As a rural player, I still feel very disadvantaged playing your games compared to people who play in urban areas. Specifically the 20m rule and the different rules around numbers of waypoints per S2 cell, as quite often in rural communities there are multiple eligible PoIs all within a very small radius. Because of this, less waypoints are created in rural communities meaning that rural players have a disproportionate number of waypoints to interact with. What is being done to address this imbalance?
I will second this. The review pages says "A visually unique nomination should not be something that is common in the area", which to me would suggest that if something like an identical trail marker turns up as an existing POI on the "nearby" list, then I would not call the submission visually unique and mark it so - one trail marker every 500m (not every 25m as you can find in some places in the UK) should suffice. However, I have come across the argument in various forums that "because the submission photo as a whole is not identical to any other - there are different things in the background - this means the submission photo is unique".
As mentioned earlier, I would like Nianic to be more definite about some of these terms that are used.
Niantic is able to create sponsored and temporary pokestops. Why not giving a free possibility to place a pokestop at home to reviewers who reach a given number of agreements (let's say 5000 or so) ? Those could be not eligible to become gyms nor count in stop per cell, and could be given for one year or have to be renewed by some way.
As a long time reviewer there's very clearly quite a few submitters who are honestly clueless. We're talking kindergartens, random trees / views etc. as the focus of a submission. With reviewing now unlocked at level 38 / 10 (PoGo/Ingress) can we please make it mandatory to pass the review test before a user is allowed to submit their first stop? It's not going to remove all poor submissions but by forcing people to at least pass the test they will have a rudimentary idea at least of what is likely to be approved and what's not instead. It should help increase the general quality of submissions at minimal cost since it's reusing the existing test and reduce a lot of frustration as a reviewer.
When a POI is too close to another one, wayfarer nomination results in nominations tab states "accepted"
Change "accepted" to "too close" or something similar.
In Ingress, the emails indicate if it was too close to another POI, but PoGO mails states as approved while this is not true. Also, most people seem not to read them.
The main reason to ask, in addition to giving people more information, is that it will also help the community forum have fewer posts asking, "why did my nomination statuses accept but not appear in any games?"
Would it be possible to add location edits to the Wayfarer interface? There has been some frustration expressed by players where if reviewers change a location which end up preventing the POI from appearing in the game they're playing, there's no real way for the submitter to edit the POI to a location where it is still accurate but will appear in the game theyr'e playing.
I've been reporting for months a couple of people who send fake 360s and have a lot of fake stops and I don't see any progress with them, they keep sending their stops and I keep reporting them without anything happening
1. Is there any chance to post this month's AMA result in any Niantic social media, including Niantic Support Twitter account, so many people that didn't know this forum exist can at least read the AMA?
2. Is there any chance to replace Wayfarer abuse form (that is using Google Forms) into 'Report an Issue in Pokemon GO' web form style? And if it can happen, will we get any feedback from the report?
Would there be further clarification of seasonal and temporary display? There are several threads about this topic. However, some questions remain unanswered.
Is an object considered as a temporary display if it can be moved easily by its owner?
Is an object considered as a permanent display if it occupies a location for a long time? If it is, how long does it take?
Is a nomination acceptable if it has a fixed location, but it is not always accessible or visible?
Should we reject a nomination as a temporary display only if we are sure that it would be removed in the near future?
This question refers to the difficulty to present and evaluate good candidates points of interest in terms of local and popular cafés or pubs or restaurants (as a place I would brought some foreign friend). When considering those acceptables POIs, what could better define them: being well-known in the neighbourhood, or having recognition by some gastronomy expert magazines, or both of or maybe does is have a different point of view? Detailed examples and clarifications about this matter would be very apreciated. Thank you in any case.
The answer is simply: "the wayspot is currently not in the correct location and you are moving it to the correct location."
Sometime there but be some uncertainly in what exactly is the correct location, but that is going to be specific to the individual wayspot, so you won't get a useful answer from this AMA.
Many of the frustrations and issues that arise are fundamentally due to communication problems.
This is a called a community forum but 99% of it consists of wayfarers discussing things with very little input from wayfarer itself - and most of that is response to a few select questions.
This lack of coherence leads to frustration as to why decisions have been made as they are imposed from above and often display a lack of understanding of the very part-time nature of wayfarers.
It also makes it hard for wayfarer employees to be able to improve things.
They obsession with secrecy and lack of transparency about technical points that are actually possible to work out is unhelpful. The situation where everyone thinks they know, but it can’t actually be confirmed.
As part of a very large, successful company with large profits, it does appear to be something that is done “on the cheap” without proper resource.
Are there any plans to improve communication flow so that it is more dynamic and meaningful?
Are there any plans to communicate more key decisions directly in game to all potential wayfarers?
Are there any plans to integrate wayfarer employees with its volunteer wayfarers so that it becomes a whole community?
I don't understand why POGO players cry in little threads and don't say anything in this...
The new move-deleting system of stops is bad, is the worst thing that niantic can do for pogo. We need to force niantic to respond to us and escalate our complaint to the people responsible for creating this new system of abuse, because the abuse of change wayspot locations was a real abuse and they should have stopped it before, but this abuse occurs because of the (silly) idea of joining all the games on the same platform and then applying different rules to each one without explaining anything to the user. Instead of changing that injustice they have made the difference even greater between the games and created a new movement system to eliminate stops / gyms.
Great niantic, you are improving, I am not sure if it is a carefully thought out decision (which would be horrible) or if you improvise on the fly
Hi! I've some eligible nominations that match your guidelines. The problem is reviewers repeatedly reject them. I always put a link in the support reporting a site that certifies the autenticity of my nominations, but rewievers keep rejecting them all. I've come to think they don't even look at the request. They look at the photo. They think: "oh! What a ****. It's clearly a temporary object! Reject it" and they never think about reading the support.
My advice is that the 1* has to be put at the end of the review. This will prevent some of the reviews from being rejected despite them matching the criteria.
I presume you're a PoGo player, and you're not aware that Ingress allows you to use pictures from your library ? It's an official feature, with a dedicated button in the app.
Drawing reviewers attention to a particular guideline is extremely clunky and hit and miss.
Would it be possible to have a list of clarifications with a “short official hotlink” so that it stood out to the reviewer and made it easy to get to the relevant info. I’m imagining it appearing like a button in a specific field at the start of the supporting info. Something you could add as an edit in wayfarer rather than the submission from whatever game.
Yeah, I agree, cooldown is frustrating. I'm rather taking a week off than waiting for the end of 24h cooldown after reviewing a couple of genuine nominations. Wayfarer algorithms are not working well. Thousands of reviewed nominations are not processed.
It would be really nice if it would be possible to expand/update the options in the "What is it" section, especially in the sports section. This is especially important in these instances when it is required to choose an option, while there might not be an appropriate option.
For example: Instead of putting down "athletic field" for almost any outdoor sports area, it would be nice to be able to specify whether it's, for example, a public soccer field (most popular team sport world wide!). "Athletic field" sounds like an athletics field (so just field and track for running, jumping, throwing, etc) to me, so it took me a while to see that as an appropriate option for a (public) soccer field. Other outdoor sports area are, for example, hockey field, volleybal field, pétanque field, etc. Also, I often come across (public) outdoor fitness equipment. Otherwise, an option "other" would be nice to have.
Other areas in the "What is it"-section I struggle with is everything to do with housing/supporting animals (not all are eligible, but some are as far as I'm concerned), for example insect hotels, storks poles, and bird houses.
And sometimes, I'm just wishing for a "I don't know"-option when I'm required to select an option in the "what is it"-section, especially while reviewing foreign submissions. Sometimes I just cannot find what it is, and nothing seems to translate to anything helpful, especially with buildings with a (presumably) specific function.
This is probably a small selection of the options that people are missing. Maybe it would be nice give reviewers the opportunity to submit options.
Will support for more languages will be added in game ??
@NianticKN-ING sir we have Nominated many things in our city. Many waypoints Accepted are having cultural & religious values so we decided to give it titles & description in our local language (Devnagari Script/fonts ) as translating it in English may give different pronunciation.
Everything was ok while submitting nomination but we have noticed once in game, titles & description in devnagari script/fonts (For hindi, Konkani &. marathi language) are not displaying correctly. They are broken.
Should location be excat cordinates of waypoint or it can be in or around 10 metres of waypoint? What was reason to decide 10 metres location edit limits ? Is it because we can nominate anywhere within or around 10 metres radius?
Question came in mind because of playground nominations like football & tennis grounds/courts... We can't nominate waypoint on place where game is played since it will disturb game played on it..
Is the Wayfarer team considering using geofences to eliminate the acceptance of wayspots on active military bases? Running locations of nominations through these kinds of filters could keep these nominations from going before reviewers. Apparently, despite guidance given here in the community from Niantic moderators that new wayspots are to be rejected as obstructing essential emergency services, the wayspots are still apparently getting through. See this thread here: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/9422/invalid-wayspots-on-an-active-military-base
Can you confirm the current best practice for dealing with a wayspot that's been removed (in the real world) and replaced with another nomination-eligible point of interest? (For example, a statue taken down and new statue put in the same spot, or a business taking over the building previously occupied by a "hyperlocal hotspot" wayspot.)
I'm still following the last advice I saw from NianticCasey (which I can't find to link to), which was to submit a removal request for the removed POI, then submit a new wayspot nomination for judging.
On the other hand, I'm seeing wayfinders here use the photo submit-and-appeal process to do incremental swaps: They add a picture of the new point of interest, submit an appeal to remove the photos of the previous wayspot, then submit title edits to match the new picture.
I have concerns about the latter process, especially with business wayspots -- moving into the same building as a former hotspot shouldn't automatically make the new business a hotspot. Sometimes the new business is just lame.
While I'm sort of on the topic of image reviews and appeals, can we get a clear statement: Is just being out of date a valid reason to request image removal?
I'm not talking about POI swaps (in this case) -- I'm asking about situations like when a park or business wayspot gets a redesigned sign. Signs are often used as wayspot photos, so having photos showing out-of-date signs makes it more difficult for players to find such wayspots in the real world. They could walk or drive right past the wayspot because they're looking for the wrong sign!
No. It should be on the POI. The 10m limit was a direct result of POGO players submitting egregiously bogus location edits, trying to get around the cell density limitations that are part of that game. (Nonsense like moving every POI in town into the same park.) It is a "this is why we can't have nice things" rule, not a suggestion to place POIs 10m off their actual location.
Sports pitches should probably have the point on or just off the edge, not middle.
Comments
As a rural player, I still feel very disadvantaged playing your games compared to people who play in urban areas. Specifically the 20m rule and the different rules around numbers of waypoints per S2 cell, as quite often in rural communities there are multiple eligible PoIs all within a very small radius. Because of this, less waypoints are created in rural communities meaning that rural players have a disproportionate number of waypoints to interact with. What is being done to address this imbalance?
I will second this. The review pages says "A visually unique nomination should not be something that is common in the area", which to me would suggest that if something like an identical trail marker turns up as an existing POI on the "nearby" list, then I would not call the submission visually unique and mark it so - one trail marker every 500m (not every 25m as you can find in some places in the UK) should suffice. However, I have come across the argument in various forums that "because the submission photo as a whole is not identical to any other - there are different things in the background - this means the submission photo is unique".
As mentioned earlier, I would like Nianic to be more definite about some of these terms that are used.
Real Incentive reward
Niantic is able to create sponsored and temporary pokestops. Why not giving a free possibility to place a pokestop at home to reviewers who reach a given number of agreements (let's say 5000 or so) ? Those could be not eligible to become gyms nor count in stop per cell, and could be given for one year or have to be renewed by some way.
As a long time reviewer there's very clearly quite a few submitters who are honestly clueless. We're talking kindergartens, random trees / views etc. as the focus of a submission. With reviewing now unlocked at level 38 / 10 (PoGo/Ingress) can we please make it mandatory to pass the review test before a user is allowed to submit their first stop? It's not going to remove all poor submissions but by forcing people to at least pass the test they will have a rudimentary idea at least of what is likely to be approved and what's not instead. It should help increase the general quality of submissions at minimal cost since it's reusing the existing test and reduce a lot of frustration as a reviewer.
When a POI is too close to another one, wayfarer nomination results in nominations tab states "accepted"
Change "accepted" to "too close" or something similar.
In Ingress, the emails indicate if it was too close to another POI, but PoGO mails states as approved while this is not true. Also, most people seem not to read them.
The main reason to ask, in addition to giving people more information, is that it will also help the community forum have fewer posts asking, "why did my nomination statuses accept but not appear in any games?"
Can we allow for longer descriptions for Wayspots within Wayfarer?
Would it be possible to add location edits to the Wayfarer interface? There has been some frustration expressed by players where if reviewers change a location which end up preventing the POI from appearing in the game they're playing, there's no real way for the submitter to edit the POI to a location where it is still accurate but will appear in the game theyr'e playing.
I've been reporting for months a couple of people who send fake 360s and have a lot of fake stops and I don't see any progress with them, they keep sending their stops and I keep reporting them without anything happening
Two questions.
1. Is there any chance to post this month's AMA result in any Niantic social media, including Niantic Support Twitter account, so many people that didn't know this forum exist can at least read the AMA?
2. Is there any chance to replace Wayfarer abuse form (that is using Google Forms) into 'Report an Issue in Pokemon GO' web form style? And if it can happen, will we get any feedback from the report?
What are the legitimate reasons for moving an existing wayspot?
Fake Nominations should be addressed ASAP. Dislikes are from players who are submitting Fake Nominations. :-)
Would there be further clarification of seasonal and temporary display? There are several threads about this topic. However, some questions remain unanswered.
The following are some related threads:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/4381/what-should-be-classed-as-temporary/p1
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/8157/are-outdoor-floorball-fields-eligible
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/2084/whats-the-ruling-for-murals-on-roller-shutters
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/5342/rool-out-door
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/395/park-animal-shaped-wire-mesh
Why don't you add a supporting description to edits like submissions?
This question refers to the difficulty to present and evaluate good candidates points of interest in terms of local and popular cafés or pubs or restaurants (as a place I would brought some foreign friend). When considering those acceptables POIs, what could better define them: being well-known in the neighbourhood, or having recognition by some gastronomy expert magazines, or both of or maybe does is have a different point of view? Detailed examples and clarifications about this matter would be very apreciated. Thank you in any case.
Why would you even need to ask this?
The answer is simply: "the wayspot is currently not in the correct location and you are moving it to the correct location."
Sometime there but be some uncertainly in what exactly is the correct location, but that is going to be specific to the individual wayspot, so you won't get a useful answer from this AMA.
Xq no me salen propuestas para calificar? Me salen mensajes como este...
Many of the frustrations and issues that arise are fundamentally due to communication problems.
This is a called a community forum but 99% of it consists of wayfarers discussing things with very little input from wayfarer itself - and most of that is response to a few select questions.
This lack of coherence leads to frustration as to why decisions have been made as they are imposed from above and often display a lack of understanding of the very part-time nature of wayfarers.
It also makes it hard for wayfarer employees to be able to improve things.
They obsession with secrecy and lack of transparency about technical points that are actually possible to work out is unhelpful. The situation where everyone thinks they know, but it can’t actually be confirmed.
As part of a very large, successful company with large profits, it does appear to be something that is done “on the cheap” without proper resource.
Are there any plans to improve communication flow so that it is more dynamic and meaningful?
Are there any plans to communicate more key decisions directly in game to all potential wayfarers?
Are there any plans to integrate wayfarer employees with its volunteer wayfarers so that it becomes a whole community?
I don't understand why POGO players cry in little threads and don't say anything in this...
The new move-deleting system of stops is bad, is the worst thing that niantic can do for pogo. We need to force niantic to respond to us and escalate our complaint to the people responsible for creating this new system of abuse, because the abuse of change wayspot locations was a real abuse and they should have stopped it before, but this abuse occurs because of the (silly) idea of joining all the games on the same platform and then applying different rules to each one without explaining anything to the user. Instead of changing that injustice they have made the difference even greater between the games and created a new movement system to eliminate stops / gyms.
Great niantic, you are improving, I am not sure if it is a carefully thought out decision (which would be horrible) or if you improvise on the fly
Hi! I've some eligible nominations that match your guidelines. The problem is reviewers repeatedly reject them. I always put a link in the support reporting a site that certifies the autenticity of my nominations, but rewievers keep rejecting them all. I've come to think they don't even look at the request. They look at the photo. They think: "oh! What a ****. It's clearly a temporary object! Reject it" and they never think about reading the support.
My advice is that the 1* has to be put at the end of the review. This will prevent some of the reviews from being rejected despite them matching the criteria.
Thank you.
I presume you're a PoGo player, and you're not aware that Ingress allows you to use pictures from your library ? It's an official feature, with a dedicated button in the app.
Drawing reviewers attention to a particular guideline is extremely clunky and hit and miss.
Would it be possible to have a list of clarifications with a “short official hotlink” so that it stood out to the reviewer and made it easy to get to the relevant info. I’m imagining it appearing like a button in a specific field at the start of the supporting info. Something you could add as an edit in wayfarer rather than the submission from whatever game.
Yeah, I agree, cooldown is frustrating. I'm rather taking a week off than waiting for the end of 24h cooldown after reviewing a couple of genuine nominations. Wayfarer algorithms are not working well. Thousands of reviewed nominations are not processed.
Yeah, backlog is regularly one of many frustrating problems.
It would be really nice if it would be possible to expand/update the options in the "What is it" section, especially in the sports section. This is especially important in these instances when it is required to choose an option, while there might not be an appropriate option.
For example: Instead of putting down "athletic field" for almost any outdoor sports area, it would be nice to be able to specify whether it's, for example, a public soccer field (most popular team sport world wide!). "Athletic field" sounds like an athletics field (so just field and track for running, jumping, throwing, etc) to me, so it took me a while to see that as an appropriate option for a (public) soccer field. Other outdoor sports area are, for example, hockey field, volleybal field, pétanque field, etc. Also, I often come across (public) outdoor fitness equipment. Otherwise, an option "other" would be nice to have.
Other areas in the "What is it"-section I struggle with is everything to do with housing/supporting animals (not all are eligible, but some are as far as I'm concerned), for example insect hotels, storks poles, and bird houses.
And sometimes, I'm just wishing for a "I don't know"-option when I'm required to select an option in the "what is it"-section, especially while reviewing foreign submissions. Sometimes I just cannot find what it is, and nothing seems to translate to anything helpful, especially with buildings with a (presumably) specific function.
This is probably a small selection of the options that people are missing. Maybe it would be nice give reviewers the opportunity to submit options.
More discussion on this topic:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/8624/suggestions-for-new-what-is-it-options
Will support for more languages will be added in game ??
@NianticKN-ING sir we have Nominated many things in our city. Many waypoints Accepted are having cultural & religious values so we decided to give it titles & description in our local language (Devnagari Script/fonts ) as translating it in English may give different pronunciation.
Everything was ok while submitting nomination but we have noticed once in game, titles & description in devnagari script/fonts (For hindi, Konkani &. marathi language) are not displaying correctly. They are broken.
Would be really great if you all add support for all major Indian languages (scripts/Fonts) in game so that we can read it properly. Otherwise people think it's wrongly spelled & keep on going to edit titles. @NianticCasey-ING @NianticAaron @ni0h-ING @NianticAustin-ING @NianticEG @NianticAaron ron
Here are more details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/exq0r2/pokémon_go_still_has_broken_rendering_for_indian/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Should location be excat cordinates of waypoint or it can be in or around 10 metres of waypoint? What was reason to decide 10 metres location edit limits ? Is it because we can nominate anywhere within or around 10 metres radius?
Question came in mind because of playground nominations like football & tennis grounds/courts... We can't nominate waypoint on place where game is played since it will disturb game played on it..
So is 10 metres location difference is allowed?
Is the Wayfarer team considering using geofences to eliminate the acceptance of wayspots on active military bases? Running locations of nominations through these kinds of filters could keep these nominations from going before reviewers. Apparently, despite guidance given here in the community from Niantic moderators that new wayspots are to be rejected as obstructing essential emergency services, the wayspots are still apparently getting through. See this thread here: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/9422/invalid-wayspots-on-an-active-military-base
Can you confirm the current best practice for dealing with a wayspot that's been removed (in the real world) and replaced with another nomination-eligible point of interest? (For example, a statue taken down and new statue put in the same spot, or a business taking over the building previously occupied by a "hyperlocal hotspot" wayspot.)
I'm still following the last advice I saw from NianticCasey (which I can't find to link to), which was to submit a removal request for the removed POI, then submit a new wayspot nomination for judging.
On the other hand, I'm seeing wayfinders here use the photo submit-and-appeal process to do incremental swaps: They add a picture of the new point of interest, submit an appeal to remove the photos of the previous wayspot, then submit title edits to match the new picture.
I have concerns about the latter process, especially with business wayspots -- moving into the same building as a former hotspot shouldn't automatically make the new business a hotspot. Sometimes the new business is just lame.
While I'm sort of on the topic of image reviews and appeals, can we get a clear statement: Is just being out of date a valid reason to request image removal?
I'm not talking about POI swaps (in this case) -- I'm asking about situations like when a park or business wayspot gets a redesigned sign. Signs are often used as wayspot photos, so having photos showing out-of-date signs makes it more difficult for players to find such wayspots in the real world. They could walk or drive right past the wayspot because they're looking for the wrong sign!
No. It should be on the POI. The 10m limit was a direct result of POGO players submitting egregiously bogus location edits, trying to get around the cell density limitations that are part of that game. (Nonsense like moving every POI in town into the same park.) It is a "this is why we can't have nice things" rule, not a suggestion to place POIs 10m off their actual location.
Sports pitches should probably have the point on or just off the edge, not middle.