Beim Bewerten bekommt man manchmal "Edits"/Änderungen vorgeschlagen.
Diese Edits haben einen vorhandenen Wayspot Namen und eine oder mehrere vorgeschlagene Änderungen.
Wenn nichts davon akzeptabel ist, soll man "Keine der oben genannten" auswählen!
Tut man dies nicht bei einem Fake Wayspot oder bei missbräuchlichen Titeländerungen, dann kann dies der Auslöser für die Sperre sein!
Niantic geht davon aus, dass Fake Wayspots offensichtlich sind und bewertet dann dein falsches Verhalten als absichtlichen Missbrauch wenn du diese Fake Wayspot nicht meldest!
Eine missbräuchliche Titeländerung, die du bewerten sollst ist meiner Meinung nach nicht immer offentsichtlich. Hier kann man schnell in die Falle tappen!
Ich hoffe es ist jetzt etwas klarer...ansonsten schreib nochmal...
the first is if you are reviewing by scrolling on a device like an iPad that button in pale grey may well as be invisible. I don’t scroll that far.
the second though puts me out on a limb as I have a particular stance on this. I find the use of the word “abuse” totally inappropriate. I appreciate that decades ago it was something common in the industry, however the world has changed. Abuse in use by the general public (which is what wayfarers are) means some very specific and it is very off putting to read it constantly. I am not about to push a button that will send an email using that term.
It is not up to us decide what misuse might have happened but we might want to “escalate for investigation”. That is much more appropriate term and actually descriptive of what needs to happen. With a text box to explain what we think the issue is.
In general we need to know what will happen eg if we select none of the above will anything substantial happen.
The whole issue would seem to stem from someone or a group of people wanting to remove a bunch of fake waypoints but went about it in wrong manner. Rather than report the waypoints and then appeal on the forums if required, they instead first elected to submit title/description edits to add phrases like "fake" to the waypoints. Then once these edits were accepted they intended to report the waypoints for removal.
The second part of issue would be the reviewers who ended up choosing the wrong option according to Niantic when coming across these edits. They were given the 30 day timeout along with those who submitted the title/desciption edits in the first place.
So...I have a waypoint near me that I've tried to get removed, a statue: the town moved it to another location and put up a really cool LFL in its place. I consulted my area people and the Wayfarer guidelines and submitted a removal request for the original location. After many, many months, that was denied. I went back, scanned the locations, submitted a photosphere showing the new location of the statue, and submitted an Edit request (back when we could move things more than 10m): also, denied. So if someone changes the name of the current point from "Hands Joined in Service" which was the statue name, to "Carved Tree Little Free Library" which is the object that's actually in place at that spot, and someone approves that name edit because it's correct and true....will those approvers be subject to a ban? Why 30 days? I hate to see people who review in good faith subject to that long a ban: chances are high that they will not return.
1) if you dont scroll far enough to find the abuse button, then thats solely on you. The option to report from the review screen is there.
Alternatively, you could have just submitted a report from the Wayfarer reporting abuse help section. Which you would have know about if you had read it.
The faiure to read what to do when reviewing is again solely on you.
2 ) The word "abuse" is not a dirty word and is wholly accurate for people who are making in appropriate edit submissions. That you do not like the word is entirely your own view, it doesn't stop the word from being the best to describe the inappropriate edits.
Niantic have clearly defined in the Wayfarer help section what they class as abuse and that upon receiving the report they would investigate and act accordingly. This is all explained in the help section, which you would know if you had actually read it.
As to
"In general we need to know what will happen eg if we select none of the above will anything substantial happen"
No you dont need to know.
They have told you what to do, they have said they will investigate and act on any valid reports. What you should do is review and report any inappropriate edits as you have been instructed to, you don't need to know anything else in order to do your job as a reviewer correctly.
You are probably one of the lucky ones who only gets reviews in your mother tongue. Where I am reviewing you get edits in various different languages. I get reviews from France. Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland. All of those language I do not understand. So how are you supposed to notice and report an abuse of you do not understand the language the edit is in?
If I am reading Niantic’s response correctly, choosing “Big Ben” in this example is what Niantic considers correct. The people who chose or submitted the edit saying “Fake Stuff” are the ones who got the 30 day ban because, even though the portals are fake and should be removed, “Fake Stuff” is making the poi title worse.
Your tone is quite rude and aggressive. Please stop to consider and not jump to conclusions. It is this sort of post that pushes me away from even reading in this forum.
To clarify you are quite wrong to say I haven’t read the help section. I have.
I also regularly go back to the guidelines when I have a case which warrants it.
I stated that I appreciated my view view on the word abuse my not fit in, but it is also widely held view. It is not accurate- the English language is much richer, and changes over time. I would be in trouble at work if I banded about the term as it is done so here. But then I work in a modern progressive place where we try to acknowledge different perspectives.
We will need to agree to differ, but please consider how others might read something, I think Niantic ought to be considering their choice of words and the effect it could have, and try to be more inclusive rather than old fashioned. They ought to be looking at the wider changes in attitudes and the change in language.
A well designed layout is essential. Placing something below the submit button, which looks like the end of the page is extremely poor design. I also regularly use the submit button at the top. So no reason to see it and I see so little true misuse it’s easy to forget.
Creating a complicated of where to report what is poor design and not intuitive. I am perfectly aware if something crops up that I need to go to the help area and rake around to find the process. I can then consider what action is warranted. Fortunately that rarely needs to be done.
Maybe you are happy not knowing the consequences of what happens when you vote. So be it.
Ignorance can be bliss.
I prefer to be treated like an intelligent, valued individual and understand what happens. It helps me to evaluate carefully, to look for the positives. It is not about following an inflexible set of yes/no rules if it was a good program can do that. We are asked to be responsible people, consider the case in front of us against the guidelines and make judgement calls. I decide how much of my precious time I can offer for free. Niantic seems to forget that they should be taking care of us and making us feel part of a team rather than some inconsequential and disposable item.
The rights and wrongs of what has happened here are one thing. It will have significant long term effects on the flow of waypoints in that area. In other words it is highly likely that there will be wider negative impacts on that local community, on people who have had no part in this at all. The consequent delays etc could end in a stagnant situation.
As I said above we will agree to differ as you have your views and I have mine. There is a large grey area in between.
I am on the east coast of the UK, so I regularly get reviews from France, Belgium every session, I even got one strange one from Germany once some how, so no I don't just get reviewes in English, and yes its quite easy to tell if they are abusive or not.
The reviewers who chose a title for fakes were 100% following Niantic's instructions. I read the Wayfarer help page that gives instructions for how to review a text edit and choosing the title that best fits the photo is exactly what Niantic tells you to do. There is nothing in their guides that mentions the word abuse or there being a nearly-invisible abuse button at the bottom of the page.
A bunch of players in Germany suddenly got together to try to get some wayspots removed from the game for unknown reasons
Rather than simply report these wayspots as invalid, they all decided to submit abusive edits to rename the waypoint descriptions from "Trail Marker #7" to "Fake Portal" (or some such nonsense that we can only speculate about because its some massive secret).
They then sat back and waited patiently in the hope that the majority of Wayfarer reviewers would simply accept their obviously nonsense title edits
And finally, with the new invalid wayspot title in place, phase 2 of their plan could begin and they would report the wayspot as invalid.
In what world would such a plan even work? Why would they simply not report the wayspot invalid in the first place since they obviously have the capacity to do so? And even it seems that a few people have been caught out and accepted their suggested abuse edits, how would they ever expect the majority of reviewers to fall for it?
Or are we supposed to believe that these were done by the infamous gangs of PGO players I keep reading about who all have 10 accounts and each do 5,000 reviews per day on the off-chance they get to review there own submissions so they can ...er... get MOAR stops removed from the game?
You are wrong. Someone submitted a description edit of POI that was fake. And we voted for the description that claimed it was faked. It was not organised nor planned by a group. It was just an individual submitting this edit and we as a reviewer got this edit to review. I think I got three of those edits.
I personally votes in favour of the edit because fakes are a huge problem and at that time I do not know better to get those fakes removed. I thought I was doing something good. It has been a few months I got those edits to review.
I still think the ban is to harsh and especially the way it was communicated was very confusing. In my opinion a warning with the exact edits would have been better. And not letting us guess what we did wrong months ago.
If the waypoint is fake or removed & the title/description edit is
Mural xyz
Removed mural, no longer here
You have to check the 'none of the above' box, not the "correct" removed mural title...
I agree that the submitter of that edit made a mistake, they should have reported it instead of asking for a title/description edit... but still, reviewers shouldn't have picked the 'Removed mural, no longer here' option. There is NO need to use the none of the above checkbox everytime, you only use it when the given options aren't good or in cases like this.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here but I want to clarify:
1.) We don't know if there are from Germany. The automatic-ban system suspended several people from at least two countries. (Germany & Austria). Because of our geographical location, the abuser(s) could also come from Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia etc... since we also get votings from this area.
2.) We don't know. Not a single official statement confirmed that until today. However, @NianticGiffard mentioned, that "they" submitted bad titles/descriptions with the goal to remove them afterwards. We don't have a single example from a bad title and also don't know which language it was. There is no confirmation, that voting for "this is fake" was a case here. I also don't believe that I ever would have voted for such a thing, at least not multiple times. It was only an idea from a user and not a official statement. @NianticGiffard replied to this user and told him what to do in this situation, but he didn't confirm that this was the case.
3.) According to NianticGiffard that was the goal, if I understand him correctly.
4.) According to NianticGiffard that was the goal, if I understand him correctly. BUT thinking more about this strategy... it does not make much sense at all as you said. Why don't they simply report it in the first place? Speaking about that we also don't know if the wayspots were fakes or not. So maybe they "edited" this wayspots because of a personal rage etc. -> in this case I would understand Niantics "anger" that more uninformed people voted for that.
The main problem is not the 30-day-suspension itself (I think longer cooldowns are not so bad if the system detects really bad reviewers... the main problem is the warning to lose your playing account and that many innocent people are indirectly marked as "intentional abusers". And the even bigger problem is, that (according to a user here) also people are affected who didn't play since months or even a year. So maybe a "bad review" from a one-year-old backlog is "killing" someone in about a half year again and than forever? And here comes the funny part => Without exactly knowing what "we" did wrong in the first case.
While I agree that there is no need to select the "Removed mural, no longer here" option, I disagree with "You have to check the 'none of the above' box [...]".
As @Hosette-ING clearly stated, we should carry out the task "Select the best title" in accordance with the Niantic guidelines. That would be the option "Mural xyz". (Assuming the wayspot is actually a mural and not something entirely different)
@Hosette-ING te-ING also refers to the example in the Niantic guidelines, what to do in the case of "This is not even here ... the pic is from the carnival mural before its restoration" (unfortunately this is also the ONLY option in the example , there is no option like "Mural xyz" in the example above).
One could discuss how to proceed when it is clear from StreetView that the mural has actually been removed. But first of all, the problem with this topic seems to be present in Germany, where there is hardly any StreetView, and secondly, Niantic does not list in the example that an abuse button, the abuse form or the like is to be used in any way. Just select the best title or "Leave description blank".
If people were really banned here because they chose "Big Ben" and not 1) "None of the Above" with 2) subsequent report on the abuse button, then that would be absurd. (Always assuming that we are really talking about THE Big Ben
and not some children's tree house in the Black Forest.)
But I don't see Niantic's statements giving rise to the assumption that this was the problem. @NianticGiffard also only writes "If neither of them is acceptable, there’s also a 'None of the above' option." Please also take into account that in this statement, just like in the Niantic guidelines, there is no mention of the abuse button anywhere!
@HoHoHowdy-ING i think that is very plausible. Also niantic doesnt want people to know that the possibilty to do this is still out there. So we are told nothing for days and then we are told only pieces.
This isnt how a healthy base between a external-worker (wayfarer) and a co-worker for Niantic should be.
Yes @Xmacke7x-ING you may be correct. My summary of the situation was based on Casey's post that said:
"We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles."
That is why I assumed there were multiple people working together to make and approve abusive edits. But it is certainly possible that all this may have been caused by a single rogue player submitting abusive title edits, and other unrelated reviewers simply being caught up in the mess.
In which case a far more sensible approach to this situation would have been to simply ban the original culprit. It would have largely resolved the problem without generating such an enormous amount of negative feeling around this issue.
@EvilDoctorSlice-ING I suspect the truth is a hybrid. My gut says it was one or more people working to create the abusive edits, one or more people working with them to get them passed, and some number of uninvolved reviewers who got caught up in it.
I'm going to assume that's the case, and then put myself in Niantic's shoes for a moment. Identifying the malicious submitters is easy. How do I separate the malicious reviewers from the accidental ones? I don't have a good answer for that.
"We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles." @NianticCasey-ING
This is absolutely not the case. I was never working together with other players to do such an action. I only was reviewing wayspots as every user here.
it could be that I voted unintentionally such an title that pointed a fake. First I saw this, I was confused what to do. The rules on this point are not clear pointed out. Especially in the German version. There are several translation errors.
i only can apologize me for that.
But what I did not understand is why we reviewers were punished and not the submitter of these abusive title edits?
for me it was an honor to be part of the wayfarer community. I only want to improve the environment for local players.
Now after Niantic shot me down first and than talk in rare cryptic words to me, I am totally demotivated. I wouldn't even treat my dog the way Niantic did with us in this case.
where are the learnings when Niantic ban us without talking to us? When we do a mistake, we must know what was wrong. This strafe is just destructive to the community. User are the capital, not the database.
Its extremely unlikely nobody talked to nobody. Players don't live in their own black box. Someone started the trend and proved the process could work, https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/n2iliq/nianticops_confirmed_fake_portal5_should_remain/. This recent reddit post could've even brought the situation to light and Niantic researched it. I believe in Ingress originally you would send removal request and edit description simultaneous which was comical when the edits got transferred to OPR. Interestingly enough I can't find anything named fake portal today even though the reddit thread found a couple
Most players i know are trying to stretch reality sometimes a bit and bend rules.
Niantic is right to go a bit harder on them.
Here there was a lot of collateral damage done, and Niantic really is not in the position to do this sort of collateral damage to people that are trustworthy and are doing thousands of reviews each month.
What is very intersting in this case is that those reviews I did which probably caused the ban were a long time ago, atleast several months or even a year ago. With my current knowledge about how to handle fake POIs I now would vote differently. Niantic's handling of those bans is totally in contrast to how mistakes should be handled in a democratic society. They are intransparent, they are very slow, the bans seem random and to harsh in contrast to other things going on in wayfarer. We as those who got the warning do not have a chance to defend or learn from the mistake because we can only guess what we did wrong.
Comments
Well, that is interesting!
I assume you still have a backlog of unprocessed reviews?
If that is the case, then all banned players with unprocessed backlogs are at risk to loose their accounts!
maybe i am dumb, i did not understand what NianticGiffard was explaining. Please someone fill me in. Thanks.
Beim Bewerten bekommt man manchmal "Edits"/Änderungen vorgeschlagen.
Diese Edits haben einen vorhandenen Wayspot Namen und eine oder mehrere vorgeschlagene Änderungen.
Wenn nichts davon akzeptabel ist, soll man "Keine der oben genannten" auswählen!
Tut man dies nicht bei einem Fake Wayspot oder bei missbräuchlichen Titeländerungen, dann kann dies der Auslöser für die Sperre sein!
Niantic geht davon aus, dass Fake Wayspots offensichtlich sind und bewertet dann dein falsches Verhalten als absichtlichen Missbrauch wenn du diese Fake Wayspot nicht meldest!
Eine missbräuchliche Titeländerung, die du bewerten sollst ist meiner Meinung nach nicht immer offentsichtlich. Hier kann man schnell in die Falle tappen!
Ich hoffe es ist jetzt etwas klarer...ansonsten schreib nochmal...
Hi,
2 points
the first is if you are reviewing by scrolling on a device like an iPad that button in pale grey may well as be invisible. I don’t scroll that far.
the second though puts me out on a limb as I have a particular stance on this. I find the use of the word “abuse” totally inappropriate. I appreciate that decades ago it was something common in the industry, however the world has changed. Abuse in use by the general public (which is what wayfarers are) means some very specific and it is very off putting to read it constantly. I am not about to push a button that will send an email using that term.
It is not up to us decide what misuse might have happened but we might want to “escalate for investigation”. That is much more appropriate term and actually descriptive of what needs to happen. With a text box to explain what we think the issue is.
In general we need to know what will happen eg if we select none of the above will anything substantial happen.
The whole issue would seem to stem from someone or a group of people wanting to remove a bunch of fake waypoints but went about it in wrong manner. Rather than report the waypoints and then appeal on the forums if required, they instead first elected to submit title/description edits to add phrases like "fake" to the waypoints. Then once these edits were accepted they intended to report the waypoints for removal.
The second part of issue would be the reviewers who ended up choosing the wrong option according to Niantic when coming across these edits. They were given the 30 day timeout along with those who submitted the title/desciption edits in the first place.
Thank you for the information. Now i get it.
It is rather ugly that Niantic punishes people that even do not know what they were doing there.
Let me get this clear:
Someone wants to do this shenanigans:
They submit a change:
a) Big Ben
b) Fake Stuff
o - None of the Above
___________
Everyone that has a clear mind says: This is Big Ben.
So...I have a waypoint near me that I've tried to get removed, a statue: the town moved it to another location and put up a really cool LFL in its place. I consulted my area people and the Wayfarer guidelines and submitted a removal request for the original location. After many, many months, that was denied. I went back, scanned the locations, submitted a photosphere showing the new location of the statue, and submitted an Edit request (back when we could move things more than 10m): also, denied. So if someone changes the name of the current point from "Hands Joined in Service" which was the statue name, to "Carved Tree Little Free Library" which is the object that's actually in place at that spot, and someone approves that name edit because it's correct and true....will those approvers be subject to a ban? Why 30 days? I hate to see people who review in good faith subject to that long a ban: chances are high that they will not return.
Ok to address your two points.
1) if you dont scroll far enough to find the abuse button, then thats solely on you. The option to report from the review screen is there.
Alternatively, you could have just submitted a report from the Wayfarer reporting abuse help section. Which you would have know about if you had read it.
The faiure to read what to do when reviewing is again solely on you.
2 ) The word "abuse" is not a dirty word and is wholly accurate for people who are making in appropriate edit submissions. That you do not like the word is entirely your own view, it doesn't stop the word from being the best to describe the inappropriate edits.
Niantic have clearly defined in the Wayfarer help section what they class as abuse and that upon receiving the report they would investigate and act accordingly. This is all explained in the help section, which you would know if you had actually read it.
As to
"In general we need to know what will happen eg if we select none of the above will anything substantial happen"
No you dont need to know.
They have told you what to do, they have said they will investigate and act on any valid reports. What you should do is review and report any inappropriate edits as you have been instructed to, you don't need to know anything else in order to do your job as a reviewer correctly.
If I choose "non of the above" every time I get an edit, am I save from getting onther ban because of edit reviewing?
You are probably one of the lucky ones who only gets reviews in your mother tongue. Where I am reviewing you get edits in various different languages. I get reviews from France. Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland. All of those language I do not understand. So how are you supposed to notice and report an abuse of you do not understand the language the edit is in?
Surely you'll end up soon with a 4 hours ban at the very least because you're not being useful.
If I am reading Niantic’s response correctly, choosing “Big Ben” in this example is what Niantic considers correct. The people who chose or submitted the edit saying “Fake Stuff” are the ones who got the 30 day ban because, even though the portals are fake and should be removed, “Fake Stuff” is making the poi title worse.
@Theisman-ING
Your tone is quite rude and aggressive. Please stop to consider and not jump to conclusions. It is this sort of post that pushes me away from even reading in this forum.
To clarify you are quite wrong to say I haven’t read the help section. I have.
I also regularly go back to the guidelines when I have a case which warrants it.
I stated that I appreciated my view view on the word abuse my not fit in, but it is also widely held view. It is not accurate- the English language is much richer, and changes over time. I would be in trouble at work if I banded about the term as it is done so here. But then I work in a modern progressive place where we try to acknowledge different perspectives.
We will need to agree to differ, but please consider how others might read something, I think Niantic ought to be considering their choice of words and the effect it could have, and try to be more inclusive rather than old fashioned. They ought to be looking at the wider changes in attitudes and the change in language.
A well designed layout is essential. Placing something below the submit button, which looks like the end of the page is extremely poor design. I also regularly use the submit button at the top. So no reason to see it and I see so little true misuse it’s easy to forget.
Creating a complicated of where to report what is poor design and not intuitive. I am perfectly aware if something crops up that I need to go to the help area and rake around to find the process. I can then consider what action is warranted. Fortunately that rarely needs to be done.
Maybe you are happy not knowing the consequences of what happens when you vote. So be it.
Ignorance can be bliss.
I prefer to be treated like an intelligent, valued individual and understand what happens. It helps me to evaluate carefully, to look for the positives. It is not about following an inflexible set of yes/no rules if it was a good program can do that. We are asked to be responsible people, consider the case in front of us against the guidelines and make judgement calls. I decide how much of my precious time I can offer for free. Niantic seems to forget that they should be taking care of us and making us feel part of a team rather than some inconsequential and disposable item.
The rights and wrongs of what has happened here are one thing. It will have significant long term effects on the flow of waypoints in that area. In other words it is highly likely that there will be wider negative impacts on that local community, on people who have had no part in this at all. The consequent delays etc could end in a stagnant situation.
As I said above we will agree to differ as you have your views and I have mine. There is a large grey area in between.
I am on the east coast of the UK, so I regularly get reviews from France, Belgium every session, I even got one strange one from Germany once some how, so no I don't just get reviewes in English, and yes its quite easy to tell if they are abusive or not.
@Theisman-ING Please read my second comment on page 4.
The reviewers who chose a title for fakes were 100% following Niantic's instructions. I read the Wayfarer help page that gives instructions for how to review a text edit and choosing the title that best fits the photo is exactly what Niantic tells you to do. There is nothing in their guides that mentions the word abuse or there being a nearly-invisible abuse button at the bottom of the page.
Did you miss the part where there is an actual example contradicting you? I posted it earlier but is in approval limbo.
Thanks to @Hosette-ING ..
this conclusions are right. here should niantic update the system..
no more words needed.
So let's get this situation straight
In what world would such a plan even work? Why would they simply not report the wayspot invalid in the first place since they obviously have the capacity to do so? And even it seems that a few people have been caught out and accepted their suggested abuse edits, how would they ever expect the majority of reviewers to fall for it?
Or are we supposed to believe that these were done by the infamous gangs of PGO players I keep reading about who all have 10 accounts and each do 5,000 reviews per day on the off-chance they get to review there own submissions so they can ...er... get MOAR stops removed from the game?
I mean, what?
https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/help#reviewing-a-suggested-wayspot-edit
You are wrong. Someone submitted a description edit of POI that was fake. And we voted for the description that claimed it was faked. It was not organised nor planned by a group. It was just an individual submitting this edit and we as a reviewer got this edit to review. I think I got three of those edits.
I personally votes in favour of the edit because fakes are a huge problem and at that time I do not know better to get those fakes removed. I thought I was doing something good. It has been a few months I got those edits to review.
I still think the ban is to harsh and especially the way it was communicated was very confusing. In my opinion a warning with the exact edits would have been better. And not letting us guess what we did wrong months ago.
If the waypoint is fake or removed & the title/description edit is
You have to check the 'none of the above' box, not the "correct" removed mural title...
I agree that the submitter of that edit made a mistake, they should have reported it instead of asking for a title/description edit... but still, reviewers shouldn't have picked the 'Removed mural, no longer here' option. There is NO need to use the none of the above checkbox everytime, you only use it when the given options aren't good or in cases like this.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts here but I want to clarify:
1.) We don't know if there are from Germany. The automatic-ban system suspended several people from at least two countries. (Germany & Austria). Because of our geographical location, the abuser(s) could also come from Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia etc... since we also get votings from this area.
2.) We don't know. Not a single official statement confirmed that until today. However, @NianticGiffard mentioned, that "they" submitted bad titles/descriptions with the goal to remove them afterwards. We don't have a single example from a bad title and also don't know which language it was. There is no confirmation, that voting for "this is fake" was a case here. I also don't believe that I ever would have voted for such a thing, at least not multiple times. It was only an idea from a user and not a official statement. @NianticGiffard replied to this user and told him what to do in this situation, but he didn't confirm that this was the case.
3.) According to NianticGiffard that was the goal, if I understand him correctly.
4.) According to NianticGiffard that was the goal, if I understand him correctly. BUT thinking more about this strategy... it does not make much sense at all as you said. Why don't they simply report it in the first place? Speaking about that we also don't know if the wayspots were fakes or not. So maybe they "edited" this wayspots because of a personal rage etc. -> in this case I would understand Niantics "anger" that more uninformed people voted for that.
The main problem is not the 30-day-suspension itself (I think longer cooldowns are not so bad if the system detects really bad reviewers... the main problem is the warning to lose your playing account and that many innocent people are indirectly marked as "intentional abusers". And the even bigger problem is, that (according to a user here) also people are affected who didn't play since months or even a year. So maybe a "bad review" from a one-year-old backlog is "killing" someone in about a half year again and than forever? And here comes the funny part => Without exactly knowing what "we" did wrong in the first case.
While I agree that there is no need to select the "Removed mural, no longer here" option, I disagree with "You have to check the 'none of the above' box [...]".
As @Hosette-ING clearly stated, we should carry out the task "Select the best title" in accordance with the Niantic guidelines. That would be the option "Mural xyz". (Assuming the wayspot is actually a mural and not something entirely different)
@Hosette-ING te-ING also refers to the example in the Niantic guidelines, what to do in the case of "This is not even here ... the pic is from the carnival mural before its restoration" (unfortunately this is also the ONLY option in the example , there is no option like "Mural xyz" in the example above).
One could discuss how to proceed when it is clear from StreetView that the mural has actually been removed. But first of all, the problem with this topic seems to be present in Germany, where there is hardly any StreetView, and secondly, Niantic does not list in the example that an abuse button, the abuse form or the like is to be used in any way. Just select the best title or "Leave description blank".
Furthermore, I really don't hope that @rodensteiner-ING's example is the problem.
If people were really banned here because they chose "Big Ben" and not 1) "None of the Above" with 2) subsequent report on the abuse button, then that would be absurd. (Always assuming that we are really talking about THE Big Ben
and not some children's tree house in the Black Forest.)
But I don't see Niantic's statements giving rise to the assumption that this was the problem. @NianticGiffard also only writes "If neither of them is acceptable, there’s also a 'None of the above' option." Please also take into account that in this statement, just like in the Niantic guidelines, there is no mention of the abuse button anywhere!
So I suspect that "Big Ben" in @rodensteiner-ING's example and "Mural xyz" in @WikiBlue-ING's example are the correct answers.
For me, the only plausible thing would be a ban due to repeated selection of "Fake Stuff", "Removed mural, no longer here" or the like.
@HoHoHowdy-ING i think that is very plausible. Also niantic doesnt want people to know that the possibilty to do this is still out there. So we are told nothing for days and then we are told only pieces.
This isnt how a healthy base between a external-worker (wayfarer) and a co-worker for Niantic should be.
Yes @Xmacke7x-ING you may be correct. My summary of the situation was based on Casey's post that said:
"We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles."
That is why I assumed there were multiple people working together to make and approve abusive edits. But it is certainly possible that all this may have been caused by a single rogue player submitting abusive title edits, and other unrelated reviewers simply being caught up in the mess.
In which case a far more sensible approach to this situation would have been to simply ban the original culprit. It would have largely resolved the problem without generating such an enormous amount of negative feeling around this issue.
@EvilDoctorSlice-ING I suspect the truth is a hybrid. My gut says it was one or more people working to create the abusive edits, one or more people working with them to get them passed, and some number of uninvolved reviewers who got caught up in it.
I'm going to assume that's the case, and then put myself in Niantic's shoes for a moment. Identifying the malicious submitters is easy. How do I separate the malicious reviewers from the accidental ones? I don't have a good answer for that.
"We recently took action against a group of users who were working together to submit and approve abusive edits to manipulate Wayspot titles." @NianticCasey-ING
@NianticCasey-ING
This is absolutely not the case. I was never working together with other players to do such an action. I only was reviewing wayspots as every user here.
it could be that I voted unintentionally such an title that pointed a fake. First I saw this, I was confused what to do. The rules on this point are not clear pointed out. Especially in the German version. There are several translation errors.
i only can apologize me for that.
But what I did not understand is why we reviewers were punished and not the submitter of these abusive title edits?
for me it was an honor to be part of the wayfarer community. I only want to improve the environment for local players.
Now after Niantic shot me down first and than talk in rare cryptic words to me, I am totally demotivated. I wouldn't even treat my dog the way Niantic did with us in this case.
where are the learnings when Niantic ban us without talking to us? When we do a mistake, we must know what was wrong. This strafe is just destructive to the community. User are the capital, not the database.
Its extremely unlikely nobody talked to nobody. Players don't live in their own black box. Someone started the trend and proved the process could work, https://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/n2iliq/nianticops_confirmed_fake_portal5_should_remain/. This recent reddit post could've even brought the situation to light and Niantic researched it. I believe in Ingress originally you would send removal request and edit description simultaneous which was comical when the edits got transferred to OPR. Interestingly enough I can't find anything named fake portal today even though the reddit thread found a couple
Most players i know are trying to stretch reality sometimes a bit and bend rules.
Niantic is right to go a bit harder on them.
Here there was a lot of collateral damage done, and Niantic really is not in the position to do this sort of collateral damage to people that are trustworthy and are doing thousands of reviews each month.
What is very intersting in this case is that those reviews I did which probably caused the ban were a long time ago, atleast several months or even a year ago. With my current knowledge about how to handle fake POIs I now would vote differently. Niantic's handling of those bans is totally in contrast to how mistakes should be handled in a democratic society. They are intransparent, they are very slow, the bans seem random and to harsh in contrast to other things going on in wayfarer. We as those who got the warning do not have a chance to defend or learn from the mistake because we can only guess what we did wrong.