Banning use of “PokéStop”, “pokerstop” & all in-game references from Supporting Information
Previously Niantic put a block on words like COVID, pandemic and a few others in nominations so that submitters could not try and get themselves a “lockdown PokéStop”.
Recently we are seeing poor nominations, where the supporting information is basically the submitter begging for a PokéStop or a gym. On occasion, this has even been in the title or description.
I am getting kind of fed up of it, and it makes me want to rate it all lower for the lack of effort. That’s not what the Supporting Information is for.
Thusly, I’d like to request to have a block put on all in game terminology (may be tricky with “gym” for actual gym submissions) in supporting information, as well as title & description. Pokémon, PokéStop, Portal, Resonator, Dark Detector, XM. All of the possible terminology.
Comments
It would be unfair to ban Portal. It has a meaning outside of Ingress and is a valid description for some POI.
I think even Pokémon would be difficult as you can have street art that features Pokémon.
Pokéstop, XM though I don't see being necessary words for title or description
This is why we NEED Trusted Reviewers. There are legitimate subs out there that also use there's words (there's an installation called Portal in the UK and Pokemon murals (where legit) are popular in places) but the vast majority of these words are only used in order to "beg" for another in game waypoint due to a lack of it or sheer selfishness.
The TR could automatically release subs into the queue or deny those that get flagged with these words in.
EZ PZ
Maybe a bit unfair to say about banning the word “Portal”, as you mentioned. Mostly it is the PokéStop, pokerstop, pokeeestop or whatever variant way someone spells it that are the issues. I haven’t seen anyone beg for a Portal or Wizard Inn in the supporting information.
Surely something can be done. Should we be reporting these as abuse?
The UI of the nomination in Pokemon Go states that they are requesting a Pokestop and tells them to explain why their Pokestop nomination is important.
So obviously they do what they are told, and banning them for Niantic's failures would be totally unfair.
People will beg just as much, they'll just pick different words.
I'm totally with you. I don't get why there's a sudden surge of hate against this. It's a known issue for, as far as I can tell, as long as Wayfarer existed. The nomination system in Pokémon Go is completely obscuring how the review works and presents it as a pure PoGo feature. Until Niantic integrates Wayfarer nomenclature in the form there's no reason to punish players who were never taught better.
I could see a change in the form to forbid game-specific in the title & description, but if a submitter wastes their supplementary info section with useless digression about pokestop density, it's their loss; no need to froth at the mouth for it.
@WandHerring-PGO It's frustration about the completely bogus things that are being submitted recently. Well, on an ongoing basis but it seems to have gotten worse right now. "I need a pokestop at home!!!!" is a frequent side dish for these desperate-but-hopeless submissions, so it's an easy target.
I would much rather see an option that allowed reviewers to mark a submission as deliberately breaking the rules. If the consensus of reviewers was that the submission was deliberate abuse then the submitter would receive a notification and some sort of punishment. Perhaps the first violation is a strong warning and a 30-day submission ban. A stronger warning and 90 days for the second offense, and a permanent submission ban for the third offense?
If you're submitting your television, living room carpet, or an onion you deserve to be spanked for it.
I'll just add this here for context.
This being the submitter is just lying in hopes people feel sorry for him and give him a pokestop at home, an easy 1* abuse for me, but this is almost ALL submissions that say "need pokestop" or "lack of stops"... like I even care about how many pokestops you may or may not have, that just makes me want to reject it more.
One of the UK members said a long time ago that if your supporting is just "need pokestop plz", chances are you submission as a whole is just complete garbage and doesn't meet any criteria... he's pretty much right there.
"PokeStop" already is a blocked word from the Description during the Ingress & Pokémon GO nomination process.
Interestingly, the words "Poke Stop" and "PokéStop" are not blocked.
There's no reason to ban the words from Supporting Information. The games literally asks "Explain why you believe your Portal/PokéStop nomination is important..." A logical response for a new person is "This PokéStop nomination is important because it ..." and then describes the value. Useless Supporting Information fields can be just as useless without blocking "Pokestop," too, and low quality ones existed just as frequently when it was primarily Ingress access, too.
Censorship of words won't work. Better moderation and direct action against these submissions, when necessary, would be much more beneficial.
Or, you know, public social media and/or in game announcements.
Can anyone even suggest that banning more words like "PokéStop" would actually stop deliberate spam/fake nominations?
Can anyone provide an example where the use of the word "PokéStop" IN SUPPORTING TEXT is the only thing that made a nomination ineligible?
If they are requests for false indications or that do not meet the criteria for eligibility, just evaluate how it was trained and ready, so that you keep these complaints that have no value.
Like I (and a few people have suggested):
In my opinion, maybe there is a correlation where if the supporting statement does mention Pokestop, the nomination quality on average is lower than usual. But for the most part, the nomination process as a whole is unaffected, the mention just makes me a little more conscious about what I am reviewing.
Some submissions are slam dunk yes some are slam dunk no regardless.
Supporting info is there to pad out a submission, make reviewers understand why it’s important if it’s not obvious and give extra info not obvious from the photo and description. If it’s useless to me I just ignore it because they are missing a trick.
If you have one of these borderline ones and only justify it as ‘my village doesn’t have a gym’ then don’t blame anyone but yourself when after a so long in review you are told no.
Wait, they did already?
There's a lot of ignorance with respect to the Wayspot nomination process, and - as others have already highlighted- Niantic hasn't exactly done much to help. I'm always inclined to give nominators the benefit of the doubt and if a nomination clearly does not meet any criteria then I 1* it for an easy agreement and move on with my life. Maybe I can too forgiving but this is an area where once again, the fault rests (largely) with Niantic, not the playerbase.
I shared some screenshots. Note that "Pokestop" is blocked but not "PokéStop." Just another example of how blocking words is not very effective.
There should be a vetting or an intra-process between the nomination going from In Queue to In Voting. Something like "Processing" whether something has been flagged for review or picked up automatically and someone like a trusted reviewer that people hint out or Niantic staff can take action on.
If we were doing that then why not just get rid of the general review process entirely? That extra step makes reviewing redundant because if a Wayspot has been "vetted", as you say, why not just then let it through? If I remember rightly, Niantic used to review Wayspots themselves and they eventually realised there are simply too many players nominating Wayspots for them to review "in-house", shall we say.
You can't ban the word as stated above, because many answers rightfully start with "This would make a great waypoint/portal/pokestop because..."
I find the information posted helpful even when they are written like "We need more pokestops in the area." and I'm looking at the Check for Duplicates map and I see 3 churches and a park within a few blocks of it that are not waystops. If the submitter had a better understanding of the criteria, they they could and should be nominating all those churches around their house. The problem is that people who are submitting do not have to take a test or read any criteria before making their first submission, and they have no clue why any of the locations already in the games exist.
Saw some coal the other day with a nice mural in the background, that wasn't a Wayspot yet... I'd love to draw on the photo with a red pen and add a "submit this instead" note.
Maybe just integrate the criteria list as part of the submission process. "what is it?!" so submitters see the list of acceptable things to get an idea what to submit. Or as OSM is the base of the map just provide a map with "candidates for submission" based on a database query. Example
"What is it" category is NOT a list of eligible/acceptable things.
Thanks for the feedback, Folks! We are committed to fighting Wayfarer abuse and are taking different steps to counter this.
education. education. education.
You cannot just open the floodgates to a system this complex without explaining how it works to people. Relying on us to educate the other trainers in our areas only goes so far. There are tons of players out there who are not connected to any kind of community to get the training we can provide them.
It might help for you to implement some kind of flagging system that is not Abuse but indicates "this trainer is submitting for POI that are completely ineligible and needs education." That flag will institute a cool down on their ability to submit. It makes no sense that reviewers get slapped with cooldowns (often just for going too fast) but bad submitters have no consequences.
I totally agree with what you said
There are groups that actively spread misinformation and abuse. When reported with proof, Niantic took no action.
I can't agree with this at all. Prior to reading these forums, I had no idea that we were reviewing/voting for MULTIPLE games, not just PoGO, and I guarantee you that the typical submitter won't know this. If a submitter is in an area with several stops for one game, but not for another, then I'd rather see "My area doesn't have X" so that I can consider that. I will presume that, if there are waypoints, that those points are probably for other games, and WILL go easier on submissions in areas that don't have a particular stop/portal/poi for their game. This is a flaw on Niantic's part, and I think it's important to consider that. It's not the same as someone taking a picture in their living room or their own mailbox trying to get a stop right at their homes so they don't have to walk 30 yards down the street.
I'm personally dismayed that a point for one game can make it harder for another game to get points as I'm in a densely populated area in one of the largest cities in Washington State. We don't have publicly accessible Pokéstops, but do enough Portals that there's pretty much no chance of getting anything for PoGO. My daughter and I just got home from a drive since that's what we have to do to get to any stops, and it doesn't look like that can change because Ingress is blocking what we play. Most PoGO players here have quit because of this.
So yeah, I want to know if someone doesn't have a point in their area so I can now that the points I do see aren't for their game and can consider that and ease up in necessary. I'd rather take the chance that someone is lying and that they actually do have points than to presume someone is lying when they really don't have stops.
Agreed. There was nothing in the submission process indicating what is and isn't allowed. It should be obvious that something inside your home isn't going to pass, but other than that, how is the typical submitter supposed to know the criteria?
I think adding, "Is it on public property?" "Is it permanent?" "Is it unique to the area?" with a Yes or No after each, would help tremendously. Checking No would get a notification on the stop that it's not eligible and cut down on trash submissions, and a Yes would pass to review.
If the answers are all Yeses, then considering what someone says in the info box is important, and blocking out words relevant to the games is a bad idea. Considering the absolute lack of easy-accessible info, submitters shouldn't pay the price. How many of us found out any of this without specifically seeking it out? We can't expect the typical submitter to do that.
Whether or not nearby wayspots appear in a particular game has absolutely nothing to do with a submission's eligibility. A wayspot submission is either eligible or it isn't.
Also, I find it difficult to believe that someone can live in an area with a substantial number of accessible Ingress portals but have zero accessible Pokéstops to the point where they would have to actually drive to spin a Pokéstop (unless the Pokéstops have been removed at a property owner's request, but that would be unrelated to the portals). Especially "in a densely populated area in one of the largest cities in Washington State." Level 17 S2 cells just aren't big enough for that to happen.
Training is good, but training will not be effective by itself. If you go through training and then don't use the information for a month do you remember it when you need it? I don't. We can't rely on people to finish training and to keep up-to-date with all of the changes. Most won't.
We need training but we also need guidance. The submission process needs to have guidance for submitters about what things are eligible and ineligible. The process needs to give submitters better guidance about what to put in each field and why, especially supporting info. (If I see one more supporting photo where someone just turned 90 degrees and took a photo of a sidewalk I'm going to s-c-r-e-a-m.) ((why on earth did the forum software star out that word?!))
We also need targeted guidance during the review process so that reviewers are shown the actual criteria for the thing they are reviewing and for each of the fields in the process.
One way to do this is to have submitters choose "What is it?" as the first step of the submission process. Once they do that they can get targeted guidance based on that category.
How long is it usually before comments with pics are posted? Since Jan wants to be the very Jan mentioned who thinks they know an area better than a resident of that area, I posted a pic showing the stops and gyms around here.
So you know my area better than I do. Sure, Jan. The nearest stops we can get to without having to get into a gated apartment complex (which I got kicked out of, twice now since I managed to get back in today) are over a mile's walk each, which isn't happening when it's cold and raining. And then the next one is farther away. There are a LOT of L14's with nothing at all whatsoever.
A Wayspot won't necessarily become a Pokéstop, and around here, we don't get them. I'm not telling you my exact address because that would be supremely stupid, even though I'm sure you want to know it so you can "prove" me wrong, and you'll see my refusal to give you my exact address a proof I'm wrong. But go on, Jan, let yourself be that very sort of person who thinks they know an area better than someone who lives there.