Agreements as a goal?

Putting a medal on OPR may have been a bad choice. There is another thread about alternative rewards for the time spent in OPR and I think it has merit due to the AWFUL way some reviewers treat the process. They do not care about the accuracy of the location, description, title, etc. They give it a glance, decide if it fits into the ever-morphing criteria, and slam 5 stars on everything. The criteria are a guideline, if it were meant to be followed blindly, we could literally employ the oft-referred to portal-monkeys to do it.

Is there hope for a better reward, and a system that rewards accurate reviews that required human thought?

My only consolation is that these careless reviewers will immediately quit reviewing once they hit their top medal.

Comments

  • msz21msz21 ✭✭✭

    I agree with @Majeye and wanted to mention a few points the agent missed. OPR is a lot of grind worthy work, most agents especially in dense portal areas don't ever consider it a real badge to get since it's a couch badge in their eyes which in a sense it is but most folks don't even ever get gold or silver on this couch badge.

    Now you clearly haven't dealt with OPR a lot because it is very common to get rejected for what folks would consider as easy portal approvals in some areas. Depending on the areas even a spelling mistake or not providing any description is grounds for rejection for some OPR reviewing agents.

    Another thing is if you are 5 starring or 1 starring a lot of candidates you will get hit with OPR cooldown which happens pretty instantly and without warning. There have been multiple folks showing and doing that to see what reasons this occurs and doing reviews like that is one of the key triggers cooldowns. Cooldowns are a 24 hour ban from reviewing any candidates. Sometimes after you get one and then review again you might be slapped with it again after one review.

  • MajeyeMajeye ✭✭✭

    I totally forgot about the cooldown, mostly because I have never been slapped with it. But then, I'm not just slapping 1 or 5 stars on things and moving on. I take my time with each submission, carefully examine everything, the picture, the location, the description, cultural or historical significance to the local area. I often find myself googling some of the history to make sure it's legit in the area. Just small things like this can only improve upon the portal network, especially if the agents doing OPR are doing their due diligence to ensure each portal is legit and not just a random picture of a cat (or family photo for that matter) <--- Yes, I see these often in OPR.

  • HydracyanHydracyan ✭✭✭✭✭

    A portal can be valid or not, not half.

    A title, description and picture can be improve after the approval.

    If the candidate is valid and in the right location, I give a higher 🌟. Exception are when picture is really bad, text has nonsense things, etc. Misspelling and weird angle is not enough for me to give it a 1 🌟. Maybe 3.

  • I don't think I disagree with anything that's been said in response to my original post. I'm just saying that having a medal on OPR reviews IS breeding some reviewers who are "in it for the agreements." They've taken over the local OPR-based chat that I was a part of, and feel that ANY deviation from the guidelines means that a reviewer is "using their own criteria" and hurting their chances of getting agreements and their Onyx medal.

  • WeyrleaderWeyrleader ✭✭✭
    edited June 2019

    I think the introduction of the cooldown and the agreements mechanism itself goes a long way to limiting the playing of OPR for the badge. It could possibly do with a little more tuning. It I'm not sure it would make allot of difference.

    I would like to see so more rigorous controls on fake submissions though.. since open review up to a broader geographic range some players are taking advantage of non local knowledge to get couches/deskies. Maybe a 3 strikes and you're out policy on fake submissions?

  • sisimeonsisimeon ✭✭✭

    I review to improve the portal network, but I can confirm many others do it simply for the medal. This both creates and enforces a hive mind mindset, which may hurt many legitimate candidates.

    From the birth of OPR up until a few months ago, not a single playground would pass OPR in Norway. Something changed, and they now mostly get accepted. I believe part of the reason the sudden change is due to the hive mind mentality now tells these agents to accept playgrounds to get an agreement.

    Many agents simply forget that the way things work in one area may be vastly different to how it works in another area. As an example smaller regions such as Norway is much more prone to local bias or faction bias to mention some than a large country such as the US.

    Agreements (a medal) as a goal is better than no reward, but it does come with its downsides too. Just like the Seer medal did in its days

  • msz21msz21 ✭✭✭

    The thing is everyone plays the game differently no matter what. Some people like to collect pretty badges, some people want more portals, some people just like reviewing as a pass time and its not our choice to really decide what way they play.

    In the end if people want agreements for upgrades, I'm fine with it as long as they are following the proper OPR guidelines since if they are reviewing for upgrades they should understand and learn what not to do for submitting when they are reviewing.

    If people like the badge, that's cool too. Some of the people in the ingress community like collecting badges, its why the anomaly badges are still a hot commodity.

    Then there are folks who just review all the time in their free time of watching a Movie/TV show or doing something non serious since they just like doing OPR. They might not be researching candidates as much as they should but they've been reviewing long enough and check the guidelines every few days to see if anything has changed. Though they probably researched candidates early on in their OPR career so they have a good sense of what can be a candidate.

    I'm personally a mix of all 3. My area is basically in limbo because of the density of portals however upgrades almost immediately get my local candidates approved so I want and like Upgrades. I already have onix recon but I want double or triple onix for when I finally recurse since I want the recursed onix badge for Recon since it probably looks even better than it currently does. I've done 20k + reviews and I have gotten to the point that I've researched so many candidates that I've become harsher on the fact that if I can't find the candidates location with any sense of reference then I will reject it otherwise if I can find its location I tend to even give a bench a 2 stars but I have also been categorizing every candidate (drop down menu option at the bottom) since I started OPR.

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