Hello everyone. I am looking for some guidance on how to best handle several location edits that are less than 10 m in difference. I’ve read or been given conflicting advice, such as not submitting location edits in-game and instead making a request on this forum, and that smaller location edits are no longer being accepted.
These location edits are primarily for wayspots present in Ingress as portals but not in Pokemon GO and other games due to a nearby wayspot occupying the same S2 cell. If these wayspots were slightly relocated, i.e. less than 5 m, to an adjacent unoccupied S2 cells then they could appear across other Niantic games too.
What would be the best method to have these location edits conducted successfully? Thank you for your feedback.
Hello and welcome,
You should not be moving any Wayspot to an empty S2 cell if it’s location currently is accurate. Accuracy is important for Wayspots, and manipulation of the game board is against the TofS, as well as considered abuse.
In-game location edits less than 10 m are fine, as long as the edits are accurate. If you can’t move a Wayspot in-game, then you can request one via help chat on the Wayfarer website.
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Thank you for the response.
These location edits would be for an equivalent placement, e.g. the wayspot point moving from the southern tip of playground equipment to its northern tip, so it wouldn’t be abuse just an improvement to the feature that could then be accessible across games.
In the past I’ve reviewed location edits where the submitter has also added a description edit with text that encourages reviewers to select a specific location option. Are there methods like that which can help guide reviewers to help make a successful edit?
You mentioned that you can use Wayfarer Help when you can’t submit a location edit in-game. In what kind of scenarios would that happen?
Tgr playground example would actually be an abusive edit as the Wayspot is already on the playground. Influencing reviewers with additional description edits is even a worse offense that can lead up to Niantic terminating all your game accounts.
There’s no legal way to add context to edits.
Help chat is to be used for location edits of bigger distance than 10 metres and those where in your game the Wayspot is not available, but also can only be done for map accuracy and not just for benefiting a game
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Alright, thanks for the clarification. So even if it improves gameplay, the map across games, and prevents ongoing duplicate submissions, it will be considered abuse to improve POI placement if even by a few metres.
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More or less, yes. When you participate in Wayfarer, you have to look at it more from a mapping project perspective, not from a game perspective.
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Like you, I thought (for years!) that moving to an equally correct location, but one that would allow it to show in my game of choice was okay by the way this is worded:
https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/help/reporting-abuse-in-wayfarer
Invalid location edits:
- Attempts to move the Wayspot to a location away from the object with which it’s associated (for example, moving the Wayspot to a different city/country) [italics mine}
But this comment on the old forum from staff was pointed out to me that unless it is a genuine correction it should not be moved:
December 2020
Hi there,
The location of the pin should accurately reflect the Wayspot’s location in the real-world, regardless of whether it has converted into the desired in-app location or not.
As TheFarix-PGO said, location changes should only be submitted to make the marker more accurate or if the marker were to be closer to a logical point of discovery representing a larger location (e.g. a welcome sign for a large park).
And many other comments from staff have indicated that game manipulation is considered abuse. So I don’t do equally correct moves any more. Just ones that are clearly better placements.
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Oh, I don’t think this was addressed. There is no place to make location edit requests on the forum. Sometimes they do happen as a consequence of an issue, but is not standard.
Maybe they were trying to tell you how to use help chat Niantic Wayfarer on the Wayfarer site, or pointing you to the links available at the top here for reporting forms. You can use the form linked under “Wayspot Removals” to request location edits, too. If that link isn’t showing for you, here it is:
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Thanks for sharing your experience and linking it to past admin statements.
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