Abuse of investigation
We need a screenshot of the rejection email to remove wayspots that are on private property or no longer exist. However, even though he didn't attach a screenshot, Niantic removed these wayspots. His way is pretty simple. Just ask Niantic to investigate the abuse. The problem is that these wayspots were not abused.
These wayspots are not only not abused, but they do not meet the removal criteria.
He has also requested an investigation into nominations that are not abused.
The root is his lack of knowledge and too strong a sense of justice. However, it is definitely Niantic that has given him the power. I have a favor to ask Niantic. Don't add more bad precedents. If his methods become widespread, the appeal process will collapse, but is that okay?
Comments
His intentions seem to be good, but I agree that this kind of behaviour is a serious risk for the appeal process as a whole.
I agree with the OP on this, way too much stuff that just deserves a rejection and nothing else, at best it is wasting the limited Niantic Resources.
Another one...
He confessed that he had deliberately shifted his location. (Case at Hodogaya Ward) — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
He requested an inappropriate investigation again, and he refuted the points raised by several wayfinders.
The pile at the start of the town road (Case at Higashiagatsuma Town) — Wayfarer (nianticlabs.com)
These are the piles that indicate the starting or ending point of town roads. Whether they have historical or cultural value and whether they are mass-produced can be debated. However, these are not abused because they were set up by the local government based on the law.
He thinks that all nominations and wayspots that are featureless or mass-produced are abuse, and several Japanese wayfinders have been influenced by him. In fact, they post nominations that are not abused such as manholes and bridges to “Today’s I want a PokéStop at my house reviews”. This is not his personal problem anymore.
@NianticGiffard @NianticCasey-ING
When are you gonna stop this? It's getting totally out of hand, if anyone dares to nominate anything that he disagree with, he request that the submitter is investigated, even if it's within the guidelines
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20606/the-applicant-who-started-numbering-them-as-he-liked-case-at-warabi-city#latest
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/20608/the-applicant-has-twisted-the-meaning-from-the-original-ama-case-at-sakai-city#latest
How is people supposed to nominate different objects that might have the same name in the real life if they aren't able to add something else to the title of the nomination? (because if he dares to nominate with the same name, then the subject at hand would request a ban due to mass produced, not unique or any other crazy reason)
We know that cemeteries are delicate matters as they are different between cultures, but so far there's no ban about nominating everything in a cemetery and the submitter correctly tries to remember this, and what he gets instead is a request for a ban due to an overzealous reviewer.
Come on!, start acting now. This is Niantic's Wayfarer, not MagicalThorn's Wayfarer
I couldn't agree more.
What's even more annoying to me is that his reports are always alswered and resolved by Niantic, even when they're in a completely wrong format. Also, her regularly reports things that are definitely, absolutely not abusive, and this appears to have no consequence at all.
Case in point: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/19924/abuse-of-kurotoriyama-park-case-at-izumi-city#latest
Here, MagicalThorn "reported" 8 Wayspots. 3 of them were perfectly fine, at the correct location. Only 2 of them were placed at a definitely wrong location, and the worst of the bunch was a displacement of 64 metres. The remaining 3 were very slightly off, by a few metres max, entirely within whet's generally seen as acceptable.
Niantic respoded by thanking him and taking action on 3 Wayspots and 2 Wayfarers. (I assume that the third Wayspot was the tower that was misplaced by about 20 metres, but not in an abusive fashion.) The 5 Wayspots that Niantic also found to be perfectly fine were not mentioned at all. The fact that he accused the nominators of 8 Wayspots of being cheaters and more than half of these accusations turned out to be false is just swept under the rug.
Meanwhile, there are tons of reports with much more compelling evidence of much, much, much more serious cheating that are completely ignored or abandoned for not following the appropriate format. This is becoming extremely disheartening.
And here I am not being able to get a clearly dangerous Wayspot removed.
There were some posts that were too harsh about the eligibility of spots, but considering that there were several spots that were discarded as inappropriate in the location transfer survey request, we can't judge all of them as false.
Three were discarded as inappropriate and five were determined not to be inappropriate, but since it is true that the exact locations were not identified, it would be strange to determine that the survey request was a lie, wouldn't it?
In the first place, it is true that there were multiple unnatural inconsistencies, and to say that the survey request is a lie is, I feel, a deliberate inducement.
Am I the only one who feels that this post itself is intended to be some kind of personal attack?
@NianticGiffard
We have many people on this forum reporting abuse. Afaik none of them received a thread which talked about them like this one. So, is this thread a personal attack? No. The person we are talking about received this thread because he is seen as a negative influence in the community.
As the OP already wrote: a) the reporter doesn't seem to understand all wayfarer rules, so he tags non-abusive behavior as abuse and b) he doesn't seem to understand the report rules, so he is using the wrong format and not abiding to the formal report procedure (abuse form when reviewing and ingame report first).
His reports are not any more important than the reports from everybody else and still he puts himself above everybody else in the community. Having a few reports breaking the rules is an inconvenience, but not world ending. The amount of rule breaking reports from this person though has reached such a high amount, that we have to openly talk about his behavior.
Yes, I do also agree with the OP. Niantic's team should tell him to follow the formal report procedure, as they did with other reporters.
We're not talking about all his posts, only about the latest trend where he's starting to use the forums to report abuse on everything he doesn't like.
He pastes lots of screenshots from wayfarer, from google maps, and then adding that this is abuse and everyone involved should be investigated. All of that based on his personal opinion and without following the guidelines provided by Niantic to report issues (in game or rejecting invalid nominations)
Do you think that it's right to investigate as abuse a person that nominates a wayspot that might have the same name as another existing one and then he adds a "2" suffix to differentiate each one of them?
Is that real abuse or does it follows the guidelines that ask us to provide unique names for each PoI?
You suggest that this post might be some kind of personal attack. How do we know that his actions in this forum aren't some kind of vendetta against other players?
Thanks for surfacing this! Please note that all reports are investigated by our team and appropriate actions are taken after our careful study on whether it's an appeal or actually an abuse.
However, I have noted down your feedback and passed it onto our abuse team to follow the appropriate decision process for every type of report.
@NianticGiffard Thanks for the reply. Please consider adding some content about abuse to your support materials for learning about wayfarer. What is abuse? Why is it wrong to abuse? What should we do if we find abuse? There is a lot for beginners to learn.
Did the same team already noticed the abuse made by spoofers at Sydney CBD, where they started to nominate "Today's 'I want a Pokestop at my house' "-quality nominations?
Niantic has actually accepted their report about numbering and "have taken action against the Wayspot and Wayfinder". I find this incredibly upsetting and unsettling. Is the numbering of objects that would otherwise be called the same considred abuse now? Where are we warned about this in the guidelines? I'm fairly sure I've accepted several nominations with numbering in the title before - should I be worried about this now?
I have to agree. It was not abuse at all, so I can't understand what kind of action they are talking about.
I'm really sorry to burst your bubble, but when it comes to the WF team (or Nia as a whole), the words "appropriate action" and "careful study" do NOT apply.
What careful study was done when your old partner Cassey decided that a monument in the middle of a roundabout with NO PEDESTRIAN CROSSING was "ok" because the crosswalk "probably was washed out"?
What careful study and appropriate actions have been taken in St. Cloud, with AisforAndis having written 5 threads already about it?
What appropriate actions were taken against the folks who have been spamming Sydney with garbage nominations from across the world?
What appropriate actions were taken when you LITERALLY scammed people in the Russia Wf challenge, moving goalposts after the event had ended, and later refusing rewards to people with FACTUAL EVIDENCE that they met your newly made up "criteria"?
🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
I find this unsettling & extremely upsetting as well. It is very offensive for all of us. I have nothing against the wayfinder who created this report & multiple other incorrect reports as well, at all. It seems in fact that they have very good intentions. But too good of intentions. OP just doesn’t understand that this is unacceptable behavior because they are being informed that they are doing the right thing, when many reports are wrong. Niantic must speak up & tell this wayfinder that they are in fact breaking the rules by doing this & not the wayfinders who submitted these wayspots. We are supposed to be biased, & this is not biased, whatsoever. In no way should someone be banned for not submitting abuse. This will create a legal dispute if not corrected immediately. @auntergaof-PGO, thank you for this post. Although it shouldn’t be necessary, sadly, it needed to happen
@NianticGiffard , anything to say apart from the classic dead silence? Or will you just sit in your chair and close the thread akin to others that outline SERIOUS ISSUES with WF?
It has been several weeks, but unfortunately, Niantic has again accepted his appeal which does not follow the format. His methods are exactly the same as before.
Of course, if you don't attach a screenshot of the rejection email, your appeal is invalid. That's right.
In the below discussion, he was prompted by Giffard to report it in the app, but he refused. Not only that, but he went on to say that if my appeal was invalid, it was a flaw in the process, not a violation of the rules.
He is not willing to follow the forum rules, so the wayfarer team has no choice but to follow the forum rules. If this issue does not improve, I will seek another way instead of posting to this discussion.
He's such a nice person.
Unless his requests are denied
He acts as if you don't agree with him, either you didn't read what he said, or maybe there was a translation issue. And escalates very quickly.
Maybe you should also tag @NianticTintino . Ofc it is weekend now, but next week maybe.
That guy was banned. Ignore him.
And his post was from July 30th. It now September 5th, and still no reply from Giffard. Perhaps his choice of words was blunt and harsh, but he wasn't completely wrong in what he said.
I don't know if most Japanese players know this forum exist or not. But, the "funnier" thing I've noticed is, there are none any single Japanese players who would either complained or threaten him for mass-reporting Wayspots he didn't like (except, some of you complaining he didn't follow the procedure), unlike some reports from St. Lucie (FL), Poland, France, Russia, etc. that you should know there are some people against the report.
He basically never replies to users, does he?
He doesn't even read the AMA as far as I can tell, and I don't know what the standards are, but he thinks he's right and there's nothing we can say to such a person.
Some of his explanations are mixed with lies, so we just don't outwardly argue with him, but we do report niantic.
In his latest posts he breaks the community guidelines by doxing a member of the community because he had called him out previously
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/23149/wayspot-that-doesnt-exist-and-more-bremen-walle-%CE%B1
Hei @NianticDanbocat , maybe from all three tagged staff members in this thread you will answer (I remember having also tagged you in the other new threads in the report section, hope that wasn't too much). I myself am really curious, I have always been about this situation. Whenever I saw Giffard answering in the report section I was not sure if we have to follow the formal report procedures or not. Often Giffard would send people away who did not follow the formal way, but in almost all cases from the user mentioned in this thread, Giffard seemed to not care about those anymore. Same goes with removal criteria. How far do we actually need those and how far can we go with what we feel? Since that is what we have seen through many reports, from which some are mentioned here. For some people you and Tintino are the bringers of clarity here, maybe enlighten us more.
And then ofc, as mentioned by WheelTrekker, the user from Japan has decided to "target" somebody on the forum. That being me, for remembering him to follow the formal report procedures, since we pretty much all do it that way. Everybody can decide to look anywhere for abusive poi and if someone does it with my city out of pettiness, so be it. But this ties in to what I have asked at the start: is this the new way now? Living over 9000 km away from me, without a way to report poi ingame, without a way to receive a rejection mail, without a way to provide actual live proof for anything and without actually understanding the local language or social customs and queues. Best example were churches which were "reported" by the Japanese user because they had an adjacent children day care. A concept foreign to his country and maybe even beyond that, since I believe he doesn't even read the AMA.
I failed to post, so I'm posting again. I apologize if this is a duplicate.
There was one thing that bothered me about his words and actions.
"And,When I was doing a review of the Wayfarer!,I have also found a few other strange things that I would like to share with you."
He said he found these wayspots during his review. However, all he attached were screenshots of the Intel Map. Did he really set his home/bonus location in Germany and review nominations from Bremen? If he hadn't reviewed the nomination from Bremen, he would have lied.
Even if he had set the home/bonus location to Germany, if it was set recently, it would be natural to assume that he was acting out of revenge, wouldn't it? @NianticGiffard
Is it just me, or did he start 'attacking' only Wayspots related to K-12 schools and daycares?
Especially after @ftzzghzuhdidu-ING wrote this long ago..., but maybe it's just a coincidence.