Hi there! While reviewing edits, reviewers see the existing Wayspot name and the suggested edits. If neither of them is acceptable, there’s also a 'None of the above' option. They do not have to skip or choose the wrong option.
Having said that, if they noticed this was a Fake Wayspot, they should have reported it via the Scanner or Pokémon GO app and not misused the edits process.
So, if you don't realize that it's a Fake Wayspot you are at risk to get the 30 days ban!
How about when the time is runnig out because someone called you on the phone or some other situation that stops you from finishing the reviewing process?
Sorry @NianticGiffard but we can't believe you without an example. If you are writing that we voted on several (!) bad titles there is no way I can believe you or learn anything from it. (even if it would be the case)
If you don't want (or allowed) to post the original example, just explain us what you mean.
Why you don't ban the people forever who are submitting obviously bad titles/descriptions. Why do you suspend reviewers who helped you in the past here in this forum or had over 10.000 reviews in the best possible rating?
Please just show us an example. Or create your own example with other words/location... so we can understand what's wrong here.
@NianticGiffard thanks for your reply on a sunday. i am sorry to say i do Not understand the Situation at all. What Have people done? And for what purpose?
I understand that you do Not want to give people ideas But i want people to understand what Not to do.
If there is Someone that can describe it in German IT would bei okay to Post it in Reddit so that Niantic doesnt Need to say If they are shy.
Einleitend ist es einmal schwer, sich bei Tausenden von Reviews innerhalb der letzten Monate zu erinnern, was man alles bewertet hat. Dein Beispiel ist mir jedoch bekannt und ich denke, dass ich von dieser Sorte vielleicht 2-3 Einreichungen zum Bewerten vorliegen hatte.
Ich bin mir aber relativ sicher, dass ich in diesen Fällen (sprich wo man zwischen 2 Titeln entscheiden musste die z.B. wie folgt lauten "Historische Poststelle" ODER "Achtung das ist ein FAKE"), keinen der beiden Varianten zugestimmt habe. Man hätte "Missbrauch" melden können.... auf der anderen Seite -> Soll man das tun, wenn derjenige der den Edit gemacht, eigentlich nur auf einen Fake hinweisen wollte?
Wie auch immer, dass hier jetzt vorrangig Leute bestraft werden die viel bewerten (weil nur Leute die viel bewerten, können auch oft auf knifflige Entscheidungen treffen) ist für mich ein Witz und ungerecht.
AUTO-TRANSLATION:
To begin with, it is difficult to remember what you have rated after (many) thousands of reviews over the past few months. However, I am aware of your example and I think that I had maybe 2-3 submissions (but not more) of this type for evaluation.
But I am relatively sure that in these cases (i.e. where you had to choose between 2 titles that read, for example, "Historic Post Office" OR "Warning this is a FAKE"), I did not agree to either of the two variants. You could have reported "abuse" .... on the other hand -> Should you do that if the person who made the edit just wanted to point out a fake?
Anyway, that here now primarily people are punished who rate a lot (because only people who rate a lot can often make tricky decisions) is a unjust for me.
First of all, thank you very much @NianticGiffard for sharing some information with us. Great to see that this topic isn‘t hushed-up completely.
But i have to say: i still have no idea what is going on. In my opinion this whole ban wave is totally ridiculous.
It is a pity, but with the current status i will never open wayfarer again. We, all the reviewers that got banned (and i am sure at least 80% got banned totally randomly like myself), are not welcome to return to reviewing. Let me quote one of your (bot?) colleagues Mayson: „note that any further violation can lead to the suspension of your pokemon go/ingress account“
Sorry for being honest: This whole system is a joke. How about warning people in such cases, not just ban them and threaten their accounts? In this case, i bet you can‘t tell that something is intentional. This is just guessing from your side with some hope to solve the Problem.
it must be very hard to review something as sensitive as a fake such as you describe.
You are left with the dilemma if you pick the original fake you are endorsing someone’s disgusting behaviour or picking the one with a title that breeches the rules but actually might accurately describe what it is - a fake.
a very difficult ethical problem.
@NianticGiffard you have given clear guidance on what to do if you find an invalid wayspot - this helps the person who submitted these wrong edits to know what to do, but not what you do if you are reviewing something like this.
Could you possibly add a button to send the edit for scrutiny with a text box to explain why?
I look exactly what a FAKE portal is or what a real stop is, make notes so that Niantic also knows that these are specifically wrong submissions. When I'm in a game where I want to explore, I want to see exactly whether the stop is there or not? If I then see that he is not there .. it is a fake! and someone tried to trick the system.
If we vote as long voters and are sure that it is a fake, other new people who are not as long as in the voting system look less precise and click Yes without looking properly. And the evaluators who vote for a long time click no because they are sure and already check themselves or are familiar with the system.
It is then clear that the new voters wave this through because they are of the opinion that this stop does not look wrong.
As a result, the longer voters have their hands tied because they have pressed reject and then collect a ban .. And then the stop goes online.
If this should then be postponed, we should then vote on at the bottom right corner, click the abuse button and fill in the details. Okay, but this button is so small that you can hardly see it and many people then tend to click on the button Location undetectable.
Then you say as above as an answer, we should use the button below and fill in the details.
Great and a 30 day ban for something like that ..
One should clarify and point out more precisely.
If I get another strike I'll be completely out of it. Didn't sit down for days, hours and minutes in vain to vote properly.
As an example, stumbling blocks:
How do I know that the stop in front of the door is at a house in a street that stands alone, or in a place? .. First I find out about the name.
But if I then see that these stumbling blocks are in a big city and do not exist in a small town or place, I fundamentally reject them. Stumbling blocks are mostly there where, for example, people were persecuted during the war.
Most of them are in large cities or small towns, which are also stored in local administration offices online on the Internet or are marked on site on city maps (flyer in the forum of a town hall or local administration)
Just for that.
I inform myself beforehand whether there is a stumbling block with the name. If it isn't there, I refuse.
But there is also a problem. Unfortunately, it's too easy to fake and people have their stops and portals to play with.
Unfortunately, many people copy the fakes of others or make screens, edit them with Photoshop or something else and then as an evaluator it is difficult to find out whether it is an original photo.
When you vote then you look and other ppl who are not as long as in the voting system click yes without
...
There already is one, look at the bottom right corner, click the abuse button and fill in the details.
THIS BUTTON MUST BE UPDATE BIGGER... So we have every time a Strike Ban 30 Days.. So sorry you should really revise your voting system.
I just found that (old) picture on a social-media group and maybe it fits good for an example of yours.
So if I am the reviewer of this proposal and there would be also the option "Attention - this is a fake" what should I do?
Well first I would check (if I can) if this is really a fake. If I don't know I would probably thake the best fitting title or I would skip it. If I am sure that it is a fake I would probably take "nichts des oben Genannten" which means that everything is not correct.
But what to do if you are not sure?
And now you have the problem, that living in a central europe state you have to review wayspots/titles in many different languages. GoogleTranslate can help in some types, but of course they are not perfect.
And now you really want to punish your reviewers for beeing unsecure of this kind of reviews? Sorry @NianticGiffard but please explain this to all of us. Is that fair? Just tell us your honest opinion.
@NianticGiffard it is not normal to ban people for trying all ways to improve the spots net. you need to improve the way of reporting. many people try to do it by the app, they do not even know about the wayfarer or the forum with appeals (even if they know - it is hard to register here with the browser default security). may be the wayfarers did the mistake by helping them, but it is not the reason for a ban, if the object is really fake.
you do not give example - then i will. on your words i should get a ban too after a half of year, cause i did a review on such photos (look bottom). this is the same as the text edit actually with no comment or escalate to support button availability. i did my investigation on the review. title is "the herb of something", i do not know polish good... but i see there is definitely not a herb on one picture, and first mind then which is fake? i copied the address, found in google maps the place (as i cant do it from photo tab) scrolled the street, hm, herb is the fake? with whole description? i tried to scroll more and more... and i saw it at last. ill give you the moment only when you see the herb:
but scroll around and you see other object with newer images. what should i do? what is the way of change the portal title description photo etc? if they upload the photo - it is not compared with the title, if they suppose the title it is not compared with photo - the vicious circle. and they get the reject for their reports. same as reviewer, you do not want me to choose real photo, you want me just check plates/faces. you dont want me to check real title, you just want grammar/cap case. the system is bad, not reviewers. it is very easy, but very destructive, i can say dumb way to solve the problem - just to ban volunteers who tries to improve. the result will be - you lose the smartest painstakingly partners and never improve the system.
you DO need to explain agents in game how to do "change the portal object" in the support help page, not somewhere in the forum thread. i say it as i had a job on process/quality management.
you need the button "escalate" with the comment available. to have a way to push the object itself to precise support review when existing processes are not realistic/wise.
and obviously you cant ban for people who did their best reviewing. (if we expect the object is really fake)
p.s. the example is not about this particular object, the example is about your system/process for people with healthy mind.
Sorry, but we aren’t welcome anymore to be a part of the wayfarer community. With the risk to lose my Game Account, I will not take any action on wayfarer anymore. Can’t you unterstand that? I was playing niantic games since five years with love and passion. I spend this years almost of my quality livetime to play PokémonGo, building up local communities, improving the game infrastructure by submitting new wayspots, reviewing submissions and submitt Fake spots or wayspots they are violating the TOS. By reporting invalid Wayspot I always use the official form.
i never did anything what you say. In the last 2 months i wasn’t active on wayfarer. I only was reporting your via ingame Formular one invalid Wayspot placed at a kindergarten.
for me I can say, I never did anything that violates your TOS. At this point I can’t recognize what I have done wrong.
my wayfarer rating always was at 65%. I spend so much time to inform me how to review submissions.
but being a part of the wayfarer community it’s just an add on to the game. It’s not my profession. I do it cause I will improve the quality of the game. This is work normally a company should pay people for doing this.
now you say, I am a bad guy and I have to be suspended for 30 days. One more failure and you risk your game account.
how can I ever be a part of wayfarer without being in danger to lose my game account. Just I was doing a mistake by reviewing a title edit?
thats crazy. In the last five years i spend thousands of Euro by playing PokemonGo. One more mistake and I can’t play anymore the game I love so much?
how can I do something wrong when I wasn’t reviewing in Wayfarer since 2 months?
But how do you know that the edit is an abuse if there are also possible correct options? If there are more options like my example you don't know if the abuse button maybe hurts the guy who proposed a good title change or it hurts the guy who wrote "thats a fake".
If there are several options it could be from more than one person. Also I think we never know whats the current title and whats the proposed new one. It is randomly what you are seeing first.
@NianticGiffard I don't have a horse in this particular race because I'm thousands of miles away and have not reviewed any of these German edits. Having said that...
Imagine that you're reviewing a statue of Mozart and you're given the choice between choosing, "Mozart Statue" and "This is a fake" as the title. You don't have enough information to determine whether the statue of Mozart is legitimate but it's absolutely clearly that "Mozart Statue" is a correct title for a statue of Mozart. Any third-grader could tell you that.
It is rational to hand out harsh punishments for malicious intent. It is not rational to hand out a such a punishment for people who have made an honest error in a situation where the right thing to do is not entirely obvious. If someone chooses the title "Mozart Statue" in the situation above then it's very likely that their intent is to do the right thing, and they have made the best decision that they could given the information that was available to them. Perhaps they made a mistake in doing so, but it's the moral equivalent of running a stop sign that was obscured by trees.
To be perfectly blunt, I think Niantic should own a lot of the blame for creating an environment in which this situation can exist. How did all of the fakes get into the game in the first place? My guess is that a team of local reviewers colluded to create them, probably a small number of reviewers reviewing on multiple accounts. The problem of local reviewers forming cabals to approve fake candidates, move wayspots to create clusters, and otherwise cheat the system is well-known at this point. Why hasn't the power of local reviewers been diluted to the point where it would be very difficult to create and edit fakes?
Why are these fake wayspots still in the game? Why hasn't Niantic identified them and removed them? Shouldn't an edit that changes text to "This is a fake" be recognized and and passed to an internal reviewer when it's submitted? The user intent is certainly unambiguous.
The people who have exhibited a pattern of malicious behavior in creating fakes should be punished harshly. People who fell into a trap created by the bad actors should not.
@NianticGiffard Ok, so if I understand it correctly, as a German reviewer I now have a chance to get a 30-day ban on title and description reviews because you don't want to tell us what the titles and / or descriptions are? At the same time, they also threaten people with a permanent ban on their Pokemon GO or Ingress account. I hope you know that you will not only lose evaluators who are affected by the spell. So I will no longer rate if there is a chance that I will get a 30 day ban and then a permanent ban and I don't even know why? Fortunately, it is their Wayspot database that receives fewer entries. Both because people will rate less or not at all and precisely these people will no longer submit.
Personally I think people should use the "none of the above" option a lot more frequently.
For example since there is no street view in germany I use it for 90% of the location edits I get because it's simply impossible to safely confirm the correct location without it. Same goes for title edits if all options are garbage. And if I see something like "please chose this or this location" it's an instant abuse.
Most submissions nowadays are garbage and the same goes for edits.
Alright, first of all: I understand all the frustration and anger people are expressing here. But I think @NianticGiffard has made it perfectly clear what the issue was and how it can be avoided in the future.
Do I agree with the severity of the punishment? No. I think a warning or a shorter ban would have done the trick much better.
However, I think that many poeple on this thread are only venting right now in a write-only mode. Please, try to read and understand what happened first.
If you come across a title/description edit review where one or more of the options are obviously wrong - they include "this is fake", "fake Stolpersteine", etc. - just select "none of tghe above" and report as abuse using the button in the bottom right corner. That's it.
Believe me, I understood exactly what NianticGiffard was explaining.
You can fall into this trap again and again if you are not careful.
The only solution for me (and probably for many others) is to stop reviewing at all, should Niantic keep this practice!
Just to make sure...I am not going to risk my PoGo account and others in my community will act the same way ...
Some facts: Over one year Wayfarer / Platin medal in PGo / Over 2.5k agreements / Over 3.5k reviews (can not check exact numbers atm) / created over 35+ POIs / introduced wayfarer to my community
... and now, to protect my community, i have to recommend not to review in wayfarer ... just sad ...
Hello Nadiwereb, thank you for your response but it is still not perfectly clear what the issue was without providing an example. Honestly I am also not a fan of the wording from @NianticGiffard (and the mail itself) because it says indirectly thats a case of intentional abuse. Because only intentional abuses are leading to 30-day-suspensions without a previous warning. Calling someone an abuser (with thousands of reviews, such much time effort for making the games better and everytime beeing in the best possible rating) is an insult.
And it was also stated to one user, that he had multiple bad reviews in such cases. However we (or better I) know, that I had (your example) maybe 2-3 times to review. And speaking of the last time I had such a thing, I am 99% sure that I choosed the none of the above" - option. And other guys mentioned, just as @Zappi75-PGO that they didn't review anything in the last 2 months. So still right now not everything makes sense.
And please let me allow the following question to you personal: If there is a fake-wayspot (important: and you don't know it is fake) and you have to choose between the two options. First of all you see the picture of the wayspot. What do you do if the picture seems totally correct with the title/description? Obviously we all are not choosing the "it is fake" - title. But if the picture and title seems correct, why don't choose it? One thing is 100% clear: I never submited an edit with "thats fake". And it is 99% clear that I never choosed a "thats fake"-title on a review. But I can ensure you 100% not for multiple times...
I also want to say a big thank you @Hosette-ING - that is a really quality post. I would be very thankful if @NianticGiffard could answer on your post with his detailed and honest opinion.
How should we report something that is not close to out hometown? If my edit is somewhere hundreds of kilometers away from me, I wouldnt just go there to get a rejected ingame report.
I want to add to my comment above. When I am asked to review a title or description edit I'm being asked to do a specific task-- to identify which of the choices (if any) is the best fit for the Wayspot. The text at the top of the page reads "Select the best title". See the attachment.
In the Reviewing a Suggested Wayspot Edit document I am told that I should "Accept the most suitable title for the Wayspot based on the criteria below:", and that I should "Always choose a Wayspot’s official title if it’s available. If the official title is not available, choose the title that closely represents the object". There is somewhat similar guidance for description edits, though with a caveat that I should not choose "[Leave description blank]" unless the other option(s) are on the "Do Not Accept" criteria.
Even more interesting, one of the examples for a description edit gives me a choice between "This is not even here... the pic is from the carnival mural before its restoration" or "Leave description blank", and "Leave description blank" is indicated as the right choice. Presumably if there was a third description that matches the wayspot that I am presented with then that would be the correct choice.
The word "abuse" does not appear in Niantic's official instructions for reviewing an edit.
When I'm reviewing an edit I'm not being asked to assess the validity of the wayspot itself, as that has already been done (correctly or incorrectly) during the initial review. Not only am I not being asked to do that, but I'm not presented with the information or tools necessary to do so.
My conclusions:
Niantic does not expect reviewers to validate the existence of a wayspot during a text edit and does not give them tools to do so
Niantic's instructions explicitly say to choose the best fit for a title or description edit
Niantic's documentation does not instruct reviewers on what to do when they encounter a review of the type mentioned in this discussion
The people who are legitimately confused/angry about their current ban were following the letter of the instructions provide by Niantic
I will further add that this precedent seems likely to have a chilling effect on reviewers. If following Niantic's explicit instructions while reviewing jeopardizes my 7.5-year-old Ingress account then I'm personally inclined to stop reviewing-- I love the game more than I love Wayfarer.
I reviewed tonight until I got a text edit so that I could grab a screenshot for illustration purposes, but the one I got is actually an interesting example. The trail marker does not appear in satellite view, and it's impossible to determine the names of the trails based on the information I'm given. As soon as I post this I'm going to submit the review with my choices for title and description, but what if this is actually a fake trail marker? I doubt it is but how am I to know?
Just found this thread because I also got this mail about the 30 days ban.
The "funny" thing is: I did not use wayfarer site since more than a year now! And I always had an excellent rating. What's going on here?
Well, I don't really need access to wayfarer now (espacially after this mail), but I would be very angry if my PoGo/Ingress Account would be banned becuase of this!
Comments
Hi there! While reviewing edits, reviewers see the existing Wayspot name and the suggested edits. If neither of them is acceptable, there’s also a 'None of the above' option. They do not have to skip or choose the wrong option.
Having said that, if they noticed this was a Fake Wayspot, they should have reported it via the Scanner or Pokémon GO app and not misused the edits process.
So, if you don't realize that it's a Fake Wayspot you are at risk to get the 30 days ban!
How about when the time is runnig out because someone called you on the phone or some other situation that stops you from finishing the reviewing process?
We can confirm you have selected a bad title/description. The response I've shared previously addresses your question.
Never did intentionally!
Don't you think that this system is the right one?
As i said before...you are punishing the wrong ones!
Sorry @NianticGiffard but we can't believe you without an example. If you are writing that we voted on several (!) bad titles there is no way I can believe you or learn anything from it. (even if it would be the case)
If you don't want (or allowed) to post the original example, just explain us what you mean.
Why you don't ban the people forever who are submitting obviously bad titles/descriptions. Why do you suspend reviewers who helped you in the past here in this forum or had over 10.000 reviews in the best possible rating?
Please just show us an example. Or create your own example with other words/location... so we can understand what's wrong here.
@NianticGiffard thanks for your reply on a sunday. i am sorry to say i do Not understand the Situation at all. What Have people done? And for what purpose?
I understand that you do Not want to give people ideas But i want people to understand what Not to do.
If there is Someone that can describe it in German IT would bei okay to Post it in Reddit so that Niantic doesnt Need to say If they are shy.
Auch einmal kurz auf Deutsch:
Einleitend ist es einmal schwer, sich bei Tausenden von Reviews innerhalb der letzten Monate zu erinnern, was man alles bewertet hat. Dein Beispiel ist mir jedoch bekannt und ich denke, dass ich von dieser Sorte vielleicht 2-3 Einreichungen zum Bewerten vorliegen hatte.
Ich bin mir aber relativ sicher, dass ich in diesen Fällen (sprich wo man zwischen 2 Titeln entscheiden musste die z.B. wie folgt lauten "Historische Poststelle" ODER "Achtung das ist ein FAKE"), keinen der beiden Varianten zugestimmt habe. Man hätte "Missbrauch" melden können.... auf der anderen Seite -> Soll man das tun, wenn derjenige der den Edit gemacht, eigentlich nur auf einen Fake hinweisen wollte?
Wie auch immer, dass hier jetzt vorrangig Leute bestraft werden die viel bewerten (weil nur Leute die viel bewerten, können auch oft auf knifflige Entscheidungen treffen) ist für mich ein Witz und ungerecht.
AUTO-TRANSLATION:
To begin with, it is difficult to remember what you have rated after (many) thousands of reviews over the past few months. However, I am aware of your example and I think that I had maybe 2-3 submissions (but not more) of this type for evaluation.
But I am relatively sure that in these cases (i.e. where you had to choose between 2 titles that read, for example, "Historic Post Office" OR "Warning this is a FAKE"), I did not agree to either of the two variants. You could have reported "abuse" .... on the other hand -> Should you do that if the person who made the edit just wanted to point out a fake?
Anyway, that here now primarily people are punished who rate a lot (because only people who rate a lot can often make tricky decisions) is a unjust for me.
First of all, thank you very much @NianticGiffard for sharing some information with us. Great to see that this topic isn‘t hushed-up completely.
But i have to say: i still have no idea what is going on. In my opinion this whole ban wave is totally ridiculous.
It is a pity, but with the current status i will never open wayfarer again. We, all the reviewers that got banned (and i am sure at least 80% got banned totally randomly like myself), are not welcome to return to reviewing. Let me quote one of your (bot?) colleagues Mayson: „note that any further violation can lead to the suspension of your pokemon go/ingress account“
Sorry for being honest: This whole system is a joke. How about warning people in such cases, not just ban them and threaten their accounts? In this case, i bet you can‘t tell that something is intentional. This is just guessing from your side with some hope to solve the Problem.
Thanks for throwing a light on this.
it must be very hard to review something as sensitive as a fake such as you describe.
You are left with the dilemma if you pick the original fake you are endorsing someone’s disgusting behaviour or picking the one with a title that breeches the rules but actually might accurately describe what it is - a fake.
a very difficult ethical problem.
@NianticGiffard you have given clear guidance on what to do if you find an invalid wayspot - this helps the person who submitted these wrong edits to know what to do, but not what you do if you are reviewing something like this.
Could you possibly add a button to send the edit for scrutiny with a text box to explain why?
There already is one, look at the bottom right corner, click the abuse button and fill in the details.
I look exactly what a FAKE portal is or what a real stop is, make notes so that Niantic also knows that these are specifically wrong submissions. When I'm in a game where I want to explore, I want to see exactly whether the stop is there or not? If I then see that he is not there .. it is a fake! and someone tried to trick the system.
If we vote as long voters and are sure that it is a fake, other new people who are not as long as in the voting system look less precise and click Yes without looking properly. And the evaluators who vote for a long time click no because they are sure and already check themselves or are familiar with the system.
It is then clear that the new voters wave this through because they are of the opinion that this stop does not look wrong.
As a result, the longer voters have their hands tied because they have pressed reject and then collect a ban .. And then the stop goes online.
If this should then be postponed, we should then vote on at the bottom right corner, click the abuse button and fill in the details. Okay, but this button is so small that you can hardly see it and many people then tend to click on the button Location undetectable.
Then you say as above as an answer, we should use the button below and fill in the details.
Great and a 30 day ban for something like that ..
One should clarify and point out more precisely.
If I get another strike I'll be completely out of it. Didn't sit down for days, hours and minutes in vain to vote properly.
As an example, stumbling blocks:
How do I know that the stop in front of the door is at a house in a street that stands alone, or in a place? .. First I find out about the name.
But if I then see that these stumbling blocks are in a big city and do not exist in a small town or place, I fundamentally reject them. Stumbling blocks are mostly there where, for example, people were persecuted during the war.
Most of them are in large cities or small towns, which are also stored in local administration offices online on the Internet or are marked on site on city maps (flyer in the forum of a town hall or local administration)
Just for that.
I inform myself beforehand whether there is a stumbling block with the name. If it isn't there, I refuse.
But there is also a problem. Unfortunately, it's too easy to fake and people have their stops and portals to play with.
Unfortunately, many people copy the fakes of others or make screens, edit them with Photoshop or something else and then as an evaluator it is difficult to find out whether it is an original photo.
When you vote then you look and other ppl who are not as long as in the voting system click yes without
...
There already is one, look at the bottom right corner, click the abuse button and fill in the details.
THIS BUTTON MUST BE UPDATE BIGGER... So we have every time a Strike Ban 30 Days.. So sorry you should really revise your voting system.
Or maybe you could have just read and follow the instructions
https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/help#reporting-abuse-in-wayfarer
What is this wayfarer site and how should i be able to open it? I‘ll try again in 23 days 🌚
@NianticGiffard
I just found that (old) picture on a social-media group and maybe it fits good for an example of yours.
So if I am the reviewer of this proposal and there would be also the option "Attention - this is a fake" what should I do?
Well first I would check (if I can) if this is really a fake. If I don't know I would probably thake the best fitting title or I would skip it. If I am sure that it is a fake I would probably take "nichts des oben Genannten" which means that everything is not correct.
But what to do if you are not sure?
And now you have the problem, that living in a central europe state you have to review wayspots/titles in many different languages. GoogleTranslate can help in some types, but of course they are not perfect.
And now you really want to punish your reviewers for beeing unsecure of this kind of reviews? Sorry @NianticGiffard but please explain this to all of us. Is that fair? Just tell us your honest opinion.
Maybe it would be pertinent to first read the instructions on what to do with abusive submissions once you regain access
What is difficult to understand.
Its not your job as a reviewer to assess the validity of an existing POI.
Your job is to review either a nomination or an edit.
Using your example above, the correct response would be to select the none of the above option, and then report the edit as abuse.
This is not difficult.
@NianticGiffard it is not normal to ban people for trying all ways to improve the spots net. you need to improve the way of reporting. many people try to do it by the app, they do not even know about the wayfarer or the forum with appeals (even if they know - it is hard to register here with the browser default security). may be the wayfarers did the mistake by helping them, but it is not the reason for a ban, if the object is really fake.
you do not give example - then i will. on your words i should get a ban too after a half of year, cause i did a review on such photos (look bottom). this is the same as the text edit actually with no comment or escalate to support button availability. i did my investigation on the review. title is "the herb of something", i do not know polish good... but i see there is definitely not a herb on one picture, and first mind then which is fake? i copied the address, found in google maps the place (as i cant do it from photo tab) scrolled the street, hm, herb is the fake? with whole description? i tried to scroll more and more... and i saw it at last. ill give you the moment only when you see the herb:
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.43067,20.7082219,3a,75y,54.28h,60.1t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1surD0wYkbBzRx-WyRnVG1TA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
but scroll around and you see other object with newer images. what should i do? what is the way of change the portal title description photo etc? if they upload the photo - it is not compared with the title, if they suppose the title it is not compared with photo - the vicious circle. and they get the reject for their reports. same as reviewer, you do not want me to choose real photo, you want me just check plates/faces. you dont want me to check real title, you just want grammar/cap case. the system is bad, not reviewers. it is very easy, but very destructive, i can say dumb way to solve the problem - just to ban volunteers who tries to improve. the result will be - you lose the smartest painstakingly partners and never improve the system.
you DO need to explain agents in game how to do "change the portal object" in the support help page, not somewhere in the forum thread. i say it as i had a job on process/quality management.
you need the button "escalate" with the comment available. to have a way to push the object itself to precise support review when existing processes are not realistic/wise.
and obviously you cant ban for people who did their best reviewing. (if we expect the object is really fake)
p.s. the example is not about this particular object, the example is about your system/process for people with healthy mind.
Sorry, but we aren’t welcome anymore to be a part of the wayfarer community. With the risk to lose my Game Account, I will not take any action on wayfarer anymore. Can’t you unterstand that? I was playing niantic games since five years with love and passion. I spend this years almost of my quality livetime to play PokémonGo, building up local communities, improving the game infrastructure by submitting new wayspots, reviewing submissions and submitt Fake spots or wayspots they are violating the TOS. By reporting invalid Wayspot I always use the official form.
i never did anything what you say. In the last 2 months i wasn’t active on wayfarer. I only was reporting your via ingame Formular one invalid Wayspot placed at a kindergarten.
for me I can say, I never did anything that violates your TOS. At this point I can’t recognize what I have done wrong.
my wayfarer rating always was at 65%. I spend so much time to inform me how to review submissions.
but being a part of the wayfarer community it’s just an add on to the game. It’s not my profession. I do it cause I will improve the quality of the game. This is work normally a company should pay people for doing this.
now you say, I am a bad guy and I have to be suspended for 30 days. One more failure and you risk your game account.
how can I ever be a part of wayfarer without being in danger to lose my game account. Just I was doing a mistake by reviewing a title edit?
thats crazy. In the last five years i spend thousands of Euro by playing PokemonGo. One more mistake and I can’t play anymore the game I love so much?
how can I do something wrong when I wasn’t reviewing in Wayfarer since 2 months?
But how do you know that the edit is an abuse if there are also possible correct options? If there are more options like my example you don't know if the abuse button maybe hurts the guy who proposed a good title change or it hurts the guy who wrote "thats a fake".
If there are several options it could be from more than one person. Also I think we never know whats the current title and whats the proposed new one. It is randomly what you are seeing first.
@NianticGiffard I don't have a horse in this particular race because I'm thousands of miles away and have not reviewed any of these German edits. Having said that...
Imagine that you're reviewing a statue of Mozart and you're given the choice between choosing, "Mozart Statue" and "This is a fake" as the title. You don't have enough information to determine whether the statue of Mozart is legitimate but it's absolutely clearly that "Mozart Statue" is a correct title for a statue of Mozart. Any third-grader could tell you that.
It is rational to hand out harsh punishments for malicious intent. It is not rational to hand out a such a punishment for people who have made an honest error in a situation where the right thing to do is not entirely obvious. If someone chooses the title "Mozart Statue" in the situation above then it's very likely that their intent is to do the right thing, and they have made the best decision that they could given the information that was available to them. Perhaps they made a mistake in doing so, but it's the moral equivalent of running a stop sign that was obscured by trees.
To be perfectly blunt, I think Niantic should own a lot of the blame for creating an environment in which this situation can exist. How did all of the fakes get into the game in the first place? My guess is that a team of local reviewers colluded to create them, probably a small number of reviewers reviewing on multiple accounts. The problem of local reviewers forming cabals to approve fake candidates, move wayspots to create clusters, and otherwise cheat the system is well-known at this point. Why hasn't the power of local reviewers been diluted to the point where it would be very difficult to create and edit fakes?
Why are these fake wayspots still in the game? Why hasn't Niantic identified them and removed them? Shouldn't an edit that changes text to "This is a fake" be recognized and and passed to an internal reviewer when it's submitted? The user intent is certainly unambiguous.
The people who have exhibited a pattern of malicious behavior in creating fakes should be punished harshly. People who fell into a trap created by the bad actors should not.
@NianticGiffard Ok, so if I understand it correctly, as a German reviewer I now have a chance to get a 30-day ban on title and description reviews because you don't want to tell us what the titles and / or descriptions are? At the same time, they also threaten people with a permanent ban on their Pokemon GO or Ingress account. I hope you know that you will not only lose evaluators who are affected by the spell. So I will no longer rate if there is a chance that I will get a 30 day ban and then a permanent ban and I don't even know why? Fortunately, it is their Wayspot database that receives fewer entries. Both because people will rate less or not at all and precisely these people will no longer submit.
Personally I think people should use the "none of the above" option a lot more frequently.
For example since there is no street view in germany I use it for 90% of the location edits I get because it's simply impossible to safely confirm the correct location without it. Same goes for title edits if all options are garbage. And if I see something like "please chose this or this location" it's an instant abuse.
Most submissions nowadays are garbage and the same goes for edits.
Alright, first of all: I understand all the frustration and anger people are expressing here. But I think @NianticGiffard has made it perfectly clear what the issue was and how it can be avoided in the future.
Do I agree with the severity of the punishment? No. I think a warning or a shorter ban would have done the trick much better.
However, I think that many poeple on this thread are only venting right now in a write-only mode. Please, try to read and understand what happened first.
If you come across a title/description edit review where one or more of the options are obviously wrong - they include "this is fake", "fake Stolpersteine", etc. - just select "none of tghe above" and report as abuse using the button in the bottom right corner. That's it.
Believe me, I understood exactly what NianticGiffard was explaining.
You can fall into this trap again and again if you are not careful.
The only solution for me (and probably for many others) is to stop reviewing at all, should Niantic keep this practice!
Just to make sure...I am not going to risk my PoGo account and others in my community will act the same way ...
Some facts: Over one year Wayfarer / Platin medal in PGo / Over 2.5k agreements / Over 3.5k reviews (can not check exact numbers atm) / created over 35+ POIs / introduced wayfarer to my community
... and now, to protect my community, i have to recommend not to review in wayfarer ... just sad ...
Hello Nadiwereb, thank you for your response but it is still not perfectly clear what the issue was without providing an example. Honestly I am also not a fan of the wording from @NianticGiffard (and the mail itself) because it says indirectly thats a case of intentional abuse. Because only intentional abuses are leading to 30-day-suspensions without a previous warning. Calling someone an abuser (with thousands of reviews, such much time effort for making the games better and everytime beeing in the best possible rating) is an insult.
And it was also stated to one user, that he had multiple bad reviews in such cases. However we (or better I) know, that I had (your example) maybe 2-3 times to review. And speaking of the last time I had such a thing, I am 99% sure that I choosed the none of the above" - option. And other guys mentioned, just as @Zappi75-PGO that they didn't review anything in the last 2 months. So still right now not everything makes sense.
And please let me allow the following question to you personal: If there is a fake-wayspot (important: and you don't know it is fake) and you have to choose between the two options. First of all you see the picture of the wayspot. What do you do if the picture seems totally correct with the title/description? Obviously we all are not choosing the "it is fake" - title. But if the picture and title seems correct, why don't choose it? One thing is 100% clear: I never submited an edit with "thats fake". And it is 99% clear that I never choosed a "thats fake"-title on a review. But I can ensure you 100% not for multiple times...
I also want to say a big thank you @Hosette-ING - that is a really quality post. I would be very thankful if @NianticGiffard could answer on your post with his detailed and honest opinion.
I don't think there's any "trap" here. If one of the title/description options is clearly abusive, report it as abuse and select "none of the above".
And if the titel/description is not clearly abusive??? Then you are trapped!
How should we report something that is not close to out hometown? If my edit is somewhere hundreds of kilometers away from me, I wouldnt just go there to get a rejected ingame report.
And the abuse form us still ineffective.
@ChristianST1909-PGO Thank you!
I want to add to my comment above. When I am asked to review a title or description edit I'm being asked to do a specific task-- to identify which of the choices (if any) is the best fit for the Wayspot. The text at the top of the page reads "Select the best title". See the attachment.
In the Reviewing a Suggested Wayspot Edit document I am told that I should "Accept the most suitable title for the Wayspot based on the criteria below:", and that I should "Always choose a Wayspot’s official title if it’s available. If the official title is not available, choose the title that closely represents the object". There is somewhat similar guidance for description edits, though with a caveat that I should not choose "[Leave description blank]" unless the other option(s) are on the "Do Not Accept" criteria.
Even more interesting, one of the examples for a description edit gives me a choice between "This is not even here... the pic is from the carnival mural before its restoration" or "Leave description blank", and "Leave description blank" is indicated as the right choice. Presumably if there was a third description that matches the wayspot that I am presented with then that would be the correct choice.
The word "abuse" does not appear in Niantic's official instructions for reviewing an edit.
When I'm reviewing an edit I'm not being asked to assess the validity of the wayspot itself, as that has already been done (correctly or incorrectly) during the initial review. Not only am I not being asked to do that, but I'm not presented with the information or tools necessary to do so.
My conclusions:
I will further add that this precedent seems likely to have a chilling effect on reviewers. If following Niantic's explicit instructions while reviewing jeopardizes my 7.5-year-old Ingress account then I'm personally inclined to stop reviewing-- I love the game more than I love Wayfarer.
I reviewed tonight until I got a text edit so that I could grab a screenshot for illustration purposes, but the one I got is actually an interesting example. The trail marker does not appear in satellite view, and it's impossible to determine the names of the trails based on the information I'm given. As soon as I post this I'm going to submit the review with my choices for title and description, but what if this is actually a fake trail marker? I doubt it is but how am I to know?
Just found this thread because I also got this mail about the 30 days ban.
The "funny" thing is: I did not use wayfarer site since more than a year now! And I always had an excellent rating. What's going on here?
Well, I don't really need access to wayfarer now (espacially after this mail), but I would be very angry if my PoGo/Ingress Account would be banned becuase of this!