Why did they remove these wayspots?!
19Markbogert95-PGO
Posts: 23 ✭✭
Hello again wayfarer community, i have never thought to be back on this forum but here i am... I got banned for a month back in september for submitting Utility poles as route markers. I ended up here in the hope for some help to appeal my ban but Niantic didnt really care I guess.. I thought these poles were eligible because other people in nearby citys/towns were submitting them and always got accepted(by bots apparently...) I was a sheep that was following the others without giving it a second thought. I dont want to fall back on that story to much because i just accepted the ban and moved on. But now i have a new case where my wayspots got removed and now im scared for another ban that i dont really deserve. These animal tiles were submitted way back before i made the mistake with the utility poles. These tiles were sitting there for more than a year and all got removed today.
Why?!
Comments
They have been removing mosaic times in Netherlands.
Something happened specifically in the Netherlands where Wayfarers were padding out every open S2 cell with mosaic tiles. Niantic concluded that the Wayfarers were taking advantage of a 'bot net and avoiding a fair vote. They began deleting sidewalk mosaic tiles from their database and games, and sending warnings, strikes, and bans to people who submitted them.
Hello @19Markbogert95-PGO
The Netherlands ended up as a mess, triggered by the bot activity. A lot of wayspots that should never have been approved continue to be removed.
The mosaic tiles, and painted tiles as a style of submission were heavily implicated in the abuse, and hence have been getting removed.
Have you got any evidence that these exist at the places submitted.
From your contribution page what dates were these submitted on?
I don't think Niantic would care about the dates when those tiles were installed, they also rejected many Wayspot restore appeals for many tiles that are officially installed.
I also want to add that these tiles were placed in the ground by our provincial government/city hall together with some of the nearby schools for some event or mini game i think, not sure.. I have never scanned the QR codes on them. But they are not handmade by players that want more waypoints/pokestops.
You won't likely to get any helpful response from Niantic here, since their stance are clear:
Since the review bots plagued NL, local players started to report many Wayspots that were accepted by the bots, and many of them are mosaic tiles. Many of them are either Pokemon themed or literally placed to bypass GO's inclusion rule. Perhaps that Niantic are unable to confirm each tiles' origin, they just nuķed them away including the officially installed ones. You can see at Invalid Wayspot Appeals section of this forum that many attempts to restore official tiles are all rejected by Niantic.
Same with trail markers.
In my nearby city Kerkdriel where our city hall is located they have the same tiles in the ground which i found at a later date while exploring so i submitted those as well.
Hey,
Welcome back.
These Wayspots were removed based on a report as a part of our efforts in the Netherlands to clean the gameboard. If these Wayspots were submitted before the last punishment, you will not be punished again for it.
Thanks,
I assume you were able to verify that they were not in the correct location or some other abuse was detected? As the information I can find clearly indicates these are great wayspots:
https://www.bommelerwaardbeweegt.nl/projecten/dierenbeweegpaden
https://www.bommelerwaardbeweegt.nl/aanbieders/ki-fit-routes/dierenbeweegpad-hedel
Sounds like the removal bot needs to learn to remove holistically, not categorically. 😎
There is no removal bot. Floor tiles are some of the most faked, misplaced, stolen, vandalized waypoints in the Netherlands and it seems Niantic has taken abundance of caution whenever they come across these.
Whether you agree its warranted or not... you have abusive users to blame for this.
If these wayspots were in the correct location, the only people to blame for their removal are the people who reported them, and the people who removed them. It looks vaguely similar to a fake, is a lousy excuse to remove good wayspots. If these are legitimate, the people who contributed to their removal are just as abusive as the people who submitted the fakes.
Sure, go on.
However those who placed Pokemon themed tiles need to be blamed at most.
Thank you for sharing! That would also make this an official walking route right?? I will be honest and say that i didnt do any research on them when i submitted these tiles, i just really thought they looked cool and that it would be a great addition to my small little town especially in these empty streets. Maybe my fault for not doing any research on them to gave them a better description. I know that there was a lot of abuse going on with these handmade and well placed tiles in the Netherlands but auto removing every single wayspot with the name Tile/Tegel to ''clean up" the game board is absurd in this case where there is nothing wrong with them. Is there a way to get them back?
I should also note that the ladybug tile i shared is not part of these animal tiles. thats a different story where i first thought that it got removed because it had Niantic made routes on it that were faulty but i learned now that it got removed simply because its a tile i guess? I still have the badges of the routes. Strangely enough this was the only pokestop in my area where you could find a route when it got released and now its gone.
These are not Pokémon themed and have a website and QR-code on them. It took me 5 minutes to find those websites. Most time was spent on figuring out what the website was, because of the lower resolution images posted here. Niantic has access to higher quality images, so it should be way easier for them to verify these wayspots. The only ones to blame are the people who reported them, and the people who removed them. And the people who refuse to give these another look to restore them.
Yes, they are part of a walking trail, and each tile is an exercise station.
You misread it again. Many of these tiles are designed to be placed on its own L17 cells which is abuse at Niantic's POV. Hence many of them are Pokemon themed.
However Niantic tend to not bothering whether the tiles are official or not, and that's also the reason they refused every appeals to restore the official ones.
I know this. I just don't see how it is relevant. These are not designed to be placed on their own L17 cells. These are not abuse.
Not bothering whether tiles meet criteria or not is lazy. Conclusion: Niantic is to blame.
@19Markbogert95-PGO
I think there is a lesson for you still to learn ……admittedly these were done sometime ago, but given everything that has gone in Netherlands / surrounding area, anything anyone submits needs to be backed up with independent evidence if possible. Trails of various kinds need to have official websites. This is as much to protect yourself from allegations as much as anything else. Reviewers are going to be cautious and probably not give the benefit of the doubt.
This will all seem unfair, and in my view it shouldn’t be like this, but the reality is that it is a fallout from the bad situation that developed in a variety of ways. There is a lot that Wayfinders can do to take back and reclaim Wayfarer from the abuse caused and improve things. Once improved a new sense of normality can return.
In the meantime make your submissions as watertight as possible and unfortunately for now stay away from the floor tiles and mosaics.
Sure.
Niantic are also just as complicit in this as the bot creators.
For years nothing has been done, nothing continues to be done in other places.
A scorched earth approach was used which may get rid of the bot abuse but it also takes out everything else like above at the same time.
Their communication when they decided to act was irresponsible and lacking any direction which resulted in comical scaremongering videos, masses of disinformation and a dearth of facts.
For an Ambassador to proclaim, on the community forum, that abusers are to blame is as comical as some of the clickbait videos.
The burden of proof lies on the nominator and as the OP has said they provided no proof of their existence. With no proof they would and should have not been accepted and probably were only accepted because of bot involvement. It is not up to Niantic to go the extra mile for proof that should have been present when the nomination was made.
There was never any proof or anything cynical as what came out of tye Netherlands, to say this was going on for years is an outright exaggeration. Did they act slow once botting was uncovered? Depends on who you ask, the community will easily say yes, but Niantic wasn't sitting on their hands, they were coming up with ideas on how to handle this, working on new policies, employee trainings, while still performing daily duties. Even with all this some ambos will still say they could have done more, and perhaps they could have, but we weren't there in the offices seeing how they spent every minute of every day.
To say Niantic is taking a scorched earth approach is an overstatement as well. On the surface some of these removals might seem like head scratches, but in this specific example... the OP has admitted to not have done their homework. That means the nomination never included any proof these markers were real, and existed at their locations. These were approved by bots and/or by reviewers who are not reviewing thoroughly. Nominations that should not have been accepted in the first place with the info originally provided.
They can see the environment in the supporting photo of the nominations. The website with the necessary information is on the tiles. That should be enough. At that point, the burden of proof should shift to the person reporting the wayspot.
They were approved long before bots became an issue.
So leaving places like the Netherlands, Zaragoza, Gdansk etc etc to fester for years and then doing what they did without any proper communication or handling of how and who that information is disseminated to is not a scorched earth approach?
Why do you think there was mass over reaction from various sections of the communities and a spate of ill informed videos?
Assuming there are good supporting photos, sure, but maybe you haven't reviewed Netherlands or seen their typical supporting photos.
Some of them were posted in this thread and they seem fine to me.
Whether there's a removal bot or not - these removals were done in a bot-like fashion, if tile then remove. We as reviewers are told to review holistically, without relying on categorical eligibility cues.....but the "abundance of caution" that was shown by Niantic runs contrary to the process they've communicated to reviewers. If we as reviewers or editors rejected or submitted removal requests for perfectly valid mosaic tiles anywhere else in the world, we'd likely be punished for our actions.
Netherland are Zaragoza are completely different types of abuse. There's no evidence Zaragoza was involved in any botting and as far as I'm aware all their waypoints were real.
You are making assumptions on their system. Likely missing a few sequences in your if and then. Probably one that involves looking at the proof presented by the submitter.