No, I mean this as an example:
Let’s suppose me and you are family / flatmates / neighbours. We discover a lot of potential wayspots in the nearbies. We decide who nominates what, making sure we both nominate and review. While reviewing, what would we be supposed to do if we find each others nominations? Would it be considered review circle? I’m always talking about wayspots adhering criteria.
Not my fault. Many players in my zone are afraid of nominating because of potential warnings and bans despite not breaking criteria
Review circles are for reviewing, not nominating. Yes, there are nomination circles out there, but as long as they are submitting eligible POIs and following the guidelines, that shouldn’t be an issue. Many users work together to find new Wayspots to submit in their areas and follow the guidelines while doing so.
In Italy we say “Meglio prevenire che curare”.
And permanent bans can’t be easily cured.
Shouldn’t or isn’t an issue?
A lot of cultures say better safe than sorry. But all you need to do is follow the ToS, the Player Guidelines, and the Wayspot Criteria, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
You are getting into hypotheticals that may never happen to you.
ToS talk about multi accounts, not review circle.
I’m going to leave this convo, as it’s just going in circles for me.
OP your concerns are valid, yet the others are being dismissive of them. When you are asking for clarification regarding rule breaking you are met with “just follow the rules” that is unfair and not constructive.
But alas, you have come to the right conclusion, there just is no official clarification regarding “review circle” why? Who knows, perhaps it’s so rampant they don’t want to reveal their criteria lest wrong doers find a way to circumvent them.
As for your community who fears making submissions, perhaps you should do some nominations yourself and after a few successful attempts they may get the confidence to join in.
Instead of exploring how the Wayfarer team detects and disposes of violations, we should receive and take note of the review circle as it should be received and acted upon.
If they know each other’s submitted nominees, they should use skips and not review them.
The review circle is an organized abuse of wayfarer, a serious violation.
When a group of people use a large number of accounts at the same time to make a wayspot be illegally approved/rejected, then they are a review circle.
This behavior will have a very bad impact on other local players. The review circle has the ability to reject all of a player or some area’s application, move wayspots to where they want, and apply for and approve fake wayspots at will. Due to the wayfarer review mechanism, one or two player is completely unable to fight against this local review circle. They can choose to ignore this review circle, or choose to let their wayfarer rating drop..
At the same time, some review circles will use third-party tools to assist in the review and reject all except their own wayspot nomination.This will further cause other local players to protect themselves, more conservative review some wayspots and have no intention to apply for new wayspots.
In my opinion, if you somehow found your friends nomination, stick to wayfarer criteria (accept if eligible, reject if ineligible, or SKIP IF UNSURE). If you know your friends nomination is ineligible and you accept it anyway, thats what i believe to be review circle. Going further, if you have several account and/or people working together to approve all wayspot in your neighbourhood without regards to its eligibility, thats what i believe will got you banned.
Question for clarification and to ease my anxious what-ifs: As long as everyone is following review guidelines and tos appropriately, something like a reviewing “party” could be ok? Like, if a group of people in an area got together to just do reviews on a regular basis just to have fun and help move the list along. But the focus was just reviewing on their own or asking for help (like we do on the forum, just in person), and completing reviews honestly and skipping any nominations that you’re unsure of or one that pops up from someone in the group.
Hopefully my question makes sense. I had been thinking of doing something like this in my area, but I don’t want it to be weird or abusive to tos. It would just be getting together, reviewing honestly, chatting, snacking, etc. NOT used for coordinating reviews to try to purposefully manipulate that certain nominations get accepted/rejected. I just thought it could be a fun way to socialize with other local wayfarers and help move through some backlog. But if that is considered a “review circle” or could even be mistaken for it, then I wouldn’t want to mess with it. Thoughts?
Another clarifying question since it was mentioned and is related: My husband and I each play and have our own account. If one of us nominates something and the other comes across it in voting, what is the most appropriate response?
So far that has only happened to me once, and I did vote in favor of the nomination because it followed criteria, but if it happens again in the future I can skip it instead if that is more appropriate.
We don’t know Niantic’s criteria regarding what a “review circle” is but, regarding your “party”, I don’t see a problem with that. Niantic does something similar, search up Wayfarer Challenge.
If the submission is eligible, it should be ok. Problem arise when you think its eligible, when its actually not . Thats why sometimes its saver to skip when you recoqnize someone’s submission if you think your judgement is biased. by repeatedly accepting nomination thats ineligible you probably might got flagged as review circle