Niantic needs to police improper rejections.
FluxAscender2-PGO
Posts: 1 ✭✭
I have had several rejections of nominations with the excuse of them being DUPLICATES, when the nomination is dozens of yards from the next nearest stop, and the object concerned in on the opposite side of a major street from any other existing Pokestop. This is getting RIDICULOUS. I live in a smallish town, and we can't get ANY new stops added.
Comments
Are you aware that not all wayspots in Niantic's Lightship database appear in Pokemon Go? It's entirely possible that your submissions are duplicates of things that already exist but aren't in PoGo.
When you attempt to submit a new wayspot, stand at the location of the object you're intending to submit (you need to be there in person) and then start the submission process. On the map where you put the pin, you can see all wayspots within around 100 metres of where you're physically stood. Any that are already in Pokémon Go will show as a blue Pokéstop icon and any that are not eligible to appear in Pokémon Go (usually due to the one Pokéstop/Gym per level 17 S2 cell rule) but are still in the Niantic Lightship database will show as an orange Wayfarer icon. You can tap on these icons to see what the wayspots are called and what they look like.
If something you're wanting to submit appears on this map as either kind of icon, then trying to submit it again will get it correctly marked as a duplicate, as it does already exist in the database, even if it isn't in your game of choice. The wording in Pokémon Go is misleading, but you're actually submitting a wayspot for the Lightship database as opposed to a Pokéstop.
Show us a couple of things that have been rejected as duplicates and we can check to see if the rejections were correct.
When an object is duplicated all around, like a bench, decorative lamp post, or lion statues placed every 10 meters along a wall (IOW: the items are all duplicates of each other)...
- and one of them has a Wayspot in Lightship
- nominating the other 20 identical things will usually result in a Duplicate rejection.
I agree! I just had a rejection of a large structure and sign at the entrance to a new housing development. These types of stops are found everywhere. It was reject due to lack of pedestrian access even though my support photo clearly showed a pedestrian sidewalk right in front of the structure. What the heck is wrong with you people!
@TexasAgent-PGO I don't know what kind of large structure you're talking about but housing development signs don't qualify unless they have historic or artistic merit. People incorrectly (or maliciously) approve them fairly often but that doesn't mean that they SHOULD be approved. Be sure to pay attention to Niantic's criteria for wayspots rather than using existing wayspots as a guideline.
@Hosette-ING The large structure (two actually) has good artistic merit. But that was not the rejection reason. if it were it should say so. The rejection reason was lack of pedestrian access. So, your hypothetical defense is simply wrong. The call for policing improper rejections is a good one. I don’t know that this relatively new way of proposing new waystops is any good. Too many bad actors who are lazy or malicious.
@Hosette-ING Oh, I forgot to re-iterate that my support photo showed a sidewalk right in front. The rejection reason was obvious rubbish.
Would you feel comfortable sharing? Otherwise we're just attacking or defending hypotheticals and this discussion isn't going to do any good for anyone.
@TexasAgent-PGO It's pretty well-known that Niantic is bad at choosing rejection reasons to show us. It could be as simple as one person accidentally or deliberately choosing an an inaccurate rejection reason.
Why don't you show us the submissions so that we can give you a better analysis?
It's quite common for reviewers to choose any rejection reason. I wouldn't use the reasoning as a guide for why your submission was rejected @TexasAgent-PGO
Although if your submission is ineligible the reasoning doesn't actually matter much too.
Safe pedestrian access is often misunderstood - by both reviewers and submitters.
For example, this could be an eligible estate sign, but the crosswalk past an object does not constitute safe pedestrian access.
Whereas this candidate below has no sidewalk but is accessible walking paths in a nearby prairie.
A nomination needs to be a place that attracts people BEFORE it is nominated. An estate sign is simply not a place you go, to meet people, explore, or exercise. It's not a gathering place for any reason. Don't even look at pedestrian access (or any other rejection criteria) until AFTER making sure it meets eligibility https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/criteria/eligibility AND acceptance https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/criteria/acceptance criteria.
Niantic doesn't care about rejection reasons. For the first year of crowd-sourcing waypoint approvals, there was no reason - you just hit 1* and Next. Reason was only added to force the REVIEWER to think about it. Then it was another year before the reason was included in the email to the NOMINATOR. This shows that Niantic doesn't care about the reason. They want to know our instinct about a waypoint. Reasons are just because we begged and groveled.
I dunno, personally I think that picture of the bird looks cool enough to meet the unique (for the area) art. But the safe pedestrian access is the issue
Can't really tell from the picture, but that front looks like road rather than a sidewalk. (Like there's even pedestrian crossing lines) so it's not really safe fro the front of it. I do t know about the back though. The second example though, it has a lot of empty space behind it, so that will be why it has the safe pedestrian access
Yup, exactly. If my post wasn't clear, the top one (a neighborhood sign) is ineligible due to unsafe access, despite being near a cross walk. The bottom one (a recreational park sign) is eligible because it can be accessed from the rec field behind the sign despite no sidewalks being nearby.
[Withdrawn comments, as the matter was clarified in a later posting I'd not seen.]
This might have been suggested before - and please forgive me if it has and I've simply not seen the discussion on it - but it sounds like a similar group to the 'waypoint reviewer community' needs to be set up by Niantic to take care of the clearly heavy appeals load Niantic are currently under.
Here's the concept: Niantic conduct a 'Review of Reviewers' to determine who among the 'thousands' of reviewers most accurately-to-their-rulings review nominations. Those discovered by them are then invited onto an Appeals panel to review appeals. And those folks then review such appeals, which should both speed up the process and make it less subject to fluctuating standards.
Make minimum conditions for a reviewer to be under consideration, such as:
Anyways, I cannot see how such a thing was not discussed in the past... but, as I said, I couldn't find it and think this current discussion warrants a 'revisit' of the idea.
@Sinykal1-PGO There have been discussions of super-reviewers with additional privileges in the past. It seems very unlikely that Niantic will do such a thing for appeals or anything else.
@Hosette-ING Thank you for the clarification. As I said, I was 'pretty sure' it was a subject visited before (common sense and a bit of logic would deem it so) but, as both slow appeals and 'poor' reviews are constantly raised, mayhap a further raising of the subject might help Niantic to understand this is something the community strongly wants.
One lives in hope.
@Sinykal1-PGO You are correct that both topics are constantly raised. However, after having watched countless "poor reviewer" discussions I can say with confidence that many of them are actually "poor submitter" issues. It's amazing how frequently someone huffs and puffs about how bad the reviewers are and then when they show the thing that got rejected it's an easy 1*.
Niantic would be well served by ensuring that submitters have much better guidance about what is and isn't an acceptable candidate. This would cut down on the frustration from people who people who are upset because their candidate was rejected, reduce the burden on the review system by wasting less reviewer capacity on obvious coal, and make appeals go faster because there would be less garbage being appealed.
That would probably increase the number of reviewers too because reviewing would be more fun, or at least less frustrating. Every time I have to review a dumpster, a street sign, a red Target ball, a tree, a parking lot, an apartment complex sign, a supermarket, a mailbox (save for rare UK ones), a gas station, a grade school, a light post, a bus stop, a fast food drive-thru, a fire hydrant, a mobile home park (I got the exact same one four times), a crosswalk, a blatant fake, or whatever **** is in someone's yard/living room/bedroom I wonder why I waste my time.
So triggered by your initial premise @Hosette-ING had many good nominations get knocked back ... And I'm super huffy with every wrongful rejection for straight forward poi that should just be online. I have listed a great many examples on this forum of great nominations that that were rejected.
It's my belief that reviewers are quite fickle and need greater training.
Having watched and participated in the forum for some time I would say while there are many poor submitter posts, there are more than enough posts by reviewers saying they would reject perfectly good submissions and/or not vote how Niantic wishes/reject anything they think could be faked with no evidence to suggest any submissions are etc.
So that argument that submitters are generally the ones at fault is false as far as im concerned.