Featured Wayspot choice very poor. Includes Wayspots which don't follow the guidelines.

Poor quality candidates and poor photos are appearing in the featured Wayspots on Wayfarer. Please,Niantic, have a Niantic employee review the featured Wayspots, because they are making a mockery of the nomination guidelines. If that can't be done, remove the featured Wayspots altogether.

As far as I am aware the guidelines for nominations indicate that Scout Halls should be rejected (1*). Yet, numerous Scout Halls here in Victoria, Australia have been accepted as Ingress portals. Acceptance of them seems to be the norm. So much so that a Scout Hall is now one of the featured Wayspots on Wayfarer. This isn't the first questionable candidate which has ended up in the featured Wayspots for the area. I've seen a very ordinary quality photo with the shadow of the photographer clearly in the middle of the photo.

Plus, and I do expect this one to be more controversial, a couple of weeks ago a cricket net was featured. I wouldn't rate cricket nets as the highest quality Wayspot. Do you feel safe ultrastriking a cricket net portal at the bowling end while people are practising their bowling & batting techniques with hard cricket balls flying back out of the nets at high speed? I personally felt distinctly uneasy last time I considered doing it. The cricketers clearly felt the same way as they stopped playing when I approached. Multiply that by 15 people approaching and I'm sure both cricket practice and pokemon raid would be substantially disrupted by a raid at a cricket net gym.



Comments

  • s3w2s3w2 ✭✭✭

    It's an automatic process. I think they believe that everything published complies with their guidelines. We - that play the game and do OPR/Wayfarer - know that it's not like that. I have seen plenty of non-compliant portals being featured. I have bothered myself to report them and support told me to do it through the app... It's pointless.

  • There was a fraudulent wayspot that a notorious poster here got approved that was a featured wayspot. When it finally was removed (after the intervention of nianticcasey) there were then only two featured wayspots for the cycle. It's nuts.

  • Scout halls are always accepted in Aus, many players feel that since they're only used by kids a few hours a week, and are open for community hires they shouldn't be denied.

  • Iirc November AMA killed them (not that everyone follows them obviously).

  • Haha when they're something that almost every small town has, they'll still get accepted.

  • ZaltysZaltys ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    It specifically said that full-time scout halls are ineligible, but part-time (places that are also available for generic meetings etc) are eligible. Hard to tell which type those are when reviewing them, although I'd assume that the latter is more common. I've seen former scouts use the halls for hosting events where the average age was around 40s.

  • edited December 2019

    Exactly. This only goes to show that people collectively have not been following Niantic guidelines but have been bending them to what they want. Now Niantic is supporting people not following the guidelines by omitting to check it's Featured Wayspots. Featured Wayspots, which look official, are clearly created by a computer algorithm & are showing the kind of average to poor submissions which are getting through.


    Besides which the scout halls which have got through aren't only in small towns. It's difficult to find a suburban scout hall which isn't a portal, even if their only use is children's activities.

    On my visits to suburban scout halls portals, I've generally found them either unused, used for scouting activites or used also for other children's after school classes, like martial arts, which have the same reasons as scout halls for not being valid Wayspots.

  • oscarc1oscarc1 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Completely agree, each week it just showcases pretty low quality submissions. Things that don't fit the guidelines or just generic things and most often they have terrible photos.

    It's a terrible way to convey "quality" submissions, especially to the brand new wave of Pokemon Go reviewers. They see this stuff and are immediately inclined to think that they are good.

    It would be great to have some actual quality control on the featured wayspots. Make them truly representative of high quality nominations.

    I had the attached go live last week and I was really hoping it would have been selected as a featured wayspots since it's actually a cool thing. This example is relevant as it is in the same cell as the original poster and the example provided.


  • GendgiGendgi ✭✭✭

    @Rostwold I was thinking that, too. The example of the Scout Hall is confusing because while in some cases it's eligible, it isn't always the case. Curating a list that would apply across regions would probably be too difficult to do actually, though. It would be nice to feature something from the AMAs or general guides, though.

  • RostwoldRostwold ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Gendgi good point, but it could actually be quite interesting to share some local special cases worldwide, the UK's pillarboxes with royal cyphers on for example... and doing that might be useful to players in France/Belgium who are close enough to the UK to see these, but might not be so well versed enough in our history to spot the torrent of lies and fakes where people try to pass off EiiR as GR. I certainly think it would be better than showing ineligible stuff!

  • GendgiGendgi ✭✭✭

    @Rostwold ya, I completely agree. Just as I was thinking thru it I was thinking of some of the language barriers and cultural barriers - for example, as an American, I have no clue what your "pillarboxes," royal ciphers, etc are. You may have things that are culturally appropriate in one area that don't fit in others. Even a disclaimer would get missed by people who just see the picture and move on.

    The featured Wayspot currently appears to be based on level 6 region, which is definitely too small to curate a list manually.

    In a PoGO group I'm in, I keep seeing examples where people are reviewing an ineligible candidate, but the background is something eligible. Something like a do & don't could be useful, too, or highlight how a business may not be eligible but a mural on site can be. I've gotten so many new ideas by reviewing that I'd never have thought of to nominate.

  • They could add a button "I suggest for featured" into Wayfarer, but I guess they trust their algorithm more than Wayfarers. Tells you a lot really.

  • RostwoldRostwold ✭✭✭✭✭

    It would be great to feature something that's hard to find but the supporting photo helped, giving an example of that might solve the 'turn round and face the other way' supporting photo problem.

  • oscarc1oscarc1 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @Rostwold You seem to know a lot about identifying those post pillars? Any chance you can PM me on Telegram, as I have found a few that are like the ones you have in the UK, but I can't identify them. Any help would be appreciated!

  • Martial arts school are also valid, they promote exercise

  • @ninthnomad I do not know if you saw last month’s AMA about martial arts schools, so I’ll just leave this link here:

    https://ingressama.com/search?q=Martial

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    In the last AMA, Niantic specificly stated that they fall under generic business.

  • Are they gonna get denied though? No.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    They do, that's why I asked that AMA question.

  • grendelwulfgrendelwulf ✭✭✭✭✭

    Players in my discord think neighborhood signs are fine and every neighborhood sign should be accepted because some are going through. Had "park" and "gardens" on the name of the neighborhood.

  • As a scout leader, I personally dislike Niantic's stance that scout halls should be treated like private daycares, as that is against what we are telling the parents. But at the same time, I also understand that not having them as points in this system is a good idea, as none of the other leaders in my group play, and therefore wouldn't understand various people showing up to come in and take it down, and it probably would be offputting for them when there are kids playing outside at the time.

    So I'm okay with rejecting them, I just don't like them being classified as K-12. (I do because of the novemeber ama, but I'm not happy about it)

  • Niantic Ingress team, please have this portion of the wayfarer remove until such time that you have 1.) improved your guidelines and 2.) improved the way you identify the featured waypoints.

    Although I believe that this feature is meant to guide all reviewers, it is current causing confusion with the reviewer community. To be blunt, the current state of this feature is NOT HELPFUL and USELESS.

  • kireankirean ✭✭✭

    Another terrible example


    Single private residence

  • Two of the current featured for me are artwork nominations I gave a 1* to for being within 40m of single family PRP. I see little point to reviewing at the moment as it’s not resulting in agreements.

  • TheismanTheisman ✭✭✭✭✭

    To be fair, the whole 40m rule and what it relates to is currently a mess, i wrote this in a recent conversation in a Wayfarer group im in

    "It says playgrounds not within 40m and then in classic Niantic tradition they throw all consistency out of the window by saying to reject indoor portals that are within 40m of PRP and in the indoor section worded so outdoor sculptures artwork etc should be rejected if within 40m of PRP, and then on the location section it says to be aware if its within 40m of being PRP and only to reject if its on or may encourage people to enter the PRP"

    So in one breath its reject if within 40m, but in next its only be aware if its within 40m.

  • GendgiGendgi ✭✭✭

    That's what happens when new guidelines are rolled out poorly and unclearly that people disagree with no real way to check it while reviewing.

    https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/wayfarer/?p=web&s=wayspot-acceptance-criteria&f=ineligible-wayspots

    Please be sure to closely review nominations whose real-world location appears to be within 40 meters of private, single-family residential property, and nominations whose real-world location appears to be in a neighborhood park. To be clear, nominations should be rejected if their real-world location appears to be on private, single-family residential property or might encourage people to go onto private property (e.g., because the real-world location is at the end of a private driveway).

    It never was clear whether or not something should be rejected for simply being 40 meters from private residential property.

    https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/wayfarer/?p=web&s=wayspot-acceptance-criteria&f=niantic-wayfarer-clarifications-january-2020&l=en

    Not acceptable: Mounted or free-standing murals, paintings, fountains, sculptures, etc. on or within 40 meters of private residences.

    The "clarification" to deny within 40 meters is basically a paragraph subnote that many people are choosing to ignore or simply haven't seen. The guides are a genuine pain to search, still.

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