Basketball Courts are being removed en masse
Maarblee-ING
Posts: 33 ✭✭✭
Over the course of the last few days, many explorers in the Italian community have noticed that Wayspots related to Basketball Courts were systematically removed by Niantic. Most of those were originally imported from the Courts Of The World website, but we've noticed a fundamental exception that seems to be a really big issue here: all of the Wayspots that were affected had "Oratorio" in their name.
For those of you who don't know, the term refers to a specific kind of leisure and recreational center which can be found all over Italy, typically managed by the church but always open and welcoming towards the whole community, from families and kids to the elderly. They were historically conceived as a place of worship, but over time these locations have evolved to encompass a whole different set of activities, including sports fields and play areas.
Now, according to this explanation, you would think that basketball courts located in the area would be perfectly eligible nominations... But for some unknown reason, on Jan 17 all of these Wayspots were deleted from the Lightship database entirely (and probably failed to migrate towards the new NBA game). And most importantly, the automated import from the website only constitutes a fraction of the overall database! The bulk of the affected nominations were manually submitted by Wayfinders and carefully reviewed by the community, which undoubtedly makes them high-quality and eligible points of interest for all Niantic games.
Is anything similar happening in other countries? If anyone has more info to share about the issue I'd be glad to know
Comments
Is the game (NBA All-Worlds) already available in Italy?
Doesn't it release like globally today? I've checked my area and the convention for the inclusion of Wayspots seems to follow the same rules as Pikmin Bloom, maybe slightly more populated.
From the small amount I saw every Go poi is also in NBA with some added Foursquare poi.
Some gyms have become the hoopy thing, official terminology, some haven't and some stops have become the hoopy thing.
Initial look seems same spacing as Go, but with potentially a different point in the Level 17 used.
we have one of the courts of the world ones imported locally very close to the original wayspot. Now in NBA we have both. I submitted a removal edit in the app in November, but that hasn’t got anywhere.
I haven’t seen any removals of original wayspots.
Some examples of basketball courts that were removed:
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da Basket del Oratorio - Pozzo d’Adda
Title of the Wayspot: Ruginello, Campo di Basket dell'oratorio
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da Basket Oratorio
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da basket - oratorio
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da basket - Oratorio San Luigi
Title of the Wayspot: Campo basket Oratorio San Giovanni Bosco
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da basket oratorio di San Fiorano
Title of the Wayspot: Campo da Basket dell'oratorio
And many more... Consider that oratories are so prevalent in Italy that there's almost always one in every town. Even if just a fraction of these Wayspots were deleted, we're potentially talking about the loss of hundreds of perfectly valid submissions
In the meantime, I've compiled a map based on reports from the areas that were affected so far:
As you can see, it's not as dramatic as I thought but we're still talking about a systematic issue, as all of these were wiped out exactly on January 17th and they all contained "basket" and "oratorio" in their title.
I can't say anything definitive because it is a guess, but I think it is most likely that it was removed due to a complaint from the administrator.
"The administrator?" Thise spots are all over the country. There's no single person responsible for them.
It would be strange if there is no unified administrator, but if the unified name wayspot has been removed, that is the most likely possibility.
There are also rare cases where Niantic really did remove it by mistake, but it is unlikely this time. (In March 2019 they once accidentally made a Softbank wayspot disappear from Ingress for a few days.)
The other thing that can be considered is something to do with sponsorship, although in this case, it is almost impossible since it disappeared on Wayfarer.
Once upon a time, when Harry Potter launched in Japan, for some reason, the post office wayspot almost never appeared in Japan and the post offices that did exist disappeared.
When everyone was wondering about this, Japan Post announced its sponsorship of Harry Potter, and we were convinced.
The location of the sponsor wayspot shown at that time was not nominated by us, but the location date given by Japan Post.
That wouldn't explain why only basketball courts were removed, and not other nominations related to oratories alongside them, including other sports fields dedicated to football and volleyball. Here's what I mean:
The examples I've included are from my local area, but the removal as a whole has been a nation-wide phenomenon. My guess is that it had something to do with the location tag categorization... Niantic probably intended to remove redundant stuff from Courts of The World but accidentally deleted perfectly valid nominations. As I mention in the image, not all basketball courts were deleted, only those that had "Oratorio" in the title for the Wayspot. Actual oratories nominations are still in the system, even if they had a basketball court inside.
What do you mean with "a unified administrator"? This is definitely Niantic's fault as there is clearly an issue with the import system related to Courts of The World and their NBA game.
I don't think something like a "Unified Catholic Basketball Association" could even exist lol
Is there any possible explanation for this happening? @NianticLC @NianticAaron @NianticTintino-ING
So you're giving several possible events based on past examples that you know of.
I am listing them in order of likelihood, I did not mean to be definitive.
And at this point, without more information, no one knows for sure if Niantic and the Wayfarer team removed it by mistake, so I can't say for sure.
If they did remove them by mistake, these wayspots will be restored within a few days.
If there is any other reason, I don't know if it has anything to do with the Wayfarer team, but please wait for their press conference.
Most if not all basketball courts in UK added to the lightship database were duplicates of existing waypoints. I’ve had a little play of the new game and also found that they are using existing a waypoints mostly pubs that haven’t got pictures even though they exist with pictures in other games. They have also added Tesco Express and Londis shops in my area (Nothing to say they are sponsored). The Londis is also in the wrong place. They’ve for some reason added completely new waypoints that could easily be added to Ingress or Pokemon etc. Also added a waypoint that no longer exists and should be removed lol. They’ll get there I suppose in a few years.
Whether it's a removal request or a bug, problem related to NBA I don't think you'll know completely until @NianticLC @NianticAaron @NianticTintino-ING @NianticTimMortar @NianticOtoStar respond to you.
Hopefully soon© @Maarblee-ING
@PeteC303-ING
i’ve noticed the no pictures for pubs which is really odd.
we have a restaurant that has come out of nowhere - I had thought about submitting it but it would be a very hard sell to convince people, but maybe a screenshot from the NBA game would help.
It’s might appear as a duplicate at point maybe if it’s not a sponsored waypoint. But I’d submit it and once accepted get the NBA waypoint duplicated.
They have also added a few train stations near me. Just seen one with two waypoints that surly are now a duplicate. Also seems that nomination criteria for recognisable faces or people doesn’t matter as I’ve just seen a number of waypoints with groups of people in them 🤷🏻♂️ now let’s see everyone else try that in a Wayfarer nomination 🤦🏻♂️
They just pulled data from foursquare and mashed it together with things from Lightship, CoTW etc.
It's pretty ugly from a Wayfaring point of view but it's probably fine for the three people in the UK who are playing it.
I’m ashamed to say I’m still at level 1. my son who does like basketball isn’t impressed.
Hey I’m one of those 3 😂
Is it any good? I'm tempted to try it but I found the last 2 niantic games I played (hp and pikmin) fairly ****
I haven’t been out and about playing it as busy (should really be in here)
I have very bad hand - eye coordination so the mechanic for throwing will need a lot of practice, and I’m not sure there is enough that is interesting to make me persist. Maybe walking around will be better and see what happens when interacting with wayspots.
I tried it but found there was not a lot of content.
@Gazzas89-PGO
The core of the game visiting hoops, tournaments felt and looked like an app store game I would play for 30 minutes then uninstall after I got bored. It was a bit clunky and slow too, with no main aim and a poor game core the drops between hoops became a bit pointless.
It seemed more like a beta game with the Lightship map copy and pasted over it tbh
I can see five hoops from home and they are all still full of the bots that populated them from release which is understandable as putting yourself on the leaderboard was laborious.
Definitely not fun for me. I'm interested to see who how much involvement Niantic have beyond the map though.
Yea I agree. The map is a mess too. Random nondescript waypoints many I know are in the wrong place, and they are added by Niantics so you’d think they know where they are.
Most of the SPOTs in NBA-AllWorld, such as restaurants and grocery stores, are probably imported from the Foursquare database, not the Lightship database.
Therefore, the worst point of the Foursquare database, the inaccuracy of the location information, is fully demonstrated, and the photos of the SPOTs are either picture of food or people's faces.
And I don't know if NBA players are enhanced there, but in my town, the general hospital is a SPOT.
Also, in my city, the bus terminal was imported from the Foursquare database, not from the Lightship database.
Therefore, the PIN was placed at a private residence 100m away.
To give you an impression of what I played, the NBA is not a location-based game, but simply a home game where you take your smartphone outside to play, so Niantic's NBA team might be happy with that.
However, I don't think this game is a Wayfarer-compliant game, as it falls entirely outside the definition of a POI and also meets Wayfarer's ineligibility criteria.
It may be, but the import of the Lightship database into this game was completed in November at the latest, and we found it locked there.
WAYSPOT, which was deleted and its location corrected in November, was also alive and well in NBA.
@NianticTintino-ING
It is necessary to remove ineligible locations and photos and furthermore correct the location information accurately prior to importing the K-12 basketball court as requested by the NBA team.
Almost all of the SPOT location information imported from Foursquare is incorrect.
Huh, apparently c r a p is blocked. Didnt think that was profanity fo anyone over the age of 3
Viennetta ice cream for Morrisons. Yum
That’s so funny.
Locally (South Manchester area) I haven’t seen much in terms of these trash stops, but I must explore
maybe basketball players need a lot of ice cream 😂
So far, none of these have been uploaded to Lightship. But it seems bizarre that there looks like removal of what appear to be good spots in Italy whilst rubbish is added in U.K. 🙄🤷♀️