"Taken necessary actions on the Wayspots and Wayfinders in accordance with our policies"
HaramDingo-ING
Posts: 1,725 ✭✭✭✭✭
What does the above really mean? Is it:
- A continued warning with no bite*
with infinite gracethat Niantic will permanently suspend the Wayfinder and ban them from Pokemon Go? - The immediate rejection of the abusive Wayspot and withdrawal/removal from the voting queue (which isn't really happening, referring to Albion Park)? Or...
- In dire cases, completely mass-reject all pending nominations (and edits) and completely suspend the Wayfarer account (for allegedly including URLs in the Supporting Statement... go figure...)
I understand that we can report abuse both within Wayfarer, using the Reporting Abuse in Wayfarer form or just publicly post it in a discussion here like most others do that does get responded to, but does the action really happen?
*note: reason for this post is because we have a local who continually asks people in Wayfarer to influence reviewers i.e. "please pick the location on the top-left for S2 cell purposes" and he has just gotten his FOURTH warning email a couple of days ago in the last twelve months, but nothing has ever happened to his account so he just keeps on doing it for experimental purposes.
Hopefully this year we will see real substance in these actions going forth maybe this year.
Tagged:
Comments
Hello @HaramDingo-ING! We do take action whenever we detect any violation of our policies. Any incorrect changes to the Wayspots in question are reversed. While we are unable to discuss our actions in detail to protect the submitter/reviewer’s privacy, they may include, but are not limited to, sending a warning message, placing restrictions on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO, or Ingress account, putting their account on probation, or placing a temporary or permanent suspension on their Wayfarer, Pokémon GO or Ingress account. Thank you!
As far as I know, Niantic is using a "3-strike-system".
when a specific number of abuses is reached, the player will recieve a warning. If the player is abusing further, his account will get banned for 30 days and after this, the account will be permanently banned. This can also be only for wayfarer I believe.
So what about all the Wayfarer abuse that occurred in Zaragoze, Spain hyper-cluster? Seems you completely reversed yourself there.
Won't somebody think of the Spoofers and the money they bring?
Didn't want to believe it, but after a very long time in this "business", this is the conclusion I've arrived at too. Money is money.
Which is why I've given up trying to get mass cases of abuse taken care of. If Niantic want to have a low quality database, so be it. I don't get paid for this, so no point in putting so much time and effort into it anymore than I already have.
Money
One of the other issues is that a lot of people use their alts to commit the abuse, meaning that their primary account escapes all punishment.
There are a few other things that can affect the "three strikes" policy as implemented by Niantic, at least as seen locally when reporting in-game harassment:
Making a submission on behalf of someone else who can't (out of submissions, distance, etc.) is about the most innocent form of "multiaccounting" there is (...it technically is, but I don't really consider it so, seeing as it's so radically different than multiaccounting done for abusive purposes).
Perhaps, but you shouldn't be submitting things that you don't know exist first hand. It's one thing to ask a friend to drive to Main Street park to submit 10 things. It's something different to send them pictures and descriptions and have them remote submit. In the later case, you're simply banking on someone's word rather than providing any proof.
Oh, I agree. I wasn't even considering that option when talking about "submitting for someone else" - creating a nomination you don't know exists is absolutely something I consider abuse.
The Zaragoza situation is really disappointing because we had a very small cluster in a certain Olympic precinct which was nuked I think back in November or something, it was no more than like 7 stops, whereas they get entire streetloads and blocks full of such atrocities. So you were fine in decimating even little small instances and even reversed your decision just for money. Money came from a community of people gathering at quite a central area in the metropolitan area using their lures and incenses, but that was taken away.
Either way, for as much as the guy has received his fourth warning without any risk of ban as of yet, he just says that its all on the same email, but doesn't care. You would think there would be a pattern of being able to find instances of "spamming inappropriate nominations" (or edits in this case), but I'm not seeing any real action being taken. It makes me wonder how you review things on your end, like your systems. Do you use a nomination intel, that instead of showing things already approved it shows nominated portals and can filter to show edit requests? Do you use a WRM (Wayspot Relationship Management) or something strangely corporate-sounding or something? Or do you just do the Niantic side of Wayfarer, the same process that we have (i.e. you're routed something that we have submitted or an invalid report)?
I really hope the abuse reports are doing something.
"I really hope the abuse reports are doing something."
I wonder that all the time. For instance, just earlier today I stumbled on a wayspot I've reported ages ago (it showed up in the possible duplicates list for a new nomination). It's a wayspot for a swing, but it's located in the middle of a parking lot next to the park where the swing is actually located (obviously misplaced for cell separation purposes). It's been months since my report, but evidently it didn't lead to anything.
I don't have a car, and they were out of submissions. So I got a ride there and was there in person. I made the submission for them. There were no shenanigans, no multiaccounting, no cheating, no nonsense.
But in a case where it's one person with multiple accounts, yup, is bad.
The 3 strikes system is a joke anyway. In PoGo, I know someone on their 4th RW, in Ingress, my friends and I got account termination with no prior strikes at all, without reason to boot. Expected some consistency with Wayfarer? Good luck.
The backflip on Zaragoza is so spectacular that it's pretty much the equivalent of a reverse 4 1⁄2 somersault pike dive.
As a reviewer in Spain, I suspect there is another bad cluster in Algeciras, Spain from having gotten one or two submissions in an area where I did not pass them because clear not meeting criteria in an area where massive zoom required to check duplicates. :/