in my opinion it would be a better idea to extend the map with points. alignment of PoGo and ingress meshes. that each point qualifies in both applications, not removing points. in some countries there are definitely too few points
Unless you guys plan on sending people to these cities in person to verify locations one by one, I can't see this going well at all. Ignoring the downsides of potentially removing gyms (which I'd consider a major issue in itself), Niantic doesn't exactly have the best track record of large scale wayfarer edits. We already saw what happened with the foursquare import, and there doesn't seem to be much evidence that a similar scale location editing spree would turn out any better. Yes, some extremely abused locations will probably be corrected. However, I expect a significant number would either become inaccurate, or be moved from one valid location to another valid location, with the only real effect being the removal of waypoints from some games. And that is just not ideal, especially for gyms in their current state.
That's also ignoring the possibility that such real world objects could be moved shortly after this mass location edit, only to be locked in a now inaccurate position by Niantic. I really hope this is a slightly early April Fools joke.
Given track record, I think it’s really important to know how this check is being done?
when reviewing we are told it’s ok for the point to be within a metre or two - you can only move it if it’s above a limited distance. So is this looking for a higher degree of precision?
Why use a word such as “healthy”, which it then implies is a bad thing? Does the removal make the density less healthy?
it is perfectly possible in city centres to have a very high density of waypoints - yes there are specific areas of well known abuse and these could be specific targets. It is often an area where small objects do get moved, sometimes larger distances but often a slight shift often to accommodate something new. So whatever system they put in place it is going to have to be used on a regular basis to keep up with legitimate changes that are happening.
This is all clearly driven by lightship wanting to be able to sell information and that requires the accuracy. The message is simply warning game players that there could be knock on changes.
It makes sense that Niantic steps in to finally fix the position of wayspots that have a history of location edits or that now have a cloud of proposed location such that it's not possible to get an outcome from the regular process.
That would end faction wars in such places and as long as Niantic uses a proper way to verify the real location, the outcome of this action should be a positive one.
I was puzzled by the rating and upgrade comment as well! Was this said to reiterate that edits don't affect this, or are they making an exception now, and edits actually could hurt you? Important information for someone who is working hard submitting edits almost daily to have correct wayspots. Some don't go through because reviewers are unsure (water towers is a mess to fix in Norway due to massive missinformation, leading to rejections now and then.)
Is Niantic going to hire somebody for physically check accuracy of items which cannot been seen on satellite or Google Street View? I'm thinking Wayspots under dense vegetation/tree cover, indoors (i.e. in a building) or underground? Or are they going to simply rely on their best assumptions without actually going there in person and checking if their assumptions are correct?
Niantic has staff members in most of the mentioned cities that they mentioned. They have staff in London and Tokyo overseas. San Francisco is their main area, with Seattle near their Bellevue office. Strangely, New York and Los Angeles don't have Niantic offices (I think), so they might have partners or other smaller collab organisations doing groundwork maybe? Or just field trips I guess.
15,000 wayspots is actually not many at all. And if it's going to affect 7+x (where x would probably account for a small amount within numerous cities, let's say a city is a third and they do maybe six "small cities", that's another 2), then roughly speaking it's about 1.6k wayspots for each city, and 500 wayspots for each small one maybe?
Who knows, some moves might prove to be beneficial and actually add more. We won't know until they actually start, so maybe people in those cities can get snapshots and start recording what wayspots do get moved around and what ends up being "locked".
The fact that you can actually "lock" wayspots from further edits is something that I asked for in December 2021's AMA. I'd like to see that actually evolve and be applied to wayspots that are known for long-recurring abuse (Eugene Aynsley Goossens aka Pratap Singh Ji comes to mind).
Yeah, this is not as bad as I first feared it could be. Though, of course, Niantic is creating more work for itself when we alreeady so many problems outstanding that have not been addressed for many months, in some cases years potentially, you will have to forgive me for being so cynical. Obviously, I believe there are a lot of things Niantic could be doing to improve their relations with their customers, and perhaps this should not be a priority considering all of the other outstanding things people on this forum have asked for (in the AMAs on this very forum and also elsewhere and been acknowledged by Niantic) that have not been acted upon.
If these actions do bring improvements to the games I suppose in the end I'll have admit it was a good thing but I would still believe there were unaddressed issues of more importance.
No, the mission simply starts on the next available portal. It would only be a problem if the mission is down to a single portal (which is the case on the final mission of a banner in London).
(Sorry for quoting you, but how else was I going to answer the question? 🤣)
Am I the only one who assumes that cleanups to the lightship database are necessary if you want to show it to a customer? And that you can surely find such customers and presentations for them just in the mentioned cities?
So at least in these places the board should look valid....
The fact that you can actually "lock" wayspots from further edits is something that I asked for in December 2021's AMA
This has been possible for at least a year or two, if not longer. Niantic will lock a wayspot from edits if the editing process is being abused (e.g. to break links in Ingress, etc.).
But there's no mention at all about portals that might be removed because afterwards they might fail the 20m rule.
It's very clear that location edits are a great danger for Pokemon, but Ingress allows to create clusters of portals and the only problem would be that links and fields will drop, but that shouldn't be an issue for city portals, they aren't good anchors like some remote portal in a hard to reach location.
In theory as they have stated this project, it sounds like it will be great. Pin location is a contentious issue for a lot of stops and creates confusion among Wayfarers, some of who think that pin location is not all that important because existing POIs have so many errors.
In practice I’m glad it’s not in my hometown because Niantic has a very poor track record when it comes to large-scale map work.
Niantic, if you really care about the quality of your database and your games just remove your arbitrary and useless rule "1 pokestop for S2 L17 cell". This is the cause of high abuse and inaccuracy of wayspots. High density areas doesn't have a single perfectly positioned wayspots because of this and HALF of the backlog are just location edits.
And don't blame players, because every single person on this planet if they have to choose between a pokestop 10 meters away from the correct location or no pokestop for the sake of a billion dollar company, they choose the first.
It really doesn't make any sense to try to improve the quality of the Wayfarer database in these conditions.
Niantic are going to have brace themselves for a torrent of complaints when someones favourite Gym gets "rebalanced", particularly when people have "worked hard" with some of those location edits. 😉
I think 0.0009% of Wayspots are going to generate considerabley more thant 0.0009% of complaints.
Lastly, will "edit requests" for locked stops flag up on the scanner when making an edit? More whingeing to be generated here if not.
I'm getting the popcorn in for this one. I'll be interested to see the changes, and how Niantic are going to manage "micro-movements" of difficult to see Waypoints.
This tweet is such a huge misread of the room when people have legitimate concerns and niantic's previous mass changes to the map have ranged between impotent and disastrous. I'm used to their communication being spotty and incorrect, but contemptuous is new.
I tried to include the same nail polish emoji as the tweet and boy the forum did not like that, so just imagine it's here.
I am primarily a Pokemon Go player (I only play Ingress occasionally) and I don't misplace pins to cram in extra Pokestops. I also report abusive location edits (ones accompanied by description edits asking players to choose a specific point to allow it to show up in Pokemon Go) even when those location edits would add more stops in my neighborhood and benefit me in Pokemon Go.
There are people that won't abuse the system for their personal benefit.
@NianticTintino Hello there! I have questions for you. Can you give us a little more clarity on what source of truth you will be using?
Boots on the ground?
maps.google.com?
Something else?
You said "Neighborhoods with a healthy density of Wayspots may see a modification or removal of a PokéStop or Gym. This is a normal rebalancing of the gameboard as Wayspots shift to more accurate locations. " Can you explain? NIA has never come out and talked about S2 cells. Are these moves going to take that in consideration? Why would legally placed POI's be removed from neighborhoods to "balance the gameboard?"
I pay attention, closely and I am confused here. Can you talk a little more so I can understand?
"Your Wayfarer rating will not be impacted by the rejection."
Are our Wayfarer ratings impacted by edit rejections?!
I've submitted several that have been rejected even though the item's location is waaaay off, really permanently removed, or even both, this raises concerns...
Comments
in my opinion it would be a better idea to extend the map with points. alignment of PoGo and ingress meshes. that each point qualifies in both applications, not removing points. in some countries there are definitely too few points
Unless you guys plan on sending people to these cities in person to verify locations one by one, I can't see this going well at all. Ignoring the downsides of potentially removing gyms (which I'd consider a major issue in itself), Niantic doesn't exactly have the best track record of large scale wayfarer edits. We already saw what happened with the foursquare import, and there doesn't seem to be much evidence that a similar scale location editing spree would turn out any better. Yes, some extremely abused locations will probably be corrected. However, I expect a significant number would either become inaccurate, or be moved from one valid location to another valid location, with the only real effect being the removal of waypoints from some games. And that is just not ideal, especially for gyms in their current state.
That's also ignoring the possibility that such real world objects could be moved shortly after this mass location edit, only to be locked in a now inaccurate position by Niantic. I really hope this is a slightly early April Fools joke.
Given track record, I think it’s really important to know how this check is being done?
when reviewing we are told it’s ok for the point to be within a metre or two - you can only move it if it’s above a limited distance. So is this looking for a higher degree of precision?
Why use a word such as “healthy”, which it then implies is a bad thing? Does the removal make the density less healthy?
it is perfectly possible in city centres to have a very high density of waypoints - yes there are specific areas of well known abuse and these could be specific targets. It is often an area where small objects do get moved, sometimes larger distances but often a slight shift often to accommodate something new. So whatever system they put in place it is going to have to be used on a regular basis to keep up with legitimate changes that are happening.
This is all clearly driven by lightship wanting to be able to sell information and that requires the accuracy. The message is simply warning game players that there could be knock on changes.
As usual it raises more questions
It makes sense that Niantic steps in to finally fix the position of wayspots that have a history of location edits or that now have a cloud of proposed location such that it's not possible to get an outcome from the regular process.
That would end faction wars in such places and as long as Niantic uses a proper way to verify the real location, the outcome of this action should be a positive one.
I was puzzled by the rating and upgrade comment as well! Was this said to reiterate that edits don't affect this, or are they making an exception now, and edits actually could hurt you? Important information for someone who is working hard submitting edits almost daily to have correct wayspots. Some don't go through because reviewers are unsure (water towers is a mess to fix in Norway due to massive missinformation, leading to rejections now and then.)
Is Niantic going to hire somebody for physically check accuracy of items which cannot been seen on satellite or Google Street View? I'm thinking Wayspots under dense vegetation/tree cover, indoors (i.e. in a building) or underground? Or are they going to simply rely on their best assumptions without actually going there in person and checking if their assumptions are correct?
Niantic has staff members in most of the mentioned cities that they mentioned. They have staff in London and Tokyo overseas. San Francisco is their main area, with Seattle near their Bellevue office. Strangely, New York and Los Angeles don't have Niantic offices (I think), so they might have partners or other smaller collab organisations doing groundwork maybe? Or just field trips I guess.
15,000 wayspots is actually not many at all. And if it's going to affect 7+x (where x would probably account for a small amount within numerous cities, let's say a city is a third and they do maybe six "small cities", that's another 2), then roughly speaking it's about 1.6k wayspots for each city, and 500 wayspots for each small one maybe?
Who knows, some moves might prove to be beneficial and actually add more. We won't know until they actually start, so maybe people in those cities can get snapshots and start recording what wayspots do get moved around and what ends up being "locked".
The fact that you can actually "lock" wayspots from further edits is something that I asked for in December 2021's AMA. I'd like to see that actually evolve and be applied to wayspots that are known for long-recurring abuse (Eugene Aynsley Goossens aka Pratap Singh Ji comes to mind).
Yeah, this is not as bad as I first feared it could be. Though, of course, Niantic is creating more work for itself when we alreeady so many problems outstanding that have not been addressed for many months, in some cases years potentially, you will have to forgive me for being so cynical. Obviously, I believe there are a lot of things Niantic could be doing to improve their relations with their customers, and perhaps this should not be a priority considering all of the other outstanding things people on this forum have asked for (in the AMAs on this very forum and also elsewhere and been acknowledged by Niantic) that have not been acted upon.
If these actions do bring improvements to the games I suppose in the end I'll have admit it was a good thing but I would still believe there were unaddressed issues of more importance.
No, the mission simply starts on the next available portal. It would only be a problem if the mission is down to a single portal (which is the case on the final mission of a banner in London).
(Sorry for quoting you, but how else was I going to answer the question? 🤣)
Am I the only one who assumes that cleanups to the lightship database are necessary if you want to show it to a customer? And that you can surely find such customers and presentations for them just in the mentioned cities?
So at least in these places the board should look valid....
I would be less apprehensive about this if niantic didn't botch everything else they tried to roll out. Good luck to those who will be impacted.
Agreed.
The fact that you can actually "lock" wayspots from further edits is something that I asked for in December 2021's AMA
This has been possible for at least a year or two, if not longer. Niantic will lock a wayspot from edits if the editing process is being abused (e.g. to break links in Ingress, etc.).
And all the while Ingress keeps everything. As per usual
Portal links and fields in Ingress may drop.
Ingress no longer gets everything anyways as some things just go in to Lightship.
But there's no mention at all about portals that might be removed because afterwards they might fail the 20m rule.
It's very clear that location edits are a great danger for Pokemon, but Ingress allows to create clusters of portals and the only problem would be that links and fields will drop, but that shouldn't be an issue for city portals, they aren't good anchors like some remote portal in a hard to reach location.
In theory as they have stated this project, it sounds like it will be great. Pin location is a contentious issue for a lot of stops and creates confusion among Wayfarers, some of who think that pin location is not all that important because existing POIs have so many errors.
In practice I’m glad it’s not in my hometown because Niantic has a very poor track record when it comes to large-scale map work.
Niantic, if you really care about the quality of your database and your games just remove your arbitrary and useless rule "1 pokestop for S2 L17 cell". This is the cause of high abuse and inaccuracy of wayspots. High density areas doesn't have a single perfectly positioned wayspots because of this and HALF of the backlog are just location edits.
And don't blame players, because every single person on this planet if they have to choose between a pokestop 10 meters away from the correct location or no pokestop for the sake of a billion dollar company, they choose the first.
It really doesn't make any sense to try to improve the quality of the Wayfarer database in these conditions.
Nice idea but:
Niantic are going to have brace themselves for a torrent of complaints when someones favourite Gym gets "rebalanced", particularly when people have "worked hard" with some of those location edits. 😉
I think 0.0009% of Wayspots are going to generate considerabley more thant 0.0009% of complaints.
Lastly, will "edit requests" for locked stops flag up on the scanner when making an edit? More whingeing to be generated here if not.
I'm getting the popcorn in for this one. I'll be interested to see the changes, and how Niantic are going to manage "micro-movements" of difficult to see Waypoints.
Such as 80m interaction distance?
This tweet is such a huge misread of the room when people have legitimate concerns and niantic's previous mass changes to the map have ranged between impotent and disastrous. I'm used to their communication being spotty and incorrect, but contemptuous is new.
I tried to include the same nail polish emoji as the tweet and boy the forum did not like that, so just imagine it's here.
I am primarily a Pokemon Go player (I only play Ingress occasionally) and I don't misplace pins to cram in extra Pokestops. I also report abusive location edits (ones accompanied by description edits asking players to choose a specific point to allow it to show up in Pokemon Go) even when those location edits would add more stops in my neighborhood and benefit me in Pokemon Go.
There are people that won't abuse the system for their personal benefit.
Meanwhile all the rural park Poi I've made still have no spawns a year later. /sigh
I pay attention, closely and I am confused here. Can you talk a little more so I can understand?
How exactly is that related to this situation? :)
Fact remains that this is another case where Pogo has / will have "rebalanging" (read: POIs removed from game map) and Ingress not.
What's your location? Maybe can ask people to set their bonus location at your place to speed up things in your area
"Your Wayfarer rating will not be impacted by the rejection."
Are our Wayfarer ratings impacted by edit rejections?!
I've submitted several that have been rejected even though the item's location is waaaay off, really permanently removed, or even both, this raises concerns...
If a portal already exists and is moved it stays in the game regardless of distance from other existing portals. Yet Pokestops and gyms are removed
is it just the at the POI or is the park barren of spawns?
If it’s more like the later, have you checked that the tags on Open Street Map are correct. There are people on TSR on Reddit who can help.