I’ve been thinking about the problems with the event and the frustration amongst various people who attempted to review. I think this stems in part from the fact that there are at least three communities involved with the challenge. These communities all have different and often conflicting goals from the system
- Ingress – Who want to get the portals resolved before the split into Niantic Spatial. Many players also would like the rewards, including the OPR tick.
- Pokemon Go – Generally a desire for more stops/gyms as well as players seeking to reach the thresholds for various rewards
- Wayfarer – Who have long been engaged with the program and have a general desire to submit and review submissions for a variety of reasons.
Many people in the latter group wanted to review as many as possible during the event but that left people in the Pokemon Go community who might have less time or interest in reviewing getting the bouncing balloon when they tried to review. Anecdotally, much of the Pokemon Go community was largely unaware that the event was even happening. If they only became aware during GMax snorlax and then encountered massive lag, it will discourage them from reviewing going forward.
Many Ingress players seemed to want to get things resolved as it will be their last chance for at least a little while to get new portals. From my experience, the local queue wasn’t as bad as it had been 18 months ago so a dedicated event might not have had as much of a perceived need.
And this is before getting into the disputes between Pokemon Go Players and Ingress Players. Of course, I’ve oversimplified things and many people fall into two or three categories.
I just hope that going forward, there is more engagement with other communities and not just through Wayfarer and this forum.