I don't think what is "featured" has anything to do with how highly rated something is. It is a completely random set of recently approved wayspots within a given period of time.
Are PoGO players able to use saved images? Those look like the exact same photo, indicating high probability the nomination was from an Ingress account. Obviously, votes came from cross-platform players.
I'm sorry that passed. I would be furious to see that in my area.
If legit, it could be a form of art. It's a little small, which could give it a lower "visual uniqueness" rating. But the problem I'm seeing if it is the exact same photo in two very different places.
That's possible. I always assumed since they're promoting them as the best they would be using whatever the top approved wayspots from the recents.
Aside from being able to spot some inappropriate things that have slipped through, I haven't found that feature to be particularly interesting. The wording is strange and not really applicable to all of the acceptance criteria and directly conflicts what we've been told with the "accessible to all" part.
Sure that's abuse, but given that the portal could be far away, it could not have shown up in the duplicates section, so both have flown through.
They could have also masked the street view location, though in Germany, I think there is no street view anyway, so not sure how it works.
Either way, to suggest that bad actors are all from PoGo and not Ingress is BS disproved by Andrew Krug/Niantic, but carry on hate-mongering.
The real issue is Niantic's broken system as I have continuously pointed out. But everyone here continues to overlook it in favour of ranting at PoGo players, of which hardly any are here. At least I'm complaining about the company that is meant to be here since we are their QA (which is a damn joke, maybe that should be a question in the next AMA).
First of all in my local area there has thus far not been a noticeable decrease in Portal quality. I live in the Netherlands and would like to know if others in my area are experiencing this. However one thing that has definitely happened to me is a lot more wrongful rejections, which seems counter to what most are complaining about. Mostly this is due to the fact that these nominations are on university grounds, and apparently those are "School K-12" and "Private Residential Property". I find it kind of funny to see others complain about to much getting though while here it seems unless it's a playground it stand no chance.
I was reviewing a few days and spotted something fishy. A submission of 'Senior University'. We discussed this in our WF Telegram and found out that this was really a daycare and senior residence. We flagged it as 1* but I went to Support and gave all the proof that the submitter lied and was trying to push this through.
Support came and said they have analyzed it yada, yada, yada... Well, it's a portal now.
At this point and with almost 25 K reviews, I don't care. Really, Niantic is not worth of our efforts.
Hey there @XQlusioN, following up on this report, the team has told me that they've gone through and rejected this Portal as it should have been weeded out earlier in the process. Please let me know if this isn't what you're seeing, thanks!
Thanks for answer on this important topic NianticCasey
In my opinion Niantic needs to re-review ALL portals added in last 2 years. As more and more players got the right to submit nominations (not just Pokemon players), the amount of junk portals has really increased. There are obvious 1* portals, and there are portals that theoretically meet criteria, but have zero cultural or historical value.
You should preserve the quality of your POI database. Quality is important, not quantity!
Some people actually want playable areas in the game. Quantity is not bad for any of the games, and your "ideas" of quality might not be mine. I think a baseball field or 2 or 3 in a park is quality. You may not, does that make me wrong?
Is the quality of the POI database really the most important? More POIs means more people can play the games, and this is where Niantic makes their money. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have stopped playing in the past because of a lack of POIs in their area.
Most people playing the games don't care at all about the quality of the POI's. They don't even mind when a POI doesn't exist anymore in the real world. They just need a fair number of POIs in order to play the game.
If you want to contribute to a high quality POI database perhaps you better become a Google Local Guide. And if you want to find out the cool places when traveling, you better start Geocaching. (Then you get the natural elements too.) Just my 2 cents.
@NianticBrian We need Dont follow criteria when we send in feeback about remove portals. Now we cant do nothing about all bad portals dont follow criteria. Write manuellt we have in old REDACTED is very good to.
If Niantic had the same thoughts as you, they should Just place random generated waipoint locations like others location games already do (Jurassic world, Minecraft, Magoo's, etc).
"Does Not Meet Current Criteria" is not a removal reason. Stop trying to push for the removal of all portals you dislike. I see you constantly spam posting in removal forum trying to remove valid portals. Stop trying to bend and break the rules to fit your alternate agenda.
And the first things to be targeted by such a change is all of the pubs, restaurants, and other hidden gems, hyper-local spots, and local attractions that some in the community detest so much.
Yet all changes they've made to the criteria seems to indicate they care that it really exists not that it's of particularly high quality. Just because Niantic are not on the quantity extreme doesn't automatically make them disagree with anything they said. If anything more recent changes have indicated that Niantic is trying to expand what qualifies as a valid portal with the intent to have more POIs. Especially the latest footbridge change seems quite a good indication of this.
What is wrong with having quality AND quantity? It would seem to me that if people were giving an honest review to all submissions and not simply banging away at that 1* it should be a simple matter to filter points of interest based on any criteria desired. You only want to see the historically relevant things, just filter for that. You want easy access and safe, filter for that. Etc. Far too often it seems that reviewers are simply eager to hit the reject button and grab the easy agreement then to actually complete the review. The criteria we have been given is the baseline for what they want in the database. The Quality is subjective.
Comments
Judging by the satellite pics, the top one "could" exist
The bottom one however is a pure homestop.
They both use the exact same image, so one, if not both, are fake.
Wow so none of the reviewers even bothered to look at the map to verify location then. It was featured so it had to have been rated really high.
I don't think what is "featured" has anything to do with how highly rated something is. It is a completely random set of recently approved wayspots within a given period of time.
Are PoGO players able to use saved images? Those look like the exact same photo, indicating high probability the nomination was from an Ingress account. Obviously, votes came from cross-platform players.
I'm sorry that passed. I would be furious to see that in my area.
If legit, it could be a form of art. It's a little small, which could give it a lower "visual uniqueness" rating. But the problem I'm seeing if it is the exact same photo in two very different places.
They can use Fake camera apps aswell.
So this isn't necessarily an Ingress submit.
Someone (or Niantic) could check if they are close by.
That's possible. I always assumed since they're promoting them as the best they would be using whatever the top approved wayspots from the recents.
Aside from being able to spot some inappropriate things that have slipped through, I haven't found that feature to be particularly interesting. The wording is strange and not really applicable to all of the acceptance criteria and directly conflicts what we've been told with the "accessible to all" part.
Thanks, @XQlusioN, that thought hadn't crossed my mind but it is a possibility.
Sure that's abuse, but given that the portal could be far away, it could not have shown up in the duplicates section, so both have flown through.
They could have also masked the street view location, though in Germany, I think there is no street view anyway, so not sure how it works.
Either way, to suggest that bad actors are all from PoGo and not Ingress is BS disproved by Andrew Krug/Niantic, but carry on hate-mongering.
The real issue is Niantic's broken system as I have continuously pointed out. But everyone here continues to overlook it in favour of ranting at PoGo players, of which hardly any are here. At least I'm complaining about the company that is meant to be here since we are their QA (which is a damn joke, maybe that should be a question in the next AMA).
First of all in my local area there has thus far not been a noticeable decrease in Portal quality. I live in the Netherlands and would like to know if others in my area are experiencing this. However one thing that has definitely happened to me is a lot more wrongful rejections, which seems counter to what most are complaining about. Mostly this is due to the fact that these nominations are on university grounds, and apparently those are "School K-12" and "Private Residential Property". I find it kind of funny to see others complain about to much getting though while here it seems unless it's a playground it stand no chance.
I was reviewing a few days and spotted something fishy. A submission of 'Senior University'. We discussed this in our WF Telegram and found out that this was really a daycare and senior residence. We flagged it as 1* but I went to Support and gave all the proof that the submitter lied and was trying to push this through.
Support came and said they have analyzed it yada, yada, yada... Well, it's a portal now.
At this point and with almost 25 K reviews, I don't care. Really, Niantic is not worth of our efforts.
@NianticCasey It's been over 2 weeks now and the portal is still active.
Does that mean rocks are now allowed?
If it was a summit marker, it would have contained at least some text to confirm this.
Hey there @XQlusioN, following up on this report, the team has told me that they've gone through and rejected this Portal as it should have been weeded out earlier in the process. Please let me know if this isn't what you're seeing, thanks!
@NianticCasey Thanks for the follow-up.
It is still showing up on Intel.
Not sure if that is related due to the ongoing issues with Intel or if the removal somehow failed.
Thanks for answer on this important topic NianticCasey
In my opinion Niantic needs to re-review ALL portals added in last 2 years. As more and more players got the right to submit nominations (not just Pokemon players), the amount of junk portals has really increased. There are obvious 1* portals, and there are portals that theoretically meet criteria, but have zero cultural or historical value.
You should preserve the quality of your POI database. Quality is important, not quantity!
Some people actually want playable areas in the game. Quantity is not bad for any of the games, and your "ideas" of quality might not be mine. I think a baseball field or 2 or 3 in a park is quality. You may not, does that make me wrong?
Is the quality of the POI database really the most important? More POIs means more people can play the games, and this is where Niantic makes their money. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have stopped playing in the past because of a lack of POIs in their area.
Most people playing the games don't care at all about the quality of the POI's. They don't even mind when a POI doesn't exist anymore in the real world. They just need a fair number of POIs in order to play the game.
If you want to contribute to a high quality POI database perhaps you better become a Google Local Guide. And if you want to find out the cool places when traveling, you better start Geocaching. (Then you get the natural elements too.) Just my 2 cents.
@NianticBrian We need Dont follow criteria when we send in feeback about remove portals. Now we cant do nothing about all bad portals dont follow criteria. Write manuellt we have in old REDACTED is very good to.
If Niantic had the same thoughts as you, they should Just place random generated waipoint locations like others location games already do (Jurassic world, Minecraft, Magoo's, etc).
"Does Not Meet Current Criteria" is not a removal reason. Stop trying to push for the removal of all portals you dislike. I see you constantly spam posting in removal forum trying to remove valid portals. Stop trying to bend and break the rules to fit your alternate agenda.
And the first things to be targeted by such a change is all of the pubs, restaurants, and other hidden gems, hyper-local spots, and local attractions that some in the community detest so much.
Yet all changes they've made to the criteria seems to indicate they care that it really exists not that it's of particularly high quality. Just because Niantic are not on the quantity extreme doesn't automatically make them disagree with anything they said. If anything more recent changes have indicated that Niantic is trying to expand what qualifies as a valid portal with the intent to have more POIs. Especially the latest footbridge change seems quite a good indication of this.
What is wrong with having quality AND quantity? It would seem to me that if people were giving an honest review to all submissions and not simply banging away at that 1* it should be a simple matter to filter points of interest based on any criteria desired. You only want to see the historically relevant things, just filter for that. You want easy access and safe, filter for that. Etc. Far too often it seems that reviewers are simply eager to hit the reject button and grab the easy agreement then to actually complete the review. The criteria we have been given is the baseline for what they want in the database. The Quality is subjective.