30 day ban from Pokemon Go and wayfarer to harsh?
19Markbogert95-PGO
Posts: 14 ✭✭
Hello i got a 30 day ban from Pokemon Go and wayfarer for apparently submitting wayspots that didnt meet the criteria. I know Niantic is not happy with the wayfarer abuse in the Netherlands but this is way to harsh!! I didnt know i was submitting trashy wayspots in the first place. These marker poles got accepted in other cities/towns so i thought they would meet the criteria somehow.
A lot of players in the Netherlands are hit with this ban because some turbo nerds made a bot system that approves everything and Niantic is now banning everyone and anything that has something to do with low quality submissions. With no warning, Extremely harsh. If these marker poles in other cities didnt got accepted i would have not submitted them in the first place. Im sorry!!
I have been playing Pokemon Go since its launch everyday for 7 years with full dedication and just cant believe that i got banned for this so easily. I have submitted a ban appeal in the hope Niantic could unban me faster. I really hope someone from Niantic reads this and is willing to help me.
Greetings,
19Markbogert95
Comments
Hi @19Markbogert95-PGO I cannot comment on why you banned or your history or how Niantic views you.
I get that - you may not deserve it - you may do. I don't know
Sorry.
What I can say to this thread is this - you raise a very interesting point. We, and I include myself, are sheep. Where one goes we follow.If we see X live we nominate X. So more Xs exist.
While we follow. Well. Criteria are clarified. Cheats/Bots/Shysters are identified and a clean up of these people takes place. But, unfortunately, many examples of bad X nomination exist. So we, nominators, keep submitting X. Because we see X live. Even though now X is bad. Because we nominate X we now bad.
Possible. Sure.
I think this is a case @19Markbogert95-PGO where the Shiiiite hit the fan - Niantic had to take action. You, may have been swept up.....
Now - you know what. For us to support you. Which is what you want - I guess. Will you share your last 10 nominations. Last 40. Last 100. Because you asking us to support you. Niantic to support you. Evidence will be key. Because. Well. I am sure any Niantic person who can help you has access to all your nominations............ And if any are the same, as in any way. you will be on battle to no where.
30 days. Not the end of the world for a cleaner DB. Hard to take if you caught up. I hear you. But....
I am not being overly supportive. Sorry. I just do not have enough information to take a position......
But I really really do believe you raise an interesting point. We copy others. It means we nominate what others do. We see POIs accepted and we go that was accepted so I will nominate. Niantic. When criteria are clarified. And you say be gone yee future vile nominations..... Take the effort to clean up the DB so people do NOT copy. Because - we people - we sheep.......
If this you. Ouch. Niantic. It happened before Netherlands. It happening now. If you make criteria clarifications. Clarify your DB to represent that so people do NOT copy what they see.
I understand your frustration but I can't be sympathetic. As I was taught as a child, "Ignorance of the law is not an excuse." In this case the law means Niantic's criteria for what makes a good wayspot. Those criteria are sometimes ambiguous but most of the abuse that I've seen coming out of NL was not ambiguous at all. You are correct that many people base their understanding of the criteria on what they see in the games currently, but as you've learned that's a really bad idea.
I'm sorry that you got caught up in the bans but I hope that it's been educational for you, and that it's been educational for other Wayfarer abusers around the world.
You took the Wayfarer test. As part of that you get to learn the criteria.
I can appreciate that the criteria doesn't make absolutely everything crystal clear, and that there are some nuances where you might have to go digging on this forum to find a clarification on something, but still, by passing the test, you should have a basic grip on the general criteria, as that helps when both submitting and reviewing.
You should be submitting wayspots based on those criteria, and not based on what you already see in the database. If you were ever unsure about something, you could've reached out on here, or Discord, Twitter, Reddit or wherever else there's a Wayfarer presence and asked for advice, instead of just submitting first and then ending up in the situation you're in now.
My thoughts are that whilst you may think it's harsh, and you may not have intended to do anything wrong, you do have at least some responsibility here because you didn't apply your knowledge of the criteria to what you were submitting. Hopefully you have learnt from this mistake.
A lot of players in the Netherlands are hit with this ban because some turbo nerds made a bot system that approves everything and Niantic is now banning everyone and anything that has something to do with low quality submissions.
This is the main issue of everything happened in the Netherlands. Despite having took action against ~1500 Wayspots including some of them already exist before this abuse happened, only 33 Wayfinders got sanctioned. And looks like the bots weren't included into the count.
Come on Niantic, in the past you have took action against 63 Wayfinders who are "incorrectly" rejecting nominations came from a single submitter. Why didn't you do the same against bot reviewers?
Sorry if I mistyped. It's 67 Wayfinders.
I want to add that I hope this has also been educational for Niantic, and perhaps also a wake-up call. Wayfarer is rife with systemic abuse, and it continues because people have been able to get away with it and largely avoid significant penalties. Niantic needs to learn how to better detect abuse and shut it down quickly. This would make their database more accurate and send a message to other systemic abusers that it's not going to be productive, but a side effect is that fewer less-guilty people would get caught in the net.
I started to type innocent in that last sentence but it's not the right word. If OP is telling the truth then their abuse was not deliberate. It's like if I got a ticket for driving 60 in a 30 zone because I couldn't be bothered to look at the speed limit signs... I didn't intentionally break the law but I could have easily avoided the ticket by paying attention to the information provided to me.
Hello and Welcome @19Markbogert95-PGO
I have no knowledge of your individual case, so my comments are based on what you are saying and the publicly available information in a variety of places.
I get your mix of emotions about what has happened to you. You have taken the correct step in appealing, and you now have to await that outcome which I hope is timely.
From what you have written it comes across as you recognise that what you were submitting would not meet eligibility criteria. And that under normal circumstances they would have been rejected. You saw the change around you as new pokestops popped up and you thought why not? And joined in.
I actually welcome that you are saying that.
I’m guessing it felt like some naughty fun, that deep down you knew would come to an end, but while that gate was open you would make the most of it. I remember that feeling from when I was a kid, and I equally remember the feeling when I was caught, and the “fun” came crashing to an end and I was punished.
So refreshingly this is not about I didn’t do it, but rather does the punishment fit the crime?
If you search back over the 3 and half years this particular forum has been active you will find regular and repeated instances of submissions that are spamming low quality that are straight rejects, wrongly located, completely fake etc. These all have a negative impact on the Wayfinder experience. I believe the experience of being a regular wayfinder, putting in voluntary effort, should be a good one. While you were having your small bit of fun, other wayfinders were being impacted, but you didn’t stop to think about them. There is plenty evidence of the distress it was causing to Wayfinders centred on Netherlands but going wider. It also goes without saying it was affecting Niantic’s Wayfarer database. Of course they were going to take action.
Previous sanctions were not being effective so Niantic have been quite clear, that if you inflict damage on one part of Niantic, the sanctions will apply across the board. It is clear from the reaction it has caused that this time people have felt the punishment.
If it had not affected your Pokemon Go account, would your reflection on being caught been different? Would you have truly have stopped to think about? My interpretation is that it has stopped and made you reflect.
Is the length of time too long? As I said at the start I have no insight into what exactly you have done, that is between you and the Wayfarer team. But we have had repeated assurances that the 30 day suspensions are because of multiple infringements, and your individual answer will come through your appeal.
Each time you did break the rules you affected someone else in the Wayfarer community so it is meant to make you stop and consider that. Cleaning up this mess takes resources, and if these instances didn’t happen those resources could be used to make changes that would improve the voluntary efforts of all Wayfinders. So you were part of the problem.
Use the 30 days wisely. Reflect on what has happened and your part in it. Learn from it, not just about wayfarer and Pokémon Go but there are wider life lessons to be had. I would like to think that although it’s an unpleasant experience now, it will become a small blip in the future, and you will be more aware of the consequences of your decisions and actions.
You can use the time to look for new good submissions, they are out there.
You can use your experience to say to others don’t do it, it’s not worth it.
You can learn from this negative experience and turn it into a positive.
You can be part of the solution.
Its now up to you.
[quote]These marker poles got accepted in other cities/towns so i thought they would meet the criteria somehow.[/quote]
I don't read he's been submitting the kind of coal we've seen in the other threads. Just trailmarkers.
Now trailmarkers have been discussed to no end and the consensus was that they were allowed. Not just the nodes, but also the ones inbetween. Of course waymarkers look different in every country on the globe. And even within one country there can be many different kinds. Wayfarer criteria have always been different for various regions around the globe. We all know the example of how in the U.K every pub is a poi while elsewhere they are strictly forbidden. And now Niantic personel from the U.S. step in and decide that american waymarkers are fine and dutch ones are not?
So what do you propose to be an effective sanction that will result in people reconsidering their actions instead of blowing it off as inconsequential? The reason it is affecting both your game and Wayfarer accounts is that Niantic wants some bite in the sanctions handed out. If it only affected your Wayfarer account, most people will just ignore the sanctions altogether and continue what they were doing once the sanctions have been lifted. After all, their game accounts are far more valuable to them than their Wayfarer accounts, and they believe they are making their games "better" by nominating and approving "everything".
this is only the numbers from the reports in that thread. The resolved reports from other sources like the abuse form were not included here
The "pole numbers" are the numbers on utility poles, such as those that hold up electrical and telephone lines and street lights. These are not and never have been trail markers, not even close.
In that case you're right. I assumed he had submitted a genuine trailmarker, but I might be wrong.
My point being: There are many different kinds of trailmarkers and it is impossible for Niantic to know them all (from every country) and thus it is always up to the interpretation of the local reviewers. Here are some examples of different ones that usually all get accepted (by human reviewers). It would be a shame to get a ban when in hindsight some of them would be labeled ineligible.
I would vote in her as a Ambassador, President, CEO something like that.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. He followed what was being accepted locally, which is what happens everywhere (postboxes in the UK being one of them). After that what rule was broken? How was he to know someone had used a bot to abuse the system? Being retroactively punished for something that wasn't his fault is defo not "ignorance of the law is not an excuse".
Education requires good teachers.
Niantic are not that, the absolute opposite in fact.
In 6 months time the bots will be somewhere else. Gdansk, which ironically is a location for a regional championship this year, abuse will just be located somewhere else.
But hey "Spare the rod and spoil the child."
That's different though. There was a clarification (even if you think it was misguided) that the older UK postboxes could be eligible. That information came from Niantic, and even if views have changed since then, they were allowable.
On the other hand, if you're submitting something that's never been eligible in the first place, and you're only doing so because you're looking at existing wayspots rather than trying to apply the actual criteria to your submission, then that's more of an issue.
But then there was a further clarification that they weren't (or at least, that's what people claimed). Bewr in mind, the majority of people reviewing aren't on here or other things, they only have what's around them to go on, so then when they see things being accepted, they, rightly or wrongly, will submit those. They shouldn't then be punished for what they thought, based on evidence around them, was acceptable locally
Not speaking to guilt or innocence here, but I do feel the punishment is too harsh. What ever happened to Niantic's three-strike policy, with in-game suspensions at 7 days, 30 days, and permanent doled out in consecutive fashion? I did think that was fair and appropriate. Skipping the seven-day and going straight to 30 seems a bit too punitive for a first offense and first violation notice, at least on the in-game side: I'd certainly stand behind a 30-day Wayfarer, 7-day in-game suspension, though.
Thank you all for responding to this discussion. These utility poles(didnt know how to call them in English) were submitted a lot in other cities by other players and almost all of them got accepted. I had some doubts at first but i thought if these many poles got accepted elsewhere they must be eligible right? I didnt know i was submitting "coal" i was in this situation the sheep that followed. how am i supposed to know there was botting abuse going on? A lot of people like me are not active on forums. I didnt know this situation until i got banned. Do i deserve a punishment like this? I have never cheated in Pokemon go in any way or form and now im at my 2nd strike already which really scares me. im afraid to submit any Pokestops, scans and routes in the future because if Niantic doesnt like them they will Permaban me. Banning people for doing labor and making content in the game? Thats really harsh in my opinion. A while back i reported a lot of fake wayspots in 's-hertogenbosch. My nearby biggest city got filled with fake statues and art structures that were not there, So I even helped the wayfarer team with this situation before my ban. These art objects were extremely fake and got there pictures taken from Google Images. I fully agreed that these had to be removed. These submission were absolute lies, my utility were not fake. They apparently were of a low quality, there is a big difference in my opinion.
In your situation I certainly wouldn't ever take part in wayfarer again, and I would avoid routes and scans as well.
As I said in my piece. Whatever happened here will continue to happen while POIs which are not eligible are seen in the games. Nearly every country has something. Niantic create guidelines. They say what is acceptable or not. They have people smashing the system. They update guidelines.
But there is little activity to clean up the DB. And while the non eligible nominations exist. People will see them live and go - oh they are acceptable and nominate the same things.
@19Markbogert95-PGO
I would like to understand more of your point of view.
As I said before it is refreshing to hear that you saying you did it, and clearly regret your actions. Thank-you for that.
You talk of having doubts, and also no awareness of the bot activities.Was there a reason you didn’t try to check out those doubts beyond relying on what you were observing? Did the shear volume and rapidity of the of these being added to the game not strike you as odd and raise further doubts? If you had wanted to check those out where would you have looked for clarification?
Regarding the suspension. Which aspects exactly do you feel are unreasonable?
Would it in all honesty have had a major effect if it hadn’t impacted on your daily game play? Was it a shock to find both wayfarer and the game involved.
Or is it the length of the punishment?
You are clearly reflecting on what has happened. The interaction with Wayfarer the damage to its database and therefore the games feels distanced. How do you feel about the impact you had on your fellow wayfinders. For them it was and continues to be a distressing experience. Do you recognise the damage to them that your action (even if you did not mean to be malicious) has had and that Wayfarer/Niantic had to take proportionate action to help them.
@Elijustrying-ING thank you for your response. I never wanted to harm Niantic or the wayfarer community in any way, I simply didnt know i was doing something wrong and i regret these actions.
I never use forums or any social media platforms, Its just me and the game. I didnt know there was botting abuse going on. Stupid me saw a lot of poles getting accepted everywhere ingame so i thought they would meet the criteria somehow. If they just didnt got accepted in the first place i would have never submitted more of them. These poles were also located in a rural area with absolute nothing nearby. They all got Removed, isnt that a punishment and lesson by itself?
The punishment is to long. 1 month of missing content in pogo is extremely painful for a veteran player like me. After 7 years it became more a life style instead of simply a game(yes im very addicted...) I feel really sad and havent been outside ever since my ban. I hope Niantic can forgive my actions and hope they release my account soon so i can go on adventure again.
Friend, if you haven't been outside since the ban, Niantic may have done you a favor. It sounds like you are way too addicted and need a little more balance in your life.
I just want to chime in to focus more attention to two aspects several people seem to be missing: transparency and education.
The practices of Niantic regarding abuse is currently not transparent at all. They don't tell you what you did wrong. The emails sent out are extremely vague. There is no proper way to appeal these sanctions. Effectively you are being sentenced without being notified about the charges, evidence against you or your rights. All they communicate is "trust us, we're sure" - but people frequenting this forum know perfectly well that Niantic does make mistakes in both reviews and appeals. Transparency (and a transparent appeal system) would be a great way to increase trust towards them. But unfortunately we don't have any transparency whatsoever right now. Even if @19Markbogert95-PGO was abusing ths system, they should be punished in a transparent and clear manner, bwcause that's what can establish the trust in other users that they won't be randomly banned out of the blue for something they thought was a legitimate nomination (even if they were wrong).
Education should be the main goal of these emails and sanctions. People who are breaking the rules should first and foremost be made aware that they are breaking the rules (which is, unfortunately, not always clear) and they should be told that they must stop breaking rules. But for this education to be successful, some very important things have to be considered: the rules must be clear, without any grey zones (looking at you, cemeteries with social functions and points of interest, which seem to be acceptable and abusive at the same time according to Niantic's communications); the consequences of breaching the rules must be made clear in advance and the rules must be enforced consistently. And most importantly: intention must be considered. If someone makes a mistake (ans nominates stuff based off accepted Wayspots instead of criteria), they mustn't be treated the same way as someone who is abusing the system intentionally. A mistake (or first infraction) should lead to a warning and an extensive education in what they did wrong, unless there's very strong evidence that it was indeed malicious. If the person chooses to continue breaking the rules (in the same way), they can be treated as intentional abusers - but not before.
The current system does not educate at all, it just retaliates and scares people away from Wayfarer. That can't be the goal of Niantic, surely...
@Nadiwereb-PGO you make good points
@Elijustrying-ING I was in the process of writing a reply with similar points as @Nadiwereb-PGO.
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When submitting a Wayspot through the games (e.g. Pokemon Go, Ingress),, there was not a single notion of potential ongoing abuse (and such notion still does not exist) within the submit process. Such a message would have served as preventative warning for players who are not aware. The (vast?) majority of players are not active on this forum at all and, as such, very likely unaware of this situation.
Meanwhile, players see some (definitely not all) lower quality Wayspots popping up in games. So they might (understandably) assume that all of these are eligible ("because why else would they be accepted in the game?"). A warning message as described above would have (at least partially) prevented this.
Given this, I agree with @Nadiwereb-PGO that, at the very least, a warning with educational mailing would be appropriate. In particular, it would be very helpful if individual submissions would be marked as "flagged by Niantic", such that it is explicitly clear.
With the current approach there is a significant risk of driving loyal Wayfinders away, as has happened already for several larger player communities in the Netherlands.
In short: receiving a ban without a single warning (including indication where one received the warning for) can be (too) harsh.
That's unfair, in my opinion. I frequently use Niantic games as motivation to go outside at least a little bit every day. I work from home, have no small children to ferry about, and it's flu season. I appreciate Niantic games for the fun they provide as well as the extra motivation to step away from the keyboard and go breathe a bit of feral air even when conditions (weather, viruses, wildfire smoke, etc.) dictate otherwise.
@19Markbogert95-PGO
Being brought to a sudden halt like that will come as a shock to you. As someone who plays every day and uses it as a release from the stresses of everyday life - Had a hard day, lets go beat up a virtual dragon 😎 - I can empathise with that loss.
The hardest part is to accept a role in that loss, we all make stupid mistakes we regret, we are human.
It is a suspension and it will revert and you know when it will it revert. That much is clear. If your appeal is successful it is best to think of it as an unexpected bonus. Plan on the 30 days.
For your own well being you do need to try and find something else to focus on that keeps you moving and helps you put this in perspective - it wont feel that way now but that's what you need to aim for. As part of the learning from this you could reflect and start to look for positive things you could redirect your considerable experience to. Perhaps since the community was affected by the bigger situation that you unwisely became part of, you could try to think of a way to give something back to that community during this time. Perhaps online, perhaps in person. I guess it may be too early but often good can come out of bad situations if you try to find a way.
What would you do if Niantic went bankrupt and all their games disappeared? Would you become a recluse/shut-in? That's what I'm talking about. If Niantic games are the only thing forcing you to go outside and interact with the real world, it's time for some serious self-reflection and maybe some mental health assistance. I'm genuinely not trying to be snarky or rude. We should not stigmatize mental health issues. Part of that is first acknowledging where there may be problems.
The reality is that we don't "own" anything. Niantic can take all of this away at any time. If our identities and entire lives are wrapped up in Niantic games, that's not a good thing - for any of us.