HELP! We are suffering from massive removing attacks
phi2458-PGO
Posts: 164 ✭✭✭
Over the past few weeks, a removing war has destroyed a lot of wayspots in Chiayi county, Taiwan. According to the reports from local players, we have lost 82 wayspots in the past few weeks. Almost all the towns across the county have become disaster areas. We are still gathering information from local groups because the affected area is extremely large.
Furthermore, a web scraper was implemented to detect the removed wayspots. It compares the Ingress map with the local pokemon go map that does not update in recent months. The result shows that 297 wayspots were removed recently.
The following map shows the victims of the wars.
Link to the map: https://omega-phi.github.io/removed-waysopts-in-Chiayi/
We have proposed several restoration appeals on this forum. The following is one of the successful appeals we proposed. The wayspot was restored by the admin. However, it was gone after a few days.
We believe that these attacks come from a multi-accounts abuser. Please have a look at the following appeal. It is a restore appeal for a statue. Note the number of disagree.
We have never seen such a large number of disagrees. With a crowd of accounts for voting, we believe that the abuser has become the majority of the system. It is easy for the abuser to manipulate the system.
The war is still ongoing. A lot of wayspots are gone, but we can do nothing about it. We are suffering. Please help.
Comments
"Their" false Wayspot was removed and now "they" are angry https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/96199
Yeah, the "such high quality" "guys".
Yes, we believe that it is one of the accounts that the abuser has.
The Wayspot was reported by @aeromycity-ING. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/16806/someone-use-multi-accounts-to-aduit-the-wayfarer
After that, the abuser got angry.
The message is left by the abuser. It says: “Aeromycity, a player from Chiayi, removed a lot of portals in Yunlin. Don’t blame me for the revenge.”
Both topics are about the same case, right?
it would be good if a moderator merged them.
Yes, we are telling the same story. It seems that there is a glitch on this forum. I did not notice that there is already a post about this problem.
There's no glitch, your post is 3 minutes earlier than the other one, so neither of you were aware of the other post at the time when you started writing it.
The sad part about this situation is that rarely Niantic acts on multiaccounters, and it has been shown that it's too easy to attack a community and claim "I'm the good guy, I only use one account"
Would agree. The current system is vulnerable to attack. You just need about 15 accounts, and then you can take over the system. Achieving this goal is relatively easy. You can simply call your friends for help or create multiple accounts and review yourself. (Maybe with the help of cheating scripts?)
I think Niantic should re-examine the current reviewing process. Crowdsourcing the reviewing tasks reduces the cost significantly. However, the disadvantage of crowdsourcing is that it is difficult to control the quality. There should be a mechanism to ensure the quality of reviewing. Otherwise, the consequence of bad reviewers would be a disaster.
By the way, I’m curious about the process of reporting invalid wayspots. Are these reports also reviewed by the local players in the reviewing system? Or are they reviewed by the admins? I did not see any invalid reports when I was reviewing.
It is weird that a large number of valid wayspots are removed in a short time.
They are not reviewed by players, they are reviewed by Niantic.
I've never seen a removal request show up for voting in Wayfinder, so I assume they ae handled internally by Niantic.
Since they are handled internally, I find it strange they would choose to remove legitimate stuff. Cause that kinda makes it seem like they aren’t doing their jobs then. Especially considering how many have been removed in one area.
Thanks all for the reply.
That’s strange. The following wayspot was removed, restored, and removed again. I’m not sure about the information that makes Niantic change its mind.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20757/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0721-1-4-%E7%A2%91%E4%BB%94%E9%A0%AD%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80
Furthermore, the following is the list of restoration appeals we have proposed.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18771/multiple-temples-and-landmarks-are-removed-due-to-unknown-reason
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21045/temples-and-tour-maps-are-removed-why
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21267/huge-statue-was-removed-due-to-misleading-information
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20931/multiple-bridges-with-murals-are-removed-due-to-misleading-information
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21511/more-temples-were-removed-ridiculously
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21577/maps-and-introduction-signs-with-art-on-the-bicycle-way-were-removed-due-to-misleading-information
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20421/remove-waypoint-without-unknow-reason-part-0715
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/19918/remove-waypoint-without-unknow-reason-part-0706
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/19387/remove-waypoint-without-unknow-reason
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/19050/multiple-temples-and-landmarks-are-removed-due-to-unknown-reason
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20389/remove-waypoint-without-unknow-reason-part-0714
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20691/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0720-1-4-portals-%E5%B8%83%E8%A2%8B%E6%96%B0%E5%A1%AD%E8%A5%BF%E7%87%9F-%E9%AD%8D%E6%B8%AF%E5%A4%AA%E8%81%96%E5%AE%AE%E7%89%8C%E6%A8%93-%E5%A4%AA%E8%81%96%E5%AE%AE%E5%8D%97%E7%87%9F-%E5%A4%AA%E8%81%96%E5%AE%AE%E5%8C%97%E7%87%9F
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20484/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0715-1
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20596/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0717-1-%E6%B8%AF%E5%A2%98%E7%A2%91%E7%89%86
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20486/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0715-2
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20607/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0718-1-4-portals-%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%AE%E5%8C%97%E7%87%9F-%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%AE%E6%9D%B1%E7%87%9F-%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%AE%E8%A5%BF%E7%87%9F-%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%AE%E5%8D%97%E7%87%9F
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20757/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0721-1-4-%E7%A2%91%E4%BB%94%E9%A0%AD%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20545/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0716-2
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20585/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0716-2
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20577/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0716-3
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20614/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0718-3-portals-%E6%A0%97%E5%AD%90%E5%B4%99%E9%9D%88%E6%85%88%E5%AE%AE%E7%89%8C%E6%A8%93-%E4%BA%94%E5%BA%9C%E5%8D%83%E6%AD%B2-%E4%B8%AD%E5%A3%87%E5%85%83%E5%B8%A5-%E4%B8%AD%E6%B4%B2%E7%A6%8F%E5%AE%89%E5%AE%AE%E7%89%8C%E6%A8%93
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20541/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0716-1
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21514/bug-appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0809-1-4-portals-%E6%9D%B1%E6%B8%AF%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80%E9%81%8B%E5%8B%95%E4%B8%AD%E5%BF%83-%E6%9D%B1%E6%B8%AF%E8%97%9D%E8%A1%93%E7%89%86-%E5%89%8D%E6%9D%B1%E6%B8%AF%E4%B8%AD%E6%9D%B1%E5%AE%AE%E9%87%91%E7%88%90-%E5%B0%8F%E6%9D%B1%E7%87%9F
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/21515/appeal-portal-wrongly-removed-0809-2-%E7%A2%91%E5%89%8D%E7%A4%BE%E5%8D%80%E5%B0%8E%E8%A6%BD%E5%9C%B0%E5%9C%96
Many of them seem to be totally fine. And Niantic has accepted many appeals.
There may be pedestrian safety concerns in some of the wayspots. But as AMA said, the definition of safe pedestrian access varies from country to country. It would be impossible to set a specific global requirement.
https://ingressama.com/search?q=Sidewalks
There are several discussions about pedestrian access in rural areas on this forum. Whether the location is safe depends on the surroundings and the local laws. A clear sidewalk would be nice. But in some rural areas, pedestrians can walk safely on the road without a clear sidewalk. In my opinion, many of the wayspots are intended for pedestrians to visit. I think it would be fine.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/16861/how-would-you-vote-on-this-one
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/127/pedestrian-access
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/5468/whatb-do-we-think-of-this-for-pedestrian-access
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/11557/rural-places-with-no-pedestrian-walkways
This screenshot is from the wayfarer system just on yesterday.
It seems that the abuser still keep his revenge without any punishment.
That's really awful and absolutely a disaster to local community legal player.
Please carefully deeply investigate the whole event and take any necessary action @NianticGiffard @NianticBrian-ING @NianticCasey-ING @halette.
Thank you sincerely
I believe that Niantic is testing programs (routines) to automatically remove wayspots. Source: "we are going to do some spring cleaning for accepted Wayspots that very clearly don’t meet the current criteria" on https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/help/niantic-wayfarer-november-2020-ama
And I believe they'll soften the sting, by adding wayspots from the FourSquare database they bought. Perhaps they'll also bring up wayspots that were accepted but too close to an invalid one.
I think Taiwan and others were test runs. It'll probably happen globally this year, maybe "soon" with the big Wayfarer freeze and update.
Thank you for the information.
I have read through the statement. Does it mean that Niantic will apply AI to judge if the wayspots meet the criteria?
The statement says that the cleaning is specifically regarding inappropriate language and game references in titles/descriptions, but I don’t see any language problems with these cases. I don’t think they were removed because of bad words.
We all know that the performance of Niantic’s bad words filter is poor if the language is not English. If the wayspots were removed by the AI, I think they were falsely removed.
I don't know. I think we're all just guessing. Time will tell.