End of Summer Lookback (long update!) - Discussion Thread

124»

Comments

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat

    I've been a longtime contributor to the Wayfarer system, from back when it was originally "OPR". Gots some 340+ accepted items under my belt now (which is saying a lot, especially considering I don't drive!). Overall the system works, but I've definitely been quite loudly critical on a few points. A couple of my personal bugbears include:

    • When Wayfarer accepts a nomination that should not have ever been accepted in the first place, the process to have that corrected is quite absurd. You can confer with @NianticCasey-ING about some of his personal interventions on my behalf. But another example that left me flabbergasted was a UK ERII mailbox, fraudulently sold to wayfarer as a GR one, and then not removed by Niantic when the fraud was exposed.
    • Reviewers need better education and explicit feedback when they are doing things incorrectly. SOME of these kinds of issues have been addressed, sort of, when the "Generic Business" rejection reason was finally removed as a rejection option, as it was overwhelmingly being used incorrectly.

    But adjacent to that second bugbear, I see in your update that submitters are finally getting an option to appeal their rejected wayspots? It is definitely something I've long hoped for and asked for, but my "oops-o-vision" smells danger. (ie. it won't just be "good" submitters using the "resubmit! resubmit! resubmit!" philosophy to finally get our "no pedestrian access" trail markers approved... but also the "one! more! wayspot!" players with nothing to lose and no consequences for having any low-effort simple and easy resubmissions process too.)

    So, I know you can't really be precise, but can you at least give some broad strokes on how Niantic sees this new Appeals process would work?

  • milotic03-INGmilotic03-ING Posts: 12 ✭✭

    hi @NianticDanbocat in our country we have a toxic wayfarer comunity rejecting valid points abusing the system using multiple accounts, one solo guy have 22 accounts of ingress/pogo to reject in mass, doing a lot of edits to clusters stops in the same area, and bully people. People of my country is quiting of wayfarer because this group aka called team rocket wayfarer with hundreds of accounts in same IPs are used to reject nominations to get upgrades.

    In my personal case i am a disable person and to bully me they abuse the bug of wayfarer photos to avoid 2 gym born near my house because they know my disable a year ago, the bug was fixed but said arrangement was not retroactive

  • aleprj-INGaleprj-ING Posts: 565 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat, another important topic to handle are the cooldowns and its effects.

    We see a lot of reviewers saying they choose bogus rejection reasons in an attempt to avoid cooldows because they are afraid of repeating the correct reason too many times. It is often said to be one of the reasons we have these bogus reasons in the rejections.

    We also see a lot of people complaining they got the cooldowns out of nowhere, sometimes after 2 or 3 reviews (and a mysterious cooldown that just says there's nothing to review). I have never got a cooldown, so I can't really tell, I'm more worried about the impact it has on the reasons.

  • oscarc1-INGoscarc1-ING Posts: 366 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Many times I will do trips just to go nominate Wayspots in regional areas, I always run out of nominations and would love more. Even if there was a option to purchase more nominations, I would be down for that lol

  • tp235-INGtp235-ING Posts: 1,383 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat

    Hello. And nice to meet you.

    I've been watching your introduction and your answers in this thread with great interest.

    And I have high hopes for you and the Wayfarer team at Niantic.


    I'd like to reiterate a suggestion that I've made before and that Giffard said was a good idea, and I'd be happy to include it in your discussions.


    Make "What is it?" mandatory as the first step when nominating a POI.

    After that, we can effectively reduce the number of low-quality nominations that the nominator does not understand by going through the following steps: location information, photos of the POI, photos of the surrounding area, title, description, and additional information.

    Of course, it also effectively reduces the number of nominations submitted for other malicious reasons.

    Also, the quality of the POI can be kept high by having the reviewers check if this is correct.


    I hope you will consider this as one of your improvement measures.

    Thanks.


    Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)


    https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/19888/proposal-to-change-some-of-the-nomination-procedures#latest

  • Elijustrying-INGElijustrying-ING Posts: 5,480 Ambassador

    I think they are planning to introduce a what is it category as Pokeminers recently discovered a text update that refers to categories:

    +RESOURCE ID: poi_contrib_edit_category_added

    +TEXT: {0} more category submission(s) will be added tomorrow.

    +RESOURCE ID: poi_contrib_remaining_category_multiple

    +TEXT: {0} category submissions remaining

    +RESOURCE ID: poi_contrib_remaining_category_one

    +TEXT: One category submission remaining


    what exactly this means is unclear as it is a data mine but it is interesting it refers to the term category.

    Personally when the new compulsory categorisation was introduced in review my neurodiverse brain really started to struggle. I would be spending several minutes trying to navigate what to me was an impenetrable decision tree and I would rapidly use the will to live and just choose other. I appreciate that many will find it obvious and it may be the choice of words but it was very frequently not obvious to me. The thought having to do this as a first step in submission does not fill me with joy.

  • jhenstridge-PGOjhenstridge-PGO Posts: 37 ✭✭✭

    I think part of the problem is that there is no incentive to pick a correct rejection reason in the system. If you pick reject in your review of a nomination and that nomination goes on to be rejected, the site rewards you irrespective of what reason you gave.

    Maybe what would help would be new type of review: take a sample of minority rejection reasons from rejected nominations and ask reviewers whether the reason is appropriate. This could then feed back into the original reviewer's Wayfinder rating.

  • oscarc1-INGoscarc1-ING Posts: 366 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Wayfarer+ had a map to view all your nominations and it all worked beautifully, until the latest Wayfarer update destroyed the plugin.

    Here are some very old screenshots as examples:

    Viewing just in queue / in voting nominations around the suburbs:

    Slightly zoomed out view showing the clustering:


    These are so old though, wish WF+ still worked so I could show you a more up to date view lol

    What I was talking about though, was using Google My Maps to plot pins to plan potential nominations, represented in yellow below:

    I don't ever imagine Wayfarer being user friendly or intuitive enough to do something like this, as a mix of Google Maps, Streetview and Intel are needed to properly plan.

  • jhenstridge-PGOjhenstridge-PGO Posts: 37 ✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat: having a cross check of minority reject reasons before the nomination is rejected sounds even better. It'd probably even be necessary once rejection appeals are implemented: if my nomination gets rejected with a list of bogus reasons, I'm going to want to appeal that. If a large proportion of rejections turn into appeals, then I can't see that system really helping.

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Our curiosity about the upcoming appeals process revolves around a few questions:

    1. Is it just a way to resubmit rejected nominations without needing to go back to the location for new photos? ie. just make some edits and resubmit
    2. Will there be any corrective action taken against the reviewers who had voted spuriously? ie. those who flagged hiking trails as "inappropriate activity"?
    3. Is there going to be any Niantic-based intervention on these appeals, or is it JUST going to be player/Wayfarer based? (I'd suspect the latter)
  • milotic03-INGmilotic03-ING Posts: 12 ✭✭

    hi @NianticDanbocat how i can send a PM here i cant see the option or is the white box in the profile of each user?

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    @NianticTintino could you kindly send @Kancerberus03-PGO a DM here?

    @0X00FF00-ING - The appeals would go directly to Niantic for review and decision. We'll be posting a more detailed update later this year. Still working out the kinks, including person hours to give you direct responses from Niantic, as I've alluded to in my post. Thanks for your patience!

    @jhenstridge-PGO - we'll have to put some checks and balances on the appeals process to limit spamming of appeals. Currently appeals are made here in the forum, directly to Niantic. So this feature would be replacing that process.

    @oscarc1-ING - got it! what motivates you the most to want to plan your adventures in advance?

  • TheGateKeepr-INGTheGateKeepr-ING Posts: 33 ✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat welcome. I appreciate your transparency and willingness to open communication making room for discussion and brainstorming ways in which everyone can help create a better wayfarer experience. This is more just commentary/suggestion but..

    It would also be beneficial to have more clarity on appeals in general. Lately there have been a few inconsistencies in appeal rulings on the forum: there are similar appeals yet one is accepted and another denied. More importantly, however, is the lack of transparency and discussion after the "ruling". I think this part is the most important as everyone can benefit from more information as this will hopefully alleviate the amount of invalid wayspots getting approved and minimize the amount of invalid wayspot appeals that are being reported in the future. The follow-up discussion or information is missing from these appeals and, when inquired, Niantic isn't able to give further information on the ruling ("Sadly we do not have more information to share in this regard.") yet they had sufficient information to make a ruling.

    I think, in general, just a more streamlined and consistent experience goes a long way for everyone involved.

  • oscarc1-INGoscarc1-ING Posts: 366 ✭✭✭✭✭

    My motivation is purely just the exploration aspect, to take the road lesser travelled and find unique and interesting things that could be submitted. Those images earlier are just within suburbia, but I like to travel far and wide and have hundreds of discovered portals all over the place - not to mention photo additions, most of which were done when working on Onyx Scout Controller.

    Travelling into regional areas makes a great road trip and I often find unique historical monuments like war memorials or lots of info signs scattered about. It's great fun to find these little towns with nothing there in-game and to leave with a dozen or so Wayspots. It's also nice to return after a few weeks/months and seeing the activity in game with people on gyms and such. Plus I take my partner, so we tend to make a weekend of it and both use up all of our submissions.

    Sometimes I wish I were around during the Seer days, I probably would have double Onyx (10k discovered) lol

    Where we are, we've spent most of the last year in lockdown, so haven't had the joy of being further than 5km from home for most of the time. So if you look at my nomination history, maybe scroll back to a year or so ago - or especially to the time when we had nominations with Ingress Redacted and Prime, that was a lot of fun, as we went out every fortnight to nominate as much as we could lol

  • Gazzas89-PGOGazzas89-PGO Posts: 2,619 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Wait what? We can appeal submission rejections here? Didn't know that. I won't do it as if my submission is rejected it probably needs a slight change

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    @TheGateKeepr-ING - Thank you for the welcome and flagging this issue. I will have to learn more from the team that handles the appeals process to see where we can streamline and improve.

    @oscarc1-ING - thank you for sharing!! it is stories like yours that really embody what we want to help you do as a company. And is an inspiration for how we will shape Wayfarer moving forward.

  • jhenstridge-PGOjhenstridge-PGO Posts: 37 ✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat: my thought was more that as long as rejections continue to come through with spurious rejection reasons, people will feel justified in asking for a review. I don't think it makes sense to characterise this as appeal spam.

    I also suspect you will see far more appeals once it is an official part of the website compared to the forum based system currently in place. My last rejection email tells me "changes to the results of the community review are not possible", so I'd have no reason to look on the forums. It'd be different if there was a big "appeal" button next to the failed nomination.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    September 8th bug fixes seem to have gone live as announced.

  • AstraeaLok-INGAstraeaLok-ING Posts: 24 ✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino Welcome to the team! Can one of you please reach out to me VIA DM. I have an extensive report of wayfarer abuse I need to submit and not publicly.

  • sinXsan-INGsinXsan-ING Posts: 299 ✭✭✭
    edited September 2021

    If I were to make a suggestion that seems feasible, I would like to see the "current name and location" in Title/Description editing and Location correction editing. I think the fact that there are so many cases of deliberate modification of the information in these POIs, but the reviewers do not know which is the current status, is a remote cause of confusion.

    @NianticTintino

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0 ✭✭

    @Gendgi-PGO - you bet, we will do our best to keep talking with y'all!

    @cyndiepooh-ING - Noted! Do you also actively submit photospheres to Google? To update the StreetView?

    @AstraeaLok-ING - @NianticGiffard and @NianticTintino can help you. If you don't hear from them in the next few days LMK

    @SturmRugerLCR-PGO - Noted! Yea, sometimes you'll submit an edit and while you're waiting for that to get reviewed, the original details get edited by someone else. So we do want to display the current details in your Contribution Management page so that you can ultimately decide what you want to do with your pending edits. Working on those details right now!

    ciao~

  • Thank you @NianticDanbocat for the tag! I'll be glad to assist.

    @AstraeaLok-ING - I have sent you a DM regarding this, let's continue our conversation there.

  • cyndiepooh-INGcyndiepooh-ING Posts: 1,317 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited September 2021

    @NianticDanbocat absolutely! this is why it is so important that we see in our nominations what the reviewers are being shown. a lot of reviewers do not know how to exit that screen and look for other views. i didn't know how until after i had done several hundred reviews when i happened to mention something about it on our local discord.

  • cyndiepooh-INGcyndiepooh-ING Posts: 1,317 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @NianticDanbocat i think i edited my reply one time too many - sorry if i have tagged you twice if the comment comes back. but yes i almost always create photospheres unless i can't get my phone to cooperate in that location. that's why it is so important to see if the reviewers are seeing my photosphere or some other view in my nominations view. i know a lot of folks don't know how to exit the view they are shown (i didn't) so it makes a difference whether to spend an upgrade or not.

Sign In or Register to comment.