Mass Abuse of Wayfarer

Breenzy-INGBreenzy-ING Posts: 27 ✭✭✭

Survey markers are a dime a dozen and need to meet minimum criteria of at least one of the following:

  • A great place for exploration
  • A great place for exercise
  • A great place to be social with others


Looking at the area pictured below (-34.024265,150.770693) it is obvious that none of them meet the above criteria. They are 3cm disks and located on random roads. The people submitting and approving them are abusing the Wayfarer system.


A quick search of "Survey Mark" in the mission author tool brings up over 6000 of these portals with most of them being in the Sydney, NSW area. 99% would not be meeting the minimum criteria. In my travels I have found 1 survey marker which meets the criteria, and it was at the top of a hill on a hiking track. Not on a random residential road.


Niantic please act! These low grade submissions are clogging up the system and diluting the pool! The submitters and approvers need to have action taken against them.


An example live in the system right now:

Middle of the road. Very nice.

Tagged:

Comments

  • boredcacher-INGboredcacher-ING Posts: 1 ✭✭
    edited July 2021

    They're on the Automatically Approve list per NIA. Just like Little Free Libraries...

  • X0bai-PGOX0bai-PGO Posts: 1,667 ✭✭✭✭✭

    These should definitely not be approved in residential areas, just like Little Free Libraries, and the information above that they are mass produced is pretty convincing.


    That said, they’re still higher quality than the front doors and garden gnomes that I have to reject en masse.

  • Hello @Breenzy-ING! We took another look at the reported locations and decided that the Wayspots do not meet our criteria for removal at this time. However, the other wayspot which you reported in the middle of the road, we have taken action on the Wayfinder in accordance with our policies. Thanks for helping us maintain the quality of the Wayspots.

  • BleedBoss-PGOBleedBoss-PGO Posts: 269 ✭✭✭


    Given how many of them there are already, i'd say the second option.


    If these were truly invalid, Niantic would remove them. "Oh but it doesnt meet removal criteria" - It DOESNT MATTER. Nia is the owner of the IP, they can remove any and all POIs for whatever reason, including without a reason.

  • MargariteDVille-INGMargariteDVille-ING Posts: 2,846 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I'd be pretty discouraged if I saved up money and time to visit Australia, and felt like all the game showed me was these things.

    Maybe you could make Ingress mission banners of them, lol.

  • jhenstridge-PGOjhenstridge-PGO Posts: 37 ✭✭✭

    There are many cases of grandfathered wayspots that don't meet the current version of eligibility criteria but haven't been deleted. I imagine deleting 6000 portals or pokestops in a single city all at once would be pretty disruptive, so it's not surprising they'd be cautious if the survey mark wayspots aren't causing problems in the real world.

    That's quite different from endorsing the creation of new ones though.

  • WheelTrekker-INGWheelTrekker-ING Posts: 3,387 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Other threads about these markers talk about the high number of them that are constantly nominated, and that number will keep on growing even further given the latest response by Niantic.

  • tp235-INGtp235-ING Posts: 1,383 ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is a big mistake that Niantic has made.

    At the start of Operation Portal Recon, they gave specific examples of candidates for approval, instead of the rough criteria that had been used until then.

    However, by simply stating "trail markers," "survey markers," and "gazebos" without adding words such as "originality" or "unique," players with no sense of decency expanded the criteria in a malicious manner, and the judges feared that the wording would lower their own rating if they rejected the candidates, resulting in this stupid field.

    Furthermore, such a field is further abused and grows like a cancer.

    This should be changed as soon as possible.

    It would be a great asset for us and for Niantic.

  • TheSamus-INGTheSamus-ING Posts: 7 ✭✭
    edited August 2021

    I get that it may be hard to delete all the ones currently live but, instead of doing that make an official post listing them as no longer eligible so people can actually start rejecting any further submissions.

Sign In or Register to comment.