A quick look at satellite and/or street view should immediately raise red flags as to the legitimacy of this wayspot. There is no church here. There is no building here. This is on the very edge of a street corner where there wouldn't even be room for the building/church directly behind the fountain even if streetview and satellite were out of date.
In other cases, should I need to explain to the abuse team why a supposed "educational sign" with zero educational valuable or information clearly doesnt meet criteria and was clearly brute forced through the system by collusion and influencing reviewers? Should I need to explain that things in medians dont have pedestrian access? Should I need to explain that the wallpaper of a Taco Bell is not a mural, but is in fact mass produced generic artwork? Should I need to explain that a church bell (and an accompanying church) is not going to be newly built in the middle of an existing historical cemetery where it would destroy dozens of existing graves?
This isn't a case of opinion where "according to me the actions taken were not satisfactory". Its not just me who feels this was handled poorly and it isn't just an opinion. This was undeniably handled incorrectly. The incompetence of the abuse team that was showcased in their lack of proper action or investigation, after we have been doing this for TEN MONTHS, is the reason why abuse like this continues to run rampant.
While obviously yes, the abuse team needs to give the Wayspots that they didn't take action on a second look, that wasn't quite the point of me showcasing these wayspots. The point is that they are not doing their jobs correctly. They are barely even doing their job at all. An abuse team that can't properly detect even the most obvious cases of abuse is hardly deserving of the name "abuse team". There is a systemic problem with how they conduct their jobs, that results in a massive failure to actually stop and prevent abuse. This has massive negative implications for Wayfarer and the entire library of Niantic products.
And again, I understand that you were likely not the person who investigated this. But given the concern you previously expressed, I would think that you would be capable or fully realizing just how horribly this was handled, and realistically, that should have been obvious to you before you even shared the list of wayspots that weren't actioned upon. It is bad enough that the people responsible for this abuse frequently come onto this forum to troll, stir the pot, and cause issues. That is something easily within your wheelhouse that could be taken care of, that has been allowed to continue for months. Just scroll up in this thread to see them defending their abuse, or check out comments like this or like this that are just designed to troll. The fact that the abuse team can't do their job correctly just emboldens them to continue all of their behaviors. They do this so openly because none of you take their actions seriously. "Concern" doesn't really mean anything until action is actually taken.
SOOOOO what Niantic is once again saying is that we don't care. Of course we will do a token look at what was provided, but why would we actually remove these waypoints? We just need more waypoints to sell our platform. Nevermind that the integrity of the platform probably plays a part in being able to sell it. I know that you are short staffed and probably overworked, but the shotty work that does come out of this company is getting more and more disappointing. There was some genuine excitement from the wayfarer community as a whole just a couple of months back when new people were brought aboard and said things we had be dying to hear for years. But now the excitement is gone replaced by the same disappointment and anger that we felt before. Niantic is slowly loosing its base of reviewers and reporters and I don't think you actually see that. But people are just done with the system, slow turn around times, the MASSIVE amount of abuse, and lack of education. we seem to be screaming into a vacuum and as I go hoarse from the screaming I feel like walking away as well.
It's very clear to me that a few of the wayspots wouldn't be removed, unless Niantic decides not to follow the same procedures it does with other reports.
The bike rack, the sign, the mural... The fact they are ineligible does not mean they will be removed, as Niantic follows the removal criteria, and it doesn't cover "not eligible" as a removal criteria (don't complain to me about it, I didn't write these procedures and I certainly wouldn't have written them like this).
It does not explain why no action was taken in some very clear cases:
Godwin Park Pavilion - It should be moved to the correct position, as it exists (AFAIK it does not create stacks anymore). If it was moved during review, reviewers should be harshly punished for moving it, as it was a very clear abuse.
Basketball Court Narcoosse Rd - Niantic often requires updated images in this kind of situation, but I think it can be seen from the maps that it's not possible that the area changed so much.
The Gatherings Bocce Court - I don't see any need for extra evidence on this case. The picture clearly doesn't match the area.
Crosses Under Trees - Again, it's very clear it doesn't match the area at all. I fail to see which extra evidence is needed.
Others are a bit more borderline:
French Soldier guarding Entrance of Belle Vie - The statue is in a decorative entrance for a village, it's not exactly "middle of the road". There's even a decorated path passing right in front of it. I don't see it as a "blatant lack of pedestrian access", although I would remove it.
Pots of Sunshine - Horrible one, but it's outside of the fence (not touching it at all) and even after the sidewalk. I can see why they didn't consider it PRP.
I know people will come with torches after me for "defending" the abusers, but what I'm saying is that we need to judge these POIs with the same parameters and procedures we use in other areas. A bike rack or an important information board wouldn't be removed anywhere, so I don't see whey they should be removed there.
What really needs to be done here is properly punishment of the abusers. And not only the directly involved accounts, as probably people are using multiple ones, so they can ban them and it won't be enough. They need to investigate these multiple accounts and start going after the main ones.
I get that removal criteria is different than being ineligible but that doesn’t work for these abuse cases. These ineligible POIs were accepted through the use of abusive behavior and therefore deserve to be removed. The same as when massive clusters occur through location editing, yes, the POIs end up placed correctly on the objects but we’re done so abusively and therefore should be adjusted.
Or like in this thread, where ineligible items are accepted through brute force or mass submitting until it’s accepted, Niantic removed that one.
With the way the Wayfarer/Lightship community is headed, the abuse team needs to adjust their course of action when it comes to newly accepted ineligible items and abuse. In the Content Guidelines, it indicates “spamming” a submission can result in action being taken against your account and in the Rejection Criteria it lists submitting a wayspot marked for removal is abuse. This group has resubmitted POIs that have been removed by Niantic multiple times, to me these actions fall under spamming and submitting a poi marked for removal, two abusive offenses.
As far as the pots, those are definitely on what has been considered PRP like with the thousands of LFLs we’ve all had to review. What happens when this person moves out and a non-pogo friendly person moves in to people stopping in front of their house everyday? It’s not hard to imagine another lawsuit as the result.
This is not me “coming with torches” for you because I agree, the issue here is Niantic needs to take action on these accounts, real action. Remove their ability to not only review but submit and access the forum. Seriously Niantic, the system is flooded with submissions, no one will miss the small chunk from these abusers.
I feel this investigation has been handled poorly from the get go. After the negative and harassing behavior on the first thread, Niantic should have started a private conversation for Andis to provide additional reports and any additional information needed.
Didn't @AisforAndis-ING have a direct line with @NianticCasey-ING after a weekend of unchecked open threats, doxing, and other malicious actions against him?
Wow. Great detailed post, @AisforAndis-ING. I don't understand why Niantic does not check these sources. You can even go the perspective county's property appraiser and see who owns the property to check if construction will happen. You can even verify right of way and if a street is platted without any deeper work. The aerials also usually are more up to date through a county's GIS. It's been a foolproof method for me for any verifiability on submissions.
in the Rejection Criteria it lists submitting a wayspot marked for removal is abuse
Actually it does not say it's abuse. If you refer to the recent chart it was a poor effort of making a summary of one of the items of the rejection criteria:
Live Wayspot marked for removal
Any accepted Wayspot that has been marked for removal will not be accepting any title, description, photo, or location edits. Any such submissions for such POIs will be automatically rejected.
This part of the rejection criteria refers to edits (so IMO it shouldn't even be in that chart). When you decide to remove a spot, you will be rejecting all edits that could be waiting in this POI (obviously, how can you accept or even review an edit for something that was removed). That's what it refers to.
Should it be? Probably. But it's hard to enforce. I think the spamming one already covers this.
You are wrong, it is considered abuse. It is literally within a list of different types of abuse. That is why it is proceeded by items such as "abusive photo", "abusive text", "fake nomination", "influencing reviewers", and the item following it is "other types of abuse".
I had a feeling someone was going to say it doesn’t say abuse but it is smack dab in the middle of all the “abusive” rejection reasons so it clearly fits in those categories.
And I was not referencing the new infographic, I was referencing the Rejection Criteria. I understand the category mainly talks about edits but I think most would agree if you’re not supposed to be submitting edits for a removed location, then you shouldn’t be resubmitting a location multiple times that Niantic removed, you tried to appeal, and Niantic denied your appeal.
I’m really not trying to turn this into a back and forth. The main point I would like to convey to Niantic is that as the community changes and abusers become “smarter”, the Abuse Team also needs to change.
Removal criteria is a subset of the rejection criteria, so when Niantic removes something it kind of says in a very clear way that it is not eligible. So you obviously shouldn't resubmit it (if you know it was removed), you should appeal it and accept the result. Submitting it again is of course not correct, especially if it's a systematic and repetitive action.
But it's not what this section is about. It says "live" (ie. not removed yet) and "marked for removal" (it doesn't say previously removed or anything like that). It's clearly just to cover the removal of the pending edits when removing a POI. If I edit a description and later the POI is removed, am I abusing something? No, but my edit must be rejected.
Hey, don’t start thinking this is a St. Cloud defender. He/she is mad at the person who defended St. Cloud. So he/ she is one of you. The anti St. Clouders.
Cc @NianticTintino hope you enjoy the read this morning. No clue if you've been reading the other threads where we're asking for better abuse responses, since you don't comment on them.
Can someone PLEASE remove the offensive word post. Seriously has been reported repeatedly for HOURs and still sitting on the page in plain sight. PLEASE MODERATE!!!!
They literally opened by insulting the Ingress players in the thread. The only ingress players in this thread are those who are against the abuse in St. Cloud. This person was very clearly insulting me and the others who do not tolerate your abuse.
Your attempts to troll and manipulate are blatantly transparent and you only continue to dig your grave deeper by constantly instigating arguments.
Even if they were on the side of anti-abuse (they aren't), that behavior wouldn't be acceptable anyways. The only reason you are harping that they are anti-abuse is because you think it makes your own inexcusable behavior and trolling look better. News flash - it doesn't, it makes it more obvious that it's a problem.
We have this ridiculous word filter in the first place because someone dropped an unfiltered N-word on the Ingress Forum, and it was left there unmoderated for the better part of a day despite multiple people trying to get the forum mods to do something about it.
But why do we have this overzeilous word filtering and edit filtering if it doesn't even catch basic things like that?
You sure are trying to paint this poster as such but I don’t know how you came to this conclusion.
If you are assuming they were responding to the latest comment, their first comment specifically mentions an “Ingress mug” so they clearly weren’t responding to @aleprj-PGO as their login is through pogo.
I was the latest Ingress account to comment and I can assure you I was not defending St. Cloud. I guess I did call them “smarter” but I think the use of quotations gets my point across clearly.
Comments
@NianticGiffard Again, the absolutely horrendous quality of investigation isn't just limited to those 6 wayspots that I went into detail over.
For one additional example, take a quick look at Church Fountain:
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=28.246137,-81.28589&z=19&pll=28.246137,-81.28589
A quick look at satellite and/or street view should immediately raise red flags as to the legitimacy of this wayspot. There is no church here. There is no building here. This is on the very edge of a street corner where there wouldn't even be room for the building/church directly behind the fountain even if streetview and satellite were out of date.
In other cases, should I need to explain to the abuse team why a supposed "educational sign" with zero educational valuable or information clearly doesnt meet criteria and was clearly brute forced through the system by collusion and influencing reviewers? Should I need to explain that things in medians dont have pedestrian access? Should I need to explain that the wallpaper of a Taco Bell is not a mural, but is in fact mass produced generic artwork? Should I need to explain that a church bell (and an accompanying church) is not going to be newly built in the middle of an existing historical cemetery where it would destroy dozens of existing graves?
This isn't a case of opinion where "according to me the actions taken were not satisfactory". Its not just me who feels this was handled poorly and it isn't just an opinion. This was undeniably handled incorrectly. The incompetence of the abuse team that was showcased in their lack of proper action or investigation, after we have been doing this for TEN MONTHS, is the reason why abuse like this continues to run rampant.
While obviously yes, the abuse team needs to give the Wayspots that they didn't take action on a second look, that wasn't quite the point of me showcasing these wayspots. The point is that they are not doing their jobs correctly. They are barely even doing their job at all. An abuse team that can't properly detect even the most obvious cases of abuse is hardly deserving of the name "abuse team". There is a systemic problem with how they conduct their jobs, that results in a massive failure to actually stop and prevent abuse. This has massive negative implications for Wayfarer and the entire library of Niantic products.
And again, I understand that you were likely not the person who investigated this. But given the concern you previously expressed, I would think that you would be capable or fully realizing just how horribly this was handled, and realistically, that should have been obvious to you before you even shared the list of wayspots that weren't actioned upon. It is bad enough that the people responsible for this abuse frequently come onto this forum to troll, stir the pot, and cause issues. That is something easily within your wheelhouse that could be taken care of, that has been allowed to continue for months. Just scroll up in this thread to see them defending their abuse, or check out comments like this or like this that are just designed to troll. The fact that the abuse team can't do their job correctly just emboldens them to continue all of their behaviors. They do this so openly because none of you take their actions seriously. "Concern" doesn't really mean anything until action is actually taken.
SOOOOO what Niantic is once again saying is that we don't care. Of course we will do a token look at what was provided, but why would we actually remove these waypoints? We just need more waypoints to sell our platform. Nevermind that the integrity of the platform probably plays a part in being able to sell it. I know that you are short staffed and probably overworked, but the shotty work that does come out of this company is getting more and more disappointing. There was some genuine excitement from the wayfarer community as a whole just a couple of months back when new people were brought aboard and said things we had be dying to hear for years. But now the excitement is gone replaced by the same disappointment and anger that we felt before. Niantic is slowly loosing its base of reviewers and reporters and I don't think you actually see that. But people are just done with the system, slow turn around times, the MASSIVE amount of abuse, and lack of education. we seem to be screaming into a vacuum and as I go hoarse from the screaming I feel like walking away as well.
It's very clear to me that a few of the wayspots wouldn't be removed, unless Niantic decides not to follow the same procedures it does with other reports.
The bike rack, the sign, the mural... The fact they are ineligible does not mean they will be removed, as Niantic follows the removal criteria, and it doesn't cover "not eligible" as a removal criteria (don't complain to me about it, I didn't write these procedures and I certainly wouldn't have written them like this).
It does not explain why no action was taken in some very clear cases:
Godwin Park Pavilion - It should be moved to the correct position, as it exists (AFAIK it does not create stacks anymore). If it was moved during review, reviewers should be harshly punished for moving it, as it was a very clear abuse.
Basketball Court Narcoosse Rd - Niantic often requires updated images in this kind of situation, but I think it can be seen from the maps that it's not possible that the area changed so much.
The Gatherings Bocce Court - I don't see any need for extra evidence on this case. The picture clearly doesn't match the area.
Crosses Under Trees - Again, it's very clear it doesn't match the area at all. I fail to see which extra evidence is needed.
Others are a bit more borderline:
French Soldier guarding Entrance of Belle Vie - The statue is in a decorative entrance for a village, it's not exactly "middle of the road". There's even a decorated path passing right in front of it. I don't see it as a "blatant lack of pedestrian access", although I would remove it.
Pots of Sunshine - Horrible one, but it's outside of the fence (not touching it at all) and even after the sidewalk. I can see why they didn't consider it PRP.
I know people will come with torches after me for "defending" the abusers, but what I'm saying is that we need to judge these POIs with the same parameters and procedures we use in other areas. A bike rack or an important information board wouldn't be removed anywhere, so I don't see whey they should be removed there.
What really needs to be done here is properly punishment of the abusers. And not only the directly involved accounts, as probably people are using multiple ones, so they can ban them and it won't be enough. They need to investigate these multiple accounts and start going after the main ones.
I get that removal criteria is different than being ineligible but that doesn’t work for these abuse cases. These ineligible POIs were accepted through the use of abusive behavior and therefore deserve to be removed. The same as when massive clusters occur through location editing, yes, the POIs end up placed correctly on the objects but we’re done so abusively and therefore should be adjusted.
Or like in this thread, where ineligible items are accepted through brute force or mass submitting until it’s accepted, Niantic removed that one.
With the way the Wayfarer/Lightship community is headed, the abuse team needs to adjust their course of action when it comes to newly accepted ineligible items and abuse. In the Content Guidelines, it indicates “spamming” a submission can result in action being taken against your account and in the Rejection Criteria it lists submitting a wayspot marked for removal is abuse. This group has resubmitted POIs that have been removed by Niantic multiple times, to me these actions fall under spamming and submitting a poi marked for removal, two abusive offenses.
As far as the pots, those are definitely on what has been considered PRP like with the thousands of LFLs we’ve all had to review. What happens when this person moves out and a non-pogo friendly person moves in to people stopping in front of their house everyday? It’s not hard to imagine another lawsuit as the result.
This is not me “coming with torches” for you because I agree, the issue here is Niantic needs to take action on these accounts, real action. Remove their ability to not only review but submit and access the forum. Seriously Niantic, the system is flooded with submissions, no one will miss the small chunk from these abusers.
I feel this investigation has been handled poorly from the get go. After the negative and harassing behavior on the first thread, Niantic should have started a private conversation for Andis to provide additional reports and any additional information needed.
The thread I referenced in the second portion of the above is this:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/22620/the-worst-submission-i-ve-ever-seen-got-accepted#latest
Didn't @AisforAndis-ING have a direct line with @NianticCasey-ING after a weekend of unchecked open threats, doxing, and other malicious actions against him?
Yep, just in time for Casey to disappear 😭
Wow. Great detailed post, @AisforAndis-ING. I don't understand why Niantic does not check these sources. You can even go the perspective county's property appraiser and see who owns the property to check if construction will happen. You can even verify right of way and if a street is platted without any deeper work. The aerials also usually are more up to date through a county's GIS. It's been a foolproof method for me for any verifiability on submissions.
in the Rejection Criteria it lists submitting a wayspot marked for removal is abuse
Actually it does not say it's abuse. If you refer to the recent chart it was a poor effort of making a summary of one of the items of the rejection criteria:
Live Wayspot marked for removal
Any accepted Wayspot that has been marked for removal will not be accepting any title, description, photo, or location edits. Any such submissions for such POIs will be automatically rejected.
This part of the rejection criteria refers to edits (so IMO it shouldn't even be in that chart). When you decide to remove a spot, you will be rejecting all edits that could be waiting in this POI (obviously, how can you accept or even review an edit for something that was removed). That's what it refers to.
Should it be? Probably. But it's hard to enforce. I think the spamming one already covers this.
You are wrong, it is considered abuse. It is literally within a list of different types of abuse. That is why it is proceeded by items such as "abusive photo", "abusive text", "fake nomination", "influencing reviewers", and the item following it is "other types of abuse".
I had a feeling someone was going to say it doesn’t say abuse but it is smack dab in the middle of all the “abusive” rejection reasons so it clearly fits in those categories.
And I was not referencing the new infographic, I was referencing the Rejection Criteria. I understand the category mainly talks about edits but I think most would agree if you’re not supposed to be submitting edits for a removed location, then you shouldn’t be resubmitting a location multiple times that Niantic removed, you tried to appeal, and Niantic denied your appeal.
If that text doesn't refer only to edits, Niantic doesn't know how to write anything at all.
I’m really not trying to turn this into a back and forth. The main point I would like to convey to Niantic is that as the community changes and abusers become “smarter”, the Abuse Team also needs to change.
Removal criteria is a subset of the rejection criteria, so when Niantic removes something it kind of says in a very clear way that it is not eligible. So you obviously shouldn't resubmit it (if you know it was removed), you should appeal it and accept the result. Submitting it again is of course not correct, especially if it's a systematic and repetitive action.
But it's not what this section is about. It says "live" (ie. not removed yet) and "marked for removal" (it doesn't say previously removed or anything like that). It's clearly just to cover the removal of the pending edits when removing a POI. If I edit a description and later the POI is removed, am I abusing something? No, but my edit must be rejected.
Hey, don’t start thinking this is a St. Cloud defender. He/she is mad at the person who defended St. Cloud. So he/ she is one of you. The anti St. Clouders.
It doesn’t matter who “he” is. They are being disruptive.
Somehow this word doesn't get censored. Nice.
@NianticGiffard if you're able to ban every troll accounts impersonating you and @TrevorAlan-PGO , how about you do the same with this guy?
I'm not surprised if this thread become closed too, just because of some people like this.
Let's ban the St. Cloud trolls while we are at it too.
****, just no.
(btw, m.a.t.e, which is very heavily used in Australia is for some reason when **** is not). But I think people use the latter more.
And the harassment of @AisforAndis-ING continues. Great :\
And no mods to look into this. It's not even a weekend.
Cc @NianticTintino hope you enjoy the read this morning. No clue if you've been reading the other threads where we're asking for better abuse responses, since you don't comment on them.
That poster is one of yours, they are an Anti-st. Clouder. They were upset that someone was defending St. Cloud. Not the other way around, sorry.
If i edit 1 character in a message I have to wait for a moderator to clear it and the whole message disappears until they do.
If I say a word like "slo pe" or "bu sh" or "stri p" they get censored.
But here's this word.
And you keep quoting it, guaranteeing that it will continue to be seen.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino @NianticGiffard
Can someone PLEASE remove the offensive word post. Seriously has been reported repeatedly for HOURs and still sitting on the page in plain sight. PLEASE MODERATE!!!!
They literally opened by insulting the Ingress players in the thread. The only ingress players in this thread are those who are against the abuse in St. Cloud. This person was very clearly insulting me and the others who do not tolerate your abuse.
Your attempts to troll and manipulate are blatantly transparent and you only continue to dig your grave deeper by constantly instigating arguments.
Even if they were on the side of anti-abuse (they aren't), that behavior wouldn't be acceptable anyways. The only reason you are harping that they are anti-abuse is because you think it makes your own inexcusable behavior and trolling look better. News flash - it doesn't, it makes it more obvious that it's a problem.
We have this ridiculous word filter in the first place because someone dropped an unfiltered N-word on the Ingress Forum, and it was left there unmoderated for the better part of a day despite multiple people trying to get the forum mods to do something about it.
But why do we have this overzeilous word filtering and edit filtering if it doesn't even catch basic things like that?
You sure are trying to paint this poster as such but I don’t know how you came to this conclusion.
If you are assuming they were responding to the latest comment, their first comment specifically mentions an “Ingress mug” so they clearly weren’t responding to @aleprj-PGO as their login is through pogo.
I was the latest Ingress account to comment and I can assure you I was not defending St. Cloud. I guess I did call them “smarter” but I think the use of quotations gets my point across clearly.