I did 27 reviews today, after 10 I had dropped from Green to Yellow, another 17 reviews later I was in Red. There is no way 27 reviews should drop someone that quickly
Is there any chance some can just give us a heads up on what is happening or have a look into the sudden changes in wayfarer review raitings please.
Everyone is getting a bit disheartened with the current state of affairs and all that is going to happen is that you will start losing competent reviews in their droves.
Maybe it is the area that I'm in, but my rating is still green and I've been rejecting a lot more nominations recently too. Particular nominations I've been seeing a lot more of are college dorms, which I reject for not meeting criteria and LFLs that are on private residential properties.
I will note that I don't have either my home or bonus locations set, so I see nominations from all over the US.
Getting reports globally from local communities of good Ingress reviewers getting put to Poor due to not voting for bad Pokemon subs.
We are getting trees, drainage ditches and all sorts of junk coming through. The systems broken because a large percentage of Pokemon reviewers are just upvoting all this junk. Ingress base too small to hold the tide back. (And shrinking due to going to Poor).
In short, what we are seeing is this - where PoGo communities are generally conscientious and/or receptive to feedback from experienced users of this system, there are no major issues. In other areas, that is not the case and the experienced, conscientious players (Ingress AND PoGo) are suffering because of that, even when they really are trying to educate the new reviewers. Both is happening, it's only a question of general percentages and people from both sides should very much keep in mind that both ways and outcomes are possible.
This should not have happened either way, and the best case scenario does not make up for the worst case scenario.
I just hope that lessons will be learned an that we who were directly victims of this will be redeemed somehow.
The calculations seem to have been changed so that it only takes recent agreements/disagreements into account, instead of the whole history. It's now easier to lose your rating, but also easier to regain it.
Which seems like a good idea, since it makes the system adapt faster to abuse. If someone with decent rating starts spamming one star, they'll quickly lose their rating and their votes stop mattering.
While too much inertia based on old agreements/disagreements isn't a good thing, going straight from green/Great to red/Poor within the span of about 30 reviewed nominations (which had a fairly comprehensive distribution from a couple of duplicates and 1 stars to 5 stars and everything in-between) feels way too quick change to me. Or if measured in wall clock time instead of number of nominations, in about an hour.
I somehow managed to get up to yellow overnight. Gained 20 upgrade points overnight in about 40 total reviews over the entirety of yesterday in red. The only thing I did differently when reviewing was more 4* rather than 5* (which lets be honest, i shouldn't be changing the way i review to get this)
I want to work towards my Onyx Recon but I also want to vote honestly and 5* what Niantic have said are definitely portals.
I'm not going to review for a little while. I want to still earn agreements but I can't do that if I review like I did before.
This isn't to say I was reviewing incorrectly before, as since the only thing I've changed is the strength of the accept, something is definitely wrong if I went back up to yellow in minimal reviews.
It could be regional, but my rejection agreement rate since starting with pogo reviewing being opened is 17% of my agreements. There are obvious bad candidates being knocked back like trees and home portals, po go players aren't just accepting everything. It sounds like some of you might just be overly harsh reviewers. Always remember, it's just a simple phone game, the goal is accessibility and safety and not interfering with private places, and Niantic designs their games with the portal density of cities in mind, so relax the standards for regional areas with low density and let in some small malls etc as their only notable social and safe spaces. Remember the goal is helping people have fun in safe ways, not looking for reasons to reject when there's room to accept.
If people are submitting things that don't meet criteria then im not accepting it. A few examples ive had recently; someones swing in their back garden, someone got creative with paint on their shoes, a street sign (actually there's been quite a few street signs), a random uninteresting bridge, someone drinking a coffee. its not reviewers fault we have to 1* so many in a row when this is the **** we are facing when we review.
i think what’s frustrating me a lot as well is some of the rejections are for simple things because the submitter doesn’t know the criteria properly. Just reviewing an Edward Viii postbox (very rare one) but there’s a clear to read licence plate behind it so it’s getting 1*d for that which is really annoying.
I just wanted to point out that using 3 and 4 stars is the correct way to vote. Under the old OPR system, most of the park stuff like signs, gazebos, exercise equipment etc were 4 stars, only churches, libraries and good public art were 5 stars. Don't be afraid to use 3s for middling stuff, something that might be ok but have a mediocre photo or a description with typos is a 2 or 3 star, not a 1.
Many of the people that are having a problem use the system as only 1 or 5 stars, spread the reviews through the range,
I review 10 nominations. I wait a few hours and log back in. I've gone from green to red. I log back in 6 to 8 hours later and I'm green again. It's like a yo-yo. Up down up down.
No a rock is not a good nomination. No your TV in your living room isn't a good submission. I'm starting to wonder if people realize that they are constantly giving up their home address to lots of random people.
There was no onboarding plan for the PoGo players. A great deal of this could have been solved by forcing Go players to pass the review test in order to be able to submit, because the people that are submitting right now have no clue what they're doing because they don't have to learn or prove that they know what they're doing...they just have to hit a level milestone that has become frankly quite empty because of empty XP.
They also could have given Go players an equivalent of the Recon badge because right now they have no incentive to review properly but a great deal of incentive to pass everything. If you give them reason to follow the guidelines there is a good chance they will.
I'm not even going to blame the Pokemon Go players for this, it is just bad implementation by Niantic.
Yes I agree, it is definitely more Niantics fault for just opening subs/reviews up. I’ve joined some PoGo reviewer chats and helping teach them the guidelines, some things they didn’t know about because they didn’t read it properly and others because it wasn’t easy to find that information.
The Queu may be mostly cleared in some areas, but I've still got some old submissions just going nowhere in areas with insufficient reviewers. I was in Jamaica this month and the obvious old age of the submissions there shocked me. Every single one was a redacted submission and some were for things already gone. I'm glad the local queu has cleared up, it will hopefully reduce the number of duplicates, etc.
Yeah they get basically no exposure to POIs before they can submit. I thought maybe they should have received review access first and had to complete a few hundred agreements to unlock submitting. Of course that too can be gamed but it would have raised the average.
You know how companies sometimes try to inflate their worth before a potential sale sometimes actually decreasing the quality/experience for temporary numbers? Maybe this is the beginning of that.
The problem is this is what we are up against, someone has submitted a hotel, it was either in guidelines or AMA that these do not meet criteria so I 1*d under generic business. However because so many current reviewers aren’t reading guidelines (the submitter didn’t or they wouldn’t be submitting it) then I will be surprised to get the agreement for and my rating will suffer.
there are many other examples that experienced reviewers will be rejecting for that a lot of newer reviewers won’t know about. For example taking a photo from a car, a photo with a licence plate in, a blurry photo or a picture taken at a bad angle (these are all 1* reasons listed), newer reviewers and submitters seem very confused at the private residential property rule and we are also getting lots of schools submitted (and I’ve heard some have been accepted.
it is very frustrating then when we have ended up in poor and told to take the test again and read the guidelines. We ARE the ones following guidelines and are being punished for it.
Have to agree with everything @YouLostAStar says. I’m finally back in the yellow after doing 17 reviews and not changing how I mark stuff. I firm but fair and do my research on most things I come across that need a definitive answer before I rate. This is one example that really annoys me !! first thought 5* for the historic value it holds but doing my research ( and having visited the public national heritage site next door ) it’s quite clearly on school grounds which trumps all other categories so did 1* location K12 but as you can see I was the minority 😩 How many of my reviews that are done to match the guidelines are following that same fate as this one ?
I only played ingress so I could sub portals to make stops and gyms . I am very meticulous in my S2 cell planning of an area so I maximise stop and gym spawning . I’m a pogo player first but I stick to the rules , much to the detriment of my profile rating 🤷♀️
The flood gates are fully open now but y’all need to figure out how to tame the flow cause a lot of s**t is flowing down river at moment .
I would go back and requote people, but there's no point.
A photo on the Niantic Wayfarer subreddit shows a person with 26 agreements out of 28 reviews and their rating is RED.
So, once again I reiterate, it isn't PoGo players' fault. What is more likely is that Niantic has once again screwed up something.
As another photo set above shows, going from yellow to green without doing anything shows something is wrong with the system.
Do you trust Niantic to figure it out? Their track record sucks.
I stand by my previous points of Ingress and PoGo player behaviour. The former are small in number but have dedicated chats and have rejected submissions based on the area because they know so and so player lives there. The latter have shown (in my country) a disappointing lack of interest in the process and are too disparate and disconnected at this point to coordinate. They also are still getting to grasp with the system which we all did once upon a time.
So Niantic is the problem once again. Did they fix "upgrade next"? Did they acknowledge it? No. I doubt they will for the haywire ratings.
Have to agree with everything said here. I've had POI on schools, generic street signs, generic bridges, QE2 Post Box all go live in my area already. This proves that the new reviewers not only have no idea what they are doing but also hold the majority of influence. They also see old POI such as generic memorial benches and believe these should all be POI regardless of significance, charity shops, anything old (with literally no significance apart from being old) is also being approved. This results in established reviewers who have kept up with your guidelines and the AMA's to be penalised for voting correctly. What follows is a slippery **** of approvals, with quality continuing to devalue as people see trash, submit trash and review trash. Niantic's games are supposed to be about going out and exploring points of interest, I have to say I don't get much satisfaction from hacking/linking or spinning/raiding generic street signs or other so called POI with no significance.
I have absolutely nothing against PoGo players, I was originally a PoGo player, joining Ingress with the primary intention of creating stops. I now play both games but more importantly I believe in is a high quality POI database regardless of which game I am playing. Some PoGo players are submitting high quality POI and have joined forums to educate themselves on what is acceptable etc, but the vast majority are not. This isn't the PoGo players fault, they haven't had to follow the same processes as Ingress players. Submitting before reviewing acts as a learning process, if things are rejected people can do research to understand why. This allows them to learn what is and isn't acceptable as they continue to level up to be allowed to review. Once being at the level required to review Ingress players understood that a little research needs to be done to establish if a submission justifies being a POI (e.g. is it on school grounds, is it permanently closed etc etc). The rating system would have also flagged up to people that they need to get a better understanding of the guidelines this might have worked for the new reviewers IF PoGo players had been allowed into the reviewing process gradually or given a significantly lower power balance until they had reached an alignment. Allowing masses of them with very little understanding of what is and isn't acceptable into the process AND therefore allowing them to hold the balance of power is what has contributed to this issue. This could have been easily rectified by making the PoGo players a 'third faction' and requiring an equal balance of votes from all three factions 33.33%, with Ingress players still holding the majority votes (66.66%) initially. This could have been amended/relaxed once alignment had been reached.
If Niantic are happy with this level of trash then they need to amend the guidelines to reflect this. If they are not happy with this then they need to do something to educate the new reviewers on what is and isn't acceptable. Perhaps halting the Wayfarer system altogether and going back to the drawing board before more damage is done. Established reviewers are currently being penalised but it will be Niantic who suffer in the long term, once their database is full of trash and the lawsuits start flooding in. The POI database should be something Niantic are proud of and what makes their products different than their competitors, why allow it to be systematically devalued in this manner?
I'm opting out of Wayfarer, as at this point of time as voting within the guidelines is being penalised. Being asked to retake a test to improve my rating and then vote completely opposite to the test and guidelines in order to maintain a good/great rating is preposterous. I cannot accept the things currently being accepted and claim to have any integrity. I understand this will only result in the problem getting worse, but I don't believe we have the power to change anything (as proven by tanking ratings and the trash appearing in the games). Niantic have caused this issue and they are the ones that need to rectify it.
When it was OPR we tried to reach out to new submitters and invite them to our chat, we were able to teach them the guidelines and any amendments to criteria and advise them how to improve their submissions.
when these players levelled up to be able to review they had the confidence to take the test and were able to very quickly get up to Green when reviewing and became a valuable asset to the portal network.
the way that PoGo submitters and reviewers has been added to the setup makes this impossible, we have invited PoGo players to our nationwide chat to try to help them but the amount that have joined is insignificant compared to the number of active submitters/reviewers
We did have a community Discord for our state to help people with nominations and understanding the criteria. However, when the accidental global release occured, the majority of users left with one going so far as to tell us "**** you and your **** rules." That particularly hurt me because I had been working with that particular person to find good candidates for him to submit.
Comments
I did 27 reviews today, after 10 I had dropped from Green to Yellow, another 17 reviews later I was in Red. There is no way 27 reviews should drop someone that quickly
earlier today mine went from green to red after reviewing a batch of 4 portals...currently sitting on a ~68% agreement rate
Yellow to red in 10 reviews 😩 still earning upgrades though 🤷♀️
Green to Red in 2 hours this afternoon. 23,00 agreements in green.
@NianticCasey @NianticBrian @RedSoloCup
Is there any chance some can just give us a heads up on what is happening or have a look into the sudden changes in wayfarer review raitings please.
Everyone is getting a bit disheartened with the current state of affairs and all that is going to happen is that you will start losing competent reviews in their droves.
Maybe it is the area that I'm in, but my rating is still green and I've been rejecting a lot more nominations recently too. Particular nominations I've been seeing a lot more of are college dorms, which I reject for not meeting criteria and LFLs that are on private residential properties.
I will note that I don't have either my home or bonus locations set, so I see nominations from all over the US.
Getting reports globally from local communities of good Ingress reviewers getting put to Poor due to not voting for bad Pokemon subs.
We are getting trees, drainage ditches and all sorts of junk coming through. The systems broken because a large percentage of Pokemon reviewers are just upvoting all this junk. Ingress base too small to hold the tide back. (And shrinking due to going to Poor).
We did warn this would happen.
In short, what we are seeing is this - where PoGo communities are generally conscientious and/or receptive to feedback from experienced users of this system, there are no major issues. In other areas, that is not the case and the experienced, conscientious players (Ingress AND PoGo) are suffering because of that, even when they really are trying to educate the new reviewers. Both is happening, it's only a question of general percentages and people from both sides should very much keep in mind that both ways and outcomes are possible.
This should not have happened either way, and the best case scenario does not make up for the worst case scenario.
I just hope that lessons will be learned an that we who were directly victims of this will be redeemed somehow.
The calculations seem to have been changed so that it only takes recent agreements/disagreements into account, instead of the whole history. It's now easier to lose your rating, but also easier to regain it.
Which seems like a good idea, since it makes the system adapt faster to abuse. If someone with decent rating starts spamming one star, they'll quickly lose their rating and their votes stop mattering.
It has always been like this, the only thing that has changed is an influx of people that have no idea what they are doing.
While too much inertia based on old agreements/disagreements isn't a good thing, going straight from green/Great to red/Poor within the span of about 30 reviewed nominations (which had a fairly comprehensive distribution from a couple of duplicates and 1 stars to 5 stars and everything in-between) feels way too quick change to me. Or if measured in wall clock time instead of number of nominations, in about an hour.
I somehow managed to get up to yellow overnight. Gained 20 upgrade points overnight in about 40 total reviews over the entirety of yesterday in red. The only thing I did differently when reviewing was more 4* rather than 5* (which lets be honest, i shouldn't be changing the way i review to get this)
I want to work towards my Onyx Recon but I also want to vote honestly and 5* what Niantic have said are definitely portals.
I'm not going to review for a little while. I want to still earn agreements but I can't do that if I review like I did before.
This isn't to say I was reviewing incorrectly before, as since the only thing I've changed is the strength of the accept, something is definitely wrong if I went back up to yellow in minimal reviews.
It could be regional, but my rejection agreement rate since starting with pogo reviewing being opened is 17% of my agreements. There are obvious bad candidates being knocked back like trees and home portals, po go players aren't just accepting everything. It sounds like some of you might just be overly harsh reviewers. Always remember, it's just a simple phone game, the goal is accessibility and safety and not interfering with private places, and Niantic designs their games with the portal density of cities in mind, so relax the standards for regional areas with low density and let in some small malls etc as their only notable social and safe spaces. Remember the goal is helping people have fun in safe ways, not looking for reasons to reject when there's room to accept.
If people are submitting things that don't meet criteria then im not accepting it. A few examples ive had recently; someones swing in their back garden, someone got creative with paint on their shoes, a street sign (actually there's been quite a few street signs), a random uninteresting bridge, someone drinking a coffee. its not reviewers fault we have to 1* so many in a row when this is the **** we are facing when we review.
As mentioned, my rejection agreements are going up since starting with PoGo's wayfarer release, those obvious invalid candidates are being rejected.
i think what’s frustrating me a lot as well is some of the rejections are for simple things because the submitter doesn’t know the criteria properly. Just reviewing an Edward Viii postbox (very rare one) but there’s a clear to read licence plate behind it so it’s getting 1*d for that which is really annoying.
I just wanted to point out that using 3 and 4 stars is the correct way to vote. Under the old OPR system, most of the park stuff like signs, gazebos, exercise equipment etc were 4 stars, only churches, libraries and good public art were 5 stars. Don't be afraid to use 3s for middling stuff, something that might be ok but have a mediocre photo or a description with typos is a 2 or 3 star, not a 1.
Many of the people that are having a problem use the system as only 1 or 5 stars, spread the reviews through the range,
I review 10 nominations. I wait a few hours and log back in. I've gone from green to red. I log back in 6 to 8 hours later and I'm green again. It's like a yo-yo. Up down up down.
No a rock is not a good nomination. No your TV in your living room isn't a good submission. I'm starting to wonder if people realize that they are constantly giving up their home address to lots of random people.
There was no onboarding plan for the PoGo players. A great deal of this could have been solved by forcing Go players to pass the review test in order to be able to submit, because the people that are submitting right now have no clue what they're doing because they don't have to learn or prove that they know what they're doing...they just have to hit a level milestone that has become frankly quite empty because of empty XP.
They also could have given Go players an equivalent of the Recon badge because right now they have no incentive to review properly but a great deal of incentive to pass everything. If you give them reason to follow the guidelines there is a good chance they will.
I'm not even going to blame the Pokemon Go players for this, it is just bad implementation by Niantic.
Yes I agree, it is definitely more Niantics fault for just opening subs/reviews up. I’ve joined some PoGo reviewer chats and helping teach them the guidelines, some things they didn’t know about because they didn’t read it properly and others because it wasn’t easy to find that information.
The Queu may be mostly cleared in some areas, but I've still got some old submissions just going nowhere in areas with insufficient reviewers. I was in Jamaica this month and the obvious old age of the submissions there shocked me. Every single one was a redacted submission and some were for things already gone. I'm glad the local queu has cleared up, it will hopefully reduce the number of duplicates, etc.
Yeah they get basically no exposure to POIs before they can submit. I thought maybe they should have received review access first and had to complete a few hundred agreements to unlock submitting. Of course that too can be gamed but it would have raised the average.
You know how companies sometimes try to inflate their worth before a potential sale sometimes actually decreasing the quality/experience for temporary numbers? Maybe this is the beginning of that.
The problem is this is what we are up against, someone has submitted a hotel, it was either in guidelines or AMA that these do not meet criteria so I 1*d under generic business. However because so many current reviewers aren’t reading guidelines (the submitter didn’t or they wouldn’t be submitting it) then I will be surprised to get the agreement for and my rating will suffer.
there are many other examples that experienced reviewers will be rejecting for that a lot of newer reviewers won’t know about. For example taking a photo from a car, a photo with a licence plate in, a blurry photo or a picture taken at a bad angle (these are all 1* reasons listed), newer reviewers and submitters seem very confused at the private residential property rule and we are also getting lots of schools submitted (and I’ve heard some have been accepted.
it is very frustrating then when we have ended up in poor and told to take the test again and read the guidelines. We ARE the ones following guidelines and are being punished for it.
what do you intend to do about this @RedSoloCup
Have to agree with everything @YouLostAStar says. I’m finally back in the yellow after doing 17 reviews and not changing how I mark stuff. I firm but fair and do my research on most things I come across that need a definitive answer before I rate. This is one example that really annoys me !! first thought 5* for the historic value it holds but doing my research ( and having visited the public national heritage site next door ) it’s quite clearly on school grounds which trumps all other categories so did 1* location K12 but as you can see I was the minority 😩 How many of my reviews that are done to match the guidelines are following that same fate as this one ?
I only played ingress so I could sub portals to make stops and gyms . I am very meticulous in my S2 cell planning of an area so I maximise stop and gym spawning . I’m a pogo player first but I stick to the rules , much to the detriment of my profile rating 🤷♀️
The flood gates are fully open now but y’all need to figure out how to tame the flow cause a lot of s**t is flowing down river at moment .
Have a wonderful day and thanks for reading 😊
I would go back and requote people, but there's no point.
A photo on the Niantic Wayfarer subreddit shows a person with 26 agreements out of 28 reviews and their rating is RED.
So, once again I reiterate, it isn't PoGo players' fault. What is more likely is that Niantic has once again screwed up something.
As another photo set above shows, going from yellow to green without doing anything shows something is wrong with the system.
Do you trust Niantic to figure it out? Their track record sucks.
I stand by my previous points of Ingress and PoGo player behaviour. The former are small in number but have dedicated chats and have rejected submissions based on the area because they know so and so player lives there. The latter have shown (in my country) a disappointing lack of interest in the process and are too disparate and disconnected at this point to coordinate. They also are still getting to grasp with the system which we all did once upon a time.
So Niantic is the problem once again. Did they fix "upgrade next"? Did they acknowledge it? No. I doubt they will for the haywire ratings.
Have to agree with everything said here. I've had POI on schools, generic street signs, generic bridges, QE2 Post Box all go live in my area already. This proves that the new reviewers not only have no idea what they are doing but also hold the majority of influence. They also see old POI such as generic memorial benches and believe these should all be POI regardless of significance, charity shops, anything old (with literally no significance apart from being old) is also being approved. This results in established reviewers who have kept up with your guidelines and the AMA's to be penalised for voting correctly. What follows is a slippery **** of approvals, with quality continuing to devalue as people see trash, submit trash and review trash. Niantic's games are supposed to be about going out and exploring points of interest, I have to say I don't get much satisfaction from hacking/linking or spinning/raiding generic street signs or other so called POI with no significance.
I have absolutely nothing against PoGo players, I was originally a PoGo player, joining Ingress with the primary intention of creating stops. I now play both games but more importantly I believe in is a high quality POI database regardless of which game I am playing. Some PoGo players are submitting high quality POI and have joined forums to educate themselves on what is acceptable etc, but the vast majority are not. This isn't the PoGo players fault, they haven't had to follow the same processes as Ingress players. Submitting before reviewing acts as a learning process, if things are rejected people can do research to understand why. This allows them to learn what is and isn't acceptable as they continue to level up to be allowed to review. Once being at the level required to review Ingress players understood that a little research needs to be done to establish if a submission justifies being a POI (e.g. is it on school grounds, is it permanently closed etc etc). The rating system would have also flagged up to people that they need to get a better understanding of the guidelines this might have worked for the new reviewers IF PoGo players had been allowed into the reviewing process gradually or given a significantly lower power balance until they had reached an alignment. Allowing masses of them with very little understanding of what is and isn't acceptable into the process AND therefore allowing them to hold the balance of power is what has contributed to this issue. This could have been easily rectified by making the PoGo players a 'third faction' and requiring an equal balance of votes from all three factions 33.33%, with Ingress players still holding the majority votes (66.66%) initially. This could have been amended/relaxed once alignment had been reached.
If Niantic are happy with this level of trash then they need to amend the guidelines to reflect this. If they are not happy with this then they need to do something to educate the new reviewers on what is and isn't acceptable. Perhaps halting the Wayfarer system altogether and going back to the drawing board before more damage is done. Established reviewers are currently being penalised but it will be Niantic who suffer in the long term, once their database is full of trash and the lawsuits start flooding in. The POI database should be something Niantic are proud of and what makes their products different than their competitors, why allow it to be systematically devalued in this manner?
I'm opting out of Wayfarer, as at this point of time as voting within the guidelines is being penalised. Being asked to retake a test to improve my rating and then vote completely opposite to the test and guidelines in order to maintain a good/great rating is preposterous. I cannot accept the things currently being accepted and claim to have any integrity. I understand this will only result in the problem getting worse, but I don't believe we have the power to change anything (as proven by tanking ratings and the trash appearing in the games). Niantic have caused this issue and they are the ones that need to rectify it.
When it was OPR we tried to reach out to new submitters and invite them to our chat, we were able to teach them the guidelines and any amendments to criteria and advise them how to improve their submissions.
when these players levelled up to be able to review they had the confidence to take the test and were able to very quickly get up to Green when reviewing and became a valuable asset to the portal network.
the way that PoGo submitters and reviewers has been added to the setup makes this impossible, we have invited PoGo players to our nationwide chat to try to help them but the amount that have joined is insignificant compared to the number of active submitters/reviewers
Just seen a scout hut go live that I 1*ed too 😪. Definitely time for me to step away.
We did have a community Discord for our state to help people with nominations and understanding the criteria. However, when the accidental global release occured, the majority of users left with one going so far as to tell us "**** you and your **** rules." That particularly hurt me because I had been working with that particular person to find good candidates for him to submit.