Abuse Reporting

X0bai-PGOX0bai-PGO Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭✭✭

Can we talk about what priority the rampant abuse within Wayfarer is getting? To my mind, the integrity of the Lightship map should be an absolute top priority, not just for the Wayfarer team but for Niantic as a whole, as EVERYTHING the company wants to do in the future seems to stand on the Lightship database. But over the past year in this forum alone, we’ve seen stunning post after post about rampant and uncontrolled abuse in St Cloud, Sydney, and other places. Social media has evidence of abusive nominations blossoming all over - from selfies in photodiscs to dishonest descriptions to location edits. That doesn’t even touch the amount of abusive coal in the queue, which has itself led to a new strain of abuse: German Wayfarers in particular have come to believe that their country is overrun with review bots that reject everything, a strategy that would be utterly self-defeating and impossible if nominations weren’t overwhelmingly trash. This arrangement seems unsustainable.

I understand that automated systems/scripts are the most desirable solution for hunting out bad actors, but whatever’s out there currently isn’t working. The prominence of this in virtually every relevant online venue (from Discord channels to Facebook groups to Reddit threads to this forum and on) completely undermines the confidence that productive Wayfarers need in order to continue being productive.

Where is this going? What plans do Niantic and Wayfarer have to address these violations and repeat violators?

31
31 votes

New · Last Updated

Comments

  • Roli112-PGORoli112-PGO Posts: 2,236 Ambassador

    Are Niantic internal reviewers able to determine abuse and act on it?

    Are Niantic internal reviewers able to look into a submitters other nominations when abuse is suspected?

    Have Niantic internal reviewers found any abuse so far?

    Same questions for the new appeals reviewers.

  • Stephyypooke-INGStephyypooke-ING Posts: 506 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am chiming in after reading Niantic will not take action on another cluster appeal.

    If Niantic does not care to take action on these clusters/abusive areas, why did they go through the trouble of rebalancing all the extra gyms and stops that appeared a couple months ago?

    It gives the impression that because these clusters are used by hardcore players who are probably spending hardcore money, they are allowed to bend the rules while the average communities are not.

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'd also like to add that Niantic often create clusters themselves, by moving wayspots (more specifically, pokestops) that were deliberately misplaced to their correct locations - but letting them retain their pokestop status (even as they break Niantic's own density rules). Thus encouraging abusers to keep nominating wayspots in false locations, as it consistently rewards them with easy clusters and empty S2 cells to keep nominating in.

    This is a magic cycle of abuse that Niantic's current policy keeps feeding into in so many ways. I am also interested in seeing this issue addressed.

  • sinXsan-INGsinXsan-ING Posts: 299 ✭✭✭

    Despite being disposed of many times in a small area, there are many users who are completely unaffected and repeatedly make malicious applications.

    It seems as if the fraudulent applicants know that their accounts will not be suspended for violations.


    Cheating on POI proposals has become a catalyst for moral decay, especially in games, and has serious implications not only for Pokémon but also for Ingress.


    Even if we were to reopen Anomaly in the future, I suspect we'd still have a mix of agents with 6000 or 8000 inventory, and I think the moral decay of POI has led to a moral decay of the game as a whole, severely diminishing the motivation of players as a whole.

  • kkbitten-INGkkbitten-ING Posts: 15 ✭✭

    Here someone edited a pokestop to an occupied cell and it disappeared! Its now just an ingress portal so maybe Niantic changed it?

  • SiIverLyra-PGOSiIverLyra-PGO Posts: 952 ✭✭✭✭✭


    That's how it works. Only Niantic can let pokestops retain their status when moved to occupied L17 cells. When it happens regularly via normal location edits, pokestops disappear.

  • kkbitten-INGkkbitten-ING Posts: 15 ✭✭

    But before they allowed that’s why we have some points with 2,3,4 pokestops in one cell! Now they decided but its a random thing or every stop mover will disappear? I just noticed recently cause it happened near me! I hate editions, most of them are nonsense

  • sogNinjaman-INGsogNinjaman-ING Posts: 3,313 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Before this year they allowed multiple Pokestops in an S17 cell. Then there was a massive amount of location edit abuse by the Pokemon Community to generate "extra" fake Gyms and to generate clusters of Gyms in certain places. Niantic put a stop to this by limiting the distance a location edit could be made without Niantic doing it, and by limiting the number of Pokestops to 1 per S17 cell. Any location edits to existing Pokestops or Gyms now fall under the new rules from March this year, so if you move a stop in a cell that has 2 stops, the moved stop will disappear. Don't blame Niantic, blame the PoGo community who cheated so much that Niantic had to limit edits.

  • AgenteAndreXXX-INGAgenteAndreXXX-ING Posts: 43 ✭✭✭

    @sogNinjaman-ING the new rules changed last year and according to some recent reports now new pokestops are allowed within 20 meters existing pokestops. If that's confirmed basically you can now have some pokestops 0.5 meters from themselves but you cannot have another one 60 meters away because it is in the same S2 L17 cell.

    Sorry but at this point I can't blame the rural player with only a church and a playground in the same L17 cell who cannot have a gym because this arbitrary no sense rule, just to make an example. I'm not saying they are right to do so but it's really hard to me to blame players instead of Niantic.

    If they really cared about the quality of their database they would removed the Pogo cell limit and do some quality control by themselves, but they seems to not even care about clusters and reports, so. And I'm talking as a both Ingress and Pogo player.

Sign In or Register to comment.