Too much rejection
AnnaBanaMermaid-PGO
Posts: 2 ✭✭
What’s the deal with rejecting everything? Isn’t the point of this to try and make the game better by getting local insight? The community I live in has all the group mailboxes flagged as pokestops. I’m glad there are some nearby, but it would be way better to have the pokestops along the biking/walking path that goes around the lake. Taking videos to scan pokestops of mailboxes really raises eyes, for one thing. They should get rid of those and put stops all along the walking path. The walking path is perfect- double the size of a sidewalk, houses are on the other side of the street with portions of the path in nature only, it’s for public use, scenic, frequently used, encourages exercise and the outdoors. But there are no trail markers. There are 4 benches widely spread out over the 2 km, so each bench is very visually distinct for the area. Not enough to make a pokestop, apparently. And apparently a gazebo which looks nothing at all like a nearby pier are duplicates. It’s frustrating that absolutely everything is rejected. 6 foot by 4 foot metallic art installations in a hotel lobby are “temporary”. Like sure, the hotel could go out of business, too. Doesn’t everyone love it when the hotel they stay at has a pokestop? This hotel had none. Why as a community are we against adding pokestops?
Comments
Technically we are adding to Lightship for a wide variety of people to use.
As a Go player more is better, as a Wayfarer I prefer to see interesting things that may show me something about an area and how the people who live there have used and shaped it.
I wish Niantic shared this sentiment...
You're right that mailboxes shouldn't be wayspots. Niantic has said so specifically. They invade people's privacy. I can't imagine being surrounded by a bunch of gamers staring at their phones when, say, I pulled my father's **** certificates out of the mail.
And you're right that markers along biking/walking paths should be great.
Benches can be tricky when they look mass-produced. I just googled and found one for $189.99. Niantic said if you can tie a bench to a view, it's OK. So something like "River Overlook", with the bench in the foreground and the river/mountains/meadow in the background. Or, if they're dedicated to someone, if you can find an interesting story about them, it becomes more personal.
A gazebo and a pier should be easy to tell apart. Try to get the gazebo as at least 80% of your primary picture (and around 20% of your supporting).
Art in a hotel lobby is generally OK. I'd suggest appealing that one, but I have unresolved appeals back 11 months, so it is sloooow.
Your supporting info should concentrate on why the nomination is good for exploration, socialization, and/or exercise.
If the problem IS your local reviewers, you can bypass them by upgrading your nominations, so they'll go to a wider audience. To earn one upgrade, you have to review until 100 nominations you reviewed (a) resolve, and (b) your vote agreed with the final decision. So, 160-200 reviews for your first upgrade, but as they start resolving (you might have been the first person to review it), it'll speed up.
My stops I nominate have been rejected as well, even quicker rejection when I upgrade. I don't get it, meaning the reviewers. I also accept the really interesting ones instantly. So when I submit a really interesting one myself (permanent artwork by an artist for example) it gets rejected as "temporary or seasonal" Are you kidding me? It's permanent great looking artwork on an entrance sign (3 of them) to a plaza & that's what the reviewers do to my submissions. I'll appeal & like 1 said above, the appeal will just sit there & sit there. Then you'll redo the whole stop submission again, AGAIN IT'S REJECTED for seasonal or temporary. Don't you see that it's a permanent free standing concrete sign with the artists artwork all on one side of the sign? I'm almost to the point where I'm going to quit reviewing & quit submitting because you constantly get denied 😒
In my area at least, the rate of unjust rejections has remained largely static for the past several years. I have some quite nice and clearly acceptable candidates I've gotten onto the map only after many resubmissions, and each time I re-nominated I improved my text or photo as much as possible. I figured since the objects were, in my estimation, clearly eligible, that the failure was on my end as I had failed to demonstrate exactly why the reviewers should vote yes. We had no Appeals process in those days, of course, so re-submission was my only option. Now, I reserve most appeals for things distant or hard to reach, and easy local candidates get improved and resubmitted. In the years since those original submissions, I've also gained a lot of valuable experience in what reviewers want to see as far as supporting and location info, and so I'm submitting better stuff with a higher chance of being approved!
Remember that submitting wayspot candidates isn't just about finding something that's eligible-- you also need to present your candidates well. It's important to think about your candidate from the perspective of the reviewers who will see it, and to ensure that it's easy for them to understand and approve your submission. I've rejected lots of potentially-good candidates because there wasn't enough information available for me to be able to approve them. (Pro tip #1: Ensure that your supporting photo includes the candidate in its larger environment. One of the biggest mistakes I see is supporting photos of the sidewalk or grass near the candidate rather than something that helps me confirm the location.)
I wrote this a couple of years ago and it's still relevant: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/9890/how-to-submit-things-that-get-accepted
@ToastMuffins-PGO You should post your nomination information in the Nomination Improvement forum, with full text, both images, rejection reasons, and pin location. Many of us have learned a lot about how to improve our work by bouncing ideas off other experienced wayfarers.
Just a slight thing, post boxes in uk you only put mail in, not take stuff out (well, not legally unless your a post person)
That’s how I feel too- all the rejection is just ridiculous and off-putting. I think this community has a problem.
The community does have a problem but it stems from lack of clarity on reviewing and submitting and many other Wayfarer results.
The recent school change is a great example, I'm supposed to accept basketball courts on schools but I only know that from visiting here most reviewed are not aware of that change.
Some of the recent criteria clarifications on trail markers, picnic areas etc I only know about from reading on here.
I would definitely take @Hosette-ING 's advice. There are hoops you have to jump through that are more than just the submission itself which can be a bit baffling and ridiculous but are fairly simple once you know how they function.
results=faults.
I agree there is too much rejection. But…a lot of people who come on the forums to complain about their rejections don’t really have good nominations. I’m just saying, go back and look for areas of improvement and also ask for advice.
I'm going to put forth an alternative hypothesis that I know will be controversial: There is not enough rejection.
Why do I say this? I have personally identified and cleaned up hundreds of fake wayspots, blatant fakes that did not exist at a particular location and could not possibly have existed there. I am continuously finding more while reviewing. I've also seen tons of new wayspots spring up that clearly do not qualify-- red Target balls (explicitly listed in the criteria as an example of things to reject), aerators in the middle of lakes (no pedestrian access), stuff on private residential property, mass-produced artwork and plaques in fast food restaurants, the wallpaper inside a Walmart, sidewalks, street signs, fire hydrants... and I could keep typing until this paragraph is too long for anyone to read.
I reject more stuff than I approve, but that's because there is a lot of complete and utter garbage being submitted... and I review on three different continents so it's not a local issue. Some of what I reject could theoretically qualify but the submitter has done such a bad job of presenting it that it's impossible to confirm the key information.
Yes, there's a lot of frustration when people have submissions rejected that they think should be accepted (and everyone thinks their submissions should all be accepted) but often reviewers are rejecting things correctly.
Both statements are correct.
- There is too much rejection.
- There is not enough rejection.
Conclusion: The quality of reviewers is too low.
Most people enter this project with the goal of improving their gameplay experience. For some this means more is better. For others this means a wayspot there is inconvenient for me to access, so I will find any excuse I can to reject it. That's why things like playgrounds, trail markers, and wayspots in residential areas and limited access locations stay controversial.
Are the criteria unclear, or do they change too often? No, the criteria are very clear and they rarely change. The only change since the criteria refresh a couple of years ago is the recent basketball court on K-12 grounds change. People interpret the criteria with their bias, and many are unwilling to listen to the arguments of others. When they then see a clarification, they see a huge change in the criteria, were others have been saying the same things to them for years. Even then, many won't change their behavior unless their rating suffers.
How can this be fixed? I don't know. A more difficult Wayfarer test that checks understanding of the criteria better, instead of knowing the criteria? And must be repeated regularly to stay qualified as a submitter/reviewer? Better moderation of this forum to stop the spreading of misinformation? A review page that aligns with the criteria and doesn't have a star system?
I'm going to back up my argument with evidence.
This is an area that I have had a large number of fakes removed from about a year ago. I originally discovered some of them while reviewing, and got quite suspicious when I reviewed multiple things that had identical pictures. I explored the map and found many sets of wayspots that had identical or nearly-identical photos that were duplicated all over town, plus several Photoshop fakes. I investigated and confirmed my suspicions, checked them out in person, and reported the fakes en masse. Most were removed.
A few months ago while reviewing I found more fake candidates in the area, and digging around on the map turned up quite a few more that were almost certainly fake. I checked them out in person and identified the fakes but haven't reported them yet. Since that visit I've reviewed more fakes from the area.
I've used a blank map background here to avoid identifying the area. All of the orange dots are portals in Ingress. The ones marked with red pins are 100% confirmed to be fake. The ones marked with brown pins are about 99% certain to be fake but I ran out of time to visit them and get photographic evidence. It is worth nothing that 52 of 123 portals in the first image are confirmed or nearly certain to be fake. The second image is a subset of the map with an S2 grid overlay. Note that there is one fake per cell, but the ones that aren't fake have a more natural distribution?
@TWVer-ING The details of the criteria change on a regular basis, and often in ways that require nuance to understand. These changes are generally not broadly communicated to the general population of people who submit and review stuff, mostly just to the nerd-level reviewers who visit this forum regularly.
At a fundamental level the problem is that Niantic is really bad at guiding both submitters and reviewers. I see soooo many things in the queue where the supporting info is some variation on, "A lot of people come here so there should be a stop here", "It's a nice place and there's parking nearby", or something else that suggests that the submitter doesn't have a basic grasp of what the criteria are for a high-quality wayspot. In fact, I'm going to quit typing and do ten reviews to see what I find. Here goes...
Example #1: An EiiR mailbox in the UK with supporting info of "Not many other stops in the village."
Example #2: A Safeway (big chain grocery store) with the supporting info of, "This is a brand new business, in a brand new shopping area just opened this week. Google maps probably still out of date, may not show up in maps yet. Grand opening was December 7th, 2022. Everything is well paved, safe, publicly accessible, and does not interfere with any emergency services."
Example #3: A directional sign. Supporting info: "I think itll add more people to want to go over to this side where there are more pokestops."
Example #4: A sign for an industrial dairy that is now closed. Supporting info: "This place is very important in this city of [REDACTED] to get milk"
Example #5: A fountain. Supporting info: "Just want some more stops around my area and i believe this spot is a good spot for one in my area"
Example #6: A blatant fake, in the area that I mentioned in my comment above. Supporting info spun a backstory about the fake and its fake relationship to the guy the park is named for.
Example #7: A campus bookstore. Supporting info: "This bookstore is easily accesable for all guests and students to meet, study and play pokemon, which helps bonding the community."
So, out of ten reviews I got one fake and six cases of supporting info that suggests that the submitters really don't know much about the criteria for good wayspots. That sample is more or less in line with what I see on a regular basis. What to do about it is a harder problem, but I think Niantic would be well-served by providing better introductory training to submitters and reviewers. That guidance should be friendly and approachable, and should walk people through the concepts in a simple, straightforward way. After that both the submission and review systems should have on-screen guidance that supports the concepts and goals, and both sides should have feedback mechanisms that actually help people improve their understanding. (While I'm living in fantasyland I'd also like ten million dollars and a purple McLaren convertible.)
From what you’ve said @Hosette-ING it seems to be mainly from players of Pokémon GO? I understand that there’s a lot more of them submitting now than Ingress agents, but I wonder if there needs to be some Pokémon GO-specific guidance/reminders delivered too, such as “do not mention game related items such as PokéStop in your nomination”.
Not trying to turn it into Ingress vs Pokémon GO, but I say I see similar to what you have mentioned in a general day-to-day review as well.
When you correct a typo because even an edit takes forever on this forum and two people disagree :/
@PkmnTrainerJ-ING My guess is that it's mostly a numbers game... if PoGo players are 95% of the submissions then they're going to be roughly 95% of the garbage. They might have a slightly higher percentage because Ingress tends to have more of a drive for exploration than PoGo does, but mostly I think it's just the percentages of the population.
And just now I got one with supporting information "A good portal". It is, though... it's a brand new sculpture by a world-famous artist.
If the criteria change on a regular basis, I'm sure you can give a few examples of criteria that changed since the 3.1 criteria refresh?
While I agree with your other points, I don't see how any of that is relevant to this discussion? It might appear that you are trying to undermine the problem discussed here, by going on about another, non related, problem. I hope that is not your intension. I you want to discuss that, fine, but please do it in a relevant topic. This one is about (valid) nominations getting rejected. You can discuss the validity of the examples posted here, but nominations begging for pokéstops and fakes are not what is being discussed in this topic.
And to answer @PkmnTrainerJ-ING, there is nothing wrong with mentioning game related items in the supporting information. It's usually not very helpful, but adding that sentence somewhere is not going to make people give better supporting information. It should say something about explaining which of the 3 eligibility criteria the nomination meets, and why.
And there is another problem. The focus on exploration. There are 2 other eligibility criteria, but many reviewers keep acting like those are inferior to exploration, and every wayspot must meet exploration criteria. People are attracted to Niantic games for any of the 3 criteria. But reviewing usually attracts mostly people attracted to the exploration aspect. Which also causes lots of invalid rejections. You can explore by reviewing, but it's not intended as a social activity, and your not doing any exercise while reviewing.
Our community default to rejecting submissions. it really sucks. We've had discussions in discord, but unless its a playground or a memorial bench, forget it. If you need you agreement points faster, just reject most things. I understand questionable stuff and garbage getting rejected but i've had so many super eligible subs get rejected. Its so disheartening. Too bad there wasn't repercussions for appeals that overturn a super eligible rejected sub because I know people reject by default just to get agreement and it works.
Here is an idea. Why not have a random (nonpunitive) tests of users with eligible submissions, we know there are already a huge bucket of appeals to pick from. There doesn't need to be any punishment, but a nice page after you submit that says thanks for your hard work reviewing but the last review you made was actually eligible/ineligible for the following reasons would be so helpful. Maybe if the users review the sub correctly then give them an agreement point. This would force users to actually review subs not just reject everything except parks/benches/playgrounds.
A **** at reviewing (and here is why) upfront is so much better than a "Unfortunately, the community has decided not to accept your Wayspot nomination." on the backend.
The problem I am noticing lately is that anything interesting gets rejected because it's not an automatic 5* like uninteresting postboxes etc.
Lots of good different nominations wrongly rejected lately
Now provide imagery of what is fake about the locations.
@MoogModular-ING I have photos documenting each and every one of them that I know to be fake, except for two or three where I wasn't able to get a photo because they were in crowded parks with tons of kids around. Here are some examples.
The first image is the portal photo, and the second is the physical location where it's allegedly located. When I took the photo I placed a small stuffed animal at the pin for illustration purposes. Note that there's a large body water in the background in the photo of the sign, but there's no water anywhere near the physical location. This is in the cluster of red pins in the northeast of my TooManyFakes photo, which I'll include again for reference. In this case, I also know where the photo was stolen from, and it's over 100 miles away from the fake location, on the edge of the San Francisco bay.
Here's the a fake footbridge in that same area. I didn't put the stuffed animal down because the pin is on the other side of the creek and... there were no footbridges to cross despite there being four footbridge wayspots in the area.
Oh speaking of, here's satellite view for one of the fake footbridges... it's the one circled on the west side. Moving west to east on this screenshot the fakes are a footbridge (that's in the middle of a grassy field), a trail marker, a directional sign for a non-existent pond, and a mile marker that has a paved road in the image.
Here's another fake footbridge in the same town.
This is in the same town where I've previously spotted a ton of fakes and gotten most of them removed. There are three fake behaviors that I've observed in this area-- stealing wayspot photos from other areas, taking multiple photos of a single wayspot and submitting them in multiple locations, and photoshopping artwork onto locations where they don't exist. In the previous round I spotted multiple cases where they would find a legit LFL then submit it (and get it approved) in multiple locations.
While reviewing the other day I came across this in the same town. At least one of them is fake, obviously.
Is that enough evidence?
A mi de un mes para acá, me están rechazando todo lo que nomino.
Es agotador.
It’s just way easier to reject than to really review a submission. I got rejected like all of you with stupid reasons. And Niantic is very slow with the appeals. In consequence I don’t submit anything at the moment... Because there is nearly no consequence in rejecting everything (I tested it and got some upgrades on the way…). I would love to contribute to the society, but it just seems not rewarding anymore to try. Some might now mark me as troll or something and I think it’s more a deep disappointment in this community and the behavior of rejection… new wayfarer just don’t feel very welcome and the work and time you invest in an upgrade just to much to be rejected by an disappointed wayfarer…
Well sometimes as a nominator of wayspots one gets the impression that people tend to reject.
But on the other hand as a reviewer, one sometimes gets annoyed by how many "coal" one has to review. Too many no-brainer nominations. Random "Wayspots", that are not eligibel whatsoever and give the impression that nominators haven't once reviewed eligibility criteria, bad photos, listless descriptions and additional Information, not bothering to give proper additional photos that would allow to locate the nomination properly. And then there are lots of fakes or deliberatly misplaced nominations and "I want a pokestop at home" suggestions....
I really try to give everything some consideration but soemtimes its hard to keep a neutral stance...
Best advice remains to do as many reviews oneself as possible. That will improve the own nominations and finally one will end up with less and less to hardly any rejections...
I think this is not about the „coal“ contributions or rejected „coal“ nominations. It’s about the rejection of eligible nominations with stupid reasons that don’t even fit. For example a historical sign with a good picture and a well researched info and reasoning. Got rejected for „orientation“…
the fact that it doesn’t matter how often you reject a stop and ruin other ppls work, because the reviewer is just lazy or bored or whatever… it’s just disappointing.
some say: just try it again… that is a punishment for every nominatior and a gift for those rejection trolls. You waited long or used a upgrade, to do it again?
or appeal it? That is ridiculous too, because Niantic is to slow in their reaction to appeal’s…
i think the only way is banning those abusers! They ruin everything…
Lately I’ve had a streak of rejections. Many of them within a week despite not being upgraded and for stupid reasons. For example I’ve had a sporting club (like literally a structure) marked down as ‘natural feature’. A challenge marker (clearly a permanent metal sign detailing a particular throw point and instructions for frisbee golfing in a publicly accessible park and paired with a giant metal basket) was knocked back and I felt should easily have been successful compared with some of the other junk thats been getting in (someone seriously submitted 4 metal street posts for example as ‘french fry art’ and it succeeded). Just now I rapidly had a Playground Cafe knocked back, and it just feels like voters are doing the usual ‘rapid reject’ voting to get to submissions they want.
It used to be more of a risk reward thing with upgrades, but now with stuff being voted against so quickly it just feels like its a mess. Unless you’ve got a vibrant obvious art mural, it just feels impossible to get anything in. Its always been a slog with what should be highly culturally appropriate submissions being rejected (e.g. a french culture society club submission being knocked back ‘temporary seasonal’ and having had to wait almost a year for its eventual and inevitable appeal success.. but this stuff just seems worse than ever lately. Meanwhile I’ve known someone who can submit stuff like multiple shopping centre wall mounted signs (something which I feel should have great difficulty or not necessarily submittable) with ease.
I would really like to see more of an overhaul or measures that discourage some of this behaviour. Its a waste of our hard work when we genuinely try to submit POI that we weigh up and put effort into just to have some voters ruin it for the rest of us. Ive always felt one good idea to be (if we successfully appeal something) that voters who had voted to sabotage (e.g. voting a clearly manmade piece as ‘natural feature) be flagged or receive negative reputation, especially if they keep doing it. We shouldnt have to resubmit stuff up to five times or rely on appeals that often get lost in limbo just because some people enjoy ruining it for others.