The irony of Niantic not understanding their own incoherent guidelines and then us asking for them to be removed is the only positive I can see in this mess.
I highly doubt every single one of the new wayspots got looked at by a Niantic employee. New or old, I don't think any person would've approved a br0thel or a McDonald's.
I think they just got the data of all those businesses as a single mass and pushed all of them live at once.
I'm not excusing it, I still think it's horrible practice and offensive to every single Wayfinder out there.
I do agree that rolling back all of those new wayspots would've been a much better solution, rather than letting them all stay and counting on people to report them - especially considering that the mistake and the report form were only published here on the forum, and likely 99.9% of PoGo's playerbase impacted by this change will never see it.
Even if they did, why would a player with no interest in Wayfarer ever report it? For them it's more stops and gyms.
I dread to imagine all the players seeing these new wayspots and thinking they're eligible, then nominating similar locations in the future... as if there isn't enough coal in the system already.
It's insulting. Here we have been charged with both going out and submitting quality stuff, and then reviewing/approving the best offerings, to get them into game. Some spots have even had special events to get more nominations in low-density area, which strains the system overall since there's a flood of hasty nominations. But in this case, our human workforce has been taken completely out of the equation, which feels almost like a reprimand (we're too slow and particular!). So why does Niantic not publish an Area of Concern map or list here, just to see if maybe people can step up and start submitting? Maybe there are submitters here who can easily get to those target areas but did not know they were in such dire need! They could also do something like designating those Areas of Concern as Special Upgrade Protocol Enabled - everything follows the normal process except that any nomination in the area is upgraded automatically. I think we've seen that automation of nomination or approval has its drawbacks, and should be limited.
Like many others, I am upset and disappointed with the recent flood of low-quality NIA-synced portals into PoGo.
I live in a semi-rural area, and many of my nominations are in small towns. Many of these small towns have photoless ingress-synced post offices, museums, fire stations, and random things. In my experience, these wayspots ...
are difficult, if not impossible to remove.
are often extremely misplaced, and difficult to move to the proper location with location edit restrictions
aren’t even there at all
in addition, since PoGo nominators can’t see these synced ingress portals, I often see really good small town nominations (churches, parks, local hotspots, etc) unable to make it into games due to the 20m proximity rule of these “ghost” wayspots.
if this is rolled out everywhere, these problems (and more) will become more widespread and lead to frustration among the global wayfarer community.
My suggestion? Instead of syncing low-quality wayspots, clean out the nomination backlogs instead. Have more wayfarer-oriented events, encourage reviewing, be more transparent in the forums... something....
Maybe we all should Just Quit reviewing. That would be a good solution For niantic, as they Just keep doing Things that harm the already broken system. They Just could add random stops and gyms Into their Games and Not bother Not fixing Bugs and broken Features.
This is Niantic's database that they use to enhance gameplay on their games. At the end, it is their database to do with what they want.
In general, I somewhat like the idea of this, but I think the execution was lazy and rushed. At its base, Niantic responded to an issue of not having enough Wayspots for players to enjoy the game. Not enough Wayspots means Trainers cannot make their own nominations or review to adequately build their own network. By seeding in these types of nominations, they allow Trainers the ability to enjoy the game.
Unfortunately, the laziness and rushed nature will cause damage that may be irreparable. I have heard of examples of Wayspots ending up being in unsafe, sensitive, and illicit locations. This may have placed them at risk of another lawsuit.
Other damage includes perpetuating low quality nominations. Almost anyone who has spent any time reviewing already sees floods of "This Starbucks hasn't been added yet!" and "Well that Target red ball is in game, why isn't mine?" nominations. Well, now we have Niantic approved Wayspots.
Their response has been requesting us to go out and report Wayspots. To be frank, what local person without their own Stops is going to report what may be their only Wayspot? They should recall all of these and either add them to the reviewer network with special instructions on how to review, or actually review them themselves.
I also think that asking players to report invalid POIs that Niantic just added rather than removing all of these POIs from database and after checking database adds only eligible is really ill-considered idea.
For first, it's not players fault that these POIs appeared in some weird places, why should now players do most of the job to fix Niantic's mistakes? Second, as you mentioned, most players won't report these POIs, especially if these are the only POIs in they area - why should they make playing game in they area harder by deleting POIs that Niantic approved to add? This make no sense for most of players, and thinking that most of players will be happy to report only POIs they got is naive thinking.
To tell the truth, it's not something that we (players and reviewers) should think about and try to fix - it's Niantic problem now. We tried to submit and review wayspots that will make database and games nicer by accepting only eligible things and trying to report existing ineligible things to get them removed. And now we got thousands of ineligble POIs added to one game (why not to all of them is something I can't understand, there are also people that can't play Ingress as they don't have portals ini they area too, it's the same for HP:WU - not only PoGo players had this problem), and we are the one that are asked to report them - well, no thank you. I had enough job as a reviewer now, I won't fix every mistake that is added to wayfarer. I will see how this problem is going to be fixed by Niantic (if it ever will), but only as a spectator.
I, as a Wayfarer (and OPR before that) just wonder what the h*ll we’ve been doing these years. They had a system that worked somewhat ok. Then they changed it so we got draconian punishments for reviewing wrongly, a hole that took ages to crawl up from. Then, they shrunk our bonus location areas to 1/4th of what they were, so we couldn’t help low density areas, meanwhile ignoring pleas for us to be able to change them more often. And now they are themselves creating stops that go against their own criteria??
for years intel map was the database for ALL games. I tried to educate the community that intel map or ingress map was the database. that way there wouldnt be any confusion. " you can easily check intel map on pc in order to avoid duplicates, pogo player" or "dont use what you see in PoGO as am example of what is valid because so many things have changed"
And it is insulting and vile what happened now. Wasting my time, I trying to keep up to date with the ever-evolving criteria and guidelines (I love current the Criteria Page and Help Page, i consider to be more clear than what was in the past) but still, I consider Wayfarer a broke system. So many obvious flaws with clear and simple solutions already talked widely here.
Niantic could at least make us review those wayspots before upload. Maybe a special event ? that way we would review them with a more open-mind (due to country-context and since the wayspots maybe wouldnt be "nominated" the way we are used to, at least the super bad ones wouldn't enter the games, an example, some wayspots have insults in their titles).
Not only this but now, we are asked to report them?! through some specific form? This indicates that these wayspots aren't going to be mass-removed (but niantic easily mass-upload them....).
Lets see what awaits us in the second half of 2021.
Any idea how many "ineligible Waypoints" were uploaded by this "process"?
Is there any way of easily finding them and giving them a review or reporting them, or are they just going to be left floating in game.
Honestly, if Niantic just removed the bonus location restrictions and ran an event with sensible "rewards" then I am sure a lot of people would participate.
If these invalid stops and gyms appear only in Pokemon Go, then no, I can't help get them removed because I can't get information from Intel. Only those that can see the actual objects can get them removed, and obviously they would need to have access to these forums to find the proper form, and would need to do a lot of manual input to remove an object that would be beneficial to them if it remained.
I won't be surprised if Niantic are gonna act as if the report form is the ultimate solution to this situation... but I'd still be extremely disappointed.
I'm hoping that they'll see how few reports (if any, really) they're getting and realize that they need to do better.
Still think it's beyond shameful that this happened in the first place.
It's from LukeAllStars' comment in the first page of this thread. They shared a screenshot of a new gym called "Burdel Mateusza". "Burdel" is the Polish word for brothel.
So if you come across one of these Foursquare PoIs in Wayfarer, how to approach the situation now? If someone submits a picture on a kindergarten PoI, do you just say yes this is a perfectly fine picture of the kindergarten, nothing to see here? What about a duplicate for a kindergarten, is it just a duplicate of a great PoI or rejection?
The followup note in the News thread is interesting: lots of cleanup, hundreds of invalid spots removed, generic photos added, and lots of happy Pokémon Go players - and they plan to extend the same courtesy to Ingress because who knew that Ingress players wanted to be able to play, too? 😂
No wonder we have not seen much Niantic presence on this forum of late. They’ve obviously been scrambling!
What just baffles me is that the comment from Niantic about their progress resolving their "mistake" has, at the time of me reading it, attracted 27 "Dislikes"! Who the heck "Dislikes" a positive progress report?
Exactly! I was thinking the same thing & started to type almost identically what you did. I refreshed the page to see your comment. Great minds think alike
I'm one of the ones that disagreed. Generally if I disagree with a post, I'll post a rebuttal or explanation, but I cannot do so on the announce-only boards.
So, I disagreed with the post because Niantic has remediated 350 waypoints through a manual process that includes only those that have been reported by Wayfarers. Anything unreported and inappropriate likely remains in Pokemon Go. Generic photos have been added, with the hope that future Wayfarers will remediate by adding better photos. I think adding these waypoints to Ingress "later" shows a true lack of forethought, no mention has been made of HPWU, and I don't understand how the database even works anymore if there are single-game layers. And lastly, since the unreviewed waypoints (or semi-waypoints, or placeholders) went into game, we've seen very little Niantic involvement on these forums and questions, frustrations, and assorted issue reports have gone unanswered.
Since these new spots are in Pokemon Go only, are they in the Wayfarer database that we all review, or will Niantic be handling all the photo approvals in-house?
I guess I am disagreeing with the overall positive tone of the message. I'd like to see some concrete Lessons Learned.
Please remove those pokestops without pictures. In my country (Turkey) maybe million pokestops are created by this way. Those are normal apartments, barbers, gas stations, markets, cafes, k-12 schools, police stations and many more... What is wrong with Niantic? They completely ruined wayfarer system. I am trying to submit and approved simple park but out of nowhere all private residents became pokestops. All my efforts and others effort are worthless? Why would I submit new pokestop or use wayfarer anymore? In my country rural areas have way way more pokestops than big cities. Please take an action before it is too late.
I feel you. Turkey is normally way out of my review radius, but ever since Niantic added these wayspots I've been getting a few of them as photo reviews. Among them were a hill sl0pe (not sure why this is censored?), a plastic packaging factory, and a neighborhood (not even a sign for the neighborhood, the submitted photos just showed a generic street). I don't know what it looks like in other countries, but from the very little I've seen in Turkey, it seems rough.
In addition to these removals, we have performed a backend photo update that has added a generic image to any newly added Wayspot that didn’t have a photo.
@NianticCasey-ING, perhaps the same thing could be done with Ingress Portals that were originally seeded over? As somebody who travels, nominates, and reviews a lot to rural communities across the US Midwest, these often add unnecessary compilations for PoGO Trainers for not knowing there may be a POI nearby or when a post office is misplaced and there is a split reviewer conclusion between duplicate & approve, causing a soft overall rejection.
Comments
The irony of Niantic not understanding their own incoherent guidelines and then us asking for them to be removed is the only positive I can see in this mess.
Not obsolete (well, maybewayfarer). People would just figure out where the data is coming from and find a way to submit data thro there.
I highly doubt every single one of the new wayspots got looked at by a Niantic employee. New or old, I don't think any person would've approved a br0thel or a McDonald's.
I think they just got the data of all those businesses as a single mass and pushed all of them live at once.
I'm not excusing it, I still think it's horrible practice and offensive to every single Wayfinder out there.
I do agree that rolling back all of those new wayspots would've been a much better solution, rather than letting them all stay and counting on people to report them - especially considering that the mistake and the report form were only published here on the forum, and likely 99.9% of PoGo's playerbase impacted by this change will never see it.
Even if they did, why would a player with no interest in Wayfarer ever report it? For them it's more stops and gyms.
I dread to imagine all the players seeing these new wayspots and thinking they're eligible, then nominating similar locations in the future... as if there isn't enough coal in the system already.
Cc: Everyone at Niantic
https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria#rejection
Whoever is responsible deserves a 4 hour cooldown in my opinion.
4 hour? You're generous. I recently got a 24-hour cooldown for clicking the "skip" option!
It's insulting. Here we have been charged with both going out and submitting quality stuff, and then reviewing/approving the best offerings, to get them into game. Some spots have even had special events to get more nominations in low-density area, which strains the system overall since there's a flood of hasty nominations. But in this case, our human workforce has been taken completely out of the equation, which feels almost like a reprimand (we're too slow and particular!). So why does Niantic not publish an Area of Concern map or list here, just to see if maybe people can step up and start submitting? Maybe there are submitters here who can easily get to those target areas but did not know they were in such dire need! They could also do something like designating those Areas of Concern as Special Upgrade Protocol Enabled - everything follows the normal process except that any nomination in the area is upgraded automatically. I think we've seen that automation of nomination or approval has its drawbacks, and should be limited.
Like many others, I am upset and disappointed with the recent flood of low-quality NIA-synced portals into PoGo.
I live in a semi-rural area, and many of my nominations are in small towns. Many of these small towns have photoless ingress-synced post offices, museums, fire stations, and random things. In my experience, these wayspots ...
in addition, since PoGo nominators can’t see these synced ingress portals, I often see really good small town nominations (churches, parks, local hotspots, etc) unable to make it into games due to the 20m proximity rule of these “ghost” wayspots.
if this is rolled out everywhere, these problems (and more) will become more widespread and lead to frustration among the global wayfarer community.
My suggestion? Instead of syncing low-quality wayspots, clean out the nomination backlogs instead. Have more wayfarer-oriented events, encourage reviewing, be more transparent in the forums... something....
Maybe we all should Just Quit reviewing. That would be a good solution For niantic, as they Just keep doing Things that harm the already broken system. They Just could add random stops and gyms Into their Games and Not bother Not fixing Bugs and broken Features.
This is Niantic's database that they use to enhance gameplay on their games. At the end, it is their database to do with what they want.
In general, I somewhat like the idea of this, but I think the execution was lazy and rushed. At its base, Niantic responded to an issue of not having enough Wayspots for players to enjoy the game. Not enough Wayspots means Trainers cannot make their own nominations or review to adequately build their own network. By seeding in these types of nominations, they allow Trainers the ability to enjoy the game.
Unfortunately, the laziness and rushed nature will cause damage that may be irreparable. I have heard of examples of Wayspots ending up being in unsafe, sensitive, and illicit locations. This may have placed them at risk of another lawsuit.
Other damage includes perpetuating low quality nominations. Almost anyone who has spent any time reviewing already sees floods of "This Starbucks hasn't been added yet!" and "Well that Target red ball is in game, why isn't mine?" nominations. Well, now we have Niantic approved Wayspots.
Their response has been requesting us to go out and report Wayspots. To be frank, what local person without their own Stops is going to report what may be their only Wayspot? They should recall all of these and either add them to the reviewer network with special instructions on how to review, or actually review them themselves.
I also think that asking players to report invalid POIs that Niantic just added rather than removing all of these POIs from database and after checking database adds only eligible is really ill-considered idea.
For first, it's not players fault that these POIs appeared in some weird places, why should now players do most of the job to fix Niantic's mistakes? Second, as you mentioned, most players won't report these POIs, especially if these are the only POIs in they area - why should they make playing game in they area harder by deleting POIs that Niantic approved to add? This make no sense for most of players, and thinking that most of players will be happy to report only POIs they got is naive thinking.
To tell the truth, it's not something that we (players and reviewers) should think about and try to fix - it's Niantic problem now. We tried to submit and review wayspots that will make database and games nicer by accepting only eligible things and trying to report existing ineligible things to get them removed. And now we got thousands of ineligble POIs added to one game (why not to all of them is something I can't understand, there are also people that can't play Ingress as they don't have portals ini they area too, it's the same for HP:WU - not only PoGo players had this problem), and we are the one that are asked to report them - well, no thank you. I had enough job as a reviewer now, I won't fix every mistake that is added to wayfarer. I will see how this problem is going to be fixed by Niantic (if it ever will), but only as a spectator.
I imagine the conversation went something like this.
Manager: we need to create more wayspots in areas where there are none to increase gameplay. Does anyone have any ideas?
Employee: we could buy data from another company and use that as source.
Manager: good idea, let's do that.
Employee: I have the list, should we load them into wayfarer for the community to review
Manager: no we don't need to do that. No one plays in the areas so they won't notice.
I, as a Wayfarer (and OPR before that) just wonder what the h*ll we’ve been doing these years. They had a system that worked somewhat ok. Then they changed it so we got draconian punishments for reviewing wrongly, a hole that took ages to crawl up from. Then, they shrunk our bonus location areas to 1/4th of what they were, so we couldn’t help low density areas, meanwhile ignoring pleas for us to be able to change them more often. And now they are themselves creating stops that go against their own criteria??
the confusing part about this is...why only pogo?
for years intel map was the database for ALL games. I tried to educate the community that intel map or ingress map was the database. that way there wouldnt be any confusion. " you can easily check intel map on pc in order to avoid duplicates, pogo player" or "dont use what you see in PoGO as am example of what is valid because so many things have changed"
And it is insulting and vile what happened now. Wasting my time, I trying to keep up to date with the ever-evolving criteria and guidelines (I love current the Criteria Page and Help Page, i consider to be more clear than what was in the past) but still, I consider Wayfarer a broke system. So many obvious flaws with clear and simple solutions already talked widely here.
Niantic could at least make us review those wayspots before upload. Maybe a special event ? that way we would review them with a more open-mind (due to country-context and since the wayspots maybe wouldnt be "nominated" the way we are used to, at least the super bad ones wouldn't enter the games, an example, some wayspots have insults in their titles).
Not only this but now, we are asked to report them?! through some specific form? This indicates that these wayspots aren't going to be mass-removed (but niantic easily mass-upload them....).
Lets see what awaits us in the second half of 2021.
Any idea how many "ineligible Waypoints" were uploaded by this "process"?
Is there any way of easily finding them and giving them a review or reporting them, or are they just going to be left floating in game.
Honestly, if Niantic just removed the bonus location restrictions and ran an event with sensible "rewards" then I am sure a lot of people would participate.
If these invalid stops and gyms appear only in Pokemon Go, then no, I can't help get them removed because I can't get information from Intel. Only those that can see the actual objects can get them removed, and obviously they would need to have access to these forums to find the proper form, and would need to do a lot of manual input to remove an object that would be beneficial to them if it remained.
I won't be surprised if Niantic are gonna act as if the report form is the ultimate solution to this situation... but I'd still be extremely disappointed.
I'm hoping that they'll see how few reports (if any, really) they're getting and realize that they need to do better.
Still think it's beyond shameful that this happened in the first place.
I'm hoping that they'll see how few reports (if any, really) they're getting and realize that they need to do better.
"Nobody is reporting things invalid, they must all have been valid!"
Yeah, true. That's probably more likely.
I'm wondering about one of the comments - did a Brothel really make it in game?
It's from LukeAllStars' comment in the first page of this thread. They shared a screenshot of a new gym called "Burdel Mateusza". "Burdel" is the Polish word for brothel.
@sogNinjaman-ING the last two screencaps here show it.
So if you come across one of these Foursquare PoIs in Wayfarer, how to approach the situation now? If someone submits a picture on a kindergarten PoI, do you just say yes this is a perfectly fine picture of the kindergarten, nothing to see here? What about a duplicate for a kindergarten, is it just a duplicate of a great PoI or rejection?
The followup note in the News thread is interesting: lots of cleanup, hundreds of invalid spots removed, generic photos added, and lots of happy Pokémon Go players - and they plan to extend the same courtesy to Ingress because who knew that Ingress players wanted to be able to play, too? 😂
No wonder we have not seen much Niantic presence on this forum of late. They’ve obviously been scrambling!
What just baffles me is that the comment from Niantic about their progress resolving their "mistake" has, at the time of me reading it, attracted 27 "Dislikes"! Who the heck "Dislikes" a positive progress report?
Exactly! I was thinking the same thing & started to type almost identically what you did. I refreshed the page to see your comment. Great minds think alike
I'm one of the ones that disagreed. Generally if I disagree with a post, I'll post a rebuttal or explanation, but I cannot do so on the announce-only boards.
So, I disagreed with the post because Niantic has remediated 350 waypoints through a manual process that includes only those that have been reported by Wayfarers. Anything unreported and inappropriate likely remains in Pokemon Go. Generic photos have been added, with the hope that future Wayfarers will remediate by adding better photos. I think adding these waypoints to Ingress "later" shows a true lack of forethought, no mention has been made of HPWU, and I don't understand how the database even works anymore if there are single-game layers. And lastly, since the unreviewed waypoints (or semi-waypoints, or placeholders) went into game, we've seen very little Niantic involvement on these forums and questions, frustrations, and assorted issue reports have gone unanswered.
Since these new spots are in Pokemon Go only, are they in the Wayfarer database that we all review, or will Niantic be handling all the photo approvals in-house?
I guess I am disagreeing with the overall positive tone of the message. I'd like to see some concrete Lessons Learned.
Please remove those pokestops without pictures. In my country (Turkey) maybe million pokestops are created by this way. Those are normal apartments, barbers, gas stations, markets, cafes, k-12 schools, police stations and many more... What is wrong with Niantic? They completely ruined wayfarer system. I am trying to submit and approved simple park but out of nowhere all private residents became pokestops. All my efforts and others effort are worthless? Why would I submit new pokestop or use wayfarer anymore? In my country rural areas have way way more pokestops than big cities. Please take an action before it is too late.
I feel you. Turkey is normally way out of my review radius, but ever since Niantic added these wayspots I've been getting a few of them as photo reviews. Among them were a hill sl0pe (not sure why this is censored?), a plastic packaging factory, and a neighborhood (not even a sign for the neighborhood, the submitted photos just showed a generic street). I don't know what it looks like in other countries, but from the very little I've seen in Turkey, it seems rough.
In addition to these removals, we have performed a backend photo update that has added a generic image to any newly added Wayspot that didn’t have a photo.
@NianticCasey-ING, perhaps the same thing could be done with Ingress Portals that were originally seeded over? As somebody who travels, nominates, and reviews a lot to rural communities across the US Midwest, these often add unnecessary compilations for PoGO Trainers for not knowing there may be a POI nearby or when a post office is misplaced and there is a split reviewer conclusion between duplicate & approve, causing a soft overall rejection.