Incorrect Moves and Negative Impacts of the Wayspot Cleanup
Before anything else, I want to say that I know that pokestops and gyms are not within the control of the Wayfarer Team but I think this issue requires the team's attention nonetheless.
As you may know, about a week ago it was discovered and shared on Twitter and elsewhere that the Empire State Building gym was removed as well as a number of other iconic gyms in NYC. At that time I did not look closely into what had changed as I didn't know the previous locations of any of those gyms.
Today, the iconic Space Needle in Seattle was demoted from Gym to Pokestop after it was moved about 39 meters. In this case, I did have the previous location so I decided to take a look at some maps and see if the location had been improved:
In these two images, the selected portal (pink ring) is the new location. The red marker with the Ingress location is the old location. These images are the Satellite and Road layers on Google Maps via IITC.
These images show the previous and current locations respectively from OpenStreetMaps.
As you can see, the pin was moved from very close to the true center of the Space Needle to the apparent center based on the Satellite view. But imagery in this view is not completely accurate, especially for taller buildings. The tilt is apparent in the image.
In short, the new location is wrong.
I have looked at a number of other moved wayspots around Seattle that have been part of this process and they all follow this exact pattern. The pin was moved to the center based solely on Satellite view.
Is this entire effort being done remotely? There was speculation after the initial announcement that it would involve folks on the ground checking locations. Is it being done manually by people? Or is some automated system picking out the center of objects based on satellite imagery?
For this gym in particular, can anything be done? We're 2 months out from GoFest which is taking place at Seattle Center where the Space Needle is located.
@NianticTintino if there's anything the Wayfarer team can do about any of these iconic gyms please put pressure on the Pogo team to do it.
Can location changes for larger structures be rechecked manually and changed again or reverted? If so, can a list of these second round edits be provided to the Pokemon Go team to allow them to restore status?
Comments
Alright, I happened to be in the area so I went to go investigate the new location in person. I have geotagging turned on on my photos, so you can confirm the accuracy - and I don’t honestly know whether to cry or just die of laughter.
Screenshot of my current location in PoGo:
The Pokestop I’m standing next to:
What I’m actually standing next to:
That is this:
View if I look away from the wall (with my back to the wall) while standing at the Space Needle wayspot’s current location:
And view if I look directly up:
Is this the result of their new initiative to move stops in urban areas?
So often when the Wayfarer team disappoints me I can chalk it up to a lack of staff, a lack of time, even ignorance. But this is just such an obvious and lazy error, I'm not sure how this could be anything but someone knowingly doing a bad job just so they could be done with it.
I'm not sure if it's any better if it's actual reviewers doing it though.
I will be in Seattle in a while for a certain event, and truthfully it makes no difference to me whether the Space Needle is a gym or a stop or whatever. I'll get gifts from it either way, pin to my Postcard Book, and send out to my friends at home. If the moves are accurate, which they don't appear to be in many cases, then what object becomes what sort of in-game POI should be random if that's Niantic's wish. At least that's how I feel.
oh my gosh LOL. what a circus act. this is an unacceptable blunder from niantic's team. Embarrassing.
it definitely points to the direction that they're just doing things from satellite view, which could also be out of date.
oh man. what even 😂
Is it bad when it feels like niantic is abusing wayfarer more than the actual players? Surely the wayfarer team would know you can't depend entirely on satellite imagery! Even when reviewing the accuracy of locations, we have an option for "probably accurate but satellite and street view don't show enough current information to be 100% sure." And yet they didn't even account for tall buildings appearing tilted?
Oh my gosh indeed. This is an epic fail. Especially removing a famous landmark as a gym...right before Go fest happens there...and the "accurate" location is less accurate. Yikes. All due respect, but for those at niantic doing these edits...ya'll need to stop. It seems to me like the only thing you're accomplishing here is nerfing the game board for no good reason.
Don't burn the goodwill of your volunteers with shenanigans like this.
Thanks for raising this awful mess.
Niantic should receive a warning from Niantic for moving this spot to the wrong location.
Niantic, when players try to move wayspots to inaccurate locations:
Also Niantic, whilst doing "wayspot clean up":
What would you expect>? Tintino visiting every town on earth and placing the Wayspots accurately beign there in Person?
No I wouldn’t.
But I would expect the same degree of care and diligence that we are expected to do when we submit or check edits.
Since this was supposedly about improving accuracy, then I would expect a good quality job, which might involve recruiting some people to check in person areas that were very dense or flagged as potential abusive.
I mean, I would expect someone who understands satellite imagery enough not to make this kind of mistake. Or the new positions to be double-checked to catch errors if someone was distracted for a second and mis-clicked.
Maybe there will be a new appeals section for Niantic edits.
ANY location move under about 2 meters seems purely asthetic since satalite image to real world location can be off by that much occasionally, and personal GPS drift is often this much in cities. If Niantic truly wants to clean up thier database they should be targeting the larger moves of over 10 meters which are easily verified in person and usually noticeable from imagery. The idea that most of thier moves have been so tiny just blows my mind because this seems like a lot of work for absolutely no benefit. Especially when these micro moves are being made on large buildings where they have previously stated that any location inside the footprint of the building is correct.
I pulled up Google Earth using the coordinates from the Intel map that shows the misplacement with some added perspective.
I'm having a little trouble with accuracy on mobile, but it looks like the new point is 15 meters from the closest edge of the tower.
(Tehstone previously noted it had moved 39m from the original pin - in the center of the tower)
I reiterate my gratitude that Niantic is not looking to “correct” anything in my hometown.
I think there's something special about the most iconic structures and art works of a city being the gyms. And based on the selection criteria Niantic used from day 1 for gyms (many photos and upvotes of those photos) it is likely that they feel (or felt) the same way. I don't want to meet up at some insignificant plaque or a painted trash can for a raid. Wayspots generally should be cool and interesting things to check out but I think it's important to have ways of determining which ones are the most cool and interesting and allowing them to stand out in some way.
And in this specific case:
ok just not 2km
Deal
i do agree that some iconic and important stuff should be gyms in pokemon go, that space needle in fact looks like a gym unlike the the awful mural that is in my town on a random wall or the starbucks
I play (way too much) in the area, and even from a revenue perspective, I would've thought that Niantic would've let these gyms stay gyms until Go Fest (Seattle) ended proper - I imagine fewer gyms means fewer raids, which probably isn't ideal.
There were a couple of POI's for which the demotion I could go either way on. For instance, we had a few plastic-flower-structure-things that didn't necessarily have to be gyms. But while they aren't in the same cells, I'd say that the Space Needle deserves to be a gym over either Pacific Science Center arches (the science center was closed for quite a while) or Chihuly Garden and Glass (which, while neat, isn't as iconic nor gym-like nor accessible as the needle).
As a "bonus", the Original Starbucks was demoted and moved to be on top of the "actual"/sponsored Starbucks stop, which resulted in this hilarity:
I'm also kind of curious as to if the sponsored stops ("Niantic" Go Fest stops have been deployed to the area, mostly re-using ID's from previous temporary stops) affect anything, but I digress.
This could be a galaxy brain move by the wayfarer team to make niantic give them more than a skeleton crew. By noticeably making things worse for the games (which niantic actually cares about) they'll force niantic to intervene and stop letting them rot on the vine
And guess what's their response?
@patsufredo-PGO - it's probably more effective to link to the twitter thread :)
@tehstone-ING - thanks for flagging this. I'll bring it up with the team on Monday. Agree on the bad move here. I will move it back myself and check with Pokémon GO team what type of Wayspot they are treating it as.
Please do categorize the Wayspots using the Wayspot edit feature. This will help us prevent these issues in the future.
Is there a category for "Iconic Local / International Landmark"?
”Landmark Building” is probably the best fit.
I had no idea that was a category. I find the categories a nightmare to wade tgrough - just way my brain works 😂
Thank you for your response, but this is a completely new information for me however this might be more in-game related:
So, the "What is it" category isn't useless at all, but it would at least help determine which in-game location objects a Wayspot become into. Is that correct?
In order of relevance it is all of these:
landmark building
iconic architecture
historic building
building -> tower
structure -> lookout
restaurant
Hopefully we can get some more guidance in the future for choosing categorizations properly.
Thank you for taking a look at this and responding!
You can choose three when you add “Wayspot Categorisation” (only in Pokémon GO currently, have to be near Wayspot) so you can add those main three at least.