Subject: Addressing Concerns and Seeking Positive Changes for the Wayfarer Pokémon GO Community
ccoliva-PGO
Posts: 33 ✭✭✭
Dear Aaron,
I hope this letter finds you well and my apologies for the delay @NianticAaron. I wanted to take a moment to express my strong opinions about the current state of the Wayfarer community in Pokémon GO and the changes that I believe are necessary for its betterment.
Firstly, let me emphasize the immense potential that Wayfarer holds in enhancing the gameplay experience for all Pokémon GO enthusiasts. The ability to contribute to the creation of PokéStops and Gyms is a unique and exciting feature that encourages exploration and engagement with local communities. However, it’s disheartening to observe that this potential is often overshadowed by the toxic behavior that has unfortunately become prevalent within the community. I had the local handball courta denied and it said to post a better picture. It’s a clear picture of handball courts. People should not be voting if they never seen handball courts in their life. Pathetic.
The toxic nature of interactions within the Wayfarer community has led to frustration and demotivation among its members. Constructive criticism has been replaced with negativity, and instead of fostering a supportive environment, the community has turned into a breeding ground for hostility. This is a far cry from the collaborative spirit that should be driving the efforts of Pokémon GO players who are passionate about improving the game.
I strongly believe that the Wayfarer community is in dire need of effective leadership that can guide the community towards a more positive and respectful direction. The toxicity is hindering the potential of Wayfarer to be a force for good within the Pokémon GO ecosystem. Leadership should be responsible for setting clear guidelines for interactions, promoting healthy discussions, and addressing concerns in a constructive manner.
Additionally, changes within the Wayfarer system itself are necessary to prevent abuse and discourage toxic behavior. Implementing stricter reporting mechanisms for inappropriate content and negative behavior could help weed out those who contribute to the toxicity. Clear consequences for repeated toxic behavior would also deter individuals from engaging in such conduct.
In conclusion, I am confident that with the right changes and dedicated leadership, the Wayfarer community can once again become a positive force in the Pokémon GO universe. By addressing the issues of toxicity and implementing necessary changes, we can create an environment where players collaborate, share ideas, and contribute to the enhancement of the game we all love.
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I am hopeful that positive changes will come to fruition, and I look forward to a healthier and more supportive Wayfarer community in the near future. Negative comments incoming? Prove me wrong.
Sincerely,
Comments
Thank you for the feedback.
We already have a reporting mechanism for bad behavior on Wayfarer Community Forum. I want to assure you that we take policy violations very seriously and take necessary actions to deter bad behavior.
Regarding unfair rejections, you could try appealing the decision. Moreover, we also take action against reviewers who do not vote in accordance with our policies. You can comb through the community posts to locate examples.
Having said that, we are working with Ambassadors to prioritize bottlenecks and issues faced by Wayfarer community.
Regards,
Ok thanks. I don’t mean any disrespect at all. I’m basically talking about the ones who have no patience driving people away. Wayfarer has 100% improved since it first started. Sorry I didn’t mention that. Also, this system is really great for building communities. I have seen tremendous improvement. All I want is positive feedback and not come off negative. The ones who do get negative need to realize others just don’t know. They come here for help so patience is needed. I can name names but I’m sure you know already. Thanks Aaron. If you ever need more honest opinions (good or bad) please let me know. Doesn’t matter to me if people like or dislike me. I’m here to speak up for the community and I’ll be more than happy to continue it.
I do have to ask if you would consider saying things like “People should not be voting if they never seen handball courts in their life. Pathetic.” could be considered contributing to the toxic negative environment?
i agree with your point overall, and people do post things that are overly negative sometimes.
Hello @ccoliva-PGO
It causes me to be very concerned when this forum is referred to as “Toxic” so I very much welcome discussion about ways to learn and improve.
You make a lot of interesting points.
One area I try to encourage is to not use references to the games people might play. Everyone here is a wayfinder and no matter which game you play the atmosphere of the forum should be equally welcoming. So if everyone who contributes to this discussion could as far as possible avoid reference to a game it would be a great start.
My personal opinion is that the term toxic needs to be used carefully. When the forum first began I came and left several times as it didn’t feel welcoming. But ended up staying as I thought I could be part of the solution rather than the problem.
It would make a small difference if everyone acknowledged that a person was new and welcomed them in.
My day to day observations are that there are on a daily basis some good supportive comments with wayfinders explaining sometimes bad news to people. But also looking for positives.
Do specific threads become argumentative? Yes they do. They can create a bad atmosphere in certain areas and at times but it doesn’t mean that the whole forum is toxic - I don’t think the OP is saying that but I regularly hear disparaging remarks that tar the whole forum with the same brush, and that is in itself unpleasant behaviour.
So the point you make about needing action is valid and it is not just about weeding out poor behaviour but more importantly encouraging good interactions.
I use 3 underlying principles in a different forum, they probably need modifying, but people should consider if what they are posting is necessary, truthful and respectful/kind. That doesn’t mean to say a place becomes devoid of criticism as It is perfectly possible to state an opposite view without being rude or hurtful to someone else.
I am interested to hear more different views not just from regulars.
I could not agree more!!
You're always welcome to share feedback. We are committed to make this forum a better experience for everyone and we could not do it without the support of everyone.
I thank you again for the feedback and hope that they continue to come in. You could reach out to me via DM as well.
Cheers!
People should not be voting if they never seen handball courts in their life.
Where I'm from handball courts are extremely rare, but I'm both aware that handball exists and confident that I could discern what a handball court is from a halfway decent image or even a 0.18s internet search. It's really disheartening when quality submissions get denied, especially given the sheer number of low-quality submissions reviewers have had to deal with, but it may be worth posting on the "Nominations Improvement" forum on here to seek feedback. Some members on here have been extremely helpful. Recently some people were able to confirm that my nomination was good, provide some valuable feedback, and @The26thDoctor-PGO even provided some much-needed and appreciated humor.
It makes me wish to have a second Community Appeal process, whereby experienced Wayfarers can help sort those appeals. Too many nominations simply get reviewed wrong, and it would be wonderful if Niantic could share some data on how many appeals get overturned. The data would be very interesting to see. There are thousands of 'Coal' submissions sorted through and denied daily around the world, and I'm sure far too many people get to appeal those. Meanwhile I don't have an Appeal and don't get reimbursed for Upgrades wasted on wrongly-denied Upgrades. Being able to get those nominations into a queue that's faster than Niantic is and better-utilize the power of this community could have an enormous and near-immediate positive impact on the overall experience.
Right now it feels like the reward-to-effort ratio is very low, and I think that negatively impacts people's mentalities with and towards Wayfarer/Niantic and doesn't make people come here with positivity in mind.
Trust me, reward to effort ratio is something we are constantly putting in front of Niantic. It's so easy to get caught up in the whole process and forget that Wayfinders are volunteers who do this to make better playing spaces for their communities.
But I would also remind everyone that those who help others through this community are like second level volunteers. Not only are they/we doing the actual Wayfinding work, but then they're/we're going out of our way to help educate others about that. Keeping a sunny disposition is always the goal. But we're all human and it gets frustrating having to answer the same questions over and over and over for years on end. So patience is required from both new and old people around here.
The Wayfarer forum is a mixed bag of good and bad.
There are plenty of people who put in a lot of time, effort and patience when dealing with newbies and frustrated people. This is a massive help and the good side of the community.
Then you have those loud persistent characters who have no patience, tell everyone their submissions are **** and that everything should be rejected. The ones who don't care about Niantics clarifications if they don't agree with them and will vote against those wishes and happy to tell everyone that. That is the negative side of the community.
We also have a middle of the spectrum group, which contains well meaning people mostly but will still insist posters submissions are not up to their standard even though the submissions are totally fine and Niantics would accept them. Some people have gone beyond suggesting things to help submissions go through to actively demanding these things to get a positive vote .
It's disheartening to see someones perfectly acceptable nomination ripped to shreds as wrong in many ways when posted when it was fine and should have been accepted as it was.
There are voting issues anyway (I can submit 8 identical things and 4 come back accepted and 4 rejected) but to know there are people on the forum time & time again encouraging others to reject submissions for the most pedantic reason... Yes it feels that side of the community is negative and rotten and the system is against you. I can see why many give up bothering.
It's lucky the community has the good guys adding their positivity to counterbalance that toxicity.
Short version:
Some of community = Awesome
A lot of Wayfarer negativity = because of bad rejections & a number of active wayfarers are contributing to that via their negative posts/voting/influence voters to reject valid nominations via their posts
I think great strides could be made as far as tolerance and patience here if new forum members were compelled to read a pop-up Forum FAQ or the pinned messages before creating a new topic or commenting on an existing topic. Yes, one does have to agree to treat people respectfully if I recall, but more specialized information (sample answered questions, where to go if you wish to contest or improve a rejected candidate, description of "what is Wayfarer-related and what is not" with links to forums for individual game-related forums, and maybe what all those Ambassador tags and little star ratings really mean, for starters) would go a long way toward smoothing the onboarding process. I have not been a member here as long as some others, but I do know how discouraging it is to log in looking for new or interesting threads but then see multiple "Where's my Portal/ Where's My Pokestop" posts right under the pinned post explaining the whole thing! Fortunately, we do have many members who will offer advice each time, but I'm afraid they'll succumb to burnout in time.
On the Niantic Forum Mod side, I'd love it if there was a weekly post listing members who've earned their First Comment badge, with maybe a spot to for members to send their welcomes or introductions. Maybe allowing members to add (if they wish) a few personal details to their profile page would be good as well, like preferred pronouns or spoken languages or primary country of residence - so people can see that all of us here are people, not automatons. Maybe games played/teams/levels would work as well!
Last of all, in a forum that's essentially world-wide, all members should recognize that translated text can come out as brusque, and that different cultures have different ways of expressing thoughts and feelings - and that's fine, of course.
@NianticAaron There is no mechanism to report some bad actions on the forum.
I suddenly had loads of disagrees and other forum members found that someone had just gone back through and disagreed with every post I had made for the previous year. I tried to report it via the bug forum as there was no other mechanism to do so but it was ignored. So these kind of toxic people will continue to do this as they can't seem to reported. It was pure abuse of the system and nothing done about it
My post disappeared :-( I edited the word cokem to come, clicked post and the ether has done its magic ... Pants it took me a while to post....hmmmmm
Some off-topic social chat is needed for a community to grow and friendship to form but let's not go as far as sharing pronouns. I would leave these forums quicker than you could wave a virtue signalling rainbow or Ukraine flag in my direction.
One learns not to mess with the great Niantic edit monster....
Wonder where I come in on this spectrum lol
@Gazzas89-PGO have we let you leave the naughty step yet? 😉
That's why I said - "if they wish". That's not information anyone should be forced to share with the general public if they don't want that information known. My reasoning - I'm still feeling bad about repeatedly referring to Danbocat as "he" when it turned out I was just making an assumption based on the Dan- portion of her name. No virtue-signaling intended: I just want to address or refer to people properly when they have a preference.
This is the best endorsement of pronoun sharing I've read. You make it sound like a great feature, especially for those who'd like to use it!
I won’t comment on everything but interesting points so far, and I am absorbing them all.
I am a great believer that changes that work best come from the users themselves, but with the caveat you will never please everyone. If the users feel more ownership over the space it tends to work better.
Yesterday whilst wayfarer was down for maintenance I was part of a a totally off topic discussion - an experiment. I do wonder if there was a structure that included an off topic space how it would be used and how it would be moderated, and how useful it would be.
There are a lot of new people that visit come to this forum everyday. Personally I dislike places that have too many barriers or cooldowns before I can interact, I tend to not persist. But I don’t think there is a formal introduction to this forum …….I came here right at the start so I have no memory of what happened then or now 😂 so I think that could be better.
An Introduction forum would help facilitate others getting to know Wayfarers in their review areas. It would be lovely to get to know folks that are submitting nominations and reviewing ours.
Thanks all for the comments and i hope you all are having a great day. This forums does more positive then negative, just wanted you to know that.
Could we please get a universal map that allows us to refresh the points of interest around the area where we are viewing rather than being pinned to our direct location? I understand that there is an ingress map/website, but I don't have an ingress account and see no reason to create an account for the map.
Could I recommend adding an option to view all points of interest, regardless of which game the poi is in, within Niantic Campfire? Something similar to the pokemon go route switch option already implemented? It would allow us a much easier submission process.
There are two reasons for the request. My primary concern is for the safety of our community. The second, in my opinion, will decease duplicate submissions.
To the first topic, in regards to our safety. As we are leaving the summer season in the northern hemisphere, and approaching winter, I would like to point out that different points of the world experience different extremes in weather. I live in an area where the summers are brutal. Starting from around mid-May the game would literally opened up every day, warning me about the temperature outside, even in the early morning. This is a mild example of how blazing hot it is around here. This poses a major health risks when trying to just quickly snap poi photos and move on, even to those who prepare. Not only does the heat present immediate health risks, the excessive heat causes phones to become exponentially hotter, which in turn, causing unnecessary wear and tear on our devices or worse. Bottom line, it is far too hot to attempt to fill out a form, as well as articulate a thoughtful description, then a thorough cause as to why the poi should be created, at location sometimes.
The the second point, presently it is impossible to tell whether a poi is already present in another game remotely, unless you create an ingress account. Even then, as i understand it, the map only allows you to view ingress poi. If you have an ingress account, then I can only imagine how powerful of a tool it can be. Still, being able to view all poi in a specific area, gives submitters a way to verify if a poi already exists in that area or not.
@LucideLachance-PGO there is a universal map for all wayspots, excluding I believe those that are sponsored and game specific.
However it is not ready for public use, no information on when it will move out of beta as of yet.
Yes the Ingress Intel Map only shows wasypots that appear as portals in Ingress. The reason why Ingress has this sort of map and Pokemon Go doesn't is related to gameplay and lore.
Where is mention of this universal map? Are there any articles about it? While I don't begrudge you the lore aspects, the map will be a huge qol for the building out the community. Hopefully it comes out soon, but complete.
@LucideLachance-PGO there are no articles since it is still in beta but it has been part of the last few Wayfarer roadmap discussions. See the latest roadmap post below, it is the very last section where they talk about the status of the Wayfarer app.
@LucideLachance-PGO
As an ambassador I have access to and can use this beta version of the app.
I use it to help explain the “why hasn’t my wayspot not appeared in my game” questions.
Here is a screenshot from both the App and the ingress map I have picked out one the map it’s a bee sculpture, which is too close to another waypoint The beacon of hope, and so does not appear on the Intel map.
It will be great if we can get to a stage soon™️ when this information is available to all submitters. I am also in favour of submitting away from the actual place - living in the U.K. my main weather issue is often rain, wind and cold but sometimes it’s very hot. I nearly always use the facility in Ingress to do this.
I think the combination of both would help keep unnecessary and ultimately frustrating nominations down.
In PGO I can see nearby waypoints. Don't know if all nearby waypoints.
But i use it for duplicates.
Surely this is all you need unless your goal is to fill cells..
You see nearby pokestops/gyms only, unless you are attempting to submit a nomination, then you can see other poi. However, the area that you can view is very small, and as outlined earlier, there are several boons to being able to see this information at a distance.
Weird, I edited this comment and it went in as a normal comment instead
Still allowed to talk and don't get many disagrees, so I'm guessing I'm not other naughty step lol