Portal Rejection Abuse and Suggestion for Improvement of Nomination Process
Rebilander
✭✭✭
Are there any steps to prevent wrong rejection or abuse of rejection of perfectly valid portals? For example, churches (or places of worship) should be a five-star rated portal. However, I've have already two church submissions rejected. These are places of worship people can come over (open to the public) and can be seen in streetview.
Is there a plan for the wrong or apparent abuse of the review process?
For improvement, can we include more of a category rather than broad appeal statements be included in the nomination process?
5
Comments
Submitting a 5 star candidate doesn't mean your submission is 5 star aswell.
Besides the object, all the other info provided (title, description, photo, location) need to be correct and can be a reason why it might end up being rejected.
It's very hard to say whether a rejection is due to abuse or an error on the submitters end.
Agree with @XQlusioN , even though the candidate is a potential 5 stars that doesn't mean your submission quality will result it in a 5 star rating.
Even the smallest things will lower your candidates potential to a progressively lower and lower score. Good submitting didn't happen over night either so you have time to learn since when OPR started, you wouldn't believe the types of candidates that were initially there. Most of these good habits of submitting have become popular over the last 2 years with constant AMAs and feedback between other reviewers.
So some of the basic things that folks aren't taught when submitting is that you won't become a great submitter unless you review. Even if you always get approvals, if you never take the time to compare your own submissions to other people's so you can see how their candidate is better/worse than yours than you don't really understand what small things you might be missing when submitting.
You can obviously submit at level 10 and only review at 12 so if you don't have access how would you improve your candidates chances? Ask your local reviewers for help. They will tell you the easy things that they see in review that could be a lot better.
My personal observation is put as much context as you can about your candidate especially if you can't see it visually on streetview or aerials or you can't find it via a Google search. If you can submit it in prime so you have 2 images and do a photosphere to give it 3 images so the reviewer really knows it exists there. Some people even go further and map it on OSM and indicate it onto Google maps by submitting it as additional information. No reviewer wants to approve a portal even if it's an easy 5 star in a place that it might not even exist. Also if you submit in redacted, please double check the map at the top right corner on the description page so it's at the correct location.
The second thing submitters don't realize is how important the description is. Especially in redacted where because the interface is so simple and it doesn't force prompt you with even requiring a description. Even if it's a fountain that's easily recognizable mention where the best place to see it is or a pedestrian path that really makes the fountain noticeable. When you write this description, do not write for the reviewer, write it as if you saw the portal randomly when your visiting a new location and you want to know some information about the POI. Mentioning ingress, pogo, WU does nothing and is grounds for rejection if it's in the main description. If you submit in prime you can provide reasoning of what category your candidate falls in if it's an iffy candidate. I have had athletic clubs like dance studios approved specifically because I mention that it acts as an athletic facility in the secondary description in prime and I mention it very casually in the main description as a "this dance studio which may also be considered as an athletic club....". Don't let your description become convoluted, keep it simple and let the POI have the main component of the text.
Another thing is title. When you submit a candidate literally named Volleyball court, I will knock off 2 stars for the title because there are hundreds of other volleyball courts. Specify the location of it somehow in the title somehow of which park it's in or facility or something at least. No matter what this POI will be utilized in multiple Niantic games and we have had clear issues with the title of portals when we have ingress events looking for certain portals regarding thematic events. Even Churches with the same names aren't too great so please indicate it if it's the only church in this small town for this type of faith if you can somehow (This is harder to follow but church names are often duplicates).
Last but not least is the image of the portal. For me this is probably the hardest thing to get right. In my personal opinion it's almost impossible to have an amazing picture unless you take really good photos, know when to take it and know at what context you provide with the image. For example, you take a picture of the church but if you can't position to really show the best view of the church with good lighting then it's a generic picture which someone thinks they can take a better picture of. I almost never give 5 stars because of this reason alone because the submitters picture can be better. Sometimes the submitter does an amazing job and I give it on the spot a 5 star almost since the picture is good. Depending on what your candidate is and what your prioritize in your picture since Redacted and Prime pictures have different intents of what you show with the main picture is what I review on. In redacted because you want to show the context because you have only 1 picture it isn't too great of a photo. While in Prime you can have an amazing photo for the POI and then have a secondary image to show nearby context.
Keep in mind, every reviewer is a different person so they might emphasis one of the other core components more than the other.
There are two sets of reasons for which submissions might be rejected:
If your portals are rejected as duplicates or "too close" and you think that is wrong, then you should recheck the location you used - it's possible that you accidentally got the location wrong.
If the submission wasn't "good enough" then there are many valid reasons why your submission might be rejected: photo includes people or car registration plates, photo was too dark, the location could not be confirmed, your description was "bad". For example, if reviewers thought your description or photo was taken from the Internet then it would be rejected.
If reviewers cannot confirm the location on Google maps then they should mark the location as 3*, but I have heard suggestions that if all reviewers do this then the portal will be rejected. Note that I have no idea if this is actually true. I have reviewed churches for which it was very difficult to confirm the location, although in general you should b
I actually already have an onyx badge for recon, with over 14,000 portals analyzed and processed. Factors that lead to a portal approval ins't new to me. Sorry for not putting more context. For what I have submitted, the photo is a clear view of the church facade (I don't know if there is any other way to take better photos of a church than it's facade; There are also no people since it wasn't a busy day) with its name clearly visible in the shot. The portal title - very specific with its city location in the title. The church is available and can be seen in street view. For the description, I did at least three sentences describing what it was, including the congregation of the church-goers. I've been so meticulous in my submissions, spending quite time in each one.
My assumption that it was rejected due to abuse is because of its location. I'm the only agent in the city, located in a cape (You know how strategic these portals can be if approved).
Anyways, perhaps before we can rule out abuse is for Niantic to include WHY a candidate was rejected, or at least the comments included in the review so we can do better.