Ingress Year 10 interview discusses original Wayspots and how they were selected
PkmnTrainerJ-ING
Posts: 5,138 Ambassador
I know, adding an Ingress post here when I sh00t down Pokémon GO topics.
However this does mention how Niantic decided the original Wayspots and how this evolved into what we have now.
There was an initial set of locations to show people what we were looking for before we started crowdsourcing and opening things up to players at their own locations. The first set was made from a historical landmark database, including USPS post offices.
Also, at the time Google had a photo service called Panoramio, which was basically a geotagged Flickr for putting user-generated pictures onto Google Maps. We would pull data from there for photos tagged "sculpture," "mural," "water fountain," or other artistic places. These were interesting places to look at in a neighborhood, but they were also, by nature of being public, likely safe places for people to come and gather.
We then quickly opened up to the player base to let us know which places should be designated. I don't know every city, but the players in those cities do. They know the hidden gems in that area, so if they want to be able to play the game in those locations, there was a tool in the app that let players take a photo, geotag it, add a description, and then it would get added to the game. That's how we grew into the tens of millions of points-of-interest we had.
Fast-forward four years, and all of the PokeStops and Gyms found in Pokemon Go initially came from Ingress players.
Thought seeing some Wayfarer/OPR history would be nice for folks.
Comments
It sounds like an awful lot like they want submissions based on local interest rather than categorical eligibility.
We would pull data from there for photos tagged "sculpture," "mural," "water fountain," or other artistic places.
I didn't know/expect that to have been a thing. It helps understand how so many
fountainsaerators made it in early on.We then quickly opened up to the player base to let us know which places should be designated. I don't know every city, but the players in those cities do. They know the hidden gems in that area, so if they want to be able to play the game in those locations, there was a tool in the app that let players take a photo, geotag it, add a description, and then it would get added to the game.
I think a lot of us lose sight of this and get bogged down with nominating for the sake of "categorical eligibility," often missing or intentionally skipping our favorite diner or nature spot because we don't think about it that way or don't want to be shoț down by reviewers who may have also lost sight.
As a reviewer, when you get hung up on whether or not something is "categorically eligible" or interesting to you, try considering from the stance of the submitter and ask if it could be truly interesting to them or their community.
It's still a great idea, shame it has been mishandled so badly.
Also get away with your P0rtalz chat ;)
Moar P0rtalz!
Also, at the time Google had a photo service called Panoramio, which was basically a geotagged Flickr for putting user-generated pictures onto Google Maps. We would pull data from there for photos tagged "sculpture," "mural," "water fountain," or other artistic places.
That helps explain some of the current blurry photos. If they were pulled from Panoramio in 2012, they were mostly uploaded to Panoramio in 2010 & 2011. Phone cameras were really bad then, compared to today.
Pictures from the historical database have aged MUCH better.
Post offices were uploaded without pictures. People have added pics to about all of them by now.
The Panoramio photos all went away ~4-6 years ago and were tagged as such when they still existed.
I don't think that they were marked as "Panoramio", but they had the name/tag of the person that added them to Panoramio, maybe in white text vs blue or green used with the photos provided by agents.
How dare he say all the stops and gyms came from portals, I'll have him know I reckon I've made at least 30 gyms and a good 200 pokestops, even a few that aren't portals
He did say "initially", which is completely true...
"Fast-forward four years, and all of the PokeStops and Gyms found in Pokemon Go **initially** came from Ingress players."
Thanks for the 9 memorial benches dedicated to John Smith, loving Father, Uncle etc etc
With a bonus driver's side mirror thrown in for good measure!
I was making a joke lol
There are still existing wayspots in my area that I am 99% sure I saw I saw as photos in Google Earth years ago, often with more "artistic" than descriptive names.
Here are some examples of these that are currently in-game at the University of Michigan Central Campus in Ann Arbor:
The Law Quad "at Night" has multiple duplicates, though my removal report has been rejected. The "Tree Veins" I am pretty sure is just meant to be a photo of the trees. There is no "art installation" there.