To add to Eli’s message, we’ve even been told that it’s OK to be more lenient in areas that don’t have many POI. There was a discussion around Starbucks and how even that could be a great wayspot in an area that has nowhere else to gather. So if the person wants to point out to me that there are no other POI, I am not going to judge them for that.
What i often see is that there are POI “nearby” just not “right here.” But even then, I’m able to use my own brain to determine if the wayspot is eligible. The submitter’s statements about wayspot density aren’t going to fool or trick me into voting against my own best judgment.
We need to keep in mind that people of all experience levels are submitting wayspots. I don’t think anyone is benefitted when we review with a critical lens trying to find a reason to reject. I’d much rather be engaged in a system where we are all trying to help each other and looking for reasons to accept whenever possible.
Nobody was laughing at you. Different takes were given and you chose to flag those as abuse, too. Niantic admin have the chance to respond and trust the Ambassadors for front line responses.
We are asked many times throughout the reviewing process to “use our best judgement” and you have seen different judgments shared with you. Many of us are considering an old Niantic clarification saying “…spelling errors may be accepted and edites when approved.” Unfortunately, with all the revisions to criteria pages, that seems to have been lost with no specific messaging as to if intentional or not.
I agree with you that calling the mural “counties” rather than “mountains” is “inaccurate” and maybe pushing into the “irrelevant” side. I do like Wayspots to be an accurate representation of the real world.
Having taken that into consideration, I think I would have voted “IDK” for accuracy on an otherwise intersting Wayspot candidate.
Since I am both an Ambassador and have a PhD in English, I wanted to jump into the conversation here as I did in the private chat with Ambassadors and the OP. I want to try and remind everyone that everyone’s contributions to the map add value, even when they are not 100% perfect. I too am very committed to adding high quality Wayspots. I would love to show you some of my obnoxiously researched Waypoints anytime! Seriously though, everyone makes mistakes. Good-faith contributions made by people who make errors are no less welcome than those who do not.
That’s why it is not necessary to reject a nomination based on a grammatical error, a title or description that could be improved and is reasonably accurate (for example, a reasonable person could look the point of interest in the nomination in question at the beginning of this thread and see how someone could think they were looking at counties instead of mountain ranges), or a misspelling. This is a good example of a Wayspot that could be edited, and it’s okay to assume someone else will do so if you don’t want to. We’re part of a community after all.
As for why I think this way, the nomination interface in many games does not have spell check and does not support autocorrect, this causes many users (including Ambassadors with PhDs in English) to make typographical errors because they are used to having those guards in place. We also recognize that many people do not use Wayfarer often enough to know that you can hold a nomination and edit later, submit remotely to ensure accuracy when nominating, or even know how to do research on public art. Many people have physical limitations that prevent them from using keyboards on phones with complete accuracy. Many people are non-native speakers of the language they are writing their nominations in. The most likely reason (to me) is that effective research and writing are both skills that are difficult to learn, and honestly, are not taught very well in U.S. schools at any rate.
I personally reject something for an inaccurate title or description when the spelling/grammar errors interfere with my ability to derive meaning, when the text is obviously completely made up in an attempt to make something ineligible appear eligible, or when the description is copy/pasted from a third-party source. As always, if anyone ever wants help learning to research or writing effective nominations, please don’t hesitate to tag me.
One other thing i feel a particular need to mention right now as I’m on day 3 of a migraine is that not everyone has great vision, especially when looking at a phone outside. I have only popped in to the forum a few times in the last couple of days because looking at the phone causes me physical pain. If someone happened to work through a moment like that and made a few small errors, it could be devestating to them to have their otherwise good POI rejected.
We also have no access to the time-line between nomination and review.
The new Explorer may come from Pokemon Go and nominate some things in the middle of nowhere, and some of them might just sit in queue for months or years.
By the time a reviewer finally gets a look at the original nomination there might be a dozen other spots nearby. No trickery involved, just a matter of time.
Sorry, but “this will be the first Pokestop in the area” or “we need more Pokestop here” is irrelevant to why a particular POI should become a Pokestop. “This is a popular local spot” is relevant. “This park is very beautiful and a great place to exercise” is relevant. “There are no Pokestops in this area” is irrelevant and is a request.
On the old forum there were a LOT of threads about clarifying this or that. I don’t have time to read them all, participate in AMAs, etc. I have several guidelines from Niantic websites. We don’t have to search thru multiple threads. If Niantic puts in the guidelines “Check for accuracy, but it’s OK if there are some spelling mistakes and inaccurate information if there are not too many wayspots”, I will follow that.
According to Reviewing a Wayspot Nomination — Wayfarer Help Center, reviewers are supposed to give thumbs down for titles and descriptions that do not match the Wayspot. If the wayspot shows mountain ranges and someone calls it “Counties”, the title does not match the wayspot. This is not reasonably accurate.
We shouldn’t be approving nominations that will require further corrections. Niantic can implement such feature like they did with location - reviewers can suggest new location for a nomination if proposed location is incorrect. Reviewers don’t have to make notes of each nomination with errors, then travel there to correct errors. This is not reviewers’ job.
It’s also not my job to think about who has autocorrect and who doesn’t, who submitted nominations and what disability they have, who knows or doesn’t know how to edit things later, who researches or doesn’t research. If their nomination gets rejected, it will be a teaching moment for them to be better next time. When a nomination is rejected, it’s not the end of line. Reviewers can add notes so that nominators can see what the problem was, and resubmit the nomination with errors corrected. This is what should be promoted - betterment and good quality, not inferiority and sloppy jobs. No participation trophies. And I am saying this not because I am just mean, but because I learned, too, and I still keep learning new things.
It’s not my job to think what caused the submitter to make mistakes. My job is to review wayspots and, if needed, assist submitters to do a better job next time thru appropriate checkmarks and proper comment fields.
Acceptance Criteria — Wayfarer Help Center explicitly mentions “Must contain accurate information in the title, description, and photo”. If you call a utility box that has mountain ranges names painted on it “Counties of California”, it’s inaccurate. I am not talking about minor spelling or grammatical errors here. Counties are not mountains.
As you correctly say it is irrelevant, so can be ignored. Just as if the box was blank.
Please try to be more aware of why a submitter in all innocence might write in that manner. Accept what others are explaining to you as to why this happens. Take that knowledge on board and adapt.
At the moment you seem to be assuming “guilt” and bad intentions and that is not helpful or fair.
@Itsutsume, I understand that your point of view is bringing through the most accuracy. High quality POIs.
BUT Niantic choose to give all usern a chance. Walk through the street and listen to the people around you, nobody is equal. To let everyone enjoy the games seems to be one of Niantic higher goals.
The given rules allows you to interprete the rainbow cube as “inaccurate”.
This given rules allows other reviewers to vote in a different way.
To discuss those themes is ok but please don’t ask for official closing given grey zones.
Personal note: if a friend comes to town I would definitly say “let’s meet at the rainbow cube”.
@Itsutsume I am going to use the opportunity of the points that are being raised here to have a moment to have some education around reviewing. By necessity what follows is addressing points around what you have been drawing out but I think there are points that apply more widely.
There are 3 options when reviewing, and I don’t know(IDK)
Personally I don’t like the term IDK as I do know why I am using this option……but that is about semantics. The clear reason for this is to provide a middle option to record that you can’t justify a full but that there are small issues that mean it is still a good enough submission.
When clicking on IDK under accuracy you can clearly see that you can record that there are errors with the title and description. So I use that to record that there are errors, but fixable.
Using IDK is something that I use across the categories as I weigh up my response to the question.
By offering this as an option it is clear that Wayfarer are happy to accept minor errors. It is a judgement call as to what constitutes minor.
Wayfarer are not insisting on perfection, but they are happy with it being what I will term “good enough”.
This also applies to the photo it does not need to be a professional standard. There is list of potential faults with a photo that make it a rejection.
If a location is slightly out we can fix that rather than reject.
We often talk about how important it is for the submitters to learn.
It’s equally important that reviewers learn.
As a reviewer I know that I am still learning.
Wayfarer is something that is dynamic with changes over the years and involves a spectrum of judgement calls.
It is important as a reviewer we not set in our reviewing ways. We need to be prepared to adapt and change.
We need to be open to feedback that others may give and this may involve an adjustment in where we draw the lines when reviewing to adapt our judgement calls.
The IDK option is there for a reason.
As reviewers we have a very crude and minimal set of information available to us (I would like to see that change but you know soon™️)
It is not often we get a chance to discuss and refine our understanding. The reviewing support area is useful for that. We should be able to ask open questions there and be prepared to receive comments that may lead to us altering our practice.
A good and important self development technique is to challenge what we are doing, sense check it against available information and reflect and discuss if possible.
That way we not only become better submitters we become better reviewers.
It is irrelevant to why a POI should be a wayspot and thus should not have been added. It’s not irrelevant in the sense that it can be ignored. If someone flat out puts “We need more Pokestops” in supporting information, you can’t ignore it - you are supposed to reject nomination as requests.
I never said about any intentions. It might have been an honest mistake of someone visiting California from another state or country. It might have been an honest mistake of every single person who approved it, or maybe it was a mistake of the automated system. It was a mistake nonetheless, and this wayspot should not have been approved due to incorrect title and description.
That wayspot has two photos with names of three mountain ranges. Someone names it “Counties”. They are not counties. They are mountain ranges. We are not talking about some abstract things. Mountain ranges are not counties. Cats are not dogs. Statues are not cars. Buildings are not hot air balloons.
POI is POI. But wayspot is more than just POI. It’s a combination of POI, its photo, its title, its description and its location. This is why there are rules on what is accepted and what is not. For example, a nomination with a low quality photo should not be accepted, no matter how great the POI is.
So far everyone seems to want me to change what I do. People keep telling me to ignore inaccuracies, to think about who the submitter could have been and how they could have felt at the time of submission, but no one said “Yeah, this wayspot’s title is just plain wrong, no doubt about that”. Why is everyone looking for excuses to justify wrongs instead of finding ways to correct them?
Better reviewers and better submitters do their research.
I don’t know if “IDK” option counts toward acceptance or rejection, or is neutral. Do you by any chance know how “IDK” option counts?
and I don’t know(IDK)