This is just personal opinion. Niantic stance is clear. I understand.
First time i submit portal all the way back in 2016, it nd 2 months to get it approved. I was lvl 1, 2months later i still lv 3 or 4. Since then i submit more and more. At some point the aprroval need more and more time because so many backlog nomination (my longest approval is 2 years) . It was like submit and forget back then. Then niantic probably said thats it, we need help. OPR was born and community is being dragged to help review nomination🤣. there was nothing in my area. Just getting lvl8 in ingress is struggle with so few portal around me. 9 years later i have submit hundreds of portal. I lost count how many is it without ingress portal submission tracker (i really miss this). Nowadays portal is everywhere. I saw people submitting removal here and then. I saw one of the ambassdor post , explaining why the pokestop/gym/portal is removed, that the wayspot is representation of real world. But it still sadden me. Personally even if said object for portal removed. I always prefer more pokestop/portal. Perhaps 9 more years in future, when i see that wayspot, i can say that years ago, it exist. Just my thought. I am not sure how other people’s opinion on this.
That being said, i understand that niantic still gonna removed said portal if its gone.
Not unless there’s something in the cell to replace it with.
There is zero incentive for me to care about the database being “up-to-date” and all the incentive in the world for me to keep gyms and Pokestops around for gameplay reasons, even if the objects they’re tied to are no longer there.
“Driving through wayfarer is like navigating a journey in a car. The windshield represents our future, filled with potential destinations and opportunities waiting to be explored. The wayspots we encounter along the way symbolize the present moment, where we experience and engage with what’s around us. The rearview mirror allows us to glance back at our past, carrying the lessons and memories of our journey. The dashboard, right in front of us, provides the necessary information to navigate safely, making informed decisions and staying on course. Together, they guide us, helping us appreciate the present, anticipate the future, and cherish the past, all while enjoying the ride.”
With this, I just want to stance that I agree with Niantic that the wayspots we should experience are those that are eligible and exist in the present, and that also means we need to have the possibility to remove wayspots due to different reasons.
Of course, we should have history with us and learn from it and develop our journey with it - which means that criteria are constantly updated and ensuring that eligible future wayspots is easier to contribute. A database of retired wayspots is available for those who have accessible rights.
I try to add something new before I remove anything. I dont want to get abuse from locals about why I dared to remove something - which I got after the edit challenge when someone else must have done an edit that caused something to disappear and I got the blame!
If a building is demolished I like to wait and see what replaces it before doing anything with wayfarer. Since submissions used to take a long time to get a result in the past, I think of it as a relatively slow process, and I can just wait a while and see what happens. Once the area is no longer a building site I quite enjoy adding new submissions from it but Im not in a rush.
I personally Wayfarer to find cool and interesting things to photograph and submit, quite often a lot of these interesting things are already submitted, so I settle for photographing and adding a photo to the waypoint.
The games help assist this quest of finding interesting things by being visible in the map from far away and literally guiding me via the map to find them. Its a terrible experience to trek to find an interesting waypoint only to go on a goose chase and realizing it doesn’t exist, never existed or is grossly misplaced.
Not only do I submit to add new POIs to the map, but I do a good deal of removal requests, too. Most of my removal requests are for Wayspots that do not meet criteria, such as being on PRP, obstructing emergency services, being an adult location, etc.
I will also request removal for POIs that no longer exist, as accuracy is important for the map; I have one that I recently submitted for something that no longer exist, but also got a new Wayspot approved nearby, so I don’t think it’ll be missed much.
It’s not just used by Niantic for game play locations, but by developers as well. The developers are expecting that the map be kept up-to-date as well, so that whatever they put out is of high quality and high accuracy. If Niantic isn’t providing a quality product to the developers, they may lose them, which I doubt they want to.
I think everyone wants more game play locations, but that’s not what Wayfarer is for. Wayfarer is for mapping out the real world, finding interesting POIs to add to the map, and make sure it’s up-to-date and accurate. Each game has its own density/inclusion rules, so even if you add more Wayspots to the map, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be added to any game based on the rules. I’ve had this happen several times with Wayspots I’ve added, not getting added to any game, but I know a developer may be able to use it, and I’m ok with that.
Oh my, i fully agree with you. Allowing for everyone to report stuff is a mistake - i fully understand that a…. Lets say light post isn’t correct, but if it got accepted, don’t remove it. A few more pixels doesn’t change the game. The most popular way i saw this used was for abusers to remove anything they want, no matter how correct is it. And IF you can’t get something removed, just edit osm and bam, remove.
That is just stupid.
You should be able to report something for not existing anymore, being fake, unaccesible, or being a duplicate, though. These make sence, but you should give great proof that it is not there, fake or unaccesible, with something like a geotagged photo, for example.
You can’t get anything to go through voting anyways. I feel if i nominated 50 churches, atleast 5 of them would be rejected for not being pernament or distinct. And that does not touch the rest of the rejection criteria.
There is a few people who sit almost 24/7 just to „remove abuse off the map” and i hate that. THAT SHOULD BE CALLED ABUSE. Not adding a photo to the internet before nominating it into a portal. (After appealing such ML rejected nominations i get told that this is abuse)
And that comes from a person that still overall has a great acceptation rate, i think above 60%, up to 75%. For my area, this is a crazy high noumber. I have been adding for a year, and my family since 2012.
This IS a thing that one of the local removers used to win if someone wants to appeal. He would edit school property to be bigger and remove stuff around schools this way. I am sure there are more examples of this.
There will always be two sides to this coin, those who wants to ensure qualified and existing wayspots versus those who want to ensure a greater gaming experience.
I am confident that the overall experiences will be better for everyone, if we ourselves guide and adhere the rules from Niantic and stop being selfish for gaming experiences (most often from the perspective of a specific game).
And one thing I take away from the conversation is one question to us all, how we can help people who feel bullied by their community for trying to fix wayspots?
In my case theres 1 particularly vocal person about it and lets just say there’s already a multitude of ways Niantic could take action on that person but they never have.
Makes sense that someone who would get argumentative and nasty about Wayfarer stuff also doesn’t stick to the rules
I personlaly will remove if there is a dublicate entery as these often cause confusion in local chat groups. otherwise i personaly will try and get as many as possable stops in the games as possable.
Also i feel that the POI should be able to be found at any point in the day. although this is a me thing i often just wont submit things that are located inside building that arnt open 24/7. (but that more a me thing and if they still fit within critera i will not remove them i just wont submit them)
I mean there no basis to remove them, even if you tried. But woah if stuff wasnt eligible, buiding or not because I don’t why the distinction matters, would make way so many of the most used waypoints like Zoos, theme parks, parks (yeah these arent open 24/7), museums, etc. ineligible.
Anyone can report wayspots using the form linked on the top here or using in-game (ingress) reports, there is no need to expose yourself if you feel unsafe. And no one can ever now for certain if someone is the reason for a wayspot removal, unless that persons tells so himself. Nevertheless Niantic is in charge of the removal, any report will always be judged by the team.
It is still obvious its me, since there are not many active wayfarers in the area and since removal is more involved than submission, it has to be someone with more knowledge of the process, ie it would be me.
Yes, but the type of removing that i see people do, is:
Someone angered you? remove everything you can in the area he plays at even if you never were there and dont know if something is in fact correct
or
You don’t like a specific type of wayspot as a wayspot? Report all of them across the country, even if many people would say to you that for example, notice boards are correct. (I myself think that they are not distinct, but that does not mean i remove a single one of them)
And both are stupid ways of removal, and the people never accually visited any of these places, just want to and i quote “clear the map from abuse”. Take it whatever way you want. Both of them remove 100’s of wayspots every month, or even week. i got official murals that were fully legit and not a vandalism, but an accual real mural founded by the city, all of them were removed in the same day. it was like 10 historical wayspots.
It is sad that i have to play with this, when even if i report a map for not being there for a year, that you can see on tons of pictures on a few mapping services, still was not removed. Yet, murals like this are removed without a care in the world. And there is way more exampkes of stuff removed like this.
And by this, i mean your way of looking at this is good, and removing even if you don’t know the backstory, but just looking at a map 24/7 trying to remove as much as possible, is bad.
THEY EVEN REMOVED A SHRINE ON A TRAIL.
