As we’ve seen from the Wayfarer Global Challenge, some regions suffer from a severe lack of active reviewers, leading to prolonged backlogs. Since Wayfarer can already identify these areas with slow review activity, there’s an opportunity to implement a more permanent support system.
I think it might be possible to permit highly experienced reviewers to set their bonus location to “Global”, allowing them to help review nominations in regions with low activity or long queue times.
This would function similarly to the Global Challenge, but with higher requirements. For example, a reviewer might need to reach 1,000 Agreements and maintain an agreement rate above 60% (or another appropriate threshold😉) to qualify.
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It’s an interesting issue that is worth thinking about. It can be very problematic in some areas for submissions to get reviewed.
At the moment it is very dependant on submitters appearing in one of the larger online communities - like this one. This identifies it as specific area and anyone can change bonus location ( once every 3 months).
Should this be improved?
An idea that has been mentioned before was around after a certain length of time with no progress the area that the submission is released to gets bigger and so on.
Ideas and reactions are welcome.
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I think the bonus location cooldown needs to be reduced. 3 months is alot now. 1 month might be more appropiate in my opinion and should also help more rural communities get their submissions reviewed, atleast hopefully, not everybody changes their bonus location.
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Well it would be great if wayfarer have another option to select that enable wayfarer to review those long overdue nomination globally due to lack of reviewer
Although the fastest fix would be to reduce bonus location cooldown
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Being able to set your bonus location to Global wouldn’t achieve the desired aim, because you would get reviews from everywhere, including places that have fast-moving submissions but do have lots of submissions.
To help slow-moving areas along, you do need a focused bonus location, so that you can choose to focus on that area. This is what the bonus location does, but it requires someone to come on here and ask for assistance.
Alternatively, you could be able to ask wayfarer to give you a location that has slow-moving submissions, but I suspect an algorithm to determine that would be overly complex.
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I think the idea described in the original post is that there is a specific global queue of reviewer light areas. So the feed would be restricted. As you say that might be tricky to implement.
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I happen to travel a lot, and I can tell you the downside is that I don’t understand all languages (just five) and I also don’t always have a good understanding of what is special in all cultures.
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IMO Global reviewing will cause more problems than it would fix.
I think more chances to change 2nd location and somewhere here that people can state that there area is slow in reviews is a better option.
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I also don’t like having a global bonus location, as that could cause some issues, especially with those that are unfamiliar with some areas of the world, those that don’t do extra research outside of the review page, prefer reviews in the language their most comfortable with, etc.
I do like changing the bonus location more often, as well as coming to a place like the forums, Reddit, Discord, etc, to find out what areas may need some help clearing out their queues.
BTW, there is a similar discussion going on here: Remote areas stuck in a loop — Request for bonus location reviewing
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I think this is a bad idea it will just create a feedback loop of locals catering to the global audience
Local submits something only locals would understand, global reviewers reject it
Local submits something more generic, global reviewers accepted
Local then starts submitting more globally acceptable things.
Instead, these nominations from “low reviewer activity” areas should be funnelled to the closest region with “high reviewer activity” that way there will at least be some chance of cultural nuance from the reviewers
Not necessarily. There are many people who regularly change their bonus locations to these low activity areas to help with reviews and it has worked out great.
Better than nominations getting stuck for months/years together.
/Some/ global reviewers coming into an area is fine. The risk being expressed here is if almost all reviewers are global.
Different. Not better. Possibly worse. There’s worse things than submissions taking a long time to review. (example: eMiLy sped up submissions. eMiLy was accepting sub-standard submissions. eMiLy was turned off. Niantic went through and removed sub-standard accepted wayspots. Niantic also removed good submissions that had been accepted by eMiLy.)
I understand and respect your opinion but for places that take months fir a nominations to decide, fast resolutions will be a blessing.
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Niantic could enable a rotating “global priority area” (Additional Bonus Location) so that reviews are still regionally focused but more dynamic🤔
That overcomes the issue of using an algorithm to flag slow areas. The challenges indicate that areas can be created, so it would be possible for a person to pick an area, use an algorithm to track progress in that area and flag when it was no longer in need of assistance, then pick a new area and so on.
Almost like a challenge that never ends and keeps moving from coldspot to coldspot.
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also a good idea, and may be easier to implement🧐
I often review nominations that are a bit far from me, and I don’t mind them being a bit further away.
This is not the case in my country or region, but from this forum, it is clear that there are regions around the world where there is a shortage of reviewers, and conversely, regions where there is a shortage of submissions. I think the idea of allowing reviewers to choose their own bonus locations globally is a very good one. Language issues can be largely resolved using the browser’s translation function. There are cultural issues, so if you don’t understand something, you can skip it. I don’t think it will be that difficult.
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Part of the journey to level up in Pokemon Go, involves increasing your platinum medal count. I found one of the easiest platinum medals to get was the Wayfarer Medal.
Has any thought ever been given to having some in-game research task that focuses on getting players to participate in the Wayfarer program?
I think that the only way that you can address reviewing backlogs, is to encourage people to change their behaviours and actually participate in the Wayfarer program.
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The problem is when the issue is not that you don’t understand something but the same thing is culturally different in the 2 countries.
You review it under your own understandings but this is different to how the nominator (and other people in his location) understands it.
Still think that the easiest to implement fix would be to reduce the timescale between bonus location changes. Maybe long time reviewers with good results the restriction could be removed completely.
Quite like the idea that after a certain time “In Voting” the nomination gets an auto “upgrade” and maybe a 3rd level if you used an upgrade and its still stuck it gets a “Super Upgrade” and goes wider. This might work in some places but for me in the UK it seems like an upgrade will get it to the whole country anyway.
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It may need to be an option.
However, it is important to note that not everyone is looking for it.
If it were to be expanded, it would be nice to have a check box for country/region and language to freely choose from.
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