Wayfarer Beta coming to Pokémon Go Soon™
Trainers,
As you may have read on the Niantic blog, we are very excited that the beta version of our new tool—Niantic Wayfarer—will soon enable Pokémon GO Trainers to review nominations for PokéStops and Gyms, helping determine places to play.
Eligible players in certain countries can continue to submit PokéStop nominations within Pokémon GO. Over the coming weeks, Wayfarer will start rolling out to a subset of the player base. Stay tuned to our Niantic channels for additional updates on future rollouts and availability of this new tool.
We hope that the launch of Wayfarer will help in our continued efforts to create an engaging experience worldwide and give Trainers like you the opportunity to shape Pokémon GO. Thank you for exploring with us, and as always, let’s GO!
—The Pokémon GO team
So it looks like Niantic is spreading the news about Pokémon Go players reviewing. And wants to do it in the next few weeks. Discuss?
Comments
Guess I'm just hopeful that the requirements + test + honeypots are enough to keep the database of POIs clean and accurate. While I recognize that most Pokemon GO players won't be malicious, the playerbase is also significantly larger and therefore a small percentage of bad apples will still be a significant amount of humans, especially compared to Ingress's much smaller playerbase.
Especially interested in how they'll handle requirements, especially since just to submit right now you need to be max level
The only area they are legally required to review is the US. It will either be first since they're reviewing anyways or last to not mess it up. It looks like special invite or lottery system. I don't really know what they would use a criteria other than 40. I think I voiced my opinion about additional criteria based on in game stuff. Level 40 is level 40.
I feel a sense of impending doom with the news of Pokemon go reviewers coming online later this year. I might as well retire from wayfarer since my agreements are going to be messed up, focusing on submissions instead (since I got 14 biweekly instead of Pokemon go's 7 biweekly) and let them do the review - my submissions are going to get accepted either way, since the Pokemon go reviewers are just going to accept pretty much everything. This means I have zero needs of upgrades, and therefore no incentives for reviewing. Okay, there's the recon medal, but how can I get the agreements required when my vote is going against the majority?
I’d like to imagine that Pokémon go players reviewing is going to roll out to countries that are already having submissions. Since they want this to be in beta, and Pokémon go submitting is still in beta, Those are probably the countries they want to roll out reviewing to and test first.
though I do hold out a small amount of hope that they will have Pokémon go players reviewing it but not submitting in my area just so I can just have quicker reviewing.
The phrase "a subset of the player base" is interesting - hopefully this is not just for server load reasons but to preserve the agreements system from being 'flipped'. The danger is that new reviewers who accept more generously could outnumber those who review carefully, meaning the careful ones start being filtered out by having poor agreement scores.
It's also interesting that Wayfarer is being presented as a beta to Pogo, but wasn't to Ingress players. Either this indicates Niantic are not fully committed to allowing Pogo players in, or that Niantic are now aware of how buggy it is... either of those are good in my book!
Well, I think the fact that you don't get your area often is going to deter a lot of people. It's definitely made a lot of pogo players in my community give up.
Actually, now I’m wondering... Was OPR ever announced to be out of Beta? I think it wasn’t just in Permanent Beta
umm no fear mongering and entitlement is what you are saying. Clearly a minority trying to distract everyone from commenting and voting. We already have seen it and it isn't cute. Tired of the arguing and trying to cause drama over something niantic has chosen to do.
Before wayfarer, accepting Pokemon go players to review is the minority.
I am not fear mongering here, as you do not have any idea of how submissions are in my area. I welcome you to put your bonus location in Indonesia and see for yourself how many bad nominations are here. I don't know how huge is the Pokemon go playerbase here, but Indonesia is the third or fourth most populous country, so I'm pretty sure it's a lot. Also, Indonesia was one of the first country to get Pokemon go submissions, so the backlog of Pokemon go submissions date from way back then. Meanwhile, there are only like 12 ingress reviewers around, or even less, judging from how few top Indonesia ingress scorer with recon medal are and how my upgraded submissions still took 1-2 weeks to be approved/rejected (most get rejected by the way, even the mosques which should've been 5* for place of worship).
Now that wayfarer is live, I'm not going to oppose Pokemon go reviewers anymore, I'm just stating that I will retire. I have zero incentives to do it anymore, instead continuing to do so is only going to hurt my wayfarer rating.
Can we (as a community) just stop assuming what pogo players are going to do? This is making people that play both games very angry. It is people being prejudiced against people before they even have a chance to vote. This has been going on for a while and to be honest should not be tolerated by anyone. The problem is a player by player issue not lumping submissions into one pile then blanket accusing a subset of the total player base for niantic. I have gotten things that I know where not submitted by pogo only players that are total trash. Just today I got an edit of a mural trying to edit it to the business name instead of what the mural is, Some people do not understand how it works or don't care to even try. I was voting on something else today and I noticed a nearby portal I wanted so badly to report as gaming the system a gas station electronic sign for price per gallon called a "clock" yeah it has been going on for a while and stuff flies under the radar so it is not new. Even if the intent isn't bad it is coming off very condescending. Sorry if I sound grouchy just been way too many negative complaints since they announced the changes :(
@TropicalJet I understand it can be frustrating when very few vote in your area. 1-2 weeks to get a response is not to terribly bad but I do agree getting 5* things like a place of worship is not fair. Sorry for coming off in a rude manner. I have been dealing with trolls on the iueng update channel constantly complaining about how things are just over. I am just tired. I go 1-2 months on average and lately submissions have dragged on for months 2+. It is a valid concern about gaming the system.
The criteria for POI removal need to be broadened to include junk that should never have been approved in the first place, with 3 strikes sanctions against whoever submitted and approved them.
I'm glad to have PoGo reviewers. There are only 2 of us locally with mentionable OPR activity, and I'm the only local player nominating on a regular basis as far as I can tell. I have yet to get a nomination finished without an upgrade, and upgrades seem cursed to be a tossup in the hands of 1 star junkies. I don't want to start sounding like TimerClock about POIs, but it's annoying having good POIs killed by outsiders for nonsense reasons.
For requirements? Let's do 10,000km walking.
I'm....ok with it, just have to have some confidence Niantic has taken various thing into consideration.
One of those is this atm the radius you get portal to review is huge. Now if they bring submissions into pogo here in Australia than in that radius there is likely to be thousands of more submissions. So it's highly possible you could do 100+ review before seeing a submission in your general area (say 50km radius). So few will have the determination or some bot cheating way to do multiple reviews of there submissions.
Also everyone starts at a good rating so any with half a brain will rate correctly or risk suddenly ending up with a poor rating and thus making there vote basically meaningless
My overwhelming experience is that PoGo players are going to be extremely lax in their judgment on review. The problem is that to them, quantity is overwhelmingly more important than quality because it means more; more chances for coins, more raids, more research tasks, more spawns, and so on. I have experience with requests from these people too because I play the game quite often. I try to explain the guidelines, they often don't care or don't understand or don't want to understand because all they understand is moremoremore.
Further, there is the problem of rampant multiaccounting. I am aware that Ingress is not immune to this problem, but the lack of community policing in Go means so many people have 2, 3, 4 and so on some times in excess of 6 L40 accounts often filling gyms on their own.
I hope Niantic has a good plan for this. It's not the end of the world if every Burger King and 7 Eleven gets a wayspot I guess, but I certainly am not looking forward to it.
There again it isn't always as it seems. I think some of the trash submissions have been blamed on pogo players just out of kneejerk reaction but my community already has a sizable about 20 or more pogo players submitting via ingress and I will say this the abuse is likely a handful of players at that. The majority care about the submissions and quality. I very rarely get any couch submissions. To be honest when I have seen 20+ pogo players submitting in a metro of 6+ million people. The sample size is small but I can say this if someone is going to game the system it isn't going to matter what game they play they will do it as they feel the need to get a point of interest. I have had a few local ingress only agents complain about getting things denied and they can't fudge submissions to keep from getting the automatic rejection letter. I mean we have a local XFAC OPR chat that has players of both games and it has been civil and constructive. But overall what I have seen is the quality of the visuals has increased mostly from the newer submitters but at the same time yes we have had a massive influx of multiple fields and exercise stations at parks etc but most of it is not fudging at all. Now with pogo players getting to vote and submit with level 40 accounts sure there is going to be growing pains but from what I have seen with all off the prime and redacted double up submissions areas actually have been completely filled in with valid poi. I am at the point I might actually be running out of valid submissions in my area just for the fact it has been filling in with the few agents we have in my area that still submit getting a lot of portals approved. Just in 10 months I went from 0 to 260 give or take a few approved points of interest. I am at 33K voted portals with about 23K agreements in 10 months. I have great status and I have had it since I earned it when I first started voting.
@SoylentGrien problem with your proposal would be a lot of the portals you request to have removed and punish the agents are from when submissions had just started and niantic was approving just about anything as long as it wasn't offensive or inappropriate for public use. I mean I have seen a lot of the early submissions being flushed that were utter coal. But they still have some that are legacy that niantic has said will not be removed unless it no longer exists or meets a take down criteria. So yes I get your point of why to do it so new submitting players don't assume that the generic food place sign approved in 2013 or 2014 is an inspiration for a new point of interest.
I think Niantics communication is a bit weird here. Marketing department, maybe? The average Pokemon player sees "ok we can get more stops in my area" without really realizing how different nominating and reviewing is, or realizing Niantic makes no promises here, It's not that surprising for seasoned OPR folk, because we have seen the potential problem with tons ow new subs but little to no new reviewers. Because of this unclear communication to us, the people who actually know how it works in real life, we jump into firepits "end of the world" or "we'll manage"...
Niantic should communicate with their free Labour and give some information so at leaset we know what's going on. (Are players getting to review before they submit - haven't we talked about that before? Is there a new test?)
OPR folks should spend time further feeding ideas to Niantic on better onboarding on all n00b reviewers.
My personal take is that new players will eat up all submission chances they get - until they get tired of the rejections and waiting time, which both are real parts of Wayfarer/OPR. When it comes to reviewing, I give 99% of people exactly 1 day then they will conclude it's not worth their time - just like most Ingress players have in the past. Reviewing has a natural deterrent for bad/ignorant actors: it's real boring work, for free. I think the "shock" is greater if you come directly from Niantic hype.
I think US is interesting because of the general legal consideration, but also "that" case. I believe US will come much later because of the potential (perceived) financial risk of "weapons free".
Not if it's limited to submissions that were made and approved after Wayfarer was launched.
Ok. Posting the normal thread. My question is: Will there be a badge for number of reviews for Pokemon go? If there is and we play both will it count for both recon and the equilivant pogo badge?
Pogo focused players submitting do choose to put the location of the wayspot not on the target to suit their aims for pogo. It's not right.
A wonderful pogo/ingress player who i greatly respect said along as they were able to stand on the spot and hack the portal it was fine. I was gob smacked!!!! I can understand a portal/waypoint being a couple of metres off target especially under trees or in buildings but 40m of in another building delibrately being placed so a gym or pokestop can be made?
So i have great apprehension about the addition of new blood to the system i have spent hours learning how to be a good submitter and reviewer, I'm keyed in to my local opr communities
Just started up pogo myself after a 3 year break to get more sub slots .... all the gyms and pokestops i have created! ....just got so many submissions to do.
I live in suburbia where my area has two active submitters. On reaching 40mil and waiting till after the anomally i decided to up my submission game. I did a sat review and came up with an additional 240 submissions in my local area. Even though it was thought the area was picked clean.
Guess want I wanted to say was the wayfarer system works because we have communites that have knowledge in how to work with that system. Are Pogo players going to join in with those preexisting communities or not.... probably not.... ingress communities don't even seem to be known about ....even the language of Niantics press statements nothing about volunteers that helped create their game ....
For those of us who do regular reviewing, I honestly can’t see PoGo players sat there approving the POIs like we do.
Myself and the other ingress players locally see very little in the way of ‘local’ submissions to us, and I think that there will be a significant number of PoGo players that will go on, do the training then get bored of it because they don’t see their local submissions before leaving it to the ingress players to continue approving the trash that they’ve submitted.
POIs can in many cases be subjective. Certain plaques for civic awards I’ve seen approved but strongly believe they shouldn’t be, I’m sure the UK reviewers dread seeing another stink pipe or Post box, but yet they’re submitted and approved left right and centre. Some have historical significant others really not.
I do definitely see a benefit as I was recently on vacation in the Caribbean and I did 5 hours of reviewing. There seemed to be such a backlog and with PoGo reviewers it may really help out the ingress community too.
Pokemon go could easily use the un-used portals for NPC battles or berry bushes or something else. If that happens some people could regret the earlier gaming of positions.
I get Indonesian submissions, but mostly in Riau. I 5* all the mosques and you're saying they don't go through?
How can Ingress players even pretend to be better when they reject mosques? The amount of awful decisions I and my friends have got suggests that Ingress reviewers are problematic themselves.
Sorry I tried quoting but it doesn't allow me to post links which is an automatic inclusion when you quote lol.
There is not point worrying about what you can't control. If Niantic wants this than so be it.
Wait till they have to review 100s for distant cities, then get some of theres rejected, or end up with a poor rating. It will be a huge novelty but it quickly will fade
It depends very much with your location. Nominations in Indonesia are reviewed by Indonesian agents and agents from surrounding countries where there is likely a strong religious bias about playing games in places that are considered sacrosanct. If the nomination was in North America or Europe, then a mosque would naturally be approved.
What I'm affraid of is the surge of duplicate submissions. Since not every portal is pokestop, pogo players, may, and I'm sure they will, submit many objects which aleready are portals, only they don't know that.
As long as the requirements do not include "ingress account lvX" and that it will be as easy as getting lv12 on ingress, everything will be fine.
Pogo player mostly don't like and don't care about ingress. There is some who hate it. It's not fair to force a complete different community to play other game. And it's evenly unfair to ingress to have a massive flood of uninterested players messing the portal Network just to reach submission lv. It's already a problem now.
The submission and review lv on pokemon should be as easy to get as it is on ingress.