Imported Wayspots Guide

Wayfarer Basics
1

Hello knowledgeable forum peoples,

I recently updated a list I made a while ago on the Discord that includes all of the different sources of imported Wayspots. I decided to post it here to share some of this information with other people, and hopefully see if anyone has any information to add or corrections to make. Please feel free to comment if you have anything to add!

Ingress-Era Imports

These imported locations were added in the early years of Ingress, circa 2012-2013. These are fully considered Wayspots, and can become Pokestops and Gyms via normal rules. These incorrectly show as “Community contributed” on the Wayfarer Map. All of these can be edited. Previously, any imported locations that had no photos wouldn’t be added as Pokestops until a photo was added. However, this was changed so that all of these can become Pokestops regardless of if they have a photo.

Fire stations, post offices, libraries, and museums

  • Source unknown (Possibly older USGS GNIS data?)
  • No photos or descriptions
  • USA-only
  • Many are severely misplaced
  • Many fire stations have since been removed after criteria changes

Panoramio

  • Sourced from Panoramio, an online photo-sharing service within Google from 2005-2016
  • Most are local landmarks
  • All had photos originally, but these were removed around the time Panoramio was discontinued
  • No descriptions and occasionally no titles
  • Lots of duplicates

Historical Marker Database (HMdb)

  • Sourced from HMdb.org
  • Historical markers
  • Photos, titles, and descriptions were imported from the website
  • Descriptions were the exact text on the sign (sometimes very long) and were imported with HTML markup included
  • Photos in Ingress are (usually) attributed to HMdb.org
  • The photo used for the Wayspot was always the second photo from the website entry, and is often zoomed-out or irrelevant
  • Sometimes misplaced

Pokemon GO-Era Imports

These imported locations were added after Pokemon GO’s launch and are mostly only used in Pokemon GO. CotW, Overture, and Foursquare (?) imports are present in the Ingress/Niantic Spatial map database, but are unused in Ingress. These show as “Other” Wayspots (imports) on the Wayfarer Map. These can become Pokestops and Gyms by normal rules, with the exception of Overture imports. All of these can be edited.

Foursquare

  • Sourced from Foursquare
  • Mainly businesses
  • Only imported in specific countries, including India, Turkey, Mexico, Poland, Brazil, Thailand, & Philippines
  • No photos or descriptions
  • Earlier batches were added to Ingress as well (some were later removed)

Courts of the World

  • Sourced from Courts of the World
  • Basketball courts
  • Added with the intention of boosting NBA All World (later discontinued)
  • Included photos and descriptions if included in the original website listing
  • Most of their names do not include “basketball court,” causing confusion
  • Sometimes do not appear on the Wayfarer Map for unknown reasons, but do appear on the Pokemon GO map

Overture

  • Sourced from Overture Maps
  • Mainly businesses
  • No photo or description
  • Initially added to supplement the Wayfarer database for Power Spots in Pokemon GO
  • Cannot become Pokestops or Gyms, except for in certain countries including India and Indonesia
  • Prior to this import, Niantic filtered the database to remove ineligible locations such as schools. However, many ineligible locations slipped through, including a large number of locations in private residential property

Street Corners and Bus Stops

  • Source unknown, street corners are possibly auto-generated
  • No photo or description
  • Only added in certain cities in France, Italy, Spain, and the United States (possible additional areas to be added in the future)
  • Majority are on private residential property
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Bookmarked! ty

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Thank you :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

Let’s see if anyone wants to add but it might be worth putting it The Wayfarer Basics area.

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Feel free to crosspost as necessary, I don’t know how the forums work

5

Don’t know if you want to add it since Wayfarer data base doesn’t feed it anymore, but for courts of the world imports, they are in the Ingress database but never were accepted as portals but they were there if you reviewed and would get marked as a duplicate. Could be a side note or something.

I never found a way to surface them, unsure if anyone else did or not.

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We are seeing issues come up where courts of the world sites aren’t showing up on the Wayfarer map currently. That is a great point!

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Good point. I think that’s also the case for Overture and (some?) Foursquare imports

8

Thank you for this great history lesson. I’ve wanted a general Wayfarer timeline for quite a while but I’m not sure how or where to build it. We need a Wiki like structure, I think.

Should this include the Street Corners initiative or do we consider that something completely different?

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This document has a history of OPR/Wayfarer from 2016-2021 Wayfarer Criteria - Google Sheets

I have the street corners already, at the end of the list