NIANTIC PLEASE! update the criteria on wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria
(or at least ADD A STATMENT that that spot is the definitive and current and up to date source for criteria, please?)
I see these posts everywhere, facebook, reddit, here, wherever, where someone asks "why did my submission get rejected?".
And someone gives a reason. A reason THEY*THINK it got rejected. And then some #@$^@#$^ #$@#$^@#$^ tells them they're WRONG and they're a HORRIBLE REVIEWER because they would reject THIS AMAZING <generic brown wooden bus stop bench or whatever they think it is>
Take a deep breath, because i know criteria can and have changed over time...
And I go to wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria, WHICH SHOULD BE the authoritative source.
And i find the appropriate piece of text. And I quote it.
At which point someone becomes some kind of demonic gym obsessed rules lawyer and begins to throw SCREENSHOTS (SCREENSHOTS! Like animals!) of ancient forum posts at me supporting their point that i am a horrible uneducated person who needs to keep up with the times.
Because here's the thing.
(A) Not everybody has time to keep up with a million forum posts, pages of comments, and other back and forth.
(B) Not everyone seems to agree on which sources are definitive. ("That was said on an archived post in the abandoned Ingress forum on REDDIT")
(C) Not all claimed definitive sources are even available any more. ("WELL IN AN OLD GOOGLE HANGOUTS, REDSOLOCUP SAID!")
(E) Followed by "YeS i KnOw It'S dEleTeD, tHaT's WhY wE aRcHiVeD a ScReEnShOt On ThIs ThIrD pArTy WeBsItE!"
(D) Darnit i'm tired of arguing with these people.
and
(E) Because you know, IF wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria IS NOT THE DEFINITIVE SOURCE, THEN WHY IS IT STILL THERE??? Why not just get rid of it if you can't keep it updated?
[ time to put down the keyboard and find an adult beverage. i apologize to anyone whose feathers i may have ruffled. i really do want to help. ]
But seriously though, it would save a LOT of people a LOT of trouble if we didn't have to fight off claims that it's not up to date...
Comments
If I compare the content linked from https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria against what is on https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/wayfarer/?l=en&p=web&s=wayspot-eligibility it seems that the text is the same in both places. I've only spot-checked but the text seems to match in the places I did check. The Wayfarer site presents it differently, with some photo illustrations, but I think the content is otherwise the same.
Where do you see the mismatch?
no mismatch seen by me, but people cherry pick from the strangest places, all in the name of making more POI and
proving*me*wrong
I simple statement of "yep, this is the definitive place for the criteria" would allow me to dodge all this nonsense.
(Also Hosette, i thank you, i recall from past experience you have always been a reasonable human being)
the damage is done.
ingress ama archive. google plus forum... so many diverse problems.
niantic should not reply to questions "is this eligible?". hence the noticeboards and political hq offices...
no mismatch seen by me. that said, why two sources? why not one, saying it is definitive, updated as needed, EVERYTHING ELSE pointing to that?
in germany we have a saying "drove the car into the mud". This has happened to wayfarer a long time ago.
i am getting continously aggressive when starting wayfarer, do 3 reviews and end up with voting 1* from 900 km away.
If it's any help, if someone comes at you with an old G+ page clarification or Ingress AMA answer, you can quote the Wayfarer 3.1 Criteria Refresh as a reason why old clarifications might not be valid anymore.
@GorillaSapiens-ING One of them is publicly visible and one of them is only visible to people logged in to Wayfarer. Frankly, I'd just link to the public ones within Wayfarer if it was me but as long as Niantic keeps them in sync it's their inefficiency to worry about rather than mine.
You have misguided people that you can correct and obtuse (or malicious) people you won't be able to. Once you determine that someone falls in the latter camp, it makes no sense to keep engaging them.
@Hosette-ING @Lechu1730-PGO @GearGlider-ING @rodensteiner-ING agree, here's what i've come up with now as a canned response...
No. For purposes of discussion here, the definitive source for criteria for rating entries on https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/ is https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria
It is baked right into the URL name. Anybody who can read can see that.
I don't care what ancient screenshot you have from reddit, AMA, forums, Google Hangouts, PMs, facebook, telegram, twitter, smoke signals, whatever, it absolutely DOES NOT MATTER... If Niantic wanted to update the criteria, they would update https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria
If https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria does NOT have the criteria, then what, EXACTLY, do you think it is for? They control it, and they can modify it, and it is the FIRST and most OBVIOUS link readily available to ALL reviewers.
Whatever disagreements you THINK you found in an AMA, or in the Wayfarer forums, or ANYWHERE else, are irrelevant. We're not reading your cherry picked, out of context quotes, or screenshots, from the fifth page of some post from 3 months ago. THEY ARE IRRELEVANT.
https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria is THE GOSPEL. Anything you pull from anywhere else is completely and utterly IRRELEVANT. If you cannot defend your point with https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria, then you HAVE no point. End of discussion.
@GorillaSapiens-ING Is that a request for feedback? If so, I have plenty but I'll start with one question. "What is your goal in writing that?"
@GorillaSapiens-ING TBH that looks more like an angry rant than a response. Not to mention there's been criteria clarifications made after the 3.1 refresh through forum AMAs.
I think the best response would be short and simple.
Due to the disorganized nature of past criteria clarifications, Niantic updated the criteria in Wayfarer 3.1 (https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/9512/wayfarer-3-1-release-notes-new-criteria-darkmode/) so that old clarifications from AMAs and posts might no longer be correct. If there are no separate clarifications made after 3.1, the best source is the criteria page on the wayfarer website. (https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria).
And if they keep arguing with you after that, well I don't think anything you say would change their mind.
I agree they should update their criterias regularly and raise wayfarer awareness on social medias as well.
This rant is interesting to me and like others I am not really sure the purpose of it. Seems very misguided as it still doesn't address the issue of valid stops being rejected for completely arbitrary reasons. I am not talking about a random bench that is half falling apart in some obscure park. I am referring to valid stops that meet all Niantic criteria (per your sited page) and still being denied.
I play with an active PoGo community and a smaller group of us coordinate pokestop submissions to provide a better game play experience for everyone. In the last week our group (roughly 8 players) has had four local restaurants, a local martial arts studio, a soccer field, and two coffee shops rejected. I wont go into screen shots or descriptions but try to believe me when I say they were all up to any standard you want to quote and fell within the Niantic criteria.
On the flip side we've had no issue with any footbridge we've submitted and I use the term "footbridge" in the loosest sense possible.
So when you have people complain about their stops being denied, and simply shove us back to the criteria page were everything is met it doesn't really solve/address/ or move the problem forward.
On another note I fail to see the benefit for reviewers to vote down , in mass, valid stops. How does a locally owned restaurant get rejected? How does a soccer field in a public park get rejected? How does a mom and pop coffee shop get rejected when the supporting image has a giant Open flag hanging next to their sign? Don't shove a criteria page in my face when these things happen because people ignore the criteria the other way too.
I think it would be helpful if they changed the review process to include a step by step acceptance or rejection process.
Rejecting? Click which criteria the stop doesnt meet?
Accepting? Walk through the acceptance criteria.
They have the process written down on the page... why isnt the review process set up the exact same way?