Revenge rejections.

SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

I've been contemplating for a while if I should post about the local case of mass rejections in my area... figured now would be a good time to do it.

For starters I'll say that I'm not the only one experiencing these mass rejections. I know of at least 6 other users in my area who experience the same thing with their nominations.

Some statistics first.

  • Pre- late June 2020: I've made 51 nominations. 26 were accepted. 2 were duplicates. 4 were withdrawn (due to the duplicating bug). 2 were rejected once, then accepted on the 2nd attempt. 1 was rejected 4 times, and accepted on the 5th. 1 one rejected 5 times, and not submitted again (a different nomination nearby was accepted). 1 was rejected 3 times due to "generic business", I have not attempted nominating it again yet. 5 were miscellaneous rejections.
  • Post- late June 2020: I've made 153 nominations. 37 were accepted - 3 of them were mysteriously moved in the acceptation process into the radius of nearby wayspots (despite being correctly placed in the first place), thus preventing them from appearing. 5 were rejected as duplicates - only 1 actually was (the same object was nominated by someone else at the same time, and accepted first). 75 were rejected. 3 were withdrawn. 33 are currently in queue or in voting. The overwhelming majority are re-submissions of previously rejected nominations, and several accepted nominations had to be re-submitted at least once.

For comparison - I've made 12 nominations in cities outside of my usual play area. 10 were accepted. 1 was rejected once, then accepted on the 2nd attempt. 1 I haven't gotten around to re-submitting yet. The rest are made in my usual play area, which spans over 2 neighboring cities.

June 2020 marked my first clashes with a local group of abusers. It resulted in Niantic removing some of their abusive wayspots due to my reports here on the forum. I have been told that "I have made myself the enemy of communities all across the country". Compare to the quote I included above.

Now, here are a few examples of some of my submissions and the rejection reasons I've been getting for them. (To try and make things simple, I'll be bringing as little details as I can, but if anyone wants to see descriptions/supporting information/etc. for anything specific, I'll gladly provide it.)

A) Main photo | Supporting photo | Location [Mural]

  • Rejection #1: "Nomination does not appear to be permanent or appears to be a seasonal display that is only put up during certain times of the year, The real-world location of the nomination appears to represent a generic store or restaurant."
  • Rejection #2: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to represent a generic store or restaurant, Photo appears to include a recognizable face, Photo of the nomination appears to be of a live animal instead of a valid object."
  • Rejection #3: "." [No reasons given]
  • Rejection #4: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm, Photo appears to include a recognizable face, Nomination does not appear to be permanent or appears to be a seasonal display that is only put up during certain times of the year."

B) Main photo | Supporting photo | Location [Historical building, Wikipedia article provided in supporting information]

  • Rejection #1: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to represent a generic store or restaurant, Nomination title or description contains a URL or HTML markup, The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm."
  • Rejection #2: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Photo of the nomination appears to be of a person or group of people instead of a valid object."
  • Rejection #3: "Photo is low quality (e.g., pitch black/blurry photos or photos taken from a car), The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria."
  • Rejection #4: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to represent a generic store or restaurant, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Photo is low quality (e.g., pitch black/blurry photos or photos taken from a car)."

Rejection #5: "The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Nomination appears to be a natural feature (waterfall, mountain, lake, etc.) that is not connected to a man-made object."

C) Main photo | Supporting photo | Location [Playground]

  • Rejection #1: wasn't actually a rejection. It was one of the cases that the nomination was accepted, but mysteriously moved away from its correct location and into the radius of an existing wayspot.
  • Rejection #2: "Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views, Nomination was flagged for offensive content."
  • Rejection #3: "Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Nomination was flagged for targeting other players with the purpose of abuse, ridicule, trolling, or harassment, Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views."

Notice the curious rejection reasons here. I can post the text from this nominations if anyone wants to personally judge the alleged abuse.

These weren't the only instances my nominations were rejected on grounds of abuse - this dedication plaque was rejected due to "Nomination was flagged for explicit content, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Nomination title or description contains a URL or HTML markup."; this art installation (so far rejected 6 times total) was once rejected due to "Nomination was flagged for explicit content, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, The real-world location of the nomination appears to be on private residential property or farm."; this information sign was rejected twice before it was finally accepted, and one of the rejections was "Insufficient evidence that the nomination accurately reflects the submitted real-world location based on comparison of the submitted photo and map views, Nomination was flagged for including personal information about the author or other players."; and this sign for a cancer association center was recently rejected for "Nomination was flagged for including personal information about the author or other players, Nomination does not appear to be permanent or appears to be a seasonal display that is only put up during certain times of the year, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria."

So there you have it. The "denying" part, and the "reporting" part.

To conclude.

This isn't a one-time thing. It's been going on for 8 months.

This isn't just me. It's at least 6 other people that I know of/remember, probably a lot more who aren't active participants in the local Wayfarer community.

This is happening in 2 specific cities. Nominations made in other cities are unaffected.

This is what revenge from an organized group of abusers looks like.

And in case anyone's wondering - most if not all of the wayspots removed by Niantic that I've mentioned above have been re-submitted and accepted, and more abusive wayspots by that group are being made all the time. But that's a whole other story, and I'm not here to talk about their nominations. I've tried long enough to report that. I'm not going to try anymore. "A fool is someone who does the same thing over and over again expecting different results".

But this revenge via mass rejections? With communities from 2 cities suffering? This is not tolerable.

@NianticAaron @NianticAndres @NianticCasey-ING @NianticEG @NianticGiffard  I am hoping to hear anyone's comment on this.

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Comments

  • BleedBoss-PGOBleedBoss-PGO Posts: 269 ✭✭✭

    Sorry for the short reply, but rest assured i read through your entire post.


    This will always be an issue because Niantic refuses to punish abusive reviewers. Your case isn't the first, and it surely won't be the last. All it takes is a decent sized local group with a spreadsheet for their nominations, and every other nomination that's done locally is to be rejected.


    We've seen this here as well with Ingress factions purposedly rejecting valid submissions due to turf wars. And Niantic sits on the sideline, silent as a rat, supporting this abuse.


    "If you are neutral in situations of opression, then you have taken the side of the opressor".

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Don't apologize, your reply is more than I expected to get on this post. I appreciate you reading all of it.

    My main hope is to raise awareness, maybe create a discussion, especially as I've been seeing more and more reports here on the forum that remind me so much of what I'm experiencing - specifically the one case I've linked in the original post.

    I don't really have high hopes for action from Niantic at this point.

  • BaltiCalling-INGBaltiCalling-ING Posts: 362 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Your satellite views are horribly blurry, possibly out of date. That can explain the 'can't find it'/'private residence or farm' rejections. I would recommend creating photospheres at each location. I can't imagine how frustrating it is to review wayspots in that area seeing how jacked up the satellite views are.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    That's how it is for the whole country - I really doubt it's really affecting the rejections. No one here is relying on satellite view for details smaller than buildings/large structures.

    I often create photospheres when there's no Street View and no other means of providing information about the location (website addresses for the supporting info section, etc.). But as you can see in example A I've provided in the original post, that doesn't change anything.

  • Rodensteiner-PGORodensteiner-PGO Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2021

    Didnt you have a Thread Here recently that went way Off Into the hot air Here recently? Wasnt that closed by niantic? Please, Respect that and do Not start again. nianticGiffard told you they Look Into it

    Also i have to say Those Submissions would be on my B and C List for Winter Submissions.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I did. About a different matter.

    This is about rejections, not about existing abusive nominations.

  • AnaKNOXdown-INGAnaKNOXdown-ING Posts: 117 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2021

    Welcome to the club. I've got a similar story. Here we've got a guy who's literally PGO level 38 account factory. Once he reaches level 38, he makes another account (and no, I'm not making this up) just to get his submissions pass.

    He got banned from Wayfarer 2 years go for abusive submissions and blames me and my friend for that. Considering he knows where both of us live, submissions from 2 areas (cityquarters) where we live get regularly rejected with "fake nomination", "explicit content", "sensitive location" and "abuse" reasons with the intent to get both of us banned. And because of evil, jealousy, revenge and TOS breaking, players who lives in these 2 areas are refrained from submitting anything.


    Here's just one of many examples:


    P.S.

    I forgot to mention that he send fake portal pictures so he can remove our portal easily. For example, he wants a memorial stone to get replaced with a picture of school not taking in consider that he got reported :)

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yikes. All of that sounds way too familiar. Horrible how this sort of cases are happening all over the world.

    I'm really sorry you're going through this.

  • AnaKNOXdown-INGAnaKNOXdown-ING Posts: 117 ✭✭✭

    Not to mention that his friend's home gym got removed by Niantic for an unknown reason. Nobody had no idea what went wrong.....but yes, we're blamed for that.

    But you know what they say about karma 😉 Abusers will get what they deserve. It's just a matter of time, right?

  • thegathaterra-PGOthegathaterra-PGO Posts: 108 ✭✭

    Sounds like portal vandalism.

    Don't they realize that by screwing up other people's reviews, they are screwing up the system.

    Niantic games are for these portal vandals as well as every one else. They are hurting themselves in the long run.

    Cutting off their nose to spite the face.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yes - I keep thinking about how they are ruining other people's ratings in doing this (those who do review these nominations regularly).

  • Thanks for flagging this, @SiIverLyra-PGO! I have also gone through all the comments in their entirety. Having said that, I have flagged this report to our team already. I'll get back to you as soon as I hear from them, until then I appreciate your understanding.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thank you for the reply Giffard, I really appreciate it.

    Seeing as this situation has been going on for months, I very much look forward to hearing what the team will have to say in the matter.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Been two months, time for some follow up.

    You know, for a while after I posted this, I had a tiny streak of accepted nominations, and for that while I thought that maybe Niantic ARE actually, truly, doing something about this issue.

    But then the regular streak of rejections returned. All with the regular unrelated rejection reasons that I've come to know over these months.

    A few notable anecdotes I can add:

    • To add to my conclusion that this doesn't happen with nominations I make outside of my usual area - I happened to make a couple of nominations in a city about 20 kilometers away. Those were accepted first try, no problem.
    • One of my old nominations - one I've been having to re-submit for nearly a year at this point - made it to a Wayfarer group I'm in. Someone stumbled on it and wanted to hear opinions on it. It's a big mural outside of an ice cream parlor. Another user - one I know is part of the abuse group that's parting my area - said that it's a "mass produced and is in every location of this ice cream chain" - which is an actual blatant lie. (This nomination got rejected again, of course.) If that's the kind of lies these people are spreading about my nominations, no wonder they get rejected again and again.
    • Recently another nomination of mine - a playground - was marked as duplicate. I thought there might've been a bug because I couldn't for the life of me find what wayspot was marked as the duplicate (it was false anyway, but I still wanted to see). I started checking wayspots farther and farther away until I found my nomination photo in a wayspot 200 meters away. This couldn't possibly have happen by accident. There is no way a few people all happened to randomly mark the same wayspot SO far away as duplicate. This isn't the first time my nomination - specifically playground nominations, for some weird reason - are falsely marked as duplicates, either.

    I can go on and list the number of submissions I've made since I made the original post, and the percentage of accepted vs rejected ones, and the number of ongoing re-submissions I'm forced to do, but I don't really see the point at this stage. If anyone is actually interested, then I'll do it. But I doubt anyone is.

    I don't know anymore. Honestly. Like. Is it because a lot of this involves a foreign language? Is it because this is a tiny country with a tiny playerbase, so Niantic don't really care about the s--tstorm of multi-faceted abuse that is going on here for nearly a goddamn year?

    Niantic said they'll look into it, so I believed them, and there is silence, and nothing seems to have changed. Niantic also say that they see my abuse reports, even though all evidence seems to point otherwise, so I believe them. Against my common sense, I keep trying to sort this hell. And that, again and again, leads me nowhere. I keep doing this dirty work, I paid and keep paying a painful personal price in my local community for standing up for Niantic's guidelines despite it being the decidedly unpopular opinion in the local Wayfarer scene, and this is the support I get from Niantic.

    What gets me above all is that the local abusers see ALL of this. As they made it clear to me again and again, they read every single thing I post. So they see Niantic's indifference. This fuels them. This makes them think that they're winning. And honestly? They are.

    I'm just tired.


    When I said I hope the Community Advocates plan would lead to better communication, THIS is what I talk about. And CAs are my last hope. If that would also lead to only more dead ends, then I'm honestly gonna give up on this. You can have a low quality game map, for all your games, littered with idiotic personal jokes about Parliament members and pet waste stations and whatever else the Israeli abusers are currently up to. I don't get paid for this.

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