Can we get action on multiaccounters/bots?

I have been wondering if you all have yet focused on the multiaccounter and bot issues in wayfarer? Ours in West Texas began after asking for help with our huge backlog in bonus area exchanges. So perhaps checking who has areas with mass bad rejections as their bonus areas and/or home locations may help track them down because they could use that as a method for getting all their accounts to see the same nominations and then reject them all falsely as duplicates or other fake reasons. It can be a huge problem, not only as far as slowing an entire area down but also greatly discouraging nominators and denying people legitimate POI, as I will now show with the number of things that I have successfully appealed, have in queue to be appealed, and have in line to go into appeal as soon as my appeals refresh each month. It is possible that I’m wrong and that this is due to the ambiguity or unfamiliarity with the guidelines, but the amount of clearly valid things being rejected is suspicious.
Successful Appeals:
Things in appeal queue:
This is within a stadium, which while open is impossible to photograph without people; and according to Niantic guidance is allowed to have people. I took great care to try and not get any faces.
There are also many more than this that I renominated and were approved after a second or third try.
Also, I thought I’d add this in, which I tagged you guys in a reply on. It shows multiaccounting on the recent Pokémon challenge, and this same system is likely going on in wayfarer.
here he brags about how you guys never do anything about what he’s doing after saying “it’s a good thing they won’t ever look at anything other than what you wrote.”
https://twitter.com/offwhitejag/status/1597274980555030531?s=46&t=jtJDA2zzf6ockhMj25iHMw
thank you for taking the time to look through all this.
Comments
I have three more to add to this. Note the improper uses of inappropriate location.
Irrespective of multi accounts etc etc one look at Windlands Park is a great example of why Wayfarer and the Lightship database is an absolute f"*king mess that can't be fixed without a major overhaul or just pushing the reset button.
What’s wrong with Windlands Park other than the incorrect rejections of soccer fields? Everything there is accurately placed, valid, and existing.
Soccer fields and sports complexes are valid. Also, all the sports fields in sports complexes that have been wrongly rejected have been overturned on appeal. Plus they’re great gathering places. We have tournaments at all our sports complexes that people come to from all over the state and neighboring states.
That's great, there are a lot of them there though all next to each other, most look like they are on half size pitches with moveable goals.
It's not uncommon to see very similar parks with multiple Wayspots like those. Don't take it personally, I have nothing against your park nor do I particularly care if you have Soccer Pitch #435 added. If you think that many all next to each other are acceptable then :shrugs:
In terms of appeals I have zero faith in the abilities of Niantic reviewers.
The map on the link to the soccer association website has the field map. All the goals are numbered, staked into the ground(they have to be because of our high winds), and there are photospheres for each one. There are also various sizes of fields for different age groups as well. As far as I can tell a sports field is valid unless it’s on a K-12 campus, and sports complexes(and their fields) are great places for gathering, exercise, enjoying the outdoors, and the culturally important activities that playing, enjoying watching sports, and rooting for a team fall into.
That's great again, I'm glad you have lots of Wayspots in your park that should have been grouped as duplicate.
They shouldn’t be rejected as duplicates, but I’m curious as to why you think they should be when they aren’t duplicates and are valid individually. We’re supposed to judge each nomination on its own merits; not based on other POI.
By that reasoning I should accept a slide, the set of swings and all other parts of a playground as separate poi.
It's not really a case of correct or incorrect. All the pitches are eligible but I don't think that makes them all acceptable.
I don't really want to get bogged down in discussing the minutia of Windlands Park to be honest. Enjoy them to your hearts content, I do think they are symbolic of why the map is broken and beyond fixing without a massive amount of input from Niantic which is not going to happen now.
Depending on the layout of the playground and if the pieces are themed I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with that either; and I see things like that pass as well fairly frequently. I think hearing how you view these things, although I believe it’s incorrect and misguided, is of value because it makes a great case for why the entire guideline system should be redone with as little ambiguity as possible; otherwise areas get slowed down, things get incorrectly rejected, and everyone is frustrated. That’s why I make it a point to bring that up as often as possible. But providing Niantic with an example, like our discussion, where even their most basic guidelines can be interpreted completely differently is ultimately helpful. Or at least it would be if they monitored the forums as often as they probably should; which I also brought up in this AMA.
Obviously I disagree :)
Not with the misguided and incorrect bit, that is entirely plausible.
Niantic could easily set down some better guidelines for things like your park. Whether that's group them together as one poi or treat them separately it honestly doesn't matter to me.
Maybe they have and I missed it but I suspect they haven't.
Fair enough, I could be wrong too. However, it seems like misunderstandings would get cleared up a lot faster if Niantic employees would monitor the forums when such debates occur, and then update the criteria on the Wayfarer site; ideally putting it on the login page and requiring people to read it before they begin reviewing.