Please Use Street View When Making Nominations
Pretty much spent last few days on a marathon of reviewing. Part of it is to earn upgrades and the other is just to help the community get through the backlog. From my reviewing, my main observation is that a lot of people have what could be good or great nominations but then they don’t have any proof that the spot exists in the real world because either Google Street view is old or the stop is not visible from either street view or from a satellite view OR it isn’t something that is marked on the map as a POI (sometimes you have to look at the separate Google map to see those).
So this is a bit of a reminder as well as a plea for folks to take the effort to download the StreetView app and make a photo bubble when you are off in the woods… on a path or in a neighborhood that doesn’t have street view.
It is really the best way to ensure that reviewers will all agree on location. Some folks will just take your world for it… others will hit the 3*… but many will read the directions and give a single star because they cannot verify that it isn’t totally fake.
Makes me sad to see what could be a good nomination go to waste in an area without many or any stops.
Comments
Good point...I make and review a lot of nominations on hiking trails where the object is either too small to be seen from satellite view, or is obscured by tree canopy.
How would I add this to a nomination, though?
I don't blindly trust photo bubble. I've seen too many intentionally misplaced photo bubble to trust them (sometime it's small distance, sometime it's just enough to obtain the home wayspot, sometime it's a blatant abuse), so I would suggest to reviewers to always check satellite view.
I prefer finding a good supporting photo including a roof with a different shape, or another poi, or the fork of a path
I have the opposite problem. A professional photographer here takes fantastic photospheres and drops them just in the vicinity. I can't get Google to remove their inaccurately placed ones and my photospheres do not override theirs. I give instructions to reviewers in the supporting to please exit any photosphere and check on satellite view to confirm placement. But have had many accurate pins rejected for mismatched location. So frustrating!
Here's an example. If you back out of the photosphere, you will see it was placed in the middle of a lake. https://www.google.com/maps/@35.7803416,-78.827014,3a,75y,93.12h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNgQGRAqNPMaK7tbc67hp_FLPzKK88Sq8Z0OOQ1!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNgQGRAqNPMaK7tbc67hp_FLPzKK88Sq8Z0OOQ1%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya128.5226-ro0-fo100!7i8036!8i4018 Close enough, right? But not for our purposes.
I am a big fan of placing a photosphere though, but as an extra photo to show the area, not proof of location.
Germany here,
No.
Download the Google Streetview app. That makes photospheres and adds them to Google Maps. Reviewers see them when Niantic loads Google Maps during the review process.
You can click the three dots at the top left with the name of the author and that provides an option to report a problem and you can opt to select that it isn't a photo of that place (it's clearly in the middle of the lake) or even try to provide the correct coordinates so they might move it.
Germany here,
No #2
A) I don't like to publish views on Private things without asking adjacent owners, and B) I wouldnt want, that someone publishes photo spheres around my home locations. So I'm not doing it, and I'm not supporting street view in any way, although it is nice for reviewing.
I would ask not to be told how to make nominations.
There is a submitter who CONSTANTLY submits photospheres wherever he goes, coupled with the following supporting statement:
Easy access via the footpath as seen the supporting photo. I have attached a photosphere under the closest address "[ADDRESS]" to prove its position and permanency.
It absolutely annoys me because photospheres like what this submitter does actually falsifies locations by moving the submitted photosphere well away from the actual object, and he feigns permanence by the photosphere which only suspends a moment of time. And then weeks down the track, the things he calls permanent are already washed away or were actually installed for minutes such as a series of fake street libraries.
It borderlines submitter identifiable because his name (which is also his username) appears in all photospheres, so it seriously písses me off.
have done so over and over and over and they do not remove the photospheres