I can see both sides, I have made edits that make more PoI appear in more games. Many times it truley is to make the PoI in a more accurate location. I dont try and influence reviewers in the location move and many are a more logical location.
As long as it's not a wrong location nudging a PoI a few feet isn't going to hurt anyone.
A lot of times poi was placed on new items when satellite may not be the most accurate and then when that satellite photo is updated you notice that it's off a few feet. Updating that for accuracy is perfectly fine.
All in all I think there is a not less malicious intent in edits unless it's completely obvious. Be positive about people. The majority of people are just trying to make all game boards better. When you start thinking the worst about people you can't see the good.
Plus Niantic does not show us the cell lines and does not even acknowledge the existence. So if you are reviewing with something like wayfarer + or iitc to check those things you are also in violation of the rules.
Basically just pick the best location and leave it at that.
I am a Pokemon Go player and I would say almost all of the negative behavior I have observed when it comes to wayspots is due to Pokemon Go players. Deliberate nomination of a duplicate wayspot with a less accurate location and supporting information admitting they are nominating a duplicate because the existing point does not appear in Pokemon Go, abusive description edits saying they want a location edit to a specific location to create a gym in an adjacent cell, nominations of pure coal with supporting information along the lines of "need more Pokestops", description edits just saying they want a Pokestop to become a gym, etc..
I am sure there is some abuse by some Ingress players too, but is much more subtle.
@Cowyn2016-PGO said, "Move a spot to be equally accurate: Borderline Debatable." I think that would be true except that Niantic has said not to do it. I think that should close the debate.
imagine all the problems niantic wouldve saved if all the wayspots would appear in the map...in the end 99.999999% of the current database is thanks to pogo...just imagine...
Niantic can and should adjust their takes based on community feedback. Things like this don't exactly have basis to be this black and white. Would surely be different if this wasn't the case, but this is simply way too black and white interpretation and I feel Niantic would do well to make a slight adjustment here.
Borderline debatable doesn't mean something isn't bad/wrong... It just doesn't mean it isnt very wrong...
For a real world analogy: If the speed limit says 65 MPH, you clearly shouldn't do 70. But you will find a lot of people thinking going 70 is okay.... and you won't see a lot of crackdown by police at 70. Meanwhile do 90... and see the abuse sirens a flashing.
Maybe a different phrase like "Technically wrong by rules, but many in community think it shouldn't be against the rules" would be a more apt phrase
People who speed aren't going around claiming that they are "morally right" for speed and those who drive at or below the speed limit are "morally wrong".
Check it out. What happens there? He aks for moving a wayspot, that is located at a street in front of a small half timbered house, that seems to be a kiosk or small shop. It's obvious, that this wayspot shouldnt be at the street. Now he argues, that the wayspot should be at the side of the house, since that's the only place, that is not a bottleneck for different types of traffic. the side of the house is a blind spot for pedestrian and biking traffic, since there is free space in the inside of a curve of bike lane and pedestrian paths.
The wayspot is according to the title the half timbered framework of the house. The wayspot picture features only a part of the house with an inscription in the woodwork. According to the title of the wayspot the wayspot is nethertheless the whole half timbered woodwork of this house, so the whole house.
So here we have 3 locations:
totally wrong location at the street
place in front of the house, which is a logical anchor point according to the wayspot picture, but the location is nethertheless a bottleneck for pedestrian and bike traffic since the sidewalks are very narrow
place at the side of the house, that is in the legit area according to the title of the spot, but it isnt a logical anchor. But it is the best place for players to not disturb biking muggles.
Niantic decided to not follow his proposal, and they ve thrown the punishment.
In the end I totaly dont get it: He asked to move the spot. Niantic moved the spot. They didnt follow his proposal, but they are Niantic - they are free to choose the location.
Result of this story:Accuracy of the wayspot or even the accuracy of a logical anchor of an area-ish wayspot is more important to Niantic than pedestrian accessibility. For me that's a dumb point of view since evrything here revolves around mobile gaming smombies. Location accuracy might be more valuable to sell their database to new customers/partners/licensors, but accessibility should be always in the minds of reviewers.
Second story for those, who are very fast in choosing "report abuse"
I got a temporary ban, too, for influencing reviewers and I was very curious about that. I have to admit, that I used sometimes location edits together with supporting texts, including examples, where I wanted to move area-ish POI for cell reasons. The time I got the ban I had neither a pending edit of that type nor such edit resolved within months.
In the end the triggering reason for my ban seemed to be friendly fire: I had 2 text edits for single wayspot unresolved. The title edit changed an abbreviation to the full word. The description edit removed a player tagg from the description. What do reviewers see? A description with playername, a description without playername. So reviewer Mr Smartypants comes to the conclusion, that someone wants to eternalize his playertagg into that wayspot, and Mr Smartypants pushes the abuse-button ...... thx, Mr Smartypants. Not.
And the moral of this story: Only use the abuse-button if you are 100% sure, what's happening there. Reviewing edits is something, where you can't apply Ockham's razor: the simplest explanation is often not the truth. I saw lots of examples, where real cheaters outsmarted the reviewers. All of these examples are observations from a single town, where players did this to create additional stops:
(have in mind: I'm from Germany, we dont have streetview - so reviewing edits is like "You know nothing, Jon Snow")
Example 1: Evryone knows the location edit reviews, with a point cloud of proposals and a single location apart. That's something you might see on daily basis. In most cases this shows repeated attempts of someone to pull a wayspot in range of their couch. I guess in most cases the reviewers simply click on the single dot and laugh about the situation.
But what about the following: someone creating a point cloud of location proposals around the real location, and the location they want to have is the single one out there? Tricked.
Example 2: Location edits with supporting statements.
Are the supporting statements like "please choose the left spot" really from the same person? Maybe it's a counter action from someone, who stumbled across the location edit from his neighborhood during reviewing, or informed by others
Maybe it's the same person, but inverted psychology is also possible.
Example 3: Location edit with supporting statments for both locations. One is simple like "choose left spot" and the other one is better and explanatory, like "please let choose the right spot; a PoGo player does this to create a couch portal". Something like this was very often used to move a wayspot.
So in the end ..... since Germany doesnt have streetview nowadays edit system is totally useless. Reviewers dont get useful information.
95% of our location edits are things, that are obscure according to the satelite pictures. No streetview available, objects are at walls or under trees, sat view is older than the object, etc.pp.
When reviewing location edits I'm glad to see examples, where I fully understand the situation and where I'm sure not to get tricked. I don't differentiate, if any action is "morally" better, is there a detailed statement of Niantic about that situation. As long as there is a good reasoning for an edit and there are valid arguments, then it's okay for me. I rank common sense here higher than whatever Niantic says, as long as the editing is lacking information.
So looking at location edits, that stay in a legit area of the POI:
Cell rules can be an argument for me, but a weak one. If there are logical anchors for an area-ish wayspot, then cell rules as argument aren't enough for me to move the wayspot away from logical anchor points (like park entrance signs vs somewhere in the park).
But even if a player does a supporting statement (what Nia considers as abuse), I appreciate it, if it helps me to understand the situation. If it's a statement with cell rule argument, it's easy to check: IITC with cell plugin .... so however the circumstances are: it is somehow helpful to decide, whatever the individual result is. That's why I did that too - explain, why I do an edit, and try to proof and verify it for the other reviewers (since they otherwise have no clue, what's going on).
Further there was the argument, that location edits for cell reasons are only useless workload for the reviewers. That's not the entire truth. Moving for cell rules prevents submissions of duplicates, that might be hidden for single games. Those duplicate submissions are workload, too. I guess this is a zero sum game. So it's simply no argument for any side.
Finally .... evrything, that causes the problems here, is the lack of displayed information for me as a reviewer, .... and the policies of Nia, that make the feature partially useless for Germans, if you follow more policy than common sense ...
Niantic could fix a lot there, but it's very low on their to-do-list according the last AMA session, where I asked them about future plans for any kind of supporting information for edits.
There would be so much easy solutions:
display the old supporting picture of the candidate, when it was submitted
force the players, that send location edits, to send a supporting picture.
a commentary field
a hint for the edit-submitter to check, whether streetview is available and maybe create a photosphere
I'm a little disappointed that Harry Potter Wizards Unite, and Catan, didn't make it long enough to have location edit wars with PokemonGo Trainers. Maybe Pikmin, or Transformers, or whatever other game, will someday be able to nominate and edit...
It would actually be pretty interesting if Pikmin (or some other game) got submit/edit privileges and started moving things around so that they appeared in Pikmin but disappeared from Pokemon Go. The same PoGo players who have no problem moving things around and maybe screwing with another game would be outraged if it happens to them. (Not all PoGo players are like that, mind you, but the ones who think it's OK to move something just to manipulate cells...)
Right now some PoGo players seem to have a might-makes-right attitude. This quote, though: "in the end 99.999999% of the current database is thanks to pogo..." I would bet my entire net worth that this number is inaccurate. Essentially every single thing in Pokemon Go when it launched was thanks to Ingress players. In July 2016 there were 5 million portals in the world. I think the number right now is about 15 million. Based on a TechCrunch article from November 2019 there were 9.4 million wayspots in games at that time. Thus, PoGo players are probably responsible for at most a third of the current wayspots.
There are 2 sides to this - and it is nothing to do with a game 😎
There is the submitter view and the reviewer view.
Only the submitter knows if what they are proposing is something that….
fits the guidelines - is righting a wrong
is a somewhere in the middle - looked and guidelines and in they can justify the proposal but know it’s not clear cut
doesn’t fit guidelines - the reasons might be well meaning (often a one off) or totally manipulative as part of wider gross and repeated patterns.
The first 2 are down to interpretation and are judgement calls and there is no mal intent. Even the first one can be subjective as we so many times see discussion on precise interpretation.
The last category I’ve split in 2 as I do think there is a difference in motivation for doing the edit.
The reviewer knows none of this.
As a reviewer you shouldn’t be trying to judge the reasons, you should look at each review afresh and see if you have enough information to decide on which location fits the guidelines the best. There should be no consideration of which is there now, or cells.
There are too many instances (not just in this thread) of reviewers assuming the worst.
I do think that there needs to swifter review by Niantic of those that do appear to deliberate and malicious. My preference would be a button marked Niantic review - so it was clear that you are asking Niantic to look at this edit and a comment field as to why.
I do like @Raachermannl-ING ideas of a commentary field and a context photo as part of the edit submission
I seem to remember when Niantic appeared to suggest dog poop stations or the local Starbucks were possibly eligible as Wayspots, there were no people claiming "Niantic has spoken, the debate should be closed", because obviously having such places as Wayspots is ridiculous. Taking Niantic literally every time might not be the best idea. Remember, this is the same Niantic that could not make up its mind as to whether dog poop stations or the local Starbucks were eligible.
That's not really what I said but sure, it has been stressed many times on this forum, especially since the "criteria refresh" that we should not be dealing in absolutes that we should always use our best judgement. What I am saying is that if we shut down other debates prematurely, then people's review piles would be full of poop anyway. I believe it is hypocritical to call for the shutting down of some debates and not others.
Healthly discussions such as the one we appear to be having here should be encouraged. It's unfortunate that some would want certain topics to be "off the table", as it were, because it makes them feel uneasy. Dialogue is an important part of a healthy society.
Don't forget the double standards Niantic itself uses.
Maybe it's nor really double standards, since Niantic isnt a single person, so maybe it's more like the idioms say: A camel is a horse by committee. Or a similar German one: Too many cooks spoil the broth (Zu viele Köche verderben den Brei).
But the examples from my comment above have the similar double standards: How can for example @BochumJules-PGO get for such nonsense a 30 day ban, but on the other hand some fakers can act undisturbed for months. I have cases in mind, where I needed 5(!) mass appeal threads, until there were no new fakes frwoing around a special single family home. Even if ING and PGO accs were both used there for faking .... same pictures, same texts on and on again, obviously the same person behind this ..... that doesnt need 5 appeals. That's poor.
Yes, we are on the same side. I honestly feel that they (Niantic) are the ones that perpetuate these kind of situations.
Hell, i got a couple of warnings on the weekend yet REAL IMPORTANT ISSUES reported during the weekend have to wait till monday for a reply. Wrong priorities to the extreme.
The worst part is that they paint themselves as a "poor small indie company" that's "very open to feedback" but when feedback is given, they simply ignore it. That's why no one should have sympathy for them: They are the cause of the problem, the biggest offenders, and the biggest hypocrites.
Would you provide evidence to support this assertion, please? Why do you think that most people who benefit from the status quo are Ingress players? How do Ingress players benefit?
For the record, I currently have four Niantic games installed on my phone. I'm recursed L16 in Ingress with over a quarter of a billion AP, L53 in HPWU, L18 in Pikmin Bloom, and L43 in PoGo. (I'll probably be L43 forever because I find the battle league dreadfully uninteresting and won't hoop-jump it just to level up.) I've played Niantic games in dense urban areas, suburbs, small towns, rural areas, on the top of mountains, places with no cell service or wifi, on three continents and in several different countries. I think having a lot of experience in multiple games gives me a different perspective than someone who exclusively or mostly plays only one game.
Couldn't of said it better myself, as an Ingress/pogo/pikmin player myself (never really got into it wizards), POI placement and/or status qou doesn't matter to me, don't care which game a POI is in (or not in)
@feliscybernicus-PGO No, I'm not playing dumb. Moving wayspots causes links and fields to drop in Ingress but for urban/suburban areas that's mostly an annoyance since they're easy enough to rethrow... remote areas are different but it seems unlikely that PoGo players are going to start tweaking a lot of mountaintop wayspots because of cell boundaries. Ingress portals are all the same so there's no gym/fortress/flower distinction to worry about. (Apparently small moves could really **** up HPWU.) Sometimes you'll **** up someone's fielding spine, certainly, but losing one layer isn't earth-shattering. Ingress has the most liberal density rules of any of the games. You could be taking away someone's couch or desk portal, but you could just as easily be taking away someone's couch or desk stop/flower/fortress in another game with your move.
So, what's your point?
Editing to add: The one thing you could **** up pretty badly is a frack cluster. That one could be quite frustrating.
Personally I don't think the rancor between PMG and Ingress players is good but it is human nature because the cell rules only apply to PMG.
This means Ingress players often go by "Letter of Law" and "Reference Wayfarer Rule Technicalicaties" but since the cell rules don't hurt them they have no skin in the game. In another words, defending the wayfarer rules is easy for Ingress players because Ingress players never suffer by them.
Meanwhile, PMG players have skin in the game, so often want rules adjusted or bent in thier favor. Especially if the blanket rule isn't a big deal or doesn't make sense.
Ingress Player POV of POG: Rule Benders
POG POV of Ingress Player: Holier than Thou or Wayfarer **** ups.
Want a Real World Analogy?
50$ year tax. No big deal to the millionaire (Ingress Player) who might defend its need. Big deal to the poor (PMG player) who the $50 is a hardship
This is the wrong way to analogize this. Something can be morally acceptable without making an alternative morally wrong. With speed limits, most people find going +5 over the speed limit to be acceptable but do not in turn argue that going the speed limit is wrong. They might think you’re weird but they’re not going to see you as being in the wrong. At the same time, most people agree that going +20 over the speed limit is not acceptable. (I’m generalizing here, since urban interstates are 55 mph and 75 is not an uncommon speed. This isn’t black and white and context matters.)
Given ambulance wait times where I live, if a family member had a stroke - a situation where every second count - speeding could be the difference between saving a life and somebody not being saved. Attempting to save a life is the morally correct thing to do, I hope we can all agree?
you are right, and all the ING will spam disagree in your comment because they know its true, besides currently the database map is 99.99% info thanks to pogo but some people still delusional
I make a crazy amount of location edits once they're made available to me. Mainly because the game map is pretty inaccurate, and it is not offset. Consider this example: Museum Station. The precise location of it is literally on the corner of a turning bus on the road, so if you'd like to ultra strike this portal (an Ingress mechanic), be prepared to be under a bus.
Oddly enough, the building the portal represents happens to be over a cell line. Regardless of being occupied or not, this location edit is favourable because it better represents the location of the wayspot, much more safer, and it so happens to also benefit Pogo players because it moves across cells (assuming that the top cell is either empty, or given the current bug, the cell moves over anyway and something new in the old cell turns into a Pokestop.
If a wayspot was ultra accurate in the first place, then there would be no reason for it to be moving around, would it not? The only instances you would have to deal with is the split between whether a wayspot pin should be in the middle of a playground or just to the side, whether a pin on a building or a couple of metres to the left/right/up/down to move it over a cell.
There was a post earlier this year about some extremely strategic portal used for links about this very exact thing. A perfect location example where Wayfinders will obviously select the pin on the lighthouse as the most accurate, but it happened in an actually different way that it had a wild impact on Ingress because it got neutralised. And it caused outrage.
Location edits are fair game. Unless they make the wayspot more inaccurate, then treat them on a case by case basis.
Comments
I can see both sides, I have made edits that make more PoI appear in more games. Many times it truley is to make the PoI in a more accurate location. I dont try and influence reviewers in the location move and many are a more logical location.
As long as it's not a wrong location nudging a PoI a few feet isn't going to hurt anyone.
A lot of times poi was placed on new items when satellite may not be the most accurate and then when that satellite photo is updated you notice that it's off a few feet. Updating that for accuracy is perfectly fine.
All in all I think there is a not less malicious intent in edits unless it's completely obvious. Be positive about people. The majority of people are just trying to make all game boards better. When you start thinking the worst about people you can't see the good.
Plus Niantic does not show us the cell lines and does not even acknowledge the existence. So if you are reviewing with something like wayfarer + or iitc to check those things you are also in violation of the rules.
Basically just pick the best location and leave it at that.
I am a Pokemon Go player and I would say almost all of the negative behavior I have observed when it comes to wayspots is due to Pokemon Go players. Deliberate nomination of a duplicate wayspot with a less accurate location and supporting information admitting they are nominating a duplicate because the existing point does not appear in Pokemon Go, abusive description edits saying they want a location edit to a specific location to create a gym in an adjacent cell, nominations of pure coal with supporting information along the lines of "need more Pokestops", description edits just saying they want a Pokestop to become a gym, etc..
I am sure there is some abuse by some Ingress players too, but is much more subtle.
@Cowyn2016-PGO said, "Move a spot to be equally accurate: Borderline Debatable." I think that would be true except that Niantic has said not to do it. I think that should close the debate.
imagine all the problems niantic wouldve saved if all the wayspots would appear in the map...in the end 99.999999% of the current database is thanks to pogo...just imagine...
Niantic can and should adjust their takes based on community feedback. Things like this don't exactly have basis to be this black and white. Would surely be different if this wasn't the case, but this is simply way too black and white interpretation and I feel Niantic would do well to make a slight adjustment here.
Borderline debatable doesn't mean something isn't bad/wrong... It just doesn't mean it isnt very wrong...
For a real world analogy: If the speed limit says 65 MPH, you clearly shouldn't do 70. But you will find a lot of people thinking going 70 is okay.... and you won't see a lot of crackdown by police at 70. Meanwhile do 90... and see the abuse sirens a flashing.
Maybe a different phrase like "Technically wrong by rules, but many in community think it shouldn't be against the rules" would be a more apt phrase
People who speed aren't going around claiming that they are "morally right" for speed and those who drive at or below the speed limit are "morally wrong".
A lot of aspects aren't mentioned here until now.
At the moment Nia is definitely very harsh with their "policies" concerning Location edits.
The very best example, that led to punishments, is @BochumJules-PGO. He doesnt do location edits ingame, evrything via Forum appeals. He nethertheless got a 30 day ban for influencing reviewers. The ban was temporal correlated with this thread: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/14625/location-edit-appeals-fachwerk-anno-1812#latest
Check it out. What happens there? He aks for moving a wayspot, that is located at a street in front of a small half timbered house, that seems to be a kiosk or small shop. It's obvious, that this wayspot shouldnt be at the street. Now he argues, that the wayspot should be at the side of the house, since that's the only place, that is not a bottleneck for different types of traffic. the side of the house is a blind spot for pedestrian and biking traffic, since there is free space in the inside of a curve of bike lane and pedestrian paths.
The wayspot is according to the title the half timbered framework of the house. The wayspot picture features only a part of the house with an inscription in the woodwork. According to the title of the wayspot the wayspot is nethertheless the whole half timbered woodwork of this house, so the whole house.
So here we have 3 locations:
Niantic decided to not follow his proposal, and they ve thrown the punishment.
In the end I totaly dont get it: He asked to move the spot. Niantic moved the spot. They didnt follow his proposal, but they are Niantic - they are free to choose the location.
Result of this story: Accuracy of the wayspot or even the accuracy of a logical anchor of an area-ish wayspot is more important to Niantic than pedestrian accessibility. For me that's a dumb point of view since evrything here revolves around mobile gaming smombies. Location accuracy might be more valuable to sell their database to new customers/partners/licensors, but accessibility should be always in the minds of reviewers.
Second story for those, who are very fast in choosing "report abuse"
I got a temporary ban, too, for influencing reviewers and I was very curious about that. I have to admit, that I used sometimes location edits together with supporting texts, including examples, where I wanted to move area-ish POI for cell reasons. The time I got the ban I had neither a pending edit of that type nor such edit resolved within months.
In the end the triggering reason for my ban seemed to be friendly fire: I had 2 text edits for single wayspot unresolved. The title edit changed an abbreviation to the full word. The description edit removed a player tagg from the description. What do reviewers see? A description with playername, a description without playername. So reviewer Mr Smartypants comes to the conclusion, that someone wants to eternalize his playertagg into that wayspot, and Mr Smartypants pushes the abuse-button ...... thx, Mr Smartypants. Not.
And the moral of this story: Only use the abuse-button if you are 100% sure, what's happening there. Reviewing edits is something, where you can't apply Ockham's razor: the simplest explanation is often not the truth. I saw lots of examples, where real cheaters outsmarted the reviewers. All of these examples are observations from a single town, where players did this to create additional stops:
(have in mind: I'm from Germany, we dont have streetview - so reviewing edits is like "You know nothing, Jon Snow")
Example 1: Evryone knows the location edit reviews, with a point cloud of proposals and a single location apart. That's something you might see on daily basis. In most cases this shows repeated attempts of someone to pull a wayspot in range of their couch. I guess in most cases the reviewers simply click on the single dot and laugh about the situation.
But what about the following: someone creating a point cloud of location proposals around the real location, and the location they want to have is the single one out there? Tricked.
Example 2: Location edits with supporting statements.
Are the supporting statements like "please choose the left spot" really from the same person? Maybe it's a counter action from someone, who stumbled across the location edit from his neighborhood during reviewing, or informed by others
Maybe it's the same person, but inverted psychology is also possible.
Example 3: Location edit with supporting statments for both locations. One is simple like "choose left spot" and the other one is better and explanatory, like "please let choose the right spot; a PoGo player does this to create a couch portal". Something like this was very often used to move a wayspot.
So in the end ..... since Germany doesnt have streetview nowadays edit system is totally useless. Reviewers dont get useful information.
95% of our location edits are things, that are obscure according to the satelite pictures. No streetview available, objects are at walls or under trees, sat view is older than the object, etc.pp.
When reviewing location edits I'm glad to see examples, where I fully understand the situation and where I'm sure not to get tricked. I don't differentiate, if any action is "morally" better, is there a detailed statement of Niantic about that situation. As long as there is a good reasoning for an edit and there are valid arguments, then it's okay for me. I rank common sense here higher than whatever Niantic says, as long as the editing is lacking information.
So looking at location edits, that stay in a legit area of the POI:
Cell rules can be an argument for me, but a weak one. If there are logical anchors for an area-ish wayspot, then cell rules as argument aren't enough for me to move the wayspot away from logical anchor points (like park entrance signs vs somewhere in the park).
But even if a player does a supporting statement (what Nia considers as abuse), I appreciate it, if it helps me to understand the situation. If it's a statement with cell rule argument, it's easy to check: IITC with cell plugin .... so however the circumstances are: it is somehow helpful to decide, whatever the individual result is. That's why I did that too - explain, why I do an edit, and try to proof and verify it for the other reviewers (since they otherwise have no clue, what's going on).
Further there was the argument, that location edits for cell reasons are only useless workload for the reviewers. That's not the entire truth. Moving for cell rules prevents submissions of duplicates, that might be hidden for single games. Those duplicate submissions are workload, too. I guess this is a zero sum game. So it's simply no argument for any side.
Finally .... evrything, that causes the problems here, is the lack of displayed information for me as a reviewer, .... and the policies of Nia, that make the feature partially useless for Germans, if you follow more policy than common sense ...
Niantic could fix a lot there, but it's very low on their to-do-list according the last AMA session, where I asked them about future plans for any kind of supporting information for edits.
There would be so much easy solutions:
I'm a little disappointed that Harry Potter Wizards Unite, and Catan, didn't make it long enough to have location edit wars with PokemonGo Trainers. Maybe Pikmin, or Transformers, or whatever other game, will someday be able to nominate and edit...
I dont understand the context of your reply.
It would actually be pretty interesting if Pikmin (or some other game) got submit/edit privileges and started moving things around so that they appeared in Pikmin but disappeared from Pokemon Go. The same PoGo players who have no problem moving things around and maybe screwing with another game would be outraged if it happens to them. (Not all PoGo players are like that, mind you, but the ones who think it's OK to move something just to manipulate cells...)
Right now some PoGo players seem to have a might-makes-right attitude. This quote, though: "in the end 99.999999% of the current database is thanks to pogo..." I would bet my entire net worth that this number is inaccurate. Essentially every single thing in Pokemon Go when it launched was thanks to Ingress players. In July 2016 there were 5 million portals in the world. I think the number right now is about 15 million. Based on a TechCrunch article from November 2019 there were 9.4 million wayspots in games at that time. Thus, PoGo players are probably responsible for at most a third of the current wayspots.
There are 2 sides to this - and it is nothing to do with a game 😎
There is the submitter view and the reviewer view.
Only the submitter knows if what they are proposing is something that….
fits the guidelines - is righting a wrong
is a somewhere in the middle - looked and guidelines and in they can justify the proposal but know it’s not clear cut
doesn’t fit guidelines - the reasons might be well meaning (often a one off) or totally manipulative as part of wider gross and repeated patterns.
The first 2 are down to interpretation and are judgement calls and there is no mal intent. Even the first one can be subjective as we so many times see discussion on precise interpretation.
The last category I’ve split in 2 as I do think there is a difference in motivation for doing the edit.
The reviewer knows none of this.
As a reviewer you shouldn’t be trying to judge the reasons, you should look at each review afresh and see if you have enough information to decide on which location fits the guidelines the best. There should be no consideration of which is there now, or cells.
There are too many instances (not just in this thread) of reviewers assuming the worst.
I do think that there needs to swifter review by Niantic of those that do appear to deliberate and malicious. My preference would be a button marked Niantic review - so it was clear that you are asking Niantic to look at this edit and a comment field as to why.
I do like @Raachermannl-ING ideas of a commentary field and a context photo as part of the edit submission
I seem to remember when Niantic appeared to suggest dog poop stations or the local Starbucks were possibly eligible as Wayspots, there were no people claiming "Niantic has spoken, the debate should be closed", because obviously having such places as Wayspots is ridiculous. Taking Niantic literally every time might not be the best idea. Remember, this is the same Niantic that could not make up its mind as to whether dog poop stations or the local Starbucks were eligible.
Yup. Taking Niantic's words as end all be all has backfired more than once. What Niantic does is ADVISE, not ORDER. Its a suggestion, not law.
That's not really what I said but sure, it has been stressed many times on this forum, especially since the "criteria refresh" that we should not be dealing in absolutes that we should always use our best judgement. What I am saying is that if we shut down other debates prematurely, then people's review piles would be full of poop anyway. I believe it is hypocritical to call for the shutting down of some debates and not others.
Healthly discussions such as the one we appear to be having here should be encouraged. It's unfortunate that some would want certain topics to be "off the table", as it were, because it makes them feel uneasy. Dialogue is an important part of a healthy society.
Most people who benefit from the status quo are ingress players so I don't think they have any room to judge here.
Not saying it's Hosette's case, but this is also very true. It just shows the double standards of the toxic community Niantic has enforced.
Don't forget the double standards Niantic itself uses.
Maybe it's nor really double standards, since Niantic isnt a single person, so maybe it's more like the idioms say: A camel is a horse by committee. Or a similar German one: Too many cooks spoil the broth (Zu viele Köche verderben den Brei).
But the examples from my comment above have the similar double standards: How can for example @BochumJules-PGO get for such nonsense a 30 day ban, but on the other hand some fakers can act undisturbed for months. I have cases in mind, where I needed 5(!) mass appeal threads, until there were no new fakes frwoing around a special single family home. Even if ING and PGO accs were both used there for faking .... same pictures, same texts on and on again, obviously the same person behind this ..... that doesnt need 5 appeals. That's poor.
Yes, we are on the same side. I honestly feel that they (Niantic) are the ones that perpetuate these kind of situations.
Hell, i got a couple of warnings on the weekend yet REAL IMPORTANT ISSUES reported during the weekend have to wait till monday for a reply. Wrong priorities to the extreme.
The worst part is that they paint themselves as a "poor small indie company" that's "very open to feedback" but when feedback is given, they simply ignore it. That's why no one should have sympathy for them: They are the cause of the problem, the biggest offenders, and the biggest hypocrites.
Would you provide evidence to support this assertion, please? Why do you think that most people who benefit from the status quo are Ingress players? How do Ingress players benefit?
For the record, I currently have four Niantic games installed on my phone. I'm recursed L16 in Ingress with over a quarter of a billion AP, L53 in HPWU, L18 in Pikmin Bloom, and L43 in PoGo. (I'll probably be L43 forever because I find the battle league dreadfully uninteresting and won't hoop-jump it just to level up.) I've played Niantic games in dense urban areas, suburbs, small towns, rural areas, on the top of mountains, places with no cell service or wifi, on three continents and in several different countries. I think having a lot of experience in multiple games gives me a different perspective than someone who exclusively or mostly plays only one game.
Couldn't of said it better myself, as an Ingress/pogo/pikmin player myself (never really got into it wizards), POI placement and/or status qou doesn't matter to me, don't care which game a POI is in (or not in)
@feliscybernicus-PGO No, I'm not playing dumb. Moving wayspots causes links and fields to drop in Ingress but for urban/suburban areas that's mostly an annoyance since they're easy enough to rethrow... remote areas are different but it seems unlikely that PoGo players are going to start tweaking a lot of mountaintop wayspots because of cell boundaries. Ingress portals are all the same so there's no gym/fortress/flower distinction to worry about. (Apparently small moves could really **** up HPWU.) Sometimes you'll **** up someone's fielding spine, certainly, but losing one layer isn't earth-shattering. Ingress has the most liberal density rules of any of the games. You could be taking away someone's couch or desk portal, but you could just as easily be taking away someone's couch or desk stop/flower/fortress in another game with your move.
So, what's your point?
Editing to add: The one thing you could **** up pretty badly is a frack cluster. That one could be quite frustrating.
Personally I don't think the rancor between PMG and Ingress players is good but it is human nature because the cell rules only apply to PMG.
This means Ingress players often go by "Letter of Law" and "Reference Wayfarer Rule Technicalicaties" but since the cell rules don't hurt them they have no skin in the game. In another words, defending the wayfarer rules is easy for Ingress players because Ingress players never suffer by them.
Meanwhile, PMG players have skin in the game, so often want rules adjusted or bent in thier favor. Especially if the blanket rule isn't a big deal or doesn't make sense.
Ingress Player POV of POG: Rule Benders
POG POV of Ingress Player: Holier than Thou or Wayfarer **** ups.
Want a Real World Analogy?
50$ year tax. No big deal to the millionaire (Ingress Player) who might defend its need. Big deal to the poor (PMG player) who the $50 is a hardship
This is the wrong way to analogize this. Something can be morally acceptable without making an alternative morally wrong. With speed limits, most people find going +5 over the speed limit to be acceptable but do not in turn argue that going the speed limit is wrong. They might think you’re weird but they’re not going to see you as being in the wrong. At the same time, most people agree that going +20 over the speed limit is not acceptable. (I’m generalizing here, since urban interstates are 55 mph and 75 is not an uncommon speed. This isn’t black and white and context matters.)
Given ambulance wait times where I live, if a family member had a stroke - a situation where every second count - speeding could be the difference between saving a life and somebody not being saved. Attempting to save a life is the morally correct thing to do, I hope we can all agree?
you are right, and all the ING will spam disagree in your comment because they know its true, besides currently the database map is 99.99% info thanks to pogo but some people still delusional
@ZeroZeroZiete-ING I've already brought math to the table to refute your 99.x% claims. At most it's 1/3, but some people are still delusional.
Theres no way with the years head start ingress had before PMG could even submit for him to be correct.
But what do you think percentage breakdown in say last year of accepted POIs are?
I did get 5 disagrees and counting. Though not a single reply on why I was wrong.
I make a crazy amount of location edits once they're made available to me. Mainly because the game map is pretty inaccurate, and it is not offset. Consider this example: Museum Station. The precise location of it is literally on the corner of a turning bus on the road, so if you'd like to ultra strike this portal (an Ingress mechanic), be prepared to be under a bus.
Oddly enough, the building the portal represents happens to be over a cell line. Regardless of being occupied or not, this location edit is favourable because it better represents the location of the wayspot, much more safer, and it so happens to also benefit Pogo players because it moves across cells (assuming that the top cell is either empty, or given the current bug, the cell moves over anyway and something new in the old cell turns into a Pokestop.
If a wayspot was ultra accurate in the first place, then there would be no reason for it to be moving around, would it not? The only instances you would have to deal with is the split between whether a wayspot pin should be in the middle of a playground or just to the side, whether a pin on a building or a couple of metres to the left/right/up/down to move it over a cell.
There was a post earlier this year about some extremely strategic portal used for links about this very exact thing. A perfect location example where Wayfinders will obviously select the pin on the lighthouse as the most accurate, but it happened in an actually different way that it had a wild impact on Ingress because it got neutralised. And it caused outrage.
Location edits are fair game. Unless they make the wayspot more inaccurate, then treat them on a case by case basis.