Niantic Wayfarer - 1 Month Check In

TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭
edited December 2019 in Wayfarer (Archive)

Apparently, no one at Niantic thought to post this on the forums.

Some pull quotes:

During that short time, we’ve seen over 750K nominations submitted and 760K Wayspots reviewed, helping clear out our queue of nominations. By expanding the reviewer base we’ve seen a 2x increase in Wayspots going live, and 3x increase in edits approved. As a result of doubling our reviewer base, we’ve been able to accept over 340K new Wayspots since launch!

Maybe not that interesting if you don't care about general statistics, but I'm sure that the following will be interesting to those recently complaining about their performance ratings drops. However, I'm very doubtful about the edits approved since I have yet to see any responses to edits that I've made over the last 3 years.

We've also taken steps to pre-approve or reject certain Wayspot nominations prior to them entering Wayfarer. Reviewers who disagree with our assessment may see a dip in their performance score. Reviewers who fail to follow Wayfarer guidelines may also be asked to take the quiz again, or (depending on the severity of the violation) may receive a time out from Wayfarer.

If I understanding this correctly, those who suddenly dropped in performance ratings are the result of those reviewers "disagreeing" with Niantic's per-evaluated nominations and not because they "disagreed with the PoGo masses". And having to retaking the quiz to reset the rating is entirely because they were failing too many of those per-evaluated nominations.

And then there is this:

Submitters who try to influence reviewers using the title or description fields may also have their submission privileges revoked.

I'm pretty sure this is referencing the use of title/description edits to influence location edits. We've already seen in the November AMA that these should be reported as abuse.

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Comments

  • @0X00FF00 did though

  • 0X00FF000X00FF00 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Mine is redundant now and I suppose can be removed. Cuz now that there are any comments here the other one will be invisible anyway lol

  • That seems to say that all submissions were reviewed (I know it doesn't) which means, how many millions of submissions must be in the system?

    Also, if indeed the elitists were failing pre-evaluated nominations, LOL. Complaining the most, but the worst reviewers.

  • 0X00FF000X00FF00 ✭✭✭✭✭

    It says that SOME nominations are reviewed by Niantic, decided yay or nay, and then dumped into Wayfarer anyway. Reviewers disagreeing with Niantic’s decision then DON’T get an agreement, regardless of any other “majority” voting.

  • No, I meant they say they received 750k noms and 760k were reviewed, implying (incorrectly) that all of them and more were reviewed, but my experience is that in urban areas (>700 portals) nothing has moved so how long must the backlog be?

    As for your comment, we are in agreement, people are complaining that they are getting disagreements because of PoGo, but likely because they rejected a Niantic-approved submission.

  • 760k reviewed and 340k accepted... 45% approval rate?

  • If I understanding this correctly, those who suddenly dropped in performance ratings are the result of those reviewers "disagreeing" with Niantic's per-evaluated nominations and not because they "disagreed with the PoGo masses". And having to retaking the quiz to reset the rating is entirely because they were failing too many of those per-evaluated nominations.


    Both things could be going on.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think another commenter figured out the likely reason for the drops in another thread, all of those pre-wayfarer reviews that you did and were just sitting in limbo waiting for a consensus came through the system really quickly with different criteria/understanding of criteria likely causing more disagreements than usual.

    That's in addition to Niantics review traps.

  • I dipped twice into yellow... i think it was due to the sign thing. What i used to know was if a sign's face plate takes up a very small part of the pic it's a poor quality photo 1* since skipping those sorts of reviews where the sign was tiny in the pic .... i went straight to green.

    I would like some more transparancy. I would like to know why i went to yellow and what sort of metrics they have tied to my name.

  • Very interesting read. So we have suddenly got to the bottom of why everyone went into the red, niantic reviewes them and those who didnt match niantic standard dropped there rating. Fantastic move by them as this shows that new and old reviewers where not following the guidelines. Maybe some will stop complaining and start reviewing correctly for a change.

  • kholman1kholman1 ✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    So I am wondering could these pre approve/reject submissions in some cases be these very fast answered submissions that only are in the system for a day after entering voting?

  • I'm guessing that they are In there all the time now to catch people out. Well at least I hope so.

  • So during the initial month less than 1% of the pre-existing backlog was reviewed for nominations. That is concerning. I also saw the pogo blog where the bolded portion was emphasizing the ability to review to the trainers.

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    There is nothing like that stated in Niantic's guidelines. In fact, Niantic is very specific about what constitutes a "low quality photo" (pitch black, blurry, taken within a vehicle). If you have been rejecting nominations under this category when they don't actually meet it, that would explain why your performance rating dropped.

  • Whereas I thought that list means "for example ... these things but not limited to just them. "

    If the sign is taking up a tiny bit of the pic it's not really a pic of the sign is it. It's a picture of the signs surrounds. Itty bitty raid circle can't work out which gym to go to. Or what to link to if you are playing ingress.

    Low quality because it's hard to differentiate from its fellows. Not visually unique.

    Improves play experience to get it right the first time. Not have to stuff around waiting for a photo edit.

    And that's the rub many of the community submitting through ingress have experienced long term waits for portal edits. 2 years if you are lucky in some cases. so that's why folks are keen for folk to do the submission as best they can.

    Look really if the sign does not take the whole width of the pic .... they haven't got out of the car.

    Anyway take heart I have removed myself from judging those portals.

  • Ps ... have taken photos from my car.... baby asleep in car .... I used this thing called a zoom.

  • So you are also submitting from your car which says not to do? Guidelines say that a man made item must be in the picture of a submission so a sign on a beach with a really nice view can be approved. So again wrong on that as well.

  • ZinkyZonkZinkyZonk ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    The trick with the internet is people get fierce and mean and oh so pedantic .... my kid has been very very sick and not allowed to play in parks or even in the backyard for most of his life.... ingress came in my life when things were very very hard. Got my gold trekker while i had been sitting in a hospital chair holding my kid after his surgery for 2 hours. Hospital has killer drift. So occasionly i pulled over and did a zoom photo with an obliging road facing sign. Why am i even here? This not a nice place.

  • 0X00FF000X00FF00 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I too have deliberately taken photos from inside the car. But unless I explicitly told the reviewer, you would NEVER know because

    1. The window was rolled down
    2. no parts of the car were visible
    3. the POI was nicely framed
    4. I didn't even get a reflection of the car in the POI's window

    Niantic's position for these games is "adventures by foot", and everything I've submitted qualifies just fine thankyouverymuch.

  • Holy cow, such strong views. As a newer arrival in Ingress with an extensive history with PoGo, it strikes me that some may want to take a fresh look at what they have done in the past and verify that it meets the current guidelines for a qualified candidate. My experience in my local community is that candidates now take at most a few weeks to be reviewed, including edits, which may have more to do with the local community than it does who is doing reviews. Previously things were far slower. I've had zero issue maintaining a positive rating and run around 50% agreements consistently. I don't care if you play Ingress, PoGo or HPWU, as long as you use sound judgement within Niantic guidelines, bully to you for your opinions on my submissions.

  • Niantic "pre approving" non-local submissions is a silly idea. They don't have local knowledge but they also won't be looking for screenshots of photos or photos of a laptop screen! Those reviewing could have seen something that Niantic didn't! This isn't a one reviewer system for a reason.

    Additionally they claim to have gotten through the queue. I'm still sitting on plenty of submissions from April/May this year. Niantic need to stop lying to me and put an upper limit on subs in the system so people like me don't need to grind through 10000+ reviews to get 80 upgrades just to have a few portals go live nearby.

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    There are a few reasons why you may sometimes want to submit from a car:

    • Weather
    • Phone tethered to a charger
    • Signal booster is much less effective outside the car

    That last one is the most frequent reason I would take a photo from a vehicle. However, the key is to avoid including any part of the car in the photo while I'm taking it.

  • How do you know they aren't inspecting the images?

  • TheismanTheisman ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    Thats the problem, we dont know either way, also we have no clue as to what exactly they have chosen as example candidates that they graded.

    They already have a problem understanding what PRP in the UK is, and the difference in the UK between Footpath Signs and Trail markers.

    This isn't necessarily incompetence on their part more a cultural and country difference that they dont seem to be able to comprehend or accept.

    Unfortunately, and putting it bluntly, no one trusts Niantic due to a longstanding history of getting things wrong.

  • sophielabsophielab ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    If they've included nominations that they could hand to 2 different employees and get 2 different answers then it's only going to confuse the reviewers when they don't guess right.

  • Svizac28Svizac28 ✭✭
    edited December 2019

    I don't know whether to laugh or cry about this.

    Wayfarer hasn't been a huge success, it has been a complete disaster. The influx of Pokemon players has completely ruined it. Submitters are submitting nominations that don't meet any criteria, and dump reviewers are approving all these nominations. And as a result we have thousands of low-quality portals which will be impossible to remove from the game.


    And as a result, reviewers who actually follow guidelines and reject garbage see their rating drop into red :(

  • I believe they took a random sample. 5% is usually considered statistically valid, I believe. Pre-evaluated it and if you disagree then your score drops. Given the number of borderline nominations it may drop for reasons that are not obvious.

  • It would be interesting to know how they are evaluating the submissions.

    Is a human reviewing them in the same way we would or is it an algorithm that is picking out key terms.

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