Rejection criteria vs Removal criteria.
sogNinjaman-ING
Posts: 3,313 ✭✭✭✭✭
Can we have some clarification as to why the Niantic "Removal Criteria" are very different from the "Rejection Criteria" please - why do they not match.
I can understand why Niantic do not want to "open the floodgates" to endless removal requests for POIs approved years ago when criteria were different, but it is very disheartening when we see genuinely invalid Waypoints arriving in the game that devalue the Waypoint database and we are then told "they are impossible to remove".
From a Lightship point of view, just removing an invalid Waypoint from all the games would be sufficient. Niantic keep the item in Lightship, but if it is resubmitted then it should ping up as a "Duplicate" and get rejected again that way. A revision of the removals criteria is in order so we can report and have removed genuinely ivalid new Waypoints created after a certain date. How about now?
Comments
Two words, "generic business".
I agree with this.
Currently, there is a significant decline in quality due to the failure to remove WAYSPOTs that do not meet the criteria for deletion, but are not worthy of approval from any aspect.
There is a need to scrutinize the confusing details of the difference between the removal criteria and the disapproval criteria.
For better wayspot quality, additional removal criteria are needed in addition to the current removal criteria.
If a wayspot with no qualifications is created, there is no way to remove it.
if they were the same then every single business, trail sign, or historical building which are perpetually argued over on this forum would constantly be taken down. Basically anything that wasn't a slam dunk would eventually be wiped off the map since they would just need to catch a niantic reviewer in an uncharitable mood, and even if something would be accepted 95% of the time, eventually its time would come.
The current system is in place because nia trusts the local communities to make nuanced decisions about locations that aren't obvious 5* locations and doesn't want every 3* stop to be relitigated until the end of time. If something is genuinely no longer there it's not particularly difficult to remove it anyway, to the point where bad actors often lie about things no longer being there to remove PoI out of spite or to free up room for their own nominations.
Unfortunately we have seen that many local communities cannot be trusted which is why I also feel the removal criteria needs adjusting to better combat new abuses.
Better give the untrustworthy communities the power to spam remove stops, that'll help. Any portal controlled by an enemy ingress faction that isn't 100% unimpeachable would be nuked by the opposing team to take it off of the game board.
Right now we see more abusive POIs added because it's easier to add them to remove them, but if it becomes just as easy we'd have to contend with the same amount of abusive additions with the added fun of far more abusive removals.
If you read my OP you will see I'm not asking for any "revised" removal criteria to be applied to the entire Waypoint database, as that would just encourage more of the Faction Fights we see in here too often.
For Waypoint removal to take place they would need to be "recent" - pick an arbitary recent date to start the process. What I would like to see are some of the genuinely ineligible Waypoints that have squeezed through be removed from the gameboard (not the database) much more easily, otherwise the current rejection / removal criteria favour those who can force through invalid waypoints. What's the point of criteria if clearly invalid new Waypoints can't be removed becaise of the mismatch between rejection and removal criteria.
"Removal Criteria" is things that could get Niantic sued: Danger, k-12, emergency services, single family residences.
Niantic is not going to outright say "We're trying to avoid litigation." So if they answer this question at all, it'll be a lot of words that don't say anything.
"Removal Criteria" is a subset of "Rejection Criteria". The whole of "Rejection Criteria" only applies to new Wayspots. For example, Niantic would rather not have a blurry photo, but they won't get sued for it.