Wayfarer 4.8.9 Release Notes
NianticTintino-ING
Posts: 996Niantic › admin
Hello Explorers,
We appreciate your patience while we worked on bringing back some of the features requested. Starting today, you’ll now see:
- UPGRADE NEXT is back and will work just as it did before the initial 4.8 Release
- For those of you who had UPGRADE NEXT applied to nominations before the initial 4.8 Release, if you did not use your upgrade between then and now, that Upgrade will be honored on the nomination you had originally applied it to.
- You will also now be able to Upgrade IN VOTING nominations
Both of these features will work on nominations that have NOT been flagged for Niantic Review.
Safe Exploring!
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Initial 4.8 Release:
Hi Explorers!
Here’s what’s new in our Wayfarer 4.8 Release!
- HOLD/RELEASE HOLD: Hope you’ve all been enjoying this feature. We have added more translations and you should now see this feature in all the languages that we currently support.
- Manage Upgrades: You can now turn off the automatic application of Upgrades from your Settings page (default setting will be ON). Toggling it on, will automatically apply Upgrades as you earn them (per the previous behavior). Toggling it off will allow you to manually choose which of your nominations to Upgrade, should you have one available. If auto-upgrades are enabled, then it will apply to the oldest nomination. As a reminder, you’re able to hold up to 1000 Upgrades at a time.
Super excited to hear your feedback about this new added feature the Community has been asking for.
Safe Exploring!
Post edited by NianticTintino-ING on
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Someone just reported that their nomination marked "Upgrade Next" was bypassed to upgrade their oldest nomination. Has "Upgrade Next" been disabled?
Thanks!! So far my community is excited about this update and now we can go about exploring knowing that the upgrades will be put to right use.
Great question. Upgrade Next won't apply. If you have the feature turned on (how it is automatically) then it'll automatically upgrade your oldest nomination. If you have it turned off, then you'll only see the Upgrade button in which case you can use it to apply to any nomination you want.
Is there anyone that really wants to just upgrade their oldest nomination? I still think there was value in "upgrade next".
We consider this release a good update as it is what many wayfinders have been hoping for.
On the other hand, we also believe that it will make clearer the problem that currently makes it easier for low-quality nominations to be approved due to collusion by the local abuse community.
We recommend that the Wayfarer team and ambassadors keep a close eye on that.
When will it be possible to check photos sent to portals, edit names, etc. in wayfarer?
I’d imagine 95% of Wayfarers will switch this off.
If I go to somewhere new, with no POI, I can save up my Upgrades and do all of those in one go. Fantastic.
Well but now you can’t upgrade a nomination anymore which is already in voting! This is a bug :( My nominations will take about 2 years in voting without an upgrade! Please change it back!
So now I cannot upgrade this one I had selected to "Upgrade Next"?
I have Auto Apply toggled off, but then this one that I wanted to send into voting will not have the "Upgrade" option on it.
And I have older nominations, so this would not be the one sent into voting if I turned it on.
I was very excited about this feature but now I am very upset.
@NianticTintino tagging you in case quoting you doesn't.
Ugh I pasted a screenshot so my other comment didn't immediately show up.
I JUST realized the ramifications of this "Upgrade Next" change.
I already selected a nomination from 2020 that is still in queue to "Upgrade Next" but now it won't be upgraded.
With Auto Apply OFF, I will not have the "Upgrade" button option.
With Auto Apply ON, I have 16 older nominations than this. 6 of those are in queue, so maybe I could place those on hold, but will the Upgrade be applied to the 10 in voting before it gets to this one?
PLEASE turn Upgrade Next back on or completely remove it so that Upgrade isn't blocked.
This is an absolutely horrible implementation of what is likely the top requested feature. Finally getting the ability to disable automatic upgrades should be a day worth celebrating, but this makes me want to stop reviewing entirely.
The inability to choose to upgrade nominations In Voting is a major step back. There is literally no value in this change. People are speculating this is a bug, but the fact that the ability to withdraw nominations In Voting was also taken away makes this feel similarly intentional.
Similarly, removing Upgrade Next and forcing automatic upgrades to apply to the oldest nomination is also a major downgrade. Generally, my nominations that are my oldest are my closest nominations to being naturally resolved. They are often the LAST nominations I would care to upgrade. Why would I want to upgrade a nomination that may be close to resolving naturally, when I have new nominations that are in far more of a need of the benefits of an upgrade? Generally there is a reason I have gone so long without upgrading my oldest nominations, and by the time a nomination is my oldest I generally don't want it upgraded.
Some real world examples:
Nearly two years ago I took a trip to Washington DC, and submitted several things while I was there. For those unaware, Washington DC is an area plagued with horrible turnaround times for reviews, and as such i still have several nominations in the system from my trip. These are my oldest nominations. The problem is, I don't want these nominations upgraded. Part of this is because they are in a place I will likely never return to, but mostly I am concerned that if these nominations are pushed to a wider reviewing audience across the country, that reviewers less familiar with local nuances will reject my nominations. And because I could never resubmit them, I again don't want to upgrade them.
Recently, I have been working on a large "Wayfarer project" of getting all of the public art at my local airport accepted. I submitted all of this art weeks ago, and have been upgrading it all over the past month. The project is nearing completion with most everything being accepted. The remaining nominations here are where I want to use my upgrades, but because of the change to disallow upgrades in voting, I will no longer be able to continue unless I decided to resubmit my current nominations there because the remaining nominations are already in voting. This is increasingly detrimental to the viability of these submissions. My local reviewers who are currently reviewing these nominations have likely traveled through this airport before, and may have insight to the airport and the artwork within it. This is favorable to me as a submitter. But my area also struggles with long turnaround times without upgrades. So now my choice is to let knowledgeable people review my submission and have it takes months to resolve, or to upgrade a fresh nomination and let unknowledgable people resolve my nomination and put it at a far greater risk of rejection. This is exactly why people say that "Upgrades ruin nominations".
One of the best "strategies" to upgrading tricky nominations is to let your locals review it for a bit first, and then to upgrade it, with the idea being that your local reviewers who more familiar with your area hopefully being able to counteract less knowledgeable reviewers from across the country once the upgrade takes effect. This useful strategy has now been ruined.
Upgrades are a precious resource that I want to take the most advantage of as possible. These changes across the board make it harder for me to use them to their full potential, and as such incentivizes me to review far less. Immediate changes to this are desperately needed.
I have the same situation. I had applied Upgrade Next to an In Queue nomination prior to 4.8 being released. I turned Automatically Apply Upgrades off because my oldest nomiation is something I don't want to upgrade. Earned an upgrade overnight, and my Upgrade Next nomination wasn't upgraded, and I can't apply my upgrade to it.
It feels like Niantic listened to our concerns about the backlog in many areas and rather than finding a way to prioritize older submissions for everyone and have those go into voting, decided to overhaul the upgrade process by removing features for us and think that we would welcome this.
Nice update @NianticTintino-ING but we really need edits management in "contributions" list. I know you work on it but I was expecting it to come in this update. I really hope it comes soon.
I agree on the implementation of upgrades being completely demotivating. The two recent changes made: not being allowed to withdraw nominations in voting and now, not being able to upgrade nominations in voting, has affectively eliminated our ability to have any management of our queue. We now have two options: put everything on hold and earn an upgrade for each, or let them all go into voting and be able to do nothing. I for one, no longer see any reason to review, and as such will now only submit because reviewing will buy me very little for the work. I generally spend 3 hours reviewing a night. You seriously need a set of beta users to test your code before you release it so you can truly understand the impact it will have on the community. I don’t wish to be negative, but the review system is becoming unusable and unless we speak up, you will not understand the impact you are having on the community. 1 step forward, 50 backward.
Yes. Have the same -.-
Schön wäre es ja, wenn das Upgrade auch dafür genommen wird wofür es vorgesehen war! Hatte seit 4 Tagen ein Upgrade auf einen Vorschlag vorgemerkt nur um jetzt zu merken, wo dies gerade fertig war, dass dieses auf ein ganz anderes gesetzt wurde. Wie kann das sein? !
I see the part of not being able to upgrade noms already in voting fixing itself on its own. Over time with the new method people will not allow noms they intend to upgrade enter voting. This means people will be putting a majority of their nominations on hold which will allow the ones in voting to go through quicker. It will take a bit of new strategizing but I see the new strategy benefitting all. People that choose not to participate in reviewing others and complain when theres are in voting for months or even years should have theirs go through quicker since there will be fewer in voting(sorry had to throw this in). And the ones that do upgrade will now not have to worry about having to use noms on ones they are not worried about and instead get to save them for better options.
But i also believe that there shouldve been a grace period for the ones already in voting when the process was changed. If we were aware of this about to take place ahead of time we couldve put them on hold before entering voting but as I noted earlier hopefully noms being put on hold will resolve this issue quicker.
Thats what I meant sorry. They kind of threw us a curveball but I think in about 3 months everyone will adjust and like it better but still do not understand why we can not upgrade if they already hit voting.
I have turned off the automatic application of Upgrades, and still need some to earn my next upgrade.
But there are no Upgrade botton for this nomination? The nomination is In voting and have Upgrade Next assigned.
Is it a bug?
How can I give this nomination an Upgrade?
Currently you cannot choose to upgrade a nomination that's in voting.
Posted a blank comment for whatever reason so let’s add to it.
When is it planned that we will be able to see all Contributions (edits and photos too) in Contributions as the emails say. It must be very confusing for any new Wayfarers.
Hello Explorers,
Thank you all for your constructive feedback regarding the changes to Upgrades. We heard you and we will be reverting back to having the Upgrade Next button as well as the ability to apply an Upgrade to IN VOTING nominations. We are all hands on deck for a company-wide launch event so the changes will be coming in early June.
Again, thank you all for your patience. Safe Exploring!
Thank you for reading and responding to our feedback! Now my question is this: If I have something I had designated as "upgrade next" prior to the 4.8 update, my understanding is that I would be unable to apply a new upgrade to it. After your changes today, will it still be treated the same way it would've been a week ago - that is, my next upgrade will be applied to this one without me having to do anything else? Or will I have to re-designate it as "upgrade next" - and will Wayfarer let me?
Thanks so much! Do you know if the ability to withdraw in-voting nominations can be shipped with this change? It was strange that this ability was intentionally removed and then later said it was difficult to add - when it never should have been removed to begin with.
June feels a ways away at this point, but I'll take that over nothing, I suppose. Here's hoping my Upgrade Next nomination currently stuck in limbo leaves it one way or another before then.
glad to know it will ((should)) happen. and yes, as gendgi said, adding the ablility to withdraw in voting nominations (and appeals) in that update would be WONDERFUL. but maybe that's asking too much.
i do hope the nominations stuck in upgrade next limbo can be fixed before june though.... if not, people will just have to wait or resubmit them.
Thanks, this is a huge relief. Bit bummed it's going to take that long, but I can wait knowing it's coming in the near-ish future.
Is it this event on May 24th - 25th that you’re all at?
Any Wayfarer talks at it?
I see the part of not being able to upgrade noms already in voting fixing itself on its own. Over time with the new method people will not allow noms they intend to upgrade enter voting. This means people will be putting a majority of their nominations on hold which will allow the ones in voting to go through quicker. It will take a bit of new strategizing but I see the new strategy benefitting all.
Hopefully this will all be moot in a month or two, but this simply isn't a viable strategy at all. It might make sense if you never stray far from home, but if you submit in an unfamiliar area, you might have no idea if upgrades will eventually be required or not. I have made several trips where I made a bunch of submissions and I really had no idea what to expect in terms of waiting times. It would have been crazy to have had to put them all on hold; there's no way I'd earn enough upgrades to cover all of them. So I would have had to let them go into voting without any idea if I'd need to upgrade some eventually.