So, I'm in the den, with PoGo open on my phone. My avatar suddenly takes off, running toward a distant gym. A message pops up: 'You are traveling too fast' to which the only response is "I'm a passenger".
Niantic's message was erroneous. To clear their error I was obligated to lie. What brought this about?
More than a decade ago, when Niantic was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google, it chose to hire a hyperactive Russian kid to figure out GPS services, rather than either purchase a turnkey system or use Google's own routines. With a bit of work, the kid could get a lat/long with extremely high precision, but the accuracy wasn't very good, and repeatability was poor. The avatar kept running around all over the place! Still, the kid had demonstrated proof-of-concept for GPS-tracking.
Instead of fleshing-out a GIS-services team and creating a real navigation tool, they asked the kid to keep at it. He attempted various methods, averaging multiple readings, discarding outliers, yet still it seemed as though any single reading would place him too far away, and the area of uncertainty was to large.
Somehow, the kid concluded that a 'cold' reading from the GPS would always be incorrect. Even averaging multiple 'cold' readings did not suffice. So, he began a practice of discarding readings without saving them. No statistics, not even arithmetic. Just take and discard in a loop, to 'heat things up' or keep the chip warm.
This became a standard practice: simply add more and more loops to query the hardware and discard the results, even when you have no reason to re-plot.
This code is still in use today, and helps to explain why our phones sometimes become quite hot while we're not even doing anything, when a Niantic program is running in the background.
This 'good enough for now' -> sunk-costs-fallacy philosophy has plagued us ever since.
Why bring this up now? Poor design, analysis, and planning seem to be hallmarks of Niantic's organizational philosophy.
An early version of Wayfarer assumed that reviewers would be extremely biased toward acceptance, so they made down-voting quicker and easier than up-voting. Unsurprisingly, reviewers voted for a small white-list and against a lot of things that were technically eligible, until Niantic added in various virtual and actual punishments against down-voters which in turn led to the up-vote bot-nets.
Having almost everything rejected was dispiriting, but the bot-nets were too accepting. Now Niantic offers cool-downs, threatening emails and instant rejection, and until recently they've been rather unapologetic about it.
They've got Ambassadors running interference for them, and it's difficult to debate them, because they have secret inside-knowledge protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements. We mustn't assume every social-media rant to be true, but there's also no guarantee that everything fed to our Ambassadors is accurate.
Apologies for the random rant. I wish you all a better year.
Conclusions after reading all above and my own experience from my local and some international communities.
Mosaic tiles are removed massively because bot abuse. But without looking at placement dates or whether the where even abusefully accepted.
If your submission is accepted by a bot, even when you're not involved in that botfraud, you can get a warning or a ban, just on the fact a bot voted for your submission. And Niantic doesn't even cares about that.
Communication is still an issue. Explanation of what you might have done wrong and for what submission that was is still bad. Only if you submitted recently and the community voted not to accept your submission. Any other way lax context. How can you learn if you're not told you what you did wrong, only that you're wrong?
People are afraid to submit or even to review. And because any form of ban appeal seemingly isn't handled properly people just play and see some locations basically getting cleared out. It drives people away from any of Niantics game. People already quit ingress because of Privacy concernes and extreme toxicity. Pokémon Go was a good replacement but the way it's going, it is slowly dieing. And I hate that. I love the game and I'm really worried about the way Niantic reacts on situations. It seems all or nothing, without proper communications.
Don't get me wrong, abuse should be dealt with! Now it seems so agressieve, but when reporting harassment or clear forms of spoofing, Niantic seems silent. This also contributes to people leaving.
I really hope that in the future post like OP made and this won't be necessary.
So we can all agree that these were fine and should not have been removed. I really want these spots back in my home town Hedel together with the tiles in my neighboring city Kerkdriel. This was another slap in the face for us small communities that live in a rural area with hardly any spots and players. The abuse on tiles was going on in the bigger cities of the Netherlands not these small areas i live. Removing every spot with the name Tile/Tegel everywhere is just unfair in my opinion, Especially if these were approved before the entire bot incident.
Assuming they were in the correct location, they should not have been removed. I wouldn't get my hopes up though. Niantic as a company just doesn't care about their customers. Some of the staff might care, but there is just to few of them to even try to tackle all the issues. Just look at the new review flow. It has been a month since the december AMA, and no-one at Niantic has commented on what a thumbs down vote on all of the last 3 questions means, to the point that some ambassadors are encouraging people to abuse the system to ensure that nominations are rejected. If they don't tackle an issue like that in a month, how can we expect them to handle some wayspots in a small town somewhere?
This thread is not about the Ladybug tile. I don't think anyone here is arguing that that was a great wayspot.
This thread is about the "Bommelerwaart beweegt" exercise trail tiles. These are great wayspots and should never have been removed. The person who reported those is the abuser here.
Then go on. I've showed you the thread contains many low quality Wayspots reported here. You want to blame @pieniechan-PGO & co. or some NL Ingress folks who often caused commotions in this forum, your choice.
However back again it's the people who run the bots and the people who were 'exploiting' them, whether they knew about the bots or not, should be blamed the most.
Are you still missing the point or are you trolling? Where did I say I blamed @pieniechan-PGO? I find it highly unlikely that they are the one who reported these specific tiles. I have seen many of their reports and I agree with all of the ones that I have seen. If every reporter was as honest as them, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I don't understand why people who were unaware of the bots should be blamed at all.
We seldom understand how or why Wayfarer does much of anything. Any general rule of consistent behavior might be bent or broken at any time, and the community can only guess about gray areas even if everybody is on the same page regarding acceptance/rejection.
It's a huge assumption that new or inactive people nominating more of what they see all around, or active wayfarers continuing to nominate more of what they were doing already were exploiting anything.
Or is everybody 'cheating' if they nominate stuff now that the backlog has been cleared out? They're exploiting the fact that decisions are reached in a more reasonable amount of time?
Those who knowingly took advantage of a glitch to nominate fake stuff or falsified locations acted badly. The rest were just people carrying on as usual.
Consistently submitting nominations against the guidelines is abuse. The timing for it doesn't really matter. Unfortunately the wayspot network in the Netherlands has grown with various examples of wayspots that should have never been approved (and are being cleaned up). That people use those examples as to nominate similar wayspots is on them, as the guidelines have not changed, and you are prompted to read them sufficient times.
Trash cans, mosaic tiles (placed for gaming benefits), little free libraries (in gardens/attached to houses so on PRP), street signs, etc. Are just a small subset of abuse wayspots that people still keep submitting, while the guidelines are clear. But hey let's blame bots for not using common sense and disregarding the wayfarer guidelines seems like a good way to put the blame elsewhere.
It was put forward as an example by the thread starter, just wanted to clarify why those likely got removed. So relevant for the discussion and to clarify for others that are confused as to why those are not good wayspots.
Consistently submitting nominations against the guidelines is abuse
That's a stand alone statement that you would apply to the whole Wayfarer system or is only pertinent to either this specific case or similar in the Netherlands?
In general, it's a matter of interpretation in the gray zone, unless explicitly violating guidelines. If judgment is strictly mechanical, there is no need for a user community.
The final two sentences of my post that you replied to were the ones that separated the wolves from the lambs.
Nominating temporary, fake, or mass-produced garbage, and re-submitting until it gets accepted are abusive behaviors. Ditto for stuff you KNOW does not meet the community's or Niantic's requirements.
None of this makes it right to condemn or punish normal behavior Ex Post Facto. Normal players did not know about others gaming the system. They were all in the same boat we find ourselves in now, except a bot-net was pushing everything through, instead of ML/AI cranking out arbitrary decisions.
I still don't see how normal players in BeNeLux/Germany are any more worthy of blame than Aussies, Brits, North Americans, etc.
Niantic pollutes its database all by itself. Where does anybody get off blaming normal Wayfarers?
You are completely right that the country you are from should not impact whether or not a Wayfinder is submitting abusively. However, the Netherlands has had loads of examples of players gaming the system to have gaming benefits and the botting was a very extreme example, but unfortunately not the only one. And apparently this inspires others to do the same, without checking guidelines. Your last sentence indicates the problem, even before the bot voting the normal in the Netherlands was not abiding the wayfarer guidelines. The fact that it is acted on now didn’t make it right before.
Everyone is free to report abuse through the right channels and it doesn’t matter where it happens, as long as niantic verified it as abuse they will act accordingly.
what you see in game has never been a reflection of what is an acceptable wayspot. For those that remember pre OPR times there were plenty of examples of wayspots approved that violated wayfarer guidelines. You are pointed to the wayfarer guidelines in the submission screen and during on boarding so that should be sufficient to point out that these exist.
Everybody can scrutinize the guidelines. Most of them are hazy shades of gray, and we hope they will guide reviewers and nominators toward a consensus, while keeping Niantic out of legal trouble.
Every single Wayfarer, it appears, is 'taking advantage' of the system, in that they attempt to nominate and vote along the blurry path informed by active wayspots they see on-line or in-person. They are subject to your blame. Are you going to target British postboxes and Ozzie survey-markers, too? And everybody else who goes along with the system?
I'm sorry but Niantic won't care about a few removed wayspots, especially from the Netherlands. I experienced the same thing with hiking trail markers, which are even listed on the criteria page. I nominated them with links to their respective website and photospheres but Niantic refused to restore them. These were discussed in another thread: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/49167/incorrect-mass-removal-of-hiking-trails#latest. So far Niantic has refused to give a proper statement to end the confusion they introduced by removing wayspots that are or could be eligible. So don't hold your breath on getting a decent response here.
The best advice I can give you is to stop caring more about Wayfarer than Niantic does. Quitting Wayfarer was the best thing I did last year. Your time is better spent on things others actually appreciate.
When im reading your case on these trail markers i can kinda understand why they got removed. In my opinion they all look the same and have the same name which is kinda awkward for Niantic their database i guess, but it should not be hard for them to give an explanation on why they got removed. Trail markers are still a very questionable criteria in my opinion.
Has there ever been a case where Niantic restored removed wayspots that were eligible after all? I would like to know, because i really want these tiles back. We already discussed that these are perfectly fine.
Our understanding of why things get removed is beside the point here. Niantic themselves state trail markers are good wayspots on their criteria page yet they remove these without explanation which is why you are unlikely to get an explanation for yours. Genuine hiking trail markers that are safe should not be removed if Niantic is going to allow cycling trail markers to stay in the database. Those cycling trail markers are often located on 50 and 60 km/h roads which are dangerous for pedestrians. I'm all for removing all of those.
I am not aware of any clarification on pavement tile art from Niantic. Based on the types of pavement art that have been removed in the whole country I highly doubt your wayspots will get restored.
Similar to not being penalized for unreasonably rejecting valid review subjects multiple times, there should be no issue with repeatedly submitting valid candidates for review. If the act of repeated submissions is deemed problematic, then individuals who persistently unreasonably reject valid candidates should also be scrutinized.
Then whats the right procedure to fight this case? Cant we tag someone who can look at this? I really want these animal tiles back. They are an official walking route. i can edit their description to give more information about them if they make a return.
Comments
The important bit is they were left for a long time.
Niantic's lack of care at fixing it led to the current situation.
So, I'm in the den, with PoGo open on my phone. My avatar suddenly takes off, running toward a distant gym. A message pops up: 'You are traveling too fast' to which the only response is "I'm a passenger".
Niantic's message was erroneous. To clear their error I was obligated to lie. What brought this about?
More than a decade ago, when Niantic was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google, it chose to hire a hyperactive Russian kid to figure out GPS services, rather than either purchase a turnkey system or use Google's own routines. With a bit of work, the kid could get a lat/long with extremely high precision, but the accuracy wasn't very good, and repeatability was poor. The avatar kept running around all over the place! Still, the kid had demonstrated proof-of-concept for GPS-tracking.
Instead of fleshing-out a GIS-services team and creating a real navigation tool, they asked the kid to keep at it. He attempted various methods, averaging multiple readings, discarding outliers, yet still it seemed as though any single reading would place him too far away, and the area of uncertainty was to large.
Somehow, the kid concluded that a 'cold' reading from the GPS would always be incorrect. Even averaging multiple 'cold' readings did not suffice. So, he began a practice of discarding readings without saving them. No statistics, not even arithmetic. Just take and discard in a loop, to 'heat things up' or keep the chip warm.
This became a standard practice: simply add more and more loops to query the hardware and discard the results, even when you have no reason to re-plot.
This code is still in use today, and helps to explain why our phones sometimes become quite hot while we're not even doing anything, when a Niantic program is running in the background.
This 'good enough for now' -> sunk-costs-fallacy philosophy has plagued us ever since.
Why bring this up now? Poor design, analysis, and planning seem to be hallmarks of Niantic's organizational philosophy.
An early version of Wayfarer assumed that reviewers would be extremely biased toward acceptance, so they made down-voting quicker and easier than up-voting. Unsurprisingly, reviewers voted for a small white-list and against a lot of things that were technically eligible, until Niantic added in various virtual and actual punishments against down-voters which in turn led to the up-vote bot-nets.
Having almost everything rejected was dispiriting, but the bot-nets were too accepting. Now Niantic offers cool-downs, threatening emails and instant rejection, and until recently they've been rather unapologetic about it.
They've got Ambassadors running interference for them, and it's difficult to debate them, because they have secret inside-knowledge protected by Non-Disclosure Agreements. We mustn't assume every social-media rant to be true, but there's also no guarantee that everything fed to our Ambassadors is accurate.
Apologies for the random rant. I wish you all a better year.
Are mosaic tiles only being removed in the Netherlands or all across the world?
I had some added in the UK after Emily mistakenly marked something as duplicate for me.
I was hoping they would be pulled into Niantic voting to see if the code could 'spot the difference'.
Unfortunately they went into regular voting. None appear in Go or Ingress so I threw some upgrades at them to get them out of the local queue.
Conclusions after reading all above and my own experience from my local and some international communities.
People are afraid to submit or even to review. And because any form of ban appeal seemingly isn't handled properly people just play and see some locations basically getting cleared out. It drives people away from any of Niantics game. People already quit ingress because of Privacy concernes and extreme toxicity. Pokémon Go was a good replacement but the way it's going, it is slowly dieing. And I hate that. I love the game and I'm really worried about the way Niantic reacts on situations. It seems all or nothing, without proper communications.
Don't get me wrong, abuse should be dealt with! Now it seems so agressieve, but when reporting harassment or clear forms of spoofing, Niantic seems silent. This also contributes to people leaving.
I really hope that in the future post like OP made and this won't be necessary.
So we can all agree that these were fine and should not have been removed. I really want these spots back in my home town Hedel together with the tiles in my neighboring city Kerkdriel. This was another slap in the face for us small communities that live in a rural area with hardly any spots and players. The abuse on tiles was going on in the bigger cities of the Netherlands not these small areas i live. Removing every spot with the name Tile/Tegel everywhere is just unfair in my opinion, Especially if these were approved before the entire bot incident.
Assuming they were in the correct location, they should not have been removed. I wouldn't get my hopes up though. Niantic as a company just doesn't care about their customers. Some of the staff might care, but there is just to few of them to even try to tackle all the issues. Just look at the new review flow. It has been a month since the december AMA, and no-one at Niantic has commented on what a thumbs down vote on all of the last 3 questions means, to the point that some ambassadors are encouraging people to abuse the system to ensure that nominations are rejected. If they don't tackle an issue like that in a month, how can we expect them to handle some wayspots in a small town somewhere?
Please Niantic? :(
These are likely removed, because these tiles can just be bought and placed wherever: https://zinloosgeweld.nl/product/stoeptegel-met-lieveheersbeestje/
It is true some might have been placed as a remembrance, but these are still very generic.
This thread is not about the Ladybug tile. I don't think anyone here is arguing that that was a great wayspot.
This thread is about the "Bommelerwaart beweegt" exercise trail tiles. These are great wayspots and should never have been removed. The person who reported those is the abuser here.
Then go on. I've showed you the thread contains many low quality Wayspots reported here. You want to blame @pieniechan-PGO & co. or some NL Ingress folks who often caused commotions in this forum, your choice.
However back again it's the people who run the bots and the people who were 'exploiting' them, whether they knew about the bots or not, should be blamed the most.
Are you still missing the point or are you trolling? Where did I say I blamed @pieniechan-PGO? I find it highly unlikely that they are the one who reported these specific tiles. I have seen many of their reports and I agree with all of the ones that I have seen. If every reporter was as honest as them, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I don't understand why people who were unaware of the bots should be blamed at all.
We seldom understand how or why Wayfarer does much of anything. Any general rule of consistent behavior might be bent or broken at any time, and the community can only guess about gray areas even if everybody is on the same page regarding acceptance/rejection.
It's a huge assumption that new or inactive people nominating more of what they see all around, or active wayfarers continuing to nominate more of what they were doing already were exploiting anything.
Or is everybody 'cheating' if they nominate stuff now that the backlog has been cleared out? They're exploiting the fact that decisions are reached in a more reasonable amount of time?
Those who knowingly took advantage of a glitch to nominate fake stuff or falsified locations acted badly. The rest were just people carrying on as usual.
Consistently submitting nominations against the guidelines is abuse. The timing for it doesn't really matter. Unfortunately the wayspot network in the Netherlands has grown with various examples of wayspots that should have never been approved (and are being cleaned up). That people use those examples as to nominate similar wayspots is on them, as the guidelines have not changed, and you are prompted to read them sufficient times.
Trash cans, mosaic tiles (placed for gaming benefits), little free libraries (in gardens/attached to houses so on PRP), street signs, etc. Are just a small subset of abuse wayspots that people still keep submitting, while the guidelines are clear. But hey let's blame bots for not using common sense and disregarding the wayfarer guidelines seems like a good way to put the blame elsewhere.
It was put forward as an example by the thread starter, just wanted to clarify why those likely got removed. So relevant for the discussion and to clarify for others that are confused as to why those are not good wayspots.
Consistently submitting nominations against the guidelines is abuse
That's a stand alone statement that you would apply to the whole Wayfarer system or is only pertinent to either this specific case or similar in the Netherlands?
In general, it's a matter of interpretation in the gray zone, unless explicitly violating guidelines. If judgment is strictly mechanical, there is no need for a user community.
The final two sentences of my post that you replied to were the ones that separated the wolves from the lambs.
Nominating temporary, fake, or mass-produced garbage, and re-submitting until it gets accepted are abusive behaviors. Ditto for stuff you KNOW does not meet the community's or Niantic's requirements.
None of this makes it right to condemn or punish normal behavior Ex Post Facto. Normal players did not know about others gaming the system. They were all in the same boat we find ourselves in now, except a bot-net was pushing everything through, instead of ML/AI cranking out arbitrary decisions.
I still don't see how normal players in BeNeLux/Germany are any more worthy of blame than Aussies, Brits, North Americans, etc.
Niantic pollutes its database all by itself. Where does anybody get off blaming normal Wayfarers?
You are completely right that the country you are from should not impact whether or not a Wayfinder is submitting abusively. However, the Netherlands has had loads of examples of players gaming the system to have gaming benefits and the botting was a very extreme example, but unfortunately not the only one. And apparently this inspires others to do the same, without checking guidelines. Your last sentence indicates the problem, even before the bot voting the normal in the Netherlands was not abiding the wayfarer guidelines. The fact that it is acted on now didn’t make it right before.
As has Spain, Poland, India. Sorry last one was abuse by Niantic.
Should Zaragoza also receive the same treatment as the Netherland?
Where do you draw the line between abuse and lack of knowledge?
I can see 10 memorial benches on a 20 minute walk. 4 were put in by Ingress players, 6 were added over the last year or so.
How many memorial benches do I have to submit before I am abusing the system? I can see them in game so they must be fine right?
I can apply the same logic to postboxes and trail markers.
Nominating 2 is ok but at three it becomes abusive?
Everyone is free to report abuse through the right channels and it doesn’t matter where it happens, as long as niantic verified it as abuse they will act accordingly.
what you see in game has never been a reflection of what is an acceptable wayspot. For those that remember pre OPR times there were plenty of examples of wayspots approved that violated wayfarer guidelines. You are pointed to the wayfarer guidelines in the submission screen and during on boarding so that should be sufficient to point out that these exist.
Thanks, Ambassador.
Everybody can scrutinize the guidelines. Most of them are hazy shades of gray, and we hope they will guide reviewers and nominators toward a consensus, while keeping Niantic out of legal trouble.
Every single Wayfarer, it appears, is 'taking advantage' of the system, in that they attempt to nominate and vote along the blurry path informed by active wayspots they see on-line or in-person. They are subject to your blame. Are you going to target British postboxes and Ozzie survey-markers, too? And everybody else who goes along with the system?
Do I resubmit this after a rejection and appeal rejection?
At what point am I spamming the system?
How many resubmits do I cross over into abuse?
1 is the name of the trail in the same way England's Coastal Path or The Great Glen Way is the name of the trail.
It's also located on here
Definitely not a regular sign.
Ambassadors have the voice of Niantic but they are not the voice of Niantic.
To see some of you adopt a hard line approach toward how the system functions and the community using it is disconcerting.
I'm sorry but Niantic won't care about a few removed wayspots, especially from the Netherlands. I experienced the same thing with hiking trail markers, which are even listed on the criteria page. I nominated them with links to their respective website and photospheres but Niantic refused to restore them. These were discussed in another thread: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/49167/incorrect-mass-removal-of-hiking-trails#latest. So far Niantic has refused to give a proper statement to end the confusion they introduced by removing wayspots that are or could be eligible. So don't hold your breath on getting a decent response here.
The best advice I can give you is to stop caring more about Wayfarer than Niantic does. Quitting Wayfarer was the best thing I did last year. Your time is better spent on things others actually appreciate.
When im reading your case on these trail markers i can kinda understand why they got removed. In my opinion they all look the same and have the same name which is kinda awkward for Niantic their database i guess, but it should not be hard for them to give an explanation on why they got removed. Trail markers are still a very questionable criteria in my opinion.
Has there ever been a case where Niantic restored removed wayspots that were eligible after all? I would like to know, because i really want these tiles back. We already discussed that these are perfectly fine.
Our understanding of why things get removed is beside the point here. Niantic themselves state trail markers are good wayspots on their criteria page yet they remove these without explanation which is why you are unlikely to get an explanation for yours. Genuine hiking trail markers that are safe should not be removed if Niantic is going to allow cycling trail markers to stay in the database. Those cycling trail markers are often located on 50 and 60 km/h roads which are dangerous for pedestrians. I'm all for removing all of those.
To answer your question, yes there are cases of restored wayspots that have been removed by Niantic. This is one of my appeals but I'm sure there are more: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/48685/removed-wayspot-appeal
I am not aware of any clarification on pavement tile art from Niantic. Based on the types of pavement art that have been removed in the whole country I highly doubt your wayspots will get restored.
Similar to not being penalized for unreasonably rejecting valid review subjects multiple times, there should be no issue with repeatedly submitting valid candidates for review. If the act of repeated submissions is deemed problematic, then individuals who persistently unreasonably reject valid candidates should also be scrutinized.
Then whats the right procedure to fight this case? Cant we tag someone who can look at this? I really want these animal tiles back. They are an official walking route. i can edit their description to give more information about them if they make a return.