Just started and curious why my rating already dropped

Hi!

I just started reviewing, and spent the better part of the day doing so, but noticed that my rating has already dropped to "fair" after ~50 nominations. I'm genuinely curious if this A, has any negative effects on my account, and any further actions I'm doing on it and B, the reason behind it, since I've spent a a lot of time researching each individual nomination and their location, and when it comes to niche (not sure if this is the word I'm looking for) evaluation, I tried looking up some post on this forum about how to judge in those instances.

Also what I feel weird that I have less than 10% of my reviewed nominations as "agreed" but what I'm guessing is that it might go up later even if i stop reviewing since there might just not be enough reviews for the system to say if people already agreed or disagreed with my opinion.

Also I'm curious if I should try to put my personal "knowledge" on a site into my evaluation or not. By this I mean I recognised some of the places that were sent in as wayspot nominations, since I walk a lot (and by a lot I mean a LOT) around the city, and there are a lot of nominations, since I live in the capital of my country and I also realized that for those that have not personally been there the google pictures might just result in a 3 or even a 1 star for the location for example. I usually tried to stick to outdated google pictures < my knowledge of the place, and tried to write personal notes at the end, but since I haven't seen any of these notes anywhere I have to think that others won't see mine either resulting with just me disagreeing with the majority, further worsening my rating

sorry for the essay, but I have a lot of fun playing these games, and wanna do my best to improve their "infrastructure"

Tagged:

Comments

  • Euthanasio2-PGOEuthanasio2-PGO Posts: 272 ✭✭✭

    If you want to accept things, you need to at least 3* all categories. Less than that cause a rejection


    When you don't see something on street views, you need to give 3* unless you are 100% convinced it does not exist or it's an attempt at a fake.


    There's also a chance you were just unlucly with your first agreement, but the massive amount of coal is likely to improve your rating.

  • waxyG-PGOwaxyG-PGO Posts: 11 ✭✭

    thanks! also how literally do you need to take the "historical / cultural relevance" point? Like a football field for example has absolute 0 of any of these so is it just an instant 1* same questions for stuff like playgrounds / malls / etc. you get my point :)

  • JohnnyAlphaCZ-INGJohnnyAlphaCZ-ING Posts: 235 ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2021

    With the history/culture thing, I try to think a bit more broadly. So the football field for example. Football is a big cultural influence. Therefore, a football field is a culturally important place (for some it is a place of worship:) ). Plus it absolutely aces the meeting place/encouraging exercise part of the acceptance criteria.

    Playgrounds are a place for parents and kids to meet and play. This is sort of socialising is important for growth and wellbeing and therefore culturally important.

    I don't think I've ever rejected a nomination (1 or 2 star) just on the basis of culture/history. If it fails at that it will fail at some other levels too and I've most likely 1 starred on the first 'should this be a portal?' question.

    Your rating will fluctuate wildly to start with. Stick to your guns, take your time. I have 14000 reviews under my belt, my agreement percentage is only just over 50% and I have had the top rating since a couple of weeks after starting.

    Oh and you don't get a agreements until the submission has had enough reviews to give it a yes or no. So unless your review is the last one it needed, it will be a while before an agreement registers on your stats.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    you have never been to a football field when you say that =) it has cultural relevance.

    even a playground has a cultural relevance.

    just dont 1* everything. just think of the wayspots you already have seen out there.

    the personal notes are for Niantics Eyes. You cannot tell the submitter anything

  • Euthanasio2-PGOEuthanasio2-PGO Posts: 272 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2021

    Sports field have cultural values. Sports are a big cultural gathering in our society. Culture is not always high art, give at least 3* to cultural value if you disagree though. It might be a cause for your low rating because other people gives higher and you give lower and unintentionally cause a rejection. Niantic is pretty irresponsible to not be transparent about this imo so I cannot blame you, I used to do the same and it was honestly extremely predictable user behavior.

  • waxyG-PGOwaxyG-PGO Posts: 11 ✭✭
    edited January 2021

    i mean i basically grew up with my father taking me to matches every month so even though i agree that it has some cultural relevance, ultras yelling is a bit controversial when it comes to culture :D

    but yes, football fields are a bit bad example and more so i meant malls, parks and such which if taken literally have no culture or history woven into. I just felt its kinda badly phrased for that part it should be more like "how much significance does it have" instead of the "cultural / historical significance"

    anyways thanks for the answers!

    Post edited by Guna1411-PGO on
  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @waxyG-PGO Welcome! And thank you for asking excellent questions.

    You are correct that it takes a while for things that you have reviewed to get to the point where Wayfarer decides whether to accept or reject it. In my experience it can take up to 30 days, occasionally more, for things to reach a consensus on accept/reject. It's unclear whether Niantic counts reviews that haven't yet reached consensus against your rating, but I suspect that it does.

    Absolutely use your knowledge of the area to your advantage. The goal of Wayfarer is to create the most accurate database of waypoints, not to try to guess how other reviewers will vote. Sometimes your local knowledge may cost you an agreement but that's OK. If you are doing a solid job of reviewing then that won't matter over time.

    For historical/cultural reference, Niantic's guidance is to use your best judgement. The exact quote:

    How much historical or cultural significance does the nomination hold within the community? A local library built 100 years ago is certainly more historically and culturally significant than exercise equipment in a park. Use your best judgement and rate the nomination accordingly. 

    My personal range for these things is 1* to 4* for most things, and I reserve 5* for things that are major cultural or historical artifacts. Other people's judgement is entirely different and they will 5* every local playground or tennis court. I well and truly cannot bring myself to give a playground more than 2* for historical/cultural relevance. (Cue people hitting the disagree button on this comment.)

  • FrealafGB-PGOFrealafGB-PGO Posts: 354 ✭✭✭✭

    I prefer to think of the cultural significance as "is it important to the local community?"

    Parks are really important for exercise, socialising, and general mental health and wellbeing, so I rate them highly for cultural significance.

    Churches and other places of worship, I always 5* in this category, because they are extremely significant for their congregation and usually do lots of work with the local community aside from just their religious significance. So again, they are important to the local community.

    Playgrounds are categorically eligible under Niantic guidelines, and as others have said, if you think something is eligible it's not the best idea to score it low on any of the main parameters. Either those parameters are low enough to reject overall, or they're at least a 3 (middling/fine/ok). Playgrounds are social spots for kids and their parents and carers, and neighbourhoods with sage playgrounds are definitely better places to live for it, so again, they do have a cultural importance.

    Hopefully that helps.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭

    i think people that have different standards will have to learn what is of cultural value for the community.

    either that or you will get a problem with your reviews.

  • Euthanasio2-PGOEuthanasio2-PGO Posts: 272 ✭✭✭

    it's been confirmed times and times again that giving less than 2 causes a rejection. Many people received an email with the only reasons of rejection was not being culturally significant as the only reason which means the only possible outcome was people giving 1 or 2* to the cultural criteria as their is no rejection reasons that involve culture.

  • Euthanasio2-PGOEuthanasio2-PGO Posts: 272 ✭✭✭

    The problem is that too many people associate the word culture with high art and niantic does not explain it. Community value would be less confusing for the average reviewer or just change the question entirely

  • NeohBel-PGONeohBel-PGO Posts: 52 ✭✭

    Having a different standard doesn't mean you're wrong: they're largely influenced by your own culture and the way you were raised.

    I know people who hate books. A library would probably have less relevance to them, while for me (as a reader) it even outperforms most churches (atheist, I'll burn, I know 😉). That doesn't mean any of us is wrong. Just try to be honest and follow the criteria.

    Let statistics do their job here: the spread of the answers is normal, because we're talking about opinions and values, but the median or average value will give you a decent idea of what the general opinion in the population is.

  • SeaprincessHNB-PGOSeaprincessHNB-PGO Posts: 1,607 Ambassador

    You're not thinking of Cultural Relevance correctly. It's not about being "cultured." It's about how well it fits in with Niantic's mission/goals. Does this thing get people outside exercising, enjoying nature, interacting with or learning about their community? Then it is culturally relevant.

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Euthanasio2-PGO Actually, it's been confirmed that people sometimes get email that only contains that rejection reason. We don't know anything about how the other things on the submission were rated... it's entirely possible that it got mediocre-to-bad reviews across the board and that was just the only thing that showed up in the email.

    I've seen some of the things that only had cultural significance as a rejection reason and they weren't exactly high-quality submissions.

    For cultural significance I look at how important this exactly thing that's in front of me is-- how much would people be affected if it disappeared, and how many people would be affected? If the Louve disappeared many people would be affected, and significantly so. If the local library disappeared a fair number of people would be moderately affected. If one tennis court disappeared from an area a few people would be mildly affected.

    If it's truly the case that something that was universally rated 5* 5* 1* 5* 5* 5* would be rejected for cultural/historical significance then Niantic owes us updated guidance.

  • sogNinjaman-INGsogNinjaman-ING Posts: 3,313 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Remember, anything rated anywhere with a 1* or a 2* score on any category is a "fail". The baseline for an average, standard Waypoint should be 333333 before it can be accepted. If you are giving 1* or 2* scores to things you think should go through, your score will go down when these are accepted by other reviewers because they voted "Yes" and your vote was "No".

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @sogNinjaman-ING You keep asserting that as thought it was unquestionably true but the evidence doesn't exist to back that up, as I explained in my comment right above yours.

  • waxyG-PGOwaxyG-PGO Posts: 11 ✭✭

    Thanks guys for all the input many things have already clarified, one last question is how, and what does my rating affect short/long term? By that i mean does my "opinion" on certain reviews count more if my rating is higher and vice versa, is it basically neglected if its closer to the bottom end? And does it have any ingame effects, or even the possibility of modifying the outcome of my own submitted wayspot nominations?

    Thanks!

  • JohnnyAlphaCZ-INGJohnnyAlphaCZ-ING Posts: 235 ✭✭✭✭

    The answers to some of that are kept deliberately mysterious by Niantic. What we do know is that if your rating is 'poor', your review agreements stop counting towards your badges. I think there has been some suggestion that the opinions of high rated reviewers carry more weight than others, but how much more weight, we don't know. To the best of my knowledge, your wayfarer rating has no effect on your nominations.

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @waxyG-PGO Niantic has stated that your review has more weight if your rating is higher, but they have not (and almost certainly will never) clarify any details about that. Niantic tends to be very tight-lipped about the details of how their systems work.

    Your submissions will not be affected by your rating.

    You will earn upgrades regardless of your rating, see the last question here: https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/help#upgrades

    If you are rated fair or poor your agreements will not count toward badges. Statement here: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/53837/#Comment_53837

  • AndyTivz-PGOAndyTivz-PGO Posts: 7 ✭✭

    TIL that one category voted less than 3* counts as you "rejecting" the nomination. guess I'll stop taking this as seriously then in that case. They could do an average of what you voted and decide what the overall rating out of 5 star you gave the stop. Nevermind

  • Hosette-INGHosette-ING Posts: 3,469 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @AndyTivz-PGO That has been repeated several times but does not seem to have a solid factual basis. The people making this statement really have only one thing that they pin it on-- some rejection email says that the rejection reason is cultural significance. I do not personally find that evidence convincing.

Sign In or Register to comment.