Reasons why dry voting zone change needs to be priority #1
ApplPsydarr-PGO
Posts: 139 ✭✭✭
Dry voting areas needs to be priority number #1 in 2021 for many reasons including those listed below. Please fix ASAP.
- they get screwed over unlike good voting areas
- 8 months for something to go through means greater chance it becomes a duplicate
- if rejected it takes another 8+ months to renominate, compared to just a week in some places
- less waypoints in games while good areas continue to flourish event after event putting them ahead of others easily
- nobody wants to wait 8+ months so no one nominates or reviews
- your chances of nominating something that was nominated by someone else is extremely high
- by the time your points make it through, you may have moved far away
- there's a lack of incentive as good voting areas continue to reap the benefits of their privilege and dry areas are left in the dust
Fix this please. My experience is Little Rock Arkansas. Other reviewers, where are your dry areas?
Comments
For reference, I current have 58 nominations in queue or voting with 3 from over a year ago.
where i live, wayspots (Pokestops) here were basicly not existant 18 month ago. we had one here, on there, and some gyms.
when my sons and i started submitting, things quickly changed. we now are a good place to play.
-> Timeline
June 2019, i made my first submissions
July/August 2019, first pokestops/gyms went live
March 2020, the backlog was flushed
My Sons started to nominate also in more remote parts of our Area
April 2020 the remote parts got their wayspots very quick, even without upgrade
June 2020 Submissions here and there started to stay in voting
....
December 2020 Submissions here and there are still in voting, because
a) we now already have alot, and the system has priorized us down
b) people HERE stopped voting, because it isnt fun, it isnt rewarding, it is a chore
c) many duplicates and many submissions in cells stop things form being voted out
d) people submit things that are now considered "the rest"
e) people submitting name changes to wayspots to add Placenames
f) People submitting things that clog the system (their living room, stuff in they front-yard)
EVEN C-19 doesnt make people want to use wayfarer when at home.
I believe that we need more evaluators and better incentives for this hard work.
yes, but not Revives or random pokemon in PGO like for AR Scanning. Id rather watch paint dry.
That may work or just make it as easy to get things through as it is in a saturated voting area. My tale of two cities is my hometown takes 2 weeks max to get something through, where I've been living for 4 years it takes 6-8 months on average.
In Arlington, VA or Washington DC, it goes over a year before a nomination gets looked at. Anything you want to be reviewed has to be an upgrade. Which is fine, no one needs more portals/pokestops - there are too many already.
Maybe nomination oversaturation? Vastly different than dry voting. I wish I had the privilege to say I didn't need more waypoints lmao. But in my opinion plenty of spots in Arlington and DC that have plenty of room for new waypoints.
Just wanted to provide an update:
I will be going back to Michigan soon were nominations take max 2 weeks to go through, but it is sad that my 83 in central Arkansas are taking forever and if any are denied I will not be able to renominate until way into the future.
This is so disheartening for so many players. There are several more issues then just dry voting at play here unfortunately. Fishing for agreements is a major issue that has plagued our community. Which then leads to legit reviewers becoming inactive, which has a detrimental effect downstream, as less reviewers means less stops reviewed. Hopefully some holistic changes to the system makes for some drastically needs improvements.
My slowdown came about a year ago. Before March last year it took only about 4 to 6 weeks for in city poi to go through. Then it started to slow.
I now have 164 with the oldest being from Feb 2020.
When voting opened to PoGo players I was down to 7 PoI in voting. It's been a long time since I've been that low.
Good news! Casey's latest update said that they're focusing more reviewers on dry areas without a lot of local reviewers.
If the only one that has finished evaluating has been because of an upgrade, you might benefit be doing more reviewing in order to earn more upgrades.
I am hopeful for them addressing dry areas. Unfortunately the advice to review more isn't really helpful. With little reviewers our agreements and disagreements take just as long as our nominations do. So something I review today could take until next year or longer to count towards an upgrade. I used to review like crazy but slowed down dramatically as my motivation in the system has gone away.
164 is a lot. I would be in the same boat if I didn't move to Michigan last year for a few months. Their nominations go through like a knife through butter.
Familiar feeling. Changing bonus location to more exotic (for me) areas has given me a temporary relief from boredom and motivation boost.
Consider joining the India challenge or what ever the call it? For me the possibility to relocate my bonus area after the challenge is more attracting than the actual challenge. :D
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/13508/option-to-change-bonus-home-location
In the US, you at least have the chance of out-of-town reviewers looking at things. I sometime hear of american reviewers getting things even from Guam or the Virgin Islands. But the US is a large place, so you have to be lucky.
Then you have Africa, for an example, where there are cities with tens of millions of people with none or just under a dozen of stops.
I wish one could change the bonus location more often, that the strange "Home" location would be made into an additional bonus location, and that the area covered by the BL would be set back to 1+8 S2 L6 cells.
The issue here, and has been discussed at great length in other forums, is upgrades tend to lead to more rejections since you don't have folks with local knowledge voting on your submissions. I can see a lot of people thinking this will be great to then have A LOT of their nominations go right into the bin from reviewers who don't have any knowledge of the area. I'd suggest folks go through all their submissions that are still in queue and really beef up the description and supporting evidence before this change. There's gonna be a lot of pink on the nominations list once this hits.
I'd love Niantic to build a hybrid model where time in voting also plays a role in submission determination. For example if its only been viewed a half dozen time in a year but most of the reviews are positive then it could go through, rather that having to hit the minimum "reviewed by" quota before it's status is determined.
The long time lag between submission and it being reviewed me a that things can and do change, not only with the poi but also the guidelines for acceptance.
I have just withdrawn a nomination that has been sitting in the queue for 9 months. The actual site has now had a refurbish and it looks a lot better - so it stands a better chance. Unfortunately Although I can update the text I can’t simply submit a better photo so it’s withdraw the nomination and start again.
not really much of an incentive
I recently changed my bonus location to the galapagos. I loved my stay there and hope to go back again sometime. And thanks for the India tip :)
I'm in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, played PoGo since launch and I'm a veteran of all previous games. The dry voting area problem is exasperated here as not only do we have few stops and gyms, we also have few players, though those who do play do so dedicatedly. This means that not only do I have many nominations pending, I am also not getting nominations to review, as the low number of stops/gyms mean that getting to the required level takes 10 times as much effort here, as opposed to high stop/gym density areas, hence we gave few submitters and even fewer evaluators. Niantic NEEDS to allow low voting density areas to get their stops with less reviews, as we have less reviewers. Maybe atleast allowing people outside our dry area to review our submission(maybe make photospheres a requirement to keep fake nominations out) would solve it all in one stroke. In a city of 6 million with barely 15 stops/gyms, it took me well over a year of intensive play to make it to lvl 40, and I have reviews pending(voting) since November 2020, and I will have them in pending until November 2043 unless Niantic looks to widen it's consideration to areas that may give them less money due to low density of players. I understand Niantic is a business, but we're not asking for much, just a little R.E.S.P.E.C.T 😅
PLEASE take a look at this discrepancy Niantic. Thanks.