Exactly, And this means that those of us here, who were trying to help make Niantic's job easier by helping to clarify and correct misinformation in that group, have been blocked from doing so by abusive moderating. We tend to self-police to a large extent and tried to perform this function and were punished for it.
@NianticCasey It doesn't explicitly say that the group is official however given that we don't have an official cross game platform, I think most people might think it is offical because the size and the fact your a member might lead people to believe that all information from mods is getting Niantic approval. Having them add something like player run to group's description and asking mod to make a posting to clarify to current members that it is not official but player run is probably a good option.
It certainly doesn’t help that they call themselves the “Niantic Wayfarer Global Reviewers Admin Team” and uses the Niantic Logo and all. It’s like a deceptive EBay post.
@NianticCasey I am the David Jeffers that you've seen and some of these screenshots that was banned for commenting on a post of Jamie's where he was complaining that someone moved his nomination into a different S2 cell and made it so they wouldn't become a pokestop, Jamie claims that he deleted a number of comments of mine that were rude, but in reality this is the only comment that was deleted.
"Is the new locationmore accurate than the one you submitted it with? Cause if so.. got no one to blame but yourself there buddy. It's not a matter of purists messing with your subs, it's a matter of people doing exactly what they're supposed to do. Make sure that the location is as accurate as possible."
while unfortunately don't have a screenshot of the original post, The original post was the same song and dance as Jamie is known for it. Complaining about Ingress people who take the nomination guidelines seriously and don't approve everything with a giant rubber stamp. Jamie routinely encourages people to just accept anything that's even remotely similar to the most cherry-picked of information from the guidelines, and he often delete any comment that is the the least bit critical, even ones that reference specific things said by you and other Niantic representatives.
I certainly don't think that they have ever claimed specifically to be official, but they have made absolutely no effort to dispel any assumption that they are official, they have made no mention that they are unofficial in any of their documentation. And have even on multiple occasions told people that they have your approval because they have you in that group. I even had someone message me directly to mock me for making my group after you posted your introduction to effectively tell me "see looks like Niantic chose a side"
I'm not going to ask you to leave that group because honestly they need you to be in there to have the opportunity to correct the absolute nonsense that get posted there sometimes.
But what I do ask is that you also join this group. This Group was started by people that Jamie has labeled purists, people who would often be critical of nominations and give constructive feedback and give actual historical context as to why things are they are and even on multiple occasions link to statements made by you or other Niantic representatives. I made this group shortly after I was banned from the group that this post is mentioning because of the earlier mentioned comment. after having my common deleted I replied back with a screenshot of the comment asking him why he thought it was appropriate to delete my comment. After that it started a discussion and basically all of the other members agreed that he was out of line for deleting my comment and because I raised too much of a stink and exposed him he banned me as retaliation So I created this group. I asked that you please join it and introduce yourself in a similar way you did in the other group, if only to **** that group away from their claimed legitimacy.
That Facebook group is a total joke! The admin kept blocking my comments because I was rightfully commenting on the 1* nominations to be rated 1*. He pretty much admitted just as much that he doesn't care about quality and just wants more Pokestops.
Several of the people in there have straight up said they don't care about quality, they want every square inch of the earth to be a wayspot, claiming that's what Niantic wants.
This is the main problem that caused me to make this post to draw Niantic's attention to it. If they are, in fact, in contact with the moderators there, perhaps they can do something about the flagrant abuse. It's one thing to have a player run group that has some misinformation in it. That's almost unavoidable because there are a lot of different interpretations of the guidelines. But to have a player-run group that tries to come off as a a source of info and advice and that "works with niantic staff" but then then uses their moderator powers as aggressively as this to try to control and skew the info is abuse. They delete dozens, probably hundreds, of comments any time someone posts an interpretation they don't like. They have banned at least a dozen players for trying to correct misinformation, and have lied about the reasons for the bans. It's malicious, the leadership is using the group to promote their own agenda and try to influence inexperienced reviewers so they can try to pass wayspots that do not fit with the guidelines.
Thanks for all of the feedback here. Unfortunately, I'm not able to do anything to influence their removal of certain members from the group as this isn't an official channel. I have been in contact with these moderators to update the name and description to more clearly distinguish themselves as an unofficial or fan-run group.
I hear you on the 'we have something cooking' not being sufficient enough and that action is needed. All I can say in response is that we are very close to a number of initiatives that will directly address a lot of the feedback in this thread. In the meantime, I'll commit to be more active in participating in discussions on this page to dispel any misinformation that I can see.
I never personally had a problem with Niantic being in their name, the only problem I had was that they made no effort at the time that I was in the group to dispel any perception that they were an official group. And then shortly after NianticCasey joined that group, they started using that as some sort of sign of approval from Niantic. As you just provided a screenshot of them, they have changed that in their group description. That wasn't there when I was banned from the group.
My problem with that group has always been that the leadership of that group is very anti-reject. Everything but the most dirty of coal they try to worm their way through by cherry picking the wayfair documentation and entirely ignoring anyone who points out AMA clarifications of nomination rules that may be unclear. the admin, Jamie, would very frequently post complaints about things that he got rejected that he claimed were easy accepting, but where sometimes things like a mural painted on the side of a private residential garage, And he would claim because it's not "Private resistance" that it was acceptable. And anyone who tried to dispel that misinformation would get their comments deleted by Jamie, And if they reposted their concern, no matter how nice they were about it, Jamie would continue to delete their comments and then ban them.
Instead of allowing discussion to happen, and constructive criticism of nominations, they delete any detailed explanations of why something should be rejected because they want to push the goal of having as many PokéStops as possible instead of having quality control at all. They have argued that it is their job as reviewers to accept as many things as possible to help improve the game, they claim that they have never even looked at what a postdoc represents and don't care what's in game. They entirely ignore the angle of exploration and Discovery. And they are creating and influencing a lot of people and giving bad information like "Just keep submitting it over and over again until it goes through" When talking about things that are very clearly against guidelines.
It is, but hours after they made the changes to the group, they still left the admin page the same.
Using the Niantic logo and the tag "NianticWayfarerGlobal" makes it still look like it's part of NIA as a company.
It makes posts to the group and with a logo very similar to official Niantic pages it's still very easy to assume it's a Offical Niantic group. Especially when viewed as a member
Looks like "Niantic Wayfarer - Niantic Wayfarer" facebook group ran by David Jeffers, just did the exact same stuff to a member on his page for people arguing over what is written versus opinions.
I was banned for saying that I would report as abuse an edit lol. The admin are joke, they even tell you to use IITC to max yours nominations, and if the nomination will not pop on pogo, just dont nominate they say.
I don't know you and I don't know who that is. I just enjoyed watching an entire discussions on the Facebook page from a link on here with admins and other agents/trainers. I'd have to say that group is just as bad as the other group based on what I saw in one thread 106 comments. One person got muted when the mob bashed and attacked one person. Literally saw couple people start harassing a guy for saying he was buying accounts and people chiming in saying yes it is a conspiracy that your submissions are rejected. If that can occur, than the system is flawed and Niantic needs to be aware that people are rejecting submissions on purpose.
Chris, because that's obviously you. Don't try to hide behind the "A Member on his page" ****.
The post you made was intentionally there to stir stuff up, as you don't ever post things like this in this group, because even in Jamie's group you would have been laughed at for nominating a good will store. Now, We won't argue your nominations merits here as that would be incredibly off topic, but I bring this up to reply to your accusation that we "did the exact same stuff". No one deleted your arguments. Discussion and critique addressed your points, referenced exactly why you were wrong, and that's it. The issue with Jamie's group that we're bringing up, is that Jamie actively hides comments that disagree with the policy of rubber stamp approve everything they can to get as many PokéStops as possible. That if anyone tries to reference why something should be rejected, or debate anything that would result in fewer poker stops they will delete your comments and ban you If you don't fall into line with their rubber stamp policy to accept everything.
You were muted, and a single comment was deleted however for trolling and being overly aggressive. You were even flinging personal insults and attacks. You'll notice that if you check the notification for your mute reason. And if you're really not Chris, you also would have seen the comments that I made on the post announcing exactly why he received a mute. We received a report and decided that it violated our rule two, but your post as a whole remained.
Post proof. I've been a part of the page moderated by Jeffers and it has been civil and helpful. They're even setting up a page where experienced reviewers can mentor newer ones.
Jamie K's page has been absoultly awful, encouraging PRP Portals, violating guidelines, and awful moderation. As evidenced by multiple people in this thread. The fact that you think buying multiple niantic accounts is okay just shows the kind of awful judgement you have about Ingress.
Sorry my name is Hoffenheim on the forums. It is not Chris, please address me correctly. Yes the guy Chris was on facebook, in the discussion. I am just sharing what I saw first hand on a Facebook page from notifications that came through today on my Facebook notifications. A 106 comment thread where multiple people engaged to attack a person and the admin muted one person instead of everyone that was wrong. The admin even said others were okay when they were wrong from the beginning. There was mention of abusing wayfarer and people potentially rejecting submissions on purpose for submissions people think are his. I suggest Niantic looks into all of it. Because if submissions are being rejected on purpose for valid things just because of a person others disagree with, than Wayfarer needs some software to detect when people are rejecting things that are valid or an appeal process should occur as a result. Reviewers are abusing the system easier than submitters and it shouldn't go unnoticed.
Are you suggesting that they should tolerate someone who has a well established reputation for spreading misinformation and outright lies in multiple forums?
The facts are he posted something, when doesn't that guy "Chris" share something somewhere between Reddit and Facebook? Okay. That is good for him. Just because he might have an ingress account? Or an old submission finally got rejected doesn't mean it is me.. Sorry bud, but you got the wrong person. He shares nianticcasey posts as well, are you saying they are the same person as well? Someone even mentioned that he has direct access to Niantic on that Facebook forum discussion today. If he has direct access to Niantic, he is doing better than me. I can't even get a simple question answered timely on here.
I just wanted to point out that Niantic needs to look into things on your page too, since your people did bring up issues with other Facebook Pages. If there is people rejecting submissions because of disagreements with people, they should look into rejections or chime in on an issue that is having people in a heated debate over a nomination idea. If people are cheating then Niantic should be aware of it as well.
I am not disagreeing that the submission "Chris" is bringing up is a low quality submission based on the photo, maybe at best a 3star for me for being "unsure" is what I typically would vote on these, but low quality submissions can still be approved. If Niantic deems them acceptable or provides more clarity on the issue, that helps all of the communities as a whole and not just that one person.
Chris, you were muted (not banned) for instigating arguments with people trying to help you. Instead of accepting criticism you attacked people (including the admins) because they disagreed that a Goodwill Chain Store sign was a valid nomination.
There is a huge difference between muting someone who had twice issued personal attacks on other players, something clearly in violation of the rules on courtesy and respect, verses deleting any and every comment from an opposing viewpoint and then banning a dozen or more people from ever participating again, without warnings and while fabricating reasons for the bans.
It is not an easy balance to keep peace and respect while also allowing people to express various viewpoints. Deliberate trolling is not cool either, which is clearly what has been happening.
Niantic cannot control any of these facebook groups directly unless they create their own and we'd MUCH rather have them focus on getting the criteria into something like a workable state than dealing with managing a facebook group. That said we should really try to refrain from petty bickering. That only causes more issues in the long run and buries the relevant issues. The only reason this issue was brought here is because a whole group of people were being systematically silenced elsewhere, in a very calculated attempt to manipulate and control information about reviewing in order to let one group's admin, not Niantic and their staff, decide portals would get approved.
Comments
Exactly, And this means that those of us here, who were trying to help make Niantic's job easier by helping to clarify and correct misinformation in that group, have been blocked from doing so by abusive moderating. We tend to self-police to a large extent and tried to perform this function and were punished for it.
@NianticCasey It doesn't explicitly say that the group is official however given that we don't have an official cross game platform, I think most people might think it is offical because the size and the fact your a member might lead people to believe that all information from mods is getting Niantic approval. Having them add something like player run to group's description and asking mod to make a posting to clarify to current members that it is not official but player run is probably a good option.
It certainly doesn’t help that they call themselves the “Niantic Wayfarer Global Reviewers Admin Team” and uses the Niantic Logo and all. It’s like a deceptive EBay post.
@NianticCasey I am the David Jeffers that you've seen and some of these screenshots that was banned for commenting on a post of Jamie's where he was complaining that someone moved his nomination into a different S2 cell and made it so they wouldn't become a pokestop, Jamie claims that he deleted a number of comments of mine that were rude, but in reality this is the only comment that was deleted.
"Is the new locationmore accurate than the one you submitted it with? Cause if so.. got no one to blame but yourself there buddy. It's not a matter of purists messing with your subs, it's a matter of people doing exactly what they're supposed to do. Make sure that the location is as accurate as possible."
while unfortunately don't have a screenshot of the original post, The original post was the same song and dance as Jamie is known for it. Complaining about Ingress people who take the nomination guidelines seriously and don't approve everything with a giant rubber stamp. Jamie routinely encourages people to just accept anything that's even remotely similar to the most cherry-picked of information from the guidelines, and he often delete any comment that is the the least bit critical, even ones that reference specific things said by you and other Niantic representatives.
I certainly don't think that they have ever claimed specifically to be official, but they have made absolutely no effort to dispel any assumption that they are official, they have made no mention that they are unofficial in any of their documentation. And have even on multiple occasions told people that they have your approval because they have you in that group. I even had someone message me directly to mock me for making my group after you posted your introduction to effectively tell me "see looks like Niantic chose a side"
I'm not going to ask you to leave that group because honestly they need you to be in there to have the opportunity to correct the absolute nonsense that get posted there sometimes.
But what I do ask is that you also join this group. This Group was started by people that Jamie has labeled purists, people who would often be critical of nominations and give constructive feedback and give actual historical context as to why things are they are and even on multiple occasions link to statements made by you or other Niantic representatives. I made this group shortly after I was banned from the group that this post is mentioning because of the earlier mentioned comment. after having my common deleted I replied back with a screenshot of the comment asking him why he thought it was appropriate to delete my comment. After that it started a discussion and basically all of the other members agreed that he was out of line for deleting my comment and because I raised too much of a stink and exposed him he banned me as retaliation So I created this group. I asked that you please join it and introduce yourself in a similar way you did in the other group, if only to **** that group away from their claimed legitimacy.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/NianticWayFarer
That Facebook group is a total joke! The admin kept blocking my comments because I was rightfully commenting on the 1* nominations to be rated 1*. He pretty much admitted just as much that he doesn't care about quality and just wants more Pokestops.
Several of the people in there have straight up said they don't care about quality, they want every square inch of the earth to be a wayspot, claiming that's what Niantic wants.
This is the main problem that caused me to make this post to draw Niantic's attention to it. If they are, in fact, in contact with the moderators there, perhaps they can do something about the flagrant abuse. It's one thing to have a player run group that has some misinformation in it. That's almost unavoidable because there are a lot of different interpretations of the guidelines. But to have a player-run group that tries to come off as a a source of info and advice and that "works with niantic staff" but then then uses their moderator powers as aggressively as this to try to control and skew the info is abuse. They delete dozens, probably hundreds, of comments any time someone posts an interpretation they don't like. They have banned at least a dozen players for trying to correct misinformation, and have lied about the reasons for the bans. It's malicious, the leadership is using the group to promote their own agenda and try to influence inexperienced reviewers so they can try to pass wayspots that do not fit with the guidelines.
Did the group get removed or am I just blocked from seeing it?
Thanks for all of the feedback here. Unfortunately, I'm not able to do anything to influence their removal of certain members from the group as this isn't an official channel. I have been in contact with these moderators to update the name and description to more clearly distinguish themselves as an unofficial or fan-run group.
I hear you on the 'we have something cooking' not being sufficient enough and that action is needed. All I can say in response is that we are very close to a number of initiatives that will directly address a lot of the feedback in this thread. In the meantime, I'll commit to be more active in participating in discussions on this page to dispel any misinformation that I can see.
Blocked from seeing it.
@NianticCasey Thank you.
Fwiw, they changed the name and description
So, shouldn't this new group also remove Niantic from their name?
I never personally had a problem with Niantic being in their name, the only problem I had was that they made no effort at the time that I was in the group to dispel any perception that they were an official group. And then shortly after NianticCasey joined that group, they started using that as some sort of sign of approval from Niantic. As you just provided a screenshot of them, they have changed that in their group description. That wasn't there when I was banned from the group.
My problem with that group has always been that the leadership of that group is very anti-reject. Everything but the most dirty of coal they try to worm their way through by cherry picking the wayfair documentation and entirely ignoring anyone who points out AMA clarifications of nomination rules that may be unclear. the admin, Jamie, would very frequently post complaints about things that he got rejected that he claimed were easy accepting, but where sometimes things like a mural painted on the side of a private residential garage, And he would claim because it's not "Private resistance" that it was acceptable. And anyone who tried to dispel that misinformation would get their comments deleted by Jamie, And if they reposted their concern, no matter how nice they were about it, Jamie would continue to delete their comments and then ban them.
Instead of allowing discussion to happen, and constructive criticism of nominations, they delete any detailed explanations of why something should be rejected because they want to push the goal of having as many PokéStops as possible instead of having quality control at all. They have argued that it is their job as reviewers to accept as many things as possible to help improve the game, they claim that they have never even looked at what a postdoc represents and don't care what's in game. They entirely ignore the angle of exploration and Discovery. And they are creating and influencing a lot of people and giving bad information like "Just keep submitting it over and over again until it goes through" When talking about things that are very clearly against guidelines.
It is, but hours after they made the changes to the group, they still left the admin page the same.
Using the Niantic logo and the tag "NianticWayfarerGlobal" makes it still look like it's part of NIA as a company.
It makes posts to the group and with a logo very similar to official Niantic pages it's still very easy to assume it's a Offical Niantic group. Especially when viewed as a member
Looks like "Niantic Wayfarer - Niantic Wayfarer" facebook group ran by David Jeffers, just did the exact same stuff to a member on his page for people arguing over what is written versus opinions.
Hi Timerclock.
I was banned for saying that I would report as abuse an edit lol. The admin are joke, they even tell you to use IITC to max yours nominations, and if the nomination will not pop on pogo, just dont nominate they say.
I don't know you and I don't know who that is. I just enjoyed watching an entire discussions on the Facebook page from a link on here with admins and other agents/trainers. I'd have to say that group is just as bad as the other group based on what I saw in one thread 106 comments. One person got muted when the mob bashed and attacked one person. Literally saw couple people start harassing a guy for saying he was buying accounts and people chiming in saying yes it is a conspiracy that your submissions are rejected. If that can occur, than the system is flawed and Niantic needs to be aware that people are rejecting submissions on purpose.
Chris, because that's obviously you. Don't try to hide behind the "A Member on his page" ****.
The post you made was intentionally there to stir stuff up, as you don't ever post things like this in this group, because even in Jamie's group you would have been laughed at for nominating a good will store. Now, We won't argue your nominations merits here as that would be incredibly off topic, but I bring this up to reply to your accusation that we "did the exact same stuff". No one deleted your arguments. Discussion and critique addressed your points, referenced exactly why you were wrong, and that's it. The issue with Jamie's group that we're bringing up, is that Jamie actively hides comments that disagree with the policy of rubber stamp approve everything they can to get as many PokéStops as possible. That if anyone tries to reference why something should be rejected, or debate anything that would result in fewer poker stops they will delete your comments and ban you If you don't fall into line with their rubber stamp policy to accept everything.
You were muted, and a single comment was deleted however for trolling and being overly aggressive. You were even flinging personal insults and attacks. You'll notice that if you check the notification for your mute reason. And if you're really not Chris, you also would have seen the comments that I made on the post announcing exactly why he received a mute. We received a report and decided that it violated our rule two, but your post as a whole remained.
Post proof. I've been a part of the page moderated by Jeffers and it has been civil and helpful. They're even setting up a page where experienced reviewers can mentor newer ones.
Jamie K's page has been absoultly awful, encouraging PRP Portals, violating guidelines, and awful moderation. As evidenced by multiple people in this thread. The fact that you think buying multiple niantic accounts is okay just shows the kind of awful judgement you have about Ingress.
Sorry my name is Hoffenheim on the forums. It is not Chris, please address me correctly. Yes the guy Chris was on facebook, in the discussion. I am just sharing what I saw first hand on a Facebook page from notifications that came through today on my Facebook notifications. A 106 comment thread where multiple people engaged to attack a person and the admin muted one person instead of everyone that was wrong. The admin even said others were okay when they were wrong from the beginning. There was mention of abusing wayfarer and people potentially rejecting submissions on purpose for submissions people think are his. I suggest Niantic looks into all of it. Because if submissions are being rejected on purpose for valid things just because of a person others disagree with, than Wayfarer needs some software to detect when people are rejecting things that are valid or an appeal process should occur as a result. Reviewers are abusing the system easier than submitters and it shouldn't go unnoticed.
🙄 Not that it's worth arguing with you anymore _hoffenheim_ but I know for a fact that's you.
For any one else, I implore any onlookers to see for themselves. You would have linked to it, but you knew how bad it made you look.
Jamie Kay should be made to step down as the "admin" of any such group relating to Wayfarers.
Are you suggesting that they should tolerate someone who has a well established reputation for spreading misinformation and outright lies in multiple forums?
The facts are he posted something, when doesn't that guy "Chris" share something somewhere between Reddit and Facebook? Okay. That is good for him. Just because he might have an ingress account? Or an old submission finally got rejected doesn't mean it is me.. Sorry bud, but you got the wrong person. He shares nianticcasey posts as well, are you saying they are the same person as well? Someone even mentioned that he has direct access to Niantic on that Facebook forum discussion today. If he has direct access to Niantic, he is doing better than me. I can't even get a simple question answered timely on here.
I just wanted to point out that Niantic needs to look into things on your page too, since your people did bring up issues with other Facebook Pages. If there is people rejecting submissions because of disagreements with people, they should look into rejections or chime in on an issue that is having people in a heated debate over a nomination idea. If people are cheating then Niantic should be aware of it as well.
I am not disagreeing that the submission "Chris" is bringing up is a low quality submission based on the photo, maybe at best a 3star for me for being "unsure" is what I typically would vote on these, but low quality submissions can still be approved. If Niantic deems them acceptable or provides more clarity on the issue, that helps all of the communities as a whole and not just that one person.
You speak very good English for being German...…..Chris 😉
Chris, you were muted (not banned) for instigating arguments with people trying to help you. Instead of accepting criticism you attacked people (including the admins) because they disagreed that a Goodwill Chain Store sign was a valid nomination.
I didn't even have to read 2 comments by this Chris guy to know it's TC...
"It is written"...
There is a huge difference between muting someone who had twice issued personal attacks on other players, something clearly in violation of the rules on courtesy and respect, verses deleting any and every comment from an opposing viewpoint and then banning a dozen or more people from ever participating again, without warnings and while fabricating reasons for the bans.
It is not an easy balance to keep peace and respect while also allowing people to express various viewpoints. Deliberate trolling is not cool either, which is clearly what has been happening.
Niantic cannot control any of these facebook groups directly unless they create their own and we'd MUCH rather have them focus on getting the criteria into something like a workable state than dealing with managing a facebook group. That said we should really try to refrain from petty bickering. That only causes more issues in the long run and buries the relevant issues. The only reason this issue was brought here is because a whole group of people were being systematically silenced elsewhere, in a very calculated attempt to manipulate and control information about reviewing in order to let one group's admin, not Niantic and their staff, decide portals would get approved.