For me it would be really interesting if thats the offical answer or the e-mail department didnt communicate with @NianticGiffard and the team that takes a look into the issue.
To be clear: I am fine with getting banned 30 days for something that is against the ToS. But I have the right to know what I did wrong, otherwise we can't change our behaviour for the future reviews.
For me personally something is 100% set: If this ban wave isn't properly reviewed and everyone knows why they got banned 30 days, I won't review a single POI in this System anymore and quit Wayfarer. It is to risky to lose the account you put time, love and passion in. I like the reviewing part (what shows in my + 15k reviewed POI) but if it leads into my account getting banned for a reason I won't ever know, then I have to quit. And I think its logical to say that I would advise anyone that asks me to do it also (doesn't matter if you got banned at this wave or not).
I agree with you. Without knowing what I did wrong, I will not review again. In the bug section @NianticCasey-ING posted the following statement.
"Hi there,
Thanks for surfacing. We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles. Although I can't confirm without any specific usernames to review, it's likely that this is what these users are experiencing."
If this is the reason we voted infavor of somekind of abusive title edits. What we do not know by this statement, how many times you need to vote infavor of the abuse edit to get the ban. If it was one time, I think the ban is to harsh and the risk getting another ban with more severe consequences would be to risky for me reviewing again. I did more than 20000 reviews. I have 70% agreement rate. Still I do mistakes. Everyone does mistakes. But if we get punished for those mistakes without the chance to know what we are punished for and to protest the punishment, it is a slap in the face.
Everything around wayfarer is understaffed, why can't Niantic hire enough people to do things properly? Even if the main of the reviews would still be reviewed by players, they should hire enough staff to take care of the forums, abuse reports, investigate bad nominators and bad reviewers.
But of course that cost money and Niantic is a poor indie company.
I asked again for a reason or some explanation and received this:
“
We will not be able to share any details of our investigation at this moment. Please review our Wayspot criteria and ensure that you follow them while reviewing nominations to avoid this in future.
“
Atleast there seems to be an investigation. Although i thought this investigation was already done and thats why we got this bans 🤔
And i completely agree with @ZeuLan111-PGO: with my account on the line, i will never do any reviews again.
There are people spoofing since 5+ years and then someone is in danger to get banned for one(!) or maybe a few mistakes, that were not even intentional. Thats totally ridiculous.
Could you please tell us @NianticGiffard if the statement from @NianticCasey-ING from the bug section is correalted to this thread?
Because right now it still is not clear if that is the case. And to be honest, I just can't believe that. We all know how bad sometimes the programming is (unfortunately I am not only speaking about Wayfarer). It is not your fault, don't get me wrong.
If you don't share my mind, just let's have a look in the current bug section. Or just have a look which wayspots Niantic released last week... speaking of +18 establishments. If we are honest, that shouldn't be acceptable. And thats the reason why there must be a detection-bot which caused this suspensions.
I also just took a short look of some user who are "suffering" from the current ban.... there is at least one guy, who helped you right here in the past to find a fake wayspot. And now you are thanking this guy with shortcut-answers and insults. Because yes, it is an insult to threaten people with losing their accounts.
HOWEVER let's calm down again and please share us your mind to find a solution to understand this case better.
After I have read everything and now would like to hear a clear opinion of what is now or how it will go on.
I think it's just a shame how Niantic deals with it.
I really enjoy playing the games, I've been in Pokemon GO from Generation 1 to the present day.
Then at some point Ingress came because it grabbed me and I found out about Wayfarer.
It was not without reason that I upgraded my account to submit.
Then I read through the Wayfarer rules and felt like paving places with new stops, on the one hand to enable new gaming experiences and, on the other hand, to bring in new nests or sights.
A lot of new things have been discovered through Ingress and Pokemon GO. No matter where and you even planned to explore new Cities or villages.
I succeeded very well, but there were also rejections in some cases. And I appreciate that there was a bot, something in the Wayfarer system or additional comments that pissed off the software. You should also optionally add a comment that serves this purpose.
For edits: If I have 7 possible candidates to choose from for a stop and have no information about which one to choose, what do I do? Of course I admit the location is not identifiable because 6 locations confuse me. Without a correct description or info what should be done? Sorry I don't see through then.
But to be honest. After a 30 day ban, I don't know myself what I did wrong in the end, what can I improve, what happens if it happens again.
I mean only you lose the evaluators in the game and in the end also players who actually allow you to get your salary for games that you have developed.
It's all about my reviewer account and just the fun that is being taken away from the wayfarers because a ban went out for no real reason and you in your system cannot tell us exactly what is wrong + what can be done better. So i have to think about Wayfarer to leave because I lose something else.
Just a random thought, but there was a recent post complaining about Ingress players in Germany making what might be viewed as potentially abusive title edits to make it easier to sort portal keys.
Thank you for your posting, every thought is nice to read. Of course that’s not OK what they did, but adding the city name to titles should not trigger this suspensions for reviewers. Also I think that I never had anything to review from this area, it’s too far away from me.
Furthermore this is from end of March, but some people here mentioned that they did not review since 2 months or longer. So I don‘t know if there could be a correlation.
@NianticGiffard Could you please give us an update on your investigation.
Thanks at the point but that's different from here.
So let's be honest, how long do you need to look something like that, 72 hours or almost 80 hours around where nothing came out unless we look.
Please now for real clarification. Most of it is delayed here and one simply expects a clear statement of what is going on.
I personally find the wrong way towards evaluators and players.
As evaluators, we want to know what's going on and Niantic can't even give clear positions.
In the meantime the number of players has collected the 30 days bans (surrounding area about 50 km in
Wiesbaden and other cities and they are also at a loss. Increased by 70 people and that with the same email as with me and without any real reasons and also after some did not vote for 3-7 weeks.
Can you wake up there please ?? !! Time is wasted here in my opinion.!
I don't know what it was like in Fulda. But the addition of town districts or town names was not used by many players to sort their keys (then the town would always have had to be in front), but as "protection against theft", so that other towns/town districts could not simply push these Wayspots to themselves (when more than 30m were still possible). In Fulda it was perhaps just old behaviour.
I requested that Niantic sends me the data they have saved about me in Wayfarer. Maybe this could help to find out what was wrong.
But this takes up to 30 days. Let's see what is faster. The end of the ban. Or Niantic gives us the exact facts about our bans. Or Niantic sending me the saved data about me.
Either way Niantic lost all its credit to me. I will not do any review until I know the exact mistake I did when reviewing.
And if they actually give infos about the mistake, I have to reconsider reviewing.
It is harsh that they hand out bans without any warning because of mistakes done when reviewing. Why should I risk losing my game account for free work. I did 20000 reviews and one mistake leads to a ban. That does not seem fair.
Of course you can „answer“ us with silence like so often before, but the problem is also not gone after the 30 days are over for the many suspended wayfarers. It’s even now a problem to find (good) wayfarers and you’re killing the last reputation and motivation with this kind of support.
I apologize for the delay there. As communicated over on another thread, we have taken action against reviewers who were found to be submitting/ voted on obviously bad titles/descriptions with the goal to report the Wayspot(s) as invalid once the title/description gets approved. This is something that could not be a translation issue or a case where they could have accidentally chosen the wrong title/description. The users were trying to bypass the existing process for reporting invalid Wayspots.
Also, if your invalid Wayspot report is/was rejected due to insufficient evidence, please submit an appeal in the forum with additional details instead of misusing the edits process.
In case of intentional abuse cases, we will take strict action even if the account has no prior violations. Since the banned reviewers had multiple cases where they voted on bad titles/descriptions, our team has given them a 30 days timeout period. If you are one of those who was affected by the bans, you're welcome to continue reviewing once your account is reinstated.
I might know now what the abusive description was.
There were fake POIs where someone Requested an edited which claimed that these are fake POI. After some research I found out that this claim was correct. E.g. Fakes Stolpersteine. What should we do if we get an edit of a fake POI, if we can not skip it?
Vermutlich geht es um Edits, bei denen der Titel und oder die Beschreibung bearbeitet wurde zu. Das ist ein Fake oder ähnlichem.
Ich kann mich jedenfalls daran erinnern, so was bekommen zu haben. Das es Fakes waren, habe ich sogar geprüft. Es waren Stolpersteine, die falsch gesetzt waren. Jedenfalls hätte man augenscheinlich die Bearbeitung nicht zustimmen dürfen.
Comments
For me it would be really interesting if thats the offical answer or the e-mail department didnt communicate with @NianticGiffard and the team that takes a look into the issue.
To be clear: I am fine with getting banned 30 days for something that is against the ToS. But I have the right to know what I did wrong, otherwise we can't change our behaviour for the future reviews.
For me personally something is 100% set: If this ban wave isn't properly reviewed and everyone knows why they got banned 30 days, I won't review a single POI in this System anymore and quit Wayfarer. It is to risky to lose the account you put time, love and passion in. I like the reviewing part (what shows in my + 15k reviewed POI) but if it leads into my account getting banned for a reason I won't ever know, then I have to quit. And I think its logical to say that I would advise anyone that asks me to do it also (doesn't matter if you got banned at this wave or not).
@ZeuLan111-PGO
I agree with you. Without knowing what I did wrong, I will not review again. In the bug section @NianticCasey-ING posted the following statement.
"Hi there,
Thanks for surfacing. We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles. Although I can't confirm without any specific usernames to review, it's likely that this is what these users are experiencing."
If this is the reason we voted infavor of somekind of abusive title edits. What we do not know by this statement, how many times you need to vote infavor of the abuse edit to get the ban. If it was one time, I think the ban is to harsh and the risk getting another ban with more severe consequences would be to risky for me reviewing again. I did more than 20000 reviews. I have 70% agreement rate. Still I do mistakes. Everyone does mistakes. But if we get punished for those mistakes without the chance to know what we are punished for and to protest the punishment, it is a slap in the face.
This might be a topic for a seperate thread.
I'm beginning to think that Niantic should be the only one reviewing wayspots.
@Mernie9-ING Because that went so well last time they tried it?
Maybe they could hire more people?
Everything around wayfarer is understaffed, why can't Niantic hire enough people to do things properly? Even if the main of the reviews would still be reviewed by players, they should hire enough staff to take care of the forums, abuse reports, investigate bad nominators and bad reviewers.
But of course that cost money and Niantic is a poor indie company.
I asked again for a reason or some explanation and received this:
“
We will not be able to share any details of our investigation at this moment. Please review our Wayspot criteria and ensure that you follow them while reviewing nominations to avoid this in future.
“
Atleast there seems to be an investigation. Although i thought this investigation was already done and thats why we got this bans 🤔
And i completely agree with @ZeuLan111-PGO: with my account on the line, i will never do any reviews again.
There are people spoofing since 5+ years and then someone is in danger to get banned for one(!) or maybe a few mistakes, that were not even intentional. Thats totally ridiculous.
Could you please tell us @NianticGiffard if the statement from @NianticCasey-ING from the bug section is correalted to this thread?
Because right now it still is not clear if that is the case. And to be honest, I just can't believe that. We all know how bad sometimes the programming is (unfortunately I am not only speaking about Wayfarer). It is not your fault, don't get me wrong.
If you don't share my mind, just let's have a look in the current bug section. Or just have a look which wayspots Niantic released last week... speaking of +18 establishments. If we are honest, that shouldn't be acceptable. And thats the reason why there must be a detection-bot which caused this suspensions.
I also just took a short look of some user who are "suffering" from the current ban.... there is at least one guy, who helped you right here in the past to find a fake wayspot. And now you are thanking this guy with shortcut-answers and insults. Because yes, it is an insult to threaten people with losing their accounts.
HOWEVER let's calm down again and please share us your mind to find a solution to understand this case better.
After I have read everything and now would like to hear a clear opinion of what is now or how it will go on.
I think it's just a shame how Niantic deals with it.
I really enjoy playing the games, I've been in Pokemon GO from Generation 1 to the present day.
Then at some point Ingress came because it grabbed me and I found out about Wayfarer.
It was not without reason that I upgraded my account to submit.
Then I read through the Wayfarer rules and felt like paving places with new stops, on the one hand to enable new gaming experiences and, on the other hand, to bring in new nests or sights.
A lot of new things have been discovered through Ingress and Pokemon GO. No matter where and you even planned to explore new Cities or villages.
I succeeded very well, but there were also rejections in some cases. And I appreciate that there was a bot, something in the Wayfarer system or additional comments that pissed off the software. You should also optionally add a comment that serves this purpose.
For edits: If I have 7 possible candidates to choose from for a stop and have no information about which one to choose, what do I do? Of course I admit the location is not identifiable because 6 locations confuse me. Without a correct description or info what should be done? Sorry I don't see through then.
But to be honest. After a 30 day ban, I don't know myself what I did wrong in the end, what can I improve, what happens if it happens again.
I mean only you lose the evaluators in the game and in the end also players who actually allow you to get your salary for games that you have developed.
It's all about my reviewer account and just the fun that is being taken away from the wayfarers because a ban went out for no real reason and you in your system cannot tell us exactly what is wrong + what can be done better. So i have to think about Wayfarer to leave because I lose something else.
Thanks and Hopefully.
@NianticGiffard @NianticCasey-ING
*bump*
...for better visibility
Still waiting for an explanation from Niantic.
Is that the calm before the coming storm?
@Fullzoom-PGO you will find the explanation (or rather, a reply) in the Bug Forum.
I have already seen this...but this is a different story...
Niantic still has not told us what we did wrong and how they will handle the situation.
Just a random thought, but there was a recent post complaining about Ingress players in Germany making what might be viewed as potentially abusive title edits to make it easier to sort portal keys.
I wonder if this sort of behaviour could be linked to these bans, rather than a bad word filter.
I had that thought the other day, too, especially since it was centered around Germany.
I really hope that Niantic doesn't consider this abuse enough to warrant a 30 day ban with no warning, though.
For what it's worth, though, with no explanations from Niantic (or @NianticCasey-ING) we're left to speculate this which leads to wild theories.
Thank you for your posting, every thought is nice to read. Of course that’s not OK what they did, but adding the city name to titles should not trigger this suspensions for reviewers. Also I think that I never had anything to review from this area, it’s too far away from me.
Furthermore this is from end of March, but some people here mentioned that they did not review since 2 months or longer. So I don‘t know if there could be a correlation.
@NianticGiffard Could you please give us an update on your investigation.
the only ones that should be penalized are the people that add "....in Fulda" to every Waterhole in the Fulda Area.
Thanks at the point but that's different from here.
So let's be honest, how long do you need to look something like that, 72 hours or almost 80 hours around where nothing came out unless we look.
Please now for real clarification. Most of it is delayed here and one simply expects a clear statement of what is going on.
I personally find the wrong way towards evaluators and players.
As evaluators, we want to know what's going on and Niantic can't even give clear positions.
In the meantime the number of players has collected the 30 days bans (surrounding area about 50 km in
Wiesbaden and other cities and they are also at a loss. Increased by 70 people and that with the same email as with me and without any real reasons and also after some did not vote for 3-7 weeks.
Can you wake up there please ?? !! Time is wasted here in my opinion.!
I’m not directly affected by this ban but the wall of silence and lack of explanation does concern me and puts me off reviewing.
none of us are “perfect” at reviewing, it is all about judgement so we can easily make “mistakes”
Without knowing what has gone here and the threat of a loss of our account it is very off putting.
I hope those affected get news soon and I hope we all get told what has happened to rebuild confidence
I don't know what it was like in Fulda. But the addition of town districts or town names was not used by many players to sort their keys (then the town would always have had to be in front), but as "protection against theft", so that other towns/town districts could not simply push these Wayspots to themselves (when more than 30m were still possible). In Fulda it was perhaps just old behaviour.
I requested that Niantic sends me the data they have saved about me in Wayfarer. Maybe this could help to find out what was wrong.
But this takes up to 30 days. Let's see what is faster. The end of the ban. Or Niantic gives us the exact facts about our bans. Or Niantic sending me the saved data about me.
Either way Niantic lost all its credit to me. I will not do any review until I know the exact mistake I did when reviewing.
And if they actually give infos about the mistake, I have to reconsider reviewing.
It is harsh that they hand out bans without any warning because of mistakes done when reviewing. Why should I risk losing my game account for free work. I did 20000 reviews and one mistake leads to a ban. That does not seem fair.
Please share an update on this matter @NianticGiffard
Of course you can „answer“ us with silence like so often before, but the problem is also not gone after the 30 days are over for the many suspended wayfarers. It’s even now a problem to find (good) wayfarers and you’re killing the last reputation and motivation with this kind of support.
Can you please give us an update about your investigation?
Five days since the ban and we still have no idea why we are treated like that.
bump
Hello
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone at home?
Come on, now
.
.
.
I need some information first
Just the basic facts
Can you show me where it hurts?
I have a feeling that you might end up with the same high quality support as this thread, I hope for the best for everyone involved in both threads
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/5115/ingress-lvl2-deleted-wayfarer-statistics-gone
At least the problem solves itself after 30 days when the ban is lifted...
Not
i wouldn’t be surprised if once the ban is lifted you find the rating has slumped.
It would be worth trying to get clarity on that.
I apologize for the delay there. As communicated over on another thread, we have taken action against reviewers who were found to be submitting/ voted on obviously bad titles/descriptions with the goal to report the Wayspot(s) as invalid once the title/description gets approved. This is something that could not be a translation issue or a case where they could have accidentally chosen the wrong title/description. The users were trying to bypass the existing process for reporting invalid Wayspots.
Also, if your invalid Wayspot report is/was rejected due to insufficient evidence, please submit an appeal in the forum with additional details instead of misusing the edits process.
In case of intentional abuse cases, we will take strict action even if the account has no prior violations. Since the banned reviewers had multiple cases where they voted on bad titles/descriptions, our team has given them a 30 days timeout period. If you are one of those who was affected by the bans, you're welcome to continue reviewing once your account is reinstated.
@NianticGiffard
I might know now what the abusive description was.
There were fake POIs where someone Requested an edited which claimed that these are fake POI. After some research I found out that this claim was correct. E.g. Fakes Stolpersteine. What should we do if we get an edit of a fake POI, if we can not skip it?
An answer would be appreciated.
I still don't know what i have done wrong...
Like i said before...i never cheated the system.
You still owe me an explanation!
Nochmal auf Deutsch:
Vermutlich geht es um Edits, bei denen der Titel und oder die Beschreibung bearbeitet wurde zu. Das ist ein Fake oder ähnlichem.
Ich kann mich jedenfalls daran erinnern, so was bekommen zu haben. Das es Fakes waren, habe ich sogar geprüft. Es waren Stolpersteine, die falsch gesetzt waren. Jedenfalls hätte man augenscheinlich die Bearbeitung nicht zustimmen dürfen.
Ich kann mich nicht an einen solchen Edit erinnern...
Hier werden die Falschen bestraft!