Difference when reporting abuse and influencing reviewers?

When reviewing, what is the difference between “report>influencing reviewers” and “accuracy>abuse>influencing reviewers”?

And actually I want to know what exactly “influencing reviewers” is, because the description says:

“Nominations with content that tries to sway and influence votes, such as dropping a codename or codewords in the title, description or photo. Or making voting requests in the title, description, supporting information, or photo.”

Isn’t influencing the reviewers is not the purpose of the supporting information? Like, to convince them that the place meets the criteria?

I don’t know but here’s my best guess.

“report>influencing reviewers”

This goes off to someone in Niantic as a “flag” to say the user is doing this, and they can then investigate, and goes as you rejecting the nomination.

“accuracy>abuse>influencing reviewers”?

Again, rejecting the nomination but not flagging it to Niantic.

Isn’t influencing the reviewers is not the purpose of the supporting information? Like, to convince them that the place meets the criteria?

Yes it is. But it is meant to be “hey, this cafe is a great social spot, they do quizzes every week and have monthly D&D games” etc.

However some people use it to say “please give me a gym” or the old “rate this 5 stars” or “Hey Cairo Resistance, give this a good rating”. All of which are a no, and is influencing in a bad way.

That’s how I have read it anyways.

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Sometimes I come across supporting information that says things like “I placed the pin a few meters away from the original location because S2 cells and stuff”. Is this acceptable?

Definetly not

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As said, it isn’t. Location guidelines below if that helps.

The cells only matter in Pokémon GO, and you shouldn’t place something intentionally in the wrong place, so I would take more to time to fully review and correct the location if I saw something like that in supporting information on review.

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This is an instance id probably use the report - influencing reviewers function especially if the pin is clearly not at an acceptable point. Now for the stuff thats just like “please approve” or “pokestop/pokemon…” i typically just roll my eyes and ignore unless im already denying for accuracy due to other reasons then I throw it in. That way maybe if they see the rejection reason added in there they can possibly get the hint not to do it or get educated on it here on the forums if they come to see why it wasnt accepted. At times people will be talking game specific if they dont know or are new since the game(s) pretty much lead you to believe its game specific.

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The one I used to see was a persistent use of inappropriate category tags that I was sure was some person or group’s signature.

Otherwise I read the supporting info very generously. This stuff is hard enough without looking for reasons to call something abuse when newbie cluelessness is much more likely. Mentioning Pokémon in supporting, asking for stops or gyms or 5 star votes, even arguing for a particular pin location if it’s a good non- gameboard argument: all fine.

Just don’t put some sort of signature or code in the submission or admit there are Pokémon or faction reasons for something sketchy about your nom. We’re all trying to influence voters, it’s only bad if we’re influencing them to review inaccurately or discriminatorily.

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About the category tags, I never thought about that. I see a lot of weird tags that makes no sense, but I just ignore and mark “no” and it doesn’t influence my review.

What bothers me the most are the supporting information that only says “is in accordance with the community standard” or something like that.

The categories shown are not always user selected. For instance, submitting in Ingress does not allow you to select categories, yet those reviews include categories. A lot of times people only select 1 category, yet in review it will have 3 or more options to choose from.

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Interesting possibility! It was very regional and just one tag and I’ve never seen anything like it with other tags or elsewhere. That’s what made me associate it with one player or group, and that still seems the simplest explanation.

Do we know anything about what categories get added between submission and review or how? Could some come from early reviewers, or are reviewers’ category suggestions politely ignored?

I think the best course of action would be to document and report the anomaly. IMO there isn’t definitive proof of a submitter’s intent. Could also be another bug vector that hasn’t been reported. Either way, documenting anomalies would paint what is more likely happening and how the incorrect tagging can be fixed/improved.

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I’ve also seen people putting the same 3 letters at the end of every description, to alert their group that it’s them.

And someone put their dog in every supporting photo - we’d had a large meet-up, so could recognize the dog. Now when I see a dog in a picture, I wonder if it’s an attempt at influencing. I assume not the first time, but if I see another I flag it as “submitter identifiable”. Third time I’ll say abuse.

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Definitely could be an attempt to influence or at least key in whos nomination it is. If I had a dog and brought it with me all the time or to every meetup and then include that in my supporting photo its the same as me throwing my Gengar beanie/hat in the supporting photo to key in who is making the submission. People see me with it, so when they see it in the photo they might vote more positively because they like me(or maybe vice versus). Yes, a dog has a mind of its own and could accidentally end up in the photo while the hat cant, but you could also make sure to get a photo without the dog. I know recently I had to report some photo edits because the same person uploaded 7 photos to 1 wayspot. I could tell it was the same person cause they included their scooter in every photo…

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I hope those three letters weren’t the ones we saw in the French challenge

RAS is “Rien A Signaler” which means “Nothing to say” literally

Yeah, the tag system is weird, because sometimes I also notice duplicates tags in a submission and didn’t know it was possible.

That’s because they don’t show us the category. For example, “Soccer Field” is under “Indoor Sports” and “Outdoor Sports”. When reviewing, we don’t know what kind of “Soccer Field” is shown. I just click Yes for both. Niantic made it; they can deal with it.

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Now I just saw a edit review with a picture like this. Is it common to me to see nomination reviews with photos like that, with the date or the phone model. I usually reject, but now I am wodering if this is ok…

w

A photo with a watermark on like that is meant to be :-1: on Accuracy.

The submission is NOT accurate or informative if: 1. Photo - includes one or more of emojis, tags, or personally identifiable information such as codenames, personal names or initials, or addresses; copyrighted material or watermarks, including screenshots of someone else’s photo; is obviously doctored; includes people, body parts, or live animals as the subject matter; is blurry, over/under exposed, taken inside a car, contains a watermark, or is improperly oriented.

You can raise it in help chat and they may remove the photo.

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