The option to have more appeals (even if thsy arent great) rather than upgrades. Ive foimd upgrades work less than 20% of the time for me, while appeals have a 75% success rate (i only appeal things i think should go in, i dont sopeal stuff on the off chance unkess i have an appeal to waste). Appeals would be much more valuable and worth getting to me than upgrades
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If it helps? Hurts?
Iâve always liked nominating trail markers on trails in the woods at parks. I was in the early stages of a couple of projects when the "Great Trail Marker Controversy of 2024 " went down.
Since then all by one of the nominations has cleared voting. Iâm 45-1 on getting them approved on the first attempt.
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I go through periods where I just burn out from seeing endless streams of garbage being nominated, eg. blatantly ineligible nominations. I get frustrated at seeing nominations that maybe could be great things but so little effort is put into them that they get rejected. I get annoyed at appeals reviewers apparently knowing less about how to review than your average community reviewers. The lottery aspect of wayfarer is discouraging.
Perhaps some relevant in game(s) incentive(s) for doing reviews would help. But honestly, perhaps for many of us, just stepping back from reviews for a while and taking a break is the best way to recover motivation.
Iâve been going in and out of that âtaking a breakâ for a while now.
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For some reason UK reviewers that see my stuff seem to hate trail markers so my acceptance rate for things like the Thames Path and NCN Route 5 are really low. Overall they do get accepted eventually but they shouldnât take 5+ tries really!
I often have problems getting NCN markers through but your Thames Path nominations should be easily accepted.
How are you framing the submissions?
Your markers are a lot nicer than mine which are the green and yellow in the style of âfootpathâ but say Thames Path instead. I have got them all accepted eventually but it took ages.
I tried to add pictures but after 10 mins of âprocessingâ I gave up
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Perhaps your trust level is not high enough. Find something about that a view minutes ago:
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Weâve been absolutely screwed in Boston by nominations that donât go through, never go into voting, and take 18+ months to naturally resolve. This is after I did 12k reviews last year and multiple others did 4-6k and more. The system is broken, Niantic are aware the system is broken and ignore it.
Itâs impossible to make a positive difference without Upgrades. Upgrades take a tremendous amount of effort to earn, and then lead to rejection in about 1/3rd of nominations. These rejections are virtually always overturned or accepted upon an identical submission. There is no way to get an Upgrade back once itâs been wasted.
Recently I realized a nomination of mine was in the wrong place - My hands donât work so well and it makes submitting on a mobile device cumbersome. I missed the location of a stop and it should not have been approved where it was because the supporting photo clearly showed where it was. I asked for help from the help chat and told them all the info was there, there was a Google Maps icon created by the POI (an art gallery at a university) that had been there for 6 years where the stop should be. Instead, Niantic claimed it was in the correct location, hundreds of feet away from where it belonged, despite proper evidence to the contrary.
On top of all that, reviewing is unnecessarily difficult on desktop. The UI overhaul they did in October did not consider desktop (much like these forums, it seems) and instead of taking moments to correct it and make life easier for reviewers theyâve ignored it, locked topics soliciting feedback, and generally done a poor job.
Then thereâs the addition of Wayfarers sending death threats via places which Wayfarer Ambassadors administrate and getting no response from Ambassadors or Niantic when itâs brought to there attention. At the end of the day, the Wayfarer team donât seem interested in putting together a quality product or creating a safe space. How on earth are people meant to be motivated?
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I agree, so much needs to be done, it really does seem that the Niantic arenât interested in improving the experience, or even communicating effectively, so how can they expect us to bother.
Itâs all such a mess with sadly no indication that is likely to change any time soon.
Sorry to hear that you have had such a poor experience despite putting in so much effort, so many great wayfarers feel the same.
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But honestly, perhaps for many of us, just stepping back from reviews for a while and taking a break is the best way to recover motivation.
Iâve been going in and out of that âtaking a breakâ for a while now.
This. I feel itâs a must for sanity sake lol 
As I reflected again for the sake of the most recent user survey, Iâve come to the realisation that Niantic has very little corporate social responsibility and accountability; which should be a fairly significant portion of any business ethics, particularly when youâre engaging free user labour to expand and improve your products.
I think itâs quite likely that Niantic is well aware of the kind of people who are most likely to be attracted to the Wayfarer program longer term and have probably even engineered it to be similar to any addictive gambling system that works on your reward centres just enough to keep you engaged - even if regularly frustrated. Itâs definitely become more a game of chance than skill, especially with Emily on the scene.
I honestly believe that itâs so much worse in the case of Wayfarer, though, because the people who seem most susceptible to addiction to this particular program are often aged, disabled, neurodivergent, socially isolated, etc who get a sense of community spirit, productivity, and accomplishment that may be difficult to have gratified in everyday life.
Of course this isnât necessarily the case for all regular users, but anecdotal evidence suggests itâs a significant trend and I think Niantic are quite aware of this prevalent market for Wayfarer. Itâs fairly low to take such advantage of those who are often most disadvantaged in society and not even ensure their psychological comfort in doing so.
The system is extremely frustrating and much of it would seemingly be quite simple to improve; and yet itâs been years of the same issues and the same soon ⢠promises.
For those most addicted who struggle to self-regulate and walk away, the program can become quite toxic and their participation a detriment to their mental health. This would not be such a problem were it not for the difficulties and failures of the system. Niantic are aware of these issues and seemingly just donât care (distraught users arenât uncommon on the forum, but those are only a fraction of participants who bother to join to voice their frustrations).
At the end of the day, individual users are responsible for themselves, but itâs not unusual for people to lack the insight or will necessary to appropriately manage unhealthy compulsions.
I do think Niantic is willfully complacent, at best; and negligent in their duty of care and social responsibility, at worst.
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At this point I really canât see me coming back. I gave my last talk last weekend (which I had promised to do months ago) and I have only nominated 1 thing in 2 months and I struggled to even do that much. I also refused a local groups request for me to come out and help a group practice nominating
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Sad to hear this, it seems a common theme among a lot of Wayfarers. Niantic have had more than enough feedback and sufficient time to make changes but have chosen not to act or communicate. Now they are losing their best, most pasionate volunteers because it is clear they just do not value or respect us.
For me it is partly their lawyers. They have said to Niantic staff, we can get sued for this and lose so donât let them do this. But if they sue us for this other thing we can defend our position so donât worry about that one. As a result stupid nominations are getting in and trespassing is being encouraged. Thatâs what is bothering me.
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@copperchick can you expand on what you mean by encouraging trespassing?
@elijustrying I posted about it in the old forum. I found a free little library next to a single family home driveway and in front of the house and reported it 3 different ways and in the forum NianticAaron said it was staying in game because the free little library was in the tiny strip of grass between the sidewalk and street that the homeowner maintains, but that the home owner doesnât own. If it ever became a gym people may potentially stand on their property. But in a court of law their lawyers could argue that little free library is not on their property so they have no right to sue.
I happened to walk by on the sidewalk to take a picture of the little free library and Grandpa was playing with his little grandchild in the front yard it was so cute.
That and the fact I had 2 really great murals denied as single family home that would never interfere with the home owner in any way told me that in a court of law because the mural is on the back side of their wall that the lawyers canât argue itâs on public property. That distinction is what soured me.
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Same here. Like to see and explore new places.
To make Wayfarer to be more âExplorerâ friendly, Wayfarer could have two additional features:
- Allow changing Bonus location more often
- New Setttings: Get reviews from Bonus location only
New topics created for these two new feature ideas:
Which of course isnât true everywhere. In some places, like my city, the property line for owners extends to the curb. Sure the sidewalk is a public easement, which means people can walk on it, but they (Niantic) really shouldnât make rules when the laws vary so much. The inconsistency is frustrating.
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I could easily go out next weekend and submit another 100 things but many of them are in cells occupied by more than one other Wayspot.
I would if I thought there was a way for them to make an appearance at some level in every game, not necessarily on the overworld map.
WellâŚI could submit eight things since my uploads are sitting at three available right now.
Late reply.
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Well if they had just watched my videos we would be good 
My 44 nomination video got 350 views so thatâs something
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It is very difficult to be motivated to review when not doing any remotely local reviews or having any ability to enact positive impact on the local or regional community. Instead Iâm constantly asked to review nominations over 3,000km away from me. It doesnât make any sense, it isnât fun. A year ago 60% of the reviews would be in the suburbs of my city, 19% would be from my bonus location, and 20% would be from the Upgrade Queue, and once every 1,000 reviews Iâd get a nomination in my city. Now 90% of my reviews are in random crummy places, terribly low-quality nominations, 5% of some poorly-intentioned fool spamming edits, and 5% in my home review area.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/t/the-boston-wayfarer-queue-remains-broken/
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