike it's a baaaaaaaad thing. Some portion of them may never come back after this debacle.
The longer you take to resolve this (and the longer you stay quiet about it), the more people you are disenfranchising.
@NianticCasey-ING @NianticAaron @NianticTintino @NianticDanbocat @NianticGiffard
Well said, and I am one of those on strike until this is fixed. But all those people who never come to the forum probably will continue, and the accept/rejects are going to be more and more random.
Thanks for giving me the last reason to stop reviewing and nominating, after months (years?) of questionable "features" and decisions. At some point everyone will get tired and stop doing free work for you.
Dear @NianticDanbocat and @NianticTintino
You have 12 -1 ambassadors that are under a NDA, I think that most of the wayfarers would fully agree that it would be great if they could be able to provide feedback when you plan such changes and beta test them before they are released to the rest of the community.
Definitely thought this was the one actual stated purpose of Ambassadors, to beta test new features.
Evidently the purpose of Ambassadors is to take the brunt of the anger from the community so Niantic employees don't have to deal with it.
@tehstone-Ambo you're a prince
@NianticTintino-ING @NianticDanbocat @NianticGiffard
Would it be possible for you to comment on why you removed our ability to actively apply upgrades to in voting submissions?
This was surely not driven by a general lack of use of this feature; I'm pretty certain I upgrade more in voting than in queue submissions, and from what I am reading out there, I'm not the only one. This is a huge change for the worse and will either doom many excellent submissions to languish for years or cause queues in slow areas to become more bogged down as people resubmit things in order to upgrade them while they are fresh and still in the queue.
You have basically broken upgrades for me; everything I had hoped to upgrade in the near future is in voting.
As a result, I won't be doing any more reviewing until this is fixed. I have seen many very prolific reviewers post here and elsewhere that they will also not be reviewing until this is fixed. I don't know if enough people will make this move for you to notice it in your metrics, but this is a huge slap in the face to your community of volunteers regardless.
Thanks in advance for any feedback you can share.
Thank you all for the feedback. We have been collecting all of the feedback and spoke about it with the Ambassadors in the meeting we just had. We will take this back to the team and get back to you all when there's more to share.
plz tintino.... don't let us down..........
OK. We have heard from Niantic. I'm not super thrilled with the answer because it reads like "this is working as planned." But at least we know they have spoken with the Ambassadors (who get it). That's better than feeling like our feedback went into a black hole.
@NianticTintino-ING Can we know when we can expect an update? Is this something that is being expedited or will it be swept under the rug like the ability to withdraw nomination in voting? 3 months later and no updates on that.
It's a very lumpy rug. Remember the Nov 2020 AMA promise (after the criteria overhaul) "we are already working on reviewing past rejections starting with the Generic Business category." Remember the promise to review appeals? They aren't even looking at a cross-section of those promises: Appeals of nominations rejected 2017-2020.
Upgrade next is an essentials feature. Especially as the agreements allways lag behind and you plan ahead which one you want to upgrade next (already annoying enough to scroll through 402 queue and 130 in voting) mostly at night to have it applied by waking up next day
I completely agree! This is how I work as well.
This is how it worked before, but with the new manual upgrade function, it's not really necessary anymore - you can just apply the upgrade after you got it. The major issue is not being able to upgrade nominations already in voting. Sure, you can just "Hold" new nominations until you get the upgrade, but that doesn't solve the problems with already existing nominations and is completely counter-intuitive.
It's not vital, but it's very nice to have. I'd like to be able to set "upgrade next" and forget it instead of having to constantly check to see if I got that upgrade and then manually apply it, which will end up slowing things down. Like others who have posted, I enjoy being able to have upgrades apply after I go to bed and wake up to an answer, for example. But, yep, the in voting thing is the true mind-boggling deal breaker.
I cannot upgrade something in voting.
But the automatic upgrade that hit last night before I turned it off upgraded something that has been in voting (in voting over a year, I believe).
At this point, most of the nominations I care about are in voting and now I cannot upgrade, so I will just have to re-nominate and place immediately on hold. I can release the hold when I earn a new upgrade. What a dump workaround to have to use, and one that will clog up the review system with redundant nominations.
What a mess.
Niantic, if you are listening, if you care, let us upgrade in-voting nominations just like we could do before this new so-called feature.
It would be really nice if you didn't decide that something others have expressed that they want and care about "is not necessary." Oh, maybe you work for Niantic? Cause that seems to be how they "listen."
Disabling our ability to upgrade nominations in voting was a very very very very very poor decision. On strike.
So, did you actually read what I wrote or you just automatically decided to lash out with a nice ad hominem at the end?
I argued why I don't think it's necessary after recent changes. I do agree with @Ochemist-ING that it might have some perks that I didn't think about, but I stand by what I said: with the new (and horribly implemented) option to assign Upgrades manually after earning them, it's much less necessary than it was before.
Hey folks!
The Ambassador group was able to bring this up with Tintino and explained what's been brought up here and in other communities we represent as the voices of the community as well as our own experiences. It will be looked at by the dev team, but this is a process that may take a while. I'm not speaking for Niantic, but this is something I felt we had a positive discussion on.
I wish I could say more at this time but wanted to share what I can.
Well I for one love the new feature
Lightship could have easily done EASY research months ago. A query on "Upgrade Next" transactions, to get stats on what kinds of things (ages and states of nominations) it's used on. A survey emailed to people with 25+ unresolved nominations. So many possibilities.
Aren't they in L.A. - a big city, so their backlog takes years? If they'd played their own game, and nominated 40 wayspots (or even just 5), they would have seen for themselves what it's like.
Just out of curiosity, is not being able to upgrade "in voting" a bug or is it now working as intended? With the error message you get I am hoping it's a bug.
If not this really is not a good feature ony being able to upgrade nominations in queue. While I use upgrades a lot on newer submissions, usually when I find some area that needs new PoI quickly. I do sometimes go through some of my old ones and give them the nudge they need to get through the voting process.
Might I suggest
@NianticDanbocat@NianticAaron @NianticGiffard
@NianticTintino-ING that if you can roll back this update until it's either fixed or re evaluated that it could be a good idea to do so.Ps I tried deleting some of the tags on this post but it was doing some weird stuff so it wouldn't erase
Thanks for this…..
it is refreshing to have some prompt communication about an issue. 👏
It appears that it’s working exactly as intended. :( They are incredibly out of touch.
I don't think they realize how many nominations are in backlog. Or how LONG many nominations wait. Or how many people have more than 10 awaiting decision.
If you assume all nominations complete in a week, and upgrades are only used to shave off a couple days - then this system would be fine.
I would rather they put the effort into clearing the backlog. Vs putting time into a system (upgrading) that is horrible only because of the backlog.
If that's true they really didn't think it through. Only reason something is in queue is for 2 reasons, 1) it's newly submitted or 2) it's blocked by a nearby nomination already in voting.
I think they fixed it. It seems I can now use upgrades on submissions in voting (haven’t done it yet, but the upgrade button is not grayed anymore).
If you are hopeful then I am hopeful. But I am still on reviewing strike until this is sorted.