A player I know wants to remove portals that are gyms in Pokémon Go, either by reporting them or editing their location to make them disappear.
Perfectly valid portals (churches, decorative fountains, etc.), but he want to eliminate them to make groups of gyms to appear together in areas that interest him, leaving huge areas empty.
It’s a huge violation of Wayfarer’s terms, but I don’t see how I can prevent it.
I can’t prevent him from falsely reporting gyms, and maybe he’ll get lucky and succeed.
I can’t prevent him from falsely modifying the location to make a gym disappear, and then starting to rate it with multiple accounts in Wayfarer to get the location change accepted.
I can’t report him for abuse because he hasn’t done anything yet.
But when he does, it will be a matter of days/weeks before he succeeds. Any ideas to prevent this?
If you have particular wayspots that are of concern, it may be worth recording their names and locations in case you have to make a report. If you have any evidence of the other player making these threats then you should record that too.
Hello
As you might expect the Wayfarer Team can’t take action on something that may or may not happen.
This is the link to the form shown in the other post Reporting Abuse in Wayfarer — Wayfarer Help Center
I would suggest documenting everything as carefully as possible.
So if you know the wayspots that are likely to be involved, check them very carefully that they are in the correct locations. If they are not then correcting the location is valid. Make sure that the actual objects are valid and not now something likely to be removed. For example many Disc Golf nets were approved in the past but these will be removed.
Take geotagged photographs that show they exist at that location - this will show up to date information that proves what is there.
It may not be used until after the event however it will not only show that they shouldnt have been removed and provide a case for restoration but it will help show the act of removal was malicious.
If you have proof of multi accounting then do provide that as well. If that is something you can do now you may do so.
This sort of manipulation of the database is taken very seriously by the team and the person is risking some sort of game ban, which defeats the purpose of this .
Peaceful solutions are always more preferable than this sort of turf war. If there is a way to resolve this without going down this route then in the long term it is likely to be better,
As @elijustrying said record and document anything that might get involved so you have clear evidence. On the other side to maybe prevent this, You could inform the player that if he/she does this you are in your right to report this player for serious abuse of the wayspot system and that this could result in a ban for their wayfarer account and POGO account, that might be permanent. Hopefully the situation gets resolved on their own, if not report the player with the clear evidence you hopefully documented. Best of luck
I see that you mention portals, which are game play locations in Ingress. Ingress has split from Wayfarer, so if this player is tryihng to remove these in Ingress, they won’t be removed in PoGo. Any removals done in Ingress are only done in Ingress now, so they would have to remove the Wayspots via PoGo to get them removed.
I know that Niantic can not give too many details but would it be possible to just get confirmation that if someone is reporting edits and the majority are being refused this will trigger something so a human looks in to it?
Thanks for the replies.
I’ll answer point by point:
I said “portals” out of habit, but he’s definitely trying to make the changes from Pokemon Go, not Ingress.
All the gyms he’s trying to remove are valid; none of them were before and aren’t now. They’re a church, a beautifully decorated fountain, a work of art in a park…
I’ll contact the abuse section you’ve been through and report everything with the names and photos of the portals.
I know he has other accounts to rate stops because he’s said so at some point, but I have no proof of it, nor their names (plus I’d like to avoid having to report him because he’s a player I know and interact with occasionally, but oh well).
That said, the main problem isn’t that they can remove a Wayspot. The main problem is that they move it. Let him, with his main account or another one, or one of his friends, ask to move a gym 10 meters to the next quadrant. And if they do that, and with the positive valorations from many accounts and they succeed, it will be irreversible.
Because the Wayspot will continue to exist, but the gym won’t; it will have disappeared when the quadrant changed, and another one will have appeared. Then I can complain, but I don’t think it will be possible to reverse it once another one has appeared in its place.
My main language isn’t english. I hope you understand me with the google translator😅
I will read your answers, follow your advices and delete this thread in a couple of days, because I don’t want any of the players involved in this can read it. Hope I could have created this thread anonimously.
We can only speculate but hope that Niantic have procedures in place.
He makes numerous Edits.
These are sent to a Random selection of “local” reviewers that will need to agree with him (and it’s not that local, I get reviews from most of the UK so it won’t just be his mates).
Hopefullly this will result in the majority being rejected which “hopefully” will trigger something at Niantic who can take action with his account(s) if required.
Ojalá pase eso. Pero ya entra en el territorio de la “suerte”, para que no le acepten ninguno de sus cambios.
Ojalá hubiera una forma en la que yo pudiera contactar con la sección de abusos de Wayfarer, probar que los Wayspots son correctos y sus ubicaciones también, y de alguna forma pudieran bloquear/impedir ningun intento de cambio de ubicación en esos portales.
Ideally, Niantic would be able to keep track of any changes so if reversed then all the changes could be reversed. Doing this could turn in to a nightmare. What would happen if 2 different edits caused changes. The 1st “incorrect” edit is reversed could cause problems with a 2nd “correct” edit.
Personally, my suggestions are…
Dont worry about things that havent happenned and may never happen.
Don’t worry about things you have no control over.
Ya. Acepto que lo que propongo es difícil de llevar a cabo.
Solo me queda aportar pruebas de como estaba todo ahora y esperar que haya suerte y no le acepten los cambios de ubicación.
Gracias por la ayuda a todos.
You may want to bookmark this topic if you ever need it in case it does happen. You can link this topic showing that you tried searching for tips and advise. It might help, but im not certain.
1 thing I can suggest is, if possible, download the scaniverse and make splats of the locations in question. The splats are Geotagged afaik.
You can then use these as evidence of their correct locations should that player succeed in a removal or movement.
Both are against TOS on abuse grounds.
Of course, until something disappears or moves you probably won’t know if they have attempted to do what their planning and unfortunately if the gym switches to another stop (if there is already more then required number of stops in the cell to generate a gym) The gym will probably remain at the new location and the original will probably just be reinstated as a stop.
Don’t worry, the Gym won’t be removed when they’re moving in the same level 14 grid.
Simply moving the gym out of the original level 18 grid will not cause anything to happen.
I think the player want to remove gym entirely. But i dont think there is anything we can do until the player actually do it. There nothing we can do if the removed wayspot is incorrectly accepted in the past.
And there are some wayspot in grey area that sometimes become removal appeal war
