Reviewers now being told to "follow the crowd" instead of rating based on Waypoint critiera
I think the exchange speaks for itself. It shows the kind of problems we have to deal with when it comes to anything relating to businesses and an is an example of reviewers that are more concerned with their ratings instead of following the criteria.
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Comments
This mentality is horrible, review based on the guidelines and not Peer Pressure.
This is the problem with 'Agreements', it is a measure of how well you follow the crowd. The system doesn't reward you for being right, it rewards you for being the same kind of wrong as other people.
And some of the long time Ingress players complaining about people gaming the S2 cells are busy gaming the agreements badge. Shameless.
The real problem is that Niantic is essentially saying this. Sure what they explicitly tell reviewers is to review according to the guidelines. But all incentives in Wayfarer are bound to the agreements you get, or in other words how much you are able to follow the crowd. This is not so much a problem of bad reviewers but of a badly designed system that rewards following the crowd while punishing those that don't.