Upcoming changes to Nominations, Edits, Reports & Scans
PkmnTrainerJ
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in General
In-Game Contribution Limits
For Pokémon GO players, we will be replacing the old contribution limit mechanism on October 12, 2021, from a 14 day wait period to accrue, to a daily accrual system, with increased max daily quota based on the contribution type. This applies to Wayspot nominations, reports, and AR scans. You’ll see this reflected in the messaging in your settings and the nominations or editing screens.
- New Nominations - 1 Daily accrual / 40 Daily Max
- Title Edits - 2 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
- Description Edits - 2 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
- Location Edits - 1 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
- Photo Submissions - 2 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
- Abuse Reports - 2 Daily Accrual / 40 Daily Max
- AR Scanning - 10 Daily Accrual / 200 Daily Max
For Ingress players, this same update will be coming later this year, as we wait for Ingress to complete a few more upgrades in the game code. We’ll update you when we get the specific date.
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Very worried about the 40 Daily Max for nominations. Queue times are already months, even years in many areas. I really wish that they had focused on abuse, criteria education, and actually getting people to review more before they increased the nomination limit from 7 to 40 in Pokemon GO.
Lol, let’s stress out a system that’s barely limping along. And still not offer anything more than a medal for your efforts to help the system.
Am I understanding this change correctly. We can max out at 40 nominations? Which you could potentially use up in a single day, but then would take 40 days to get back to max?
Also, isn’t this a step backwards for scanning? Right now I could go to a new town and scan 400 portals, with this new change, I’d be tapped out at 200… But hey, I’d get 10 the next day.
Or is there no total max, just max daily numbers? So I could never nominate anything and have 365 at the end of the year?
Also, it’s surprising when these pretty significant announcements happen, there isn’t some sort of conversation amongst the community “specialists” about having a coordinated release of information. Sure would have been nice to see an announcement here like, “hey y’all, if you frequent the wayfarer forums, you might see some chatter about contribution limits. You will see these changes eventually, but probably not for a few months. Any questions or concerns, tag me.” Maybe I’m just too needy…
so many nominations in pogo while they all have multiple accounts and wayfarer being already overloaded.. what can goes wrong 🤣
Not sure if you're misunderstanding the accrual system. You get one submission a day. If you don't use it, it carries over, so the next day you have 2 submissions to spend. If you don't use any of 'em you can accrue up to 40 potential submissions. But you'd need to wait 40 days and not submit anything during that time to accrue this number. If you use all 40 of them in the same day, then you start again, being able to only submit 1 the next day (or save it for later)
It's really a better system than having a rolling 14 day window. Those of us that travel can now opt to save up submission "points" to be able to submit more than 7 or 14 during our holidays.
At least, that's my understanding.
I believe that’s how it’ll work. So if you have Pokémon GO & Ingress eligible accounts and submit nothing for 40 days, you’ll have 80 Nominations to use.
The nominations are fine, but the AR scan is definitely a step back. :/ Make it at least 20 Daily... with maybe 400 cap...
I don't think that they're willing to have different amounts per game. The limit is unfortunately due to the #scantheground crew trying to get poffins. I don't scan often. I got to silver and probably won't go higher. I would like them to at least consider making the scanning limit different because unless there's a lot of ground or interior of cars being submitted there shouldn't be lowering of the limit.
I can't review since wayfarer update so I won't be able to submit much with an expectation of having a portal because it currently takes a year for stuff close to home. Apparently, I have too many portals and way too much fun playing(ok last part might be true). Traveling where I'd be able to submit will probably not be terribly productive either with the incoming volume so it's just going to be a photo album on wayfarer with few if any approvals here. I saw the dichotomy of the reviewers being angry on wayfarer forum and the pokemon go submitters on another platform all excited since they themselves get results back quickly.
I understand it perfectly well. Before, it was a max of 7 every 2 weeks, so on average 1 every 2 days with a delay of 2 weeks. Now it's 1 a day. Excpet now, the max cap is 40 instead of 7 and you get them back a lot quicker.
This is a better system for nominators, for sure, but awful with the current system in place where reviewers are already stretched thin and backlogs take months to years.
I think
means you accrue one a day, but can only use a maximum of 40 in a single day.
So if you don't nominate for 3 months, you'd accrue 90 (one per day) nominations. You could nominate 40 on day 91, 40 on day 92, and 13 on day 93.
I confirmed with Niantic, you can only accrue 40 nominations. It's capped at 40 total. Can't accrue more than that
they should really add a review part requirement.
Wayfarer queue is so overloaded it going to be even worst with that
There is a test for any new submitters coming up Soon™️ but that’s only for new submitters. Those already submitting Coal will carry on doing so.
Yeah which is weird, let everyone do the test, even the people with (winged) recon!
In the meantime a lot has changed about what is a good wayspot so everyone should be on the same page anyways.
The amount of rejections I get for indoor wayspots is almost 100%, which is too stupid.
If I can't review because the new site after the update isn't usable then I doubt I'd be able to take a test for you. A lot of the current criteria isn't auto accept and basically is very subjective so it's more "I like this or I don't like this" which is frustrating to submitters.
This (is meant to) comes tomorrow for Pokémon GO players. For anyone who hasn’t seen, the Nominations etc. will all start at maximum numbers for all players that are level 38+.
So if you have no Nominations left, you will have 40 all of a sudden available tomorrow.
I wonder if it’ll work the same for Ingress.
Yes. You'll send in your nomination and probably won't hear back without an upgrade. The system probably can't handle this increase. It will only take a few people opening up app and using a significant amount at one time to backlog the system. I know the hope is vacation or traveling type nominations (higher quality) but I'm thinking it's just going to be normal stuff.
If I leave mine without an upgrade I generally hear back in 3 months or so. There’s zero rush on any of mine though.
The system is more fragile than you think. (Are they so not priority that a 1 to 2 year wait ok?)
I'd rather have them fix the sync to Ingress for Niantic reviewed stuff first. Then change the contribution limits nominations if the wayfarer system hasn't seized up.
I definitely feel like this is putting the cart before the horse or whatever that saying is. But hey, I have more or less stop reviewing and nominating things and my scanning numbers have nearly stalled as well. So no use complaining about something that won't change my game.
When we can talk about real incentives for all of the above, maybe you can earn back some of my valuable time. Until then, I'm done wasting my time working for a different colored medal. Nothing like flexing how much time you spent sitting in front of a computer for that onyx recon medal.
As expected this ran into issues and did not launch yesterday. Instead it’s happening on 26th October.
As we have had a delay, maybe we can have a simultaneous launch in Pokémon GO & Ingress?
It's really being changed in pokemon to dribble out daily scans for this new power up pokestops. It has little to do with nominations but it might break Wayfarer and ability to get new portals approved.
The only people concerned about scanning limits were Ingress players. There are plenty available for this new thing in pokemon. It's not worth the risk of damage to nomination processing.
I manage extremely large-scale computing systems for a living. Here's what my systems do when they are overloaded and backing up:
It's pretty easy to understand the concepts if you think about very basic plumbing. If a pipe is backing up you stop putting more things in the pipe, or at least slow the flow down to a trickle, while you work to remove the obstruction. Once you think you have the pipe unclogged you put a little bit of stuff in it to ensure that it isn't going to back up again and then you slowly increase it to full capacity. If the problem is that your pipe just isn't big enough to handle all the stuff that's flowing through it then you slow down the incoming flow until you can replace the pipe with a bigger one or add another pipe.
What Niantic seems to be doing is exactly the opposite-- they're pouring a lot more stuff into the pipe before they remove the clog and/or upgrade the pipe. If your current mental image is of the single toilet in a crowded dive bar overflowing with [redacted] at the end of a busy night then you completely understand the concept.
Honestly, this sounds like a horrendous change given the current burden on Wayfarer.
As an addendum to my previous message, here's how I would manage the current backlog if I was King of Wayfarer:
Throttle incoming requests: I would significantly cut back on the number of things that people could submit. If you don't review you get some trivial number like one submission, one photo submission, and one edit per month. Want more? Roll up your sleeves and start reviewing.
Reduce incoming traffic by having less junk in it: Know what's even better than installing bigger pipes? Putting less stuff through the existing. We've all seen restaurants with "Please do not flush anything but toilet paper" signs in their bathrooms, I assume. Right now people are flushing toilet paper and wads of paper towels and old shoes and half-eaten tuna sandwiches because they don't know better. By my calculations more than 50% of the things being submitted are garbage. Remember that submitter test? It's time. Require it for everyone who hasn't already passed the reviewing test, no grandfathering of existing accounts. Invest in education. Find ways to further restrict people who keep flushing, err, submitting sandwiches and shoes.
If half of your traffic is garbage and you can cut the garbage in half you remove 25% of the burden on the system.
Get bigger/more pipes: I'd invest in reviewing capacity. Part of this would be a publicity campaign. A lot of it would be the carrot of earning more submissions/edits/photos through reviewing. I'd tie all rewards to high-quality results so that I didn't end up with people doing the reviewing equivalent of scanning the ground. I'd also look for ways to make reviewing more efficient so that I wasn't wasting reviewers' time and energy. Since I'm not familiar with the internals of Wayfarer I'm not sure exactly what I'd do but I'm fairly certain there are several ways to optimize. From the outside I can peer over the fence and see a couple of obvious ones.
Once I got the current backlog under control I would make sure it didn't happen again. How?
Systemically scale submissions with the size of the backlog: Computers are really good at doing this if you give them a good algorithm. If Wayfarer is all caught up and there isn't a backlog then everyone gets more submissions. If the backlog starts growing then submission limits get cut back and review incentives go up. In theory this could happen without human intervention but in practice a person would probably have to approve the threshold changes and communicate about them. It should be guided by a set of rules, though: If the median time for a review exceeds X days then there's a Q% reduction in submission limits. If the median time goes up from X to Y then submission limits are further reduced by R%. It's simple-- when pipes back up you put less stuff in them and increase the incentive to help clear them out.
This is really just the basic design of large systems, but with a bit more of a human element.
Testing isn't the only way to reduce traffic. The nomination process could have more options, and be more intuitive.
Like, ask the nominator "Which criteria does this meet?" with checkboxes for explore, exercise, social - each with into buttons to read more about it. Heck, even throw in "no stops near here" and "lots of people go by here", but they stop the nomination process.
Even better: The nominator should have to answer the "What is it" question, and based on the answer, it would take fewer to reject (like if the nominator said it is a school) or more to reject (like if the nominator said it was a sculpture).
Yes, people could game these scheme, but it'll at least educate those who care. Many nominators don't even know Wayfarer exists.
I'm sure a UI expert would have many other good suggestions.
ALTHOUGH, maybe Niantic's plan is to increase traffic. That would create more places where nominations take months to years without an upgrade. That would mean more people will have to review, to get upgrades. With more reviewers, more wayspots are added to Lightship. Maybe Niantic isn't looking at individuals' pain - they're looking at the big picture: build their moneymaker. That's what for-profit companies DO.
It’s definitely part of their plan. More wayspots and then more of them scanned. It’s mind boggling they haven’t at least started offering some sort of incentive. Ticks on a medal isn’t cutting it for me unfortunately…
@MargariteDVille I have long advocated for submitters to have to fill in the "What is it?" category at the beginning of the submission, at which point they would get tailored guidance about that particular category. And then reviewers would get targeted guidance during the review process based on that category.
If Niantic's goal is to add stuff to Lightship then it's in their best interest to ensure that the whole pipeline is as effective as possible. Having a bunch of stuff get submitted and then lounge around in limbo for months or years doesn't really help them populate the database.
Where is the evidence the issue is with throughput capability?
To me it seems to be more a data handling issue.