NSW State Survey Markers
BiggestBluest-ING
Posts: 5 ✭✭
More must be done to combat the constant influx of Survey Markers in NSW. These nominations do not meet any of the eligibility criteria, these markers are mass produced, near identical items with no cultural or historical value. They are not a great place for exploration, great place for exercise or a great place to be social with others. They are located at regular intervals along the kerb of every street in the state and as such they are are often in the front yard or on the driveway of family homes. And yet despite all this, not only are these markers submitted in their hundreds every day, they are constantly being accepted by reviewers.
See the below duplicate maps taken from recent submissions:
You can see just how common these markers are on the state database. https://maps.six.nsw.gov.au
Survey Markers are by far the most common submission I encounter while reviewing, I would estimate around 20% of all nominations I review are survey markers, and I am not the only one who is fed up.
Submitters will often include the in-game existence and prevalence of Survey Markers in their Supporting Evidence to justify their submission. It is also common to read the phrase "This an eligible submission according to Niantic - Geodetic Sign" with submitters creating a false equivalency by implying that because an appropriate label exists, the nomination must be eligible. I would like to point out that 'Snow and Ice' and 'Private Home' are also labels that can be chosen in the What is it? section despite being specifically prohibited.
Further exacerbating the problem is the fact that these nominations will occasionally show up on the Wayfarer homepage as part of Niantic's 'Featured Waypoints'.
There's not much more to say, while I would love Niantic to take a stand and mass delete these waypoints I know that's not going to happen. It would be great if Niantic could at least create a specific 'Generic, Mass Produced Item' rejection category that could be used in these situations as well as when dealing with the occasional nomination of street signs and bus stops.
Comments
Wow this sounds like places I would love to 'explore'
Quoting the NSW Spatial Services glossary (https://www.spatial.nsw.gov.au/surveying/scims_online/glossary):
---
Each Permanent Survey Mark (PSM) in SCIMS consists of a two-letter Mark Type prefix and a Mark Number.
The Mark Type is one of the following:
TS Trigonometrical Station
SS State Survey Mark
PM Permanent Mark
CR Cadastral Reference Mark
GB Geodetic Bench Mark
MM Miscellaneous Survey Mark
CP Mapping Control Point
---
When Niantic said in an AMA that survey markers/geodetic stations can be eligible, I'm pretty sure what they had in mind are trig stations not those 50c sized discs on the kerb.
I just wish people would stop voting these through because they see some are already in game nearby.
What's really infuriating is that quite often they claim it's got safe pedestrian access from the sidewalk but the pin is placed in the gutter. The gutter is part of the road and is not a safe place to stand, but then again, I'm reasonably sure that 99% of the people who submit those don't understand the concept of ultra strikes. Oh the irony, that often a real trig station on top of a named mountain would get rejected for no pedestrian access because the trail is a bit overgrown yet these things in the gutter goes through. I don't know about others but I know where I'm more likely to get hit by a car.
Having said that, I wouldn't reject all SS/PM marks, I would happily accept it if it's at an interesting location that would encourage exploration. For example, "State Survey Marker 15028" at Cape Banks is one that I would accept because it's located inside a national park and it has great views towards the water.
The legislation around these in NSW dictates that they must be placed "at intervals of not more than 100 metres along a road frontage that has intervening side boundaries" in urban areas (https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/2020-09-23/sl-2017-0486#sec.29).
If you had a game that (for example, ahem) used quadrilateral shaped cells that had edge lengths ranging from 50 to 80m to control the density of features, you can see how (if left unchecked) these could quickly proliferate in great numbers across entire suburbs in that game.
Is that what Niantic wants? There really needs to be a clear statement on what Niantic wants us to do with these markers so everyone is on the same page because there are quite a few confused and ideologically divided Australian Wayfinders out there right now.
It would be great if Niantic could at least create a specific 'Generic, Mass Produced Item' rejection category that could be used in these situations as well as when dealing with the occasional nomination of street signs and bus stops.
Remember how that worked out when the Generic Business reject reasons were rife? Anything was believed to be a generic "store or restaurant". Something "mass-produced" would go into the "other rejection criteria", use that. There is no point in creating a new reject reason if they aren't going to be used properly, or if the wayspot is going to be approved anyway.
It doesn't really matter how many times you reject a survey mark. Since most submitters have an excess of 40 nominations (including their endless alt accounts), all they will do is spam the nominations over and over until they get accepted. The worst offenders are those in Albion Park/Shellharbour (that use the exact same description for each one), Cherrybrook (example "State Survey Mark 46405." <- with a dot at the end, @Tntnnbltn-ING has an example of a typical Cherrybrook survey mark here), Turramurra (home of the abusive moving LFL), and Auburn (with the endless N/A supporting statements).
The majority of people have absolutely no idea what a survey mark is, and will often copy that description from the currently featured survey mark Wayspot (Condell Park/Wiley Park are huge violators, or the ones in Dulwich Hill that have a super useless supporting statement "eligible under rules" which demonstrates nothing). For the most part, so many nominations barely have good photos and are often tilted and sidewards, or a supporting photo that doesn't help or include the survey mark whatsoever and are also equally worthless.
The problem is not about the survey marks themselves. It's the spamming submitters. One rejection will just result in them submitting it again and again because they've all been approved elsewhere or a couple has already been approved in their area. There are some areas (like the featured Wayspot in The Ponds above) that seem to have quite the knowledge about survey marks. The majority of the crowd elsewhere really don't (when the copy and paste the same thing from the showcase, descriptions from other survey marks, or use the exact generic supporting statement starting with "Registered markers..." blah blah blah).
They are not being constantly accepted as much as you think. Many of them are being rejected for being submitted by people who barely have an idea of what they actually are or even understand what the description means. And they are just being resubmitted once they're rejected, or the next one just goes into voting because it's been spammed many times before.
For your reference, here are the two Niantic responses to Survey Marks:
Both the decisions above sent out shockwaves to those communities and groups who have been submitting survey marks or who were deliberating on submitting them, to which such submissions accelerated from this point onwards.
Just keep on rejecting if you feel that it is the right thing to do. Then days or weeks later, you'll see the same exact survey mark with the same photo, description and supporting statement again. What then? Spamming nominations is a strategy many nominators with these excess nominations use to try and fatigue reviewers into eventually slipping their poor attempt of a survey mark into acceptance.
This is an example where someone who knows absolutely nothing about survey marks tried to submit one, and left a stupid remark in their supporting statement trying to get help from their friend with words such as "Then for why you think its suitable put something like". They can't even spell spatial.
Bad part is that because some are getting through it is actually making it easier for more to get voted through.
Only way to stop this would be for Niantic to remove them all at once from both in game and in voting.
I'm sure there are things around that would make much better candidates but because of this flood of bad PoI they might not ever see the light.
@BiggestBluest-ING what do you recommend be done about these survey marks?
If you're in the SydRes Discord, you'll notice someone in particular ranting about reviewers being "picky" about their survey marks in the #Wayfarer channel. Consider starting there.
By the way, I've noticed a lot of fleshed out description edits for the Walk the Walls Festival in Cronulla featuring the name and more information for each of them. It's quite nice (don't know if it's you, but making a wild stab in the dark assumption).
Niantic once said these are Eligble. People tried to submit them and they got rejected. For obvious reasons too because they look nothing worthwhile.
The literal only reason they’re mass submitted and accepted is because of the first thing you see when you open up wayfarer website, was there featured section. and for Sydney NSW it was Lithgow that got featured. And they submitted survey markers and a few got thru. So for a good 6 months or so all 3 featured things were survey markers. Every week it would change and 2-3 new survey markers so when someone opened up wayfarer to review would one would show for a featured wayspot and when people reviewed they would think well I saw one as a featured wayspot so why not.
If it wasn’t for that this thread would of never happened.
You try submitting these anywhere else In the world or even anywhere else in australia for that fact they simply won’t get accepted no matter how hard you try.
and yes I’ve submitted a few in my time. Why? Because they got accepted and occupied my time whilst in lockdown.
I don’t like when things get rejected for pedestrian access, we’re not idiots the game has a wide radius even if a stop is in the middle of the street we can reach it from the sidewalk.
You do realise wayspots are not just for Pokemon Go right? There is a reason that the POI must have safe pedestrian access - so let me reiterate and elaborate why. In Ingress, there's an item called an ultra strike, these are weapons that have a very very small strike radius. You can protect/defend portals by equipping it with shields (and other mods), and you can recharge portals if they're being attacked, kind of like putting a Blissey wall in a PoGo gym then golden razzing it as it's being attacked. When a portal is fully shielded with something like Aegis, blasting it with bursters (especially from a distance) is rather ineffective, so you need to get rid of the shields first. Ultra strikes are used to de-mod a portal by standing right on top of the portal - standing on the sidewalk of a road trying to ultra strike something in the middle of the street is a waste of ultra strikes. Noting that the best ultra strike (L8) only has a range of 30 metres, with the entry level ultra strike having a mere range of 10 metres. According to slight GPS drift and sometimes misplacement, standing on top of a portal and ultra striking it is not always straightforward.
I'm not an Ingress player but I'm not ignorant of the game mechanisms of other Niantic games.
@ExPlatypus35z-PGO Niantic has made it explicitly clear that there needs to be a safe walking path for you to walk up and touch it, or if it's something overhead like artwork at the top of a building you need to be able to touch the corresponding location on the ground. That is why things in traffic circles and medians, fountains in the middle of lakes, etc. should be rejected for not having safe pedestrian access.
Here's the relevant information for you: https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/criteria/rejection
Having said that, as a long-time Ingress player I must disagree with @AeriTheBOFH-PGO's argument about ultrastrikes. Being able to ultrastrike mods off of a portal is convenient but not a requirement, and it's entirely possible to take out well-shielded portals without using ultrastrikes... they didn't even exist when I started playing. I've destroyed plenty of portals that I couldn't even get within 40 meters of because they were inside areas that weren't currently accessible to me. The real reason for requiring safe pedestrian is because Niantic wants every wayspot to have safe pedestrian access. (I say this as someone who has destroyed 661,075 resonators, neutralized 105,918 portals. For those who don't play Ingress, that's a LOT. The onyx Purifier badge is one of the hardest ones to earn and the threshold for that is 300K resonators destroyed.)
When I played Ingress, I relied heavily on ultra strikes, because the resident fielder would defend his portals. I could stand there and use a bunch of bursters but ultra striking was much much more effective in my case. Everyone has a different play style when it comes to Ingress but my point still stands. I'm sure that when Niantic mentioned that it's not sufficient to be able to interact with a wayspot from a sidewalk, they had people who use ultra strikes in mind. When I blew up a lot of portals I was only level 6 or 7, so dropping a bunch of L8 bursters to destroy actively defended anchors loaded with Aegis was not an option. When I did get to level 8, there just wasn't enough farms around either.
But I think at the end of the day, we (as in the road != safe pedestrian access crowd) can all agree that it's Niantic's intention that every wayspot has safe pedestrian access and you should be able to stand there safely for as long as you want. The short summary of the argument is "because Niantic said so", and I'm sure the mechanism of ultra strikes is one of the reasons, among others.
If anyone actually walked rather than drove, then they'd realise that these suburbs with "loads" of SSMs are actually quie widely spaced really. Given COVID, is better that people spread out to play rather than all gather. They might be uninteresting but are they any less interesting than a swing set in a playground or some random local small park sign? Really? Are they really that offensive? Then don't interact with them. About half the SSMs are on footpaths anyway - I don't think I've seen ones on the road get through. And they are geocaching targets BTW.
@bluejet-PGO do you have a problem?
I don’t believe one person telling others reviewers to reject them is informative. Spreading misinformation is incorrect. It has long believed that these markers have been approved long ago by many of the Niantic staff. Ive even seen someone from Niantic themselves approve them recently as well - from a community member. With the Niantic reviewers taking part of the new review system with the balloon icon next to a contribution.
@AeriTheBOFH-PGO Certainly different styles but there are plenty of places where you can stand right on top of a wayspot and still not be able to ultrastrike mods. I just got home from the San Francisco financial district, which means lots of tall buildings and hella GPS drift. I neutralized 252 portals and the only time I used ultrastrikes was when I wanted to knock the mods off of one so I could farm it.
I'm pretty sure the reason Niantic requires safe pedestrian access is that they don't want bad PR and legal liability for people doing stupid stuff to get to wayspots. Imagine some player getting hit and killed because they decided to run across a busy road to get to a wayspot in a median. That would probably end up with a lot of press and a lawsuit.
I don’t believe one person telling others reviewers to reject them is informative. Spreading misinformation is incorrect. It has long believed that these markers have been approved long ago by many of the Niantic staff. Ive even seen someone from Niantic themselves approve them recently as well (not my nomination). With the Niantic reviewers taking part of the new review system. There is a category for them. Look at the screenshot.
I think there is a big diffrence between survey markers for roadways and the national survey markers used to mark elevation, borders and mountain tops.
There are categories in that list for high schools, detached houses, fire stations, child care facilities, supermarkets, out houses, and police stations. Just because something appears in that list, it does not make it an automatic 5-star contribution.
I've heard of recent cases where Niantic reviewers have denied survey markers in Sydney as well, it really seems to be luck of the draw. Niantic has opted to not remove the markers in the past, but they also appear to maintain the position that removal and eligibility criteria are different beasts.
To beat a tired horse: without clarification from Niantic in the (potentially) unique case of NSW where these survey markers are extremely numerous in urban areas, I'm afraid there will never be a clear way to review these.
Using SIX maps in my little 1.9 km2 (0.7 sq mi) suburb of just shy of 4,000 people, I counted over 100 survey markers of the type shown in the OP. Does Niantic really want all of those submitted, and then for that process to be repeated in every town and suburb between Tweed Heads, Albury and all the way out to Broken Hill?
Many are buried, destroyed or on roads, or unsightly. I find the nicer-looking ones on footpaths are the most likely to get through. There aren't that many. Is easy to get a large suburb map and freak out about how many there are. What harm does it do? Many areas are have literally nothing else to tag.
Anyway, I usually vote 5/5/4/2/4..and 3 or 5 depending on whether I can see them or not (as long as the area looks plausible). And yes they are geodetic signs. Bam.
Apologies for the double post. That upload didn’t appear the first time but apparently it was delayed. Posting from my phone.
Any post that contains a photo has to be approved by a Niantic moderator and it can take a while sometimes.
Not anymore. We review photos
I meant posts on this forum containing photos need mod approval which is why bluejet’s comment was delayed. I was not talking about photo submissions.
You're right. Wayfarer is about the community's decision, so I can't really say to people to reject things. I agree that survey marks were touted by the former Ingress Community Manager Andrew Krug that they were eligible on public pathways. Some survey marks were in the system even before Wayfarer and OPR (the Ingress-only equivalent before Wayfarer) pre-2017, and only surged in popularity towards the end of 2020.
That being said, submitters need to make the effort to properly nominate a survey mark. It is very easy to tell whether someone has copied and pasted their description from the wayspot showcase and their supporting information is a paltry "eligible under rules" which means absolutely nothing to the reviewer. Or the photo is poor and not even centred like the majority of survey mark nominations in Cherrybrook. You should ask the survey mark submitter from Canterbury for guidance. Or Auburn for that case (despite their supporting statement is often N/A, they do a pretty good job everywhere else).
Lastly, someone told me not submit in the area and let the local community who play day in/day out do that instead. I did a few around Burwood and Homebush some months back but now I won't do anymore and leave the Inner West community to try to keep submitting survey marks and usually fail. All for your taking now, kapeesh?
Do you forget what it's like to be low level? When I was a tadpole, there were two portals that I simply couldn't hope to ****, because they had resonators in inaccessible places (e.g in a pond), and the centres similarly were not ultrastrikeable with low level USs. If I tried to attack those two portals, I would run out of standard bursters long before the last resonators went down, and that was without anybody recharging them.
Correctly positioned POIs in contrast can be taken down by a low level agent, with enough persistence, precisely because they can be ultrastruck.
Of course, after a few months of playing, I had access to level 8 bursters, and didn't give a ****'s about exactly which resonator was at which position, and whether a lone portal was shielded or not. But I haven't forgotten was it was like to be level 4, and how level 4 weapons were such a massive increase over level 3 ones...
Now, back to the topic at hand.
I live in Japan, and in Japan, trig points are stone blocks, about 20 cm square; I have submitted very few, as they are almost impossible to get passed, even the "1st order" ones, of which there are very few. (In all of Osaka prefecture, population about 8 million, there is a grand total of... four. This means the great majority of cities in the prefecture have not a single 1st-order trig point). See here: http://kansekimanpo3.okunohosomichi.net/ten_index_osaka.html
Counting all trig points, 1st through 4th order, Osaka prefecture has 403. Given their rarity, you might think they would make good wayfarer candidates, and people do indeed go trig point bagging, so they could well fit the "exploration" category even if there was no "geodetic survey marker" category. But as rather undistinguished stone blocks, they don't have much appeal in the eyes of the standard reviewer. After all, the only inscription they bear is the order of the marker (1st, 2nd, etc.), and a rather small square stone block, surrounded by leaves and other forest detritus (as they usually are) isn't exactly photogenic.
I would never dream of submitting mere surveying markers, even if they were "eligible", give these, at least here, are usually just concrete blocks about 8 cm square, with no visible features about them at all, other than an orientation cross and the name "Osaka" on the side (some are better - being partially in plastic, with the lat-long coordinates printed on them; but the only time I've used these is as supporting photos for a portal candidate that just happened to have one of these nearby - to show the candidate is actually at this position).
But who wants their game littered with these things - they occur every hundred metres, in every direction. The game would be nothing but survey markers if these were acceptable.
When people talk about NSW markers, they have to bear in mind what goes for NSW goes for the rest of the world. In NZ, where I used to live, trig stations were great big things you could climb on, and were easily photographable. Great candidates you might think! But the form of a trig point shouldn't really matter, since it's all about function with these things. And if a Japanese trig point isn't "acceptable" I don't think an NZ one should be either - and nice versa.
Personally I'd like to see trig points accepted - if of a certain standard. In population-dense Japan, one could make an argument for any trig point (i.e. all 403 of the ones in Osaka Prefecture). But you couldn't have that density in New Zealand; not least because trig *stations* in NZ are simply not as densely placed as that, but also because such a density would look too great in comparison to all the other waypoints (not a problem in Osaka, which has what - maybe 100000 portals?). A 403:100000 ratio would hardly be overkill, but it would look a bit different if the ratio was 403 to 10000, and obviously so if it was 403:1000.
Imagine getting survey mark...
after survey mark...
with the same unoriginal generic description...
over...
and over...
again.
Five consecutive reviews. All copypasta descriptions from one concentrated area. Wayfarer is tiring.
Survey markers...
... are an integral part...
... of geospatial infrastructure...
...and environmental map in NSW...
... blah blah i am unoriginal
(Yeahp, these are five other survey marks that have been gone into voting since this post was approved this morning, it's also likely the five in the last post have all been approved as well)
For a bonus, you cannot reject these because this is ths submitter's attitude towards these:
20 times to get up
My favourite from the past few days was the one in the middle of Kingsway.
There was also old **** from Turramurra, who probably spammed the system anyway because the one I reviewed a couple of days ago was a dupe of one already in the system, which I had no idea how it got through in the first place because it was literally on the road.
Maybe one of these days I'll actively try to get some removed for pedestrian access and PRP.