Hello again! I recently wrote about a problem in our city of Burgas, Bulgaria - stop signs disappear for no reason. Our community decided to make new ones instead of reporting every missing one, because there are a lot of them, and for me in particular it is easier and it is part of the game. Unfortunately, the new approved ones also disappear and I don’t understand why. I love this game, I have been playing since the very beginning, we became friends with most of the players, we meet every week, I have become a habit of walking 8-10 km a day - this is healthy. But lately it has been causing me more worries and nerves, because apparently there is someone who wants to give us up from the game. These are fake reports and has anyone been punished for this?
Giving coordinates is the hardest part for me, so in the area of these coordinates you can see 5-6 missing stops, even those in full cells that were not in the game have disappeared.
42.499912, 27.465525
The names of the missing stops are: Zoo салон за красота , Социална Творческа лаборатория, Арт ателие, Фурна Кейти
Please help us deal with this problem, if something depends on us - we will do it, give us advice. It is becoming increasingly difficult to play,routes are disappearing and we can never raise the rank of a routes. I have some ideas that I sincerely hope will be considered:
A player without nominations should not have the right to report
2 There should be a limit per month or year for reports
Newly accepted stops should not be able to be reported for 1 year, because the world is changing, but not so fast
Acceptance for consideration of a report should only be with a photo or video
Stops should only be reported on site
Please help stop this indiscriminate disappearance!Thanks!
There’s a reasonable chance that some wayspots are being reported for removal because they definitely don’t meet criteria. The picture of the shop front for the animal beauty salon could fall under this.
This almost certainly should not have been accepted, going just by the information presented here. Just because something is accepted does not mean it should have been accepted.
Relaxing the removal reports so that, for example, a wayspot would be immune for a year, would clearly be unreasonable if that wayspot was blatantly needing removal such as being on a school or in the middle of the road. There would be no cut-off where immunity would be reasonable for one wayspot but not another.
Your suggestions would almost entirely prevent the legitimate reporting of stops that were accepted in violation of the criteria, or have become improper due to real world changes. For that reason I hope they will not be put in practice.
For instance, I have reported 15 stops for removal this week, all of which were on school property - which is automatically considered ineligible. 14 (all on the property of two adjoining schools) should never have been accepted in the first place, but also, I don’t have access to those two schools in order to report on site or provide pictures on site, other than the two or three that were reachable from the street. Your proposals to require on site reporting with photo evidence would have prevented my reporting most of these.
The 15th one was at a different school and was legitimately accepted years ago, as a picture of the sign at the entrance of and representing the park that was there before the school existed, but that sign and the entire park have since been replaced by an elementary school.
I’m not saying that is a factor in your situation, not at all. But the suggestions you made, while they sound good in your situation, could be disastrous in others.
Players cannot remove wayspots, they can only report them to Niantic.
These reports are all checked by real people at Niantic, not by a bot. Niantic will not remove a wayspot just because a player reports it, but will check it against the removal criteria.
Removing wayspot is not as easy as you think. Most of wayspot removed usually shouldnt get approved in the first place. It might be falsely approved by community who prefer any wayspot or its falsely auto approved by AI.
Its possible to appeal incorrectly removed wayspot though. I suggest you to pick other nomination other than that two that you think got better chance. Animal salon and bakery is not something that normally should be approved. You can argue but at best its grey area.
If game locations have been removed, Niantic will have had a reason to remove them. Resubmitting the same location could be considered spamming ineligible nominations, and could lead to sanctions against your account. So pursuing reinstatement in this channel is the better way to address the removals. Here is a comment from staff saying this on another post:
Wayfinders who submit inappropriate abuse reports may also receive a warning or punishment for repeat offenses.
I have not seen anyone say here that they were punished for submitting fake abuse reports, but I feel certain that it would happen if the reports were proved to be fake.
Staff will address posts in this category, but they don’t usually give much information as to why the removals happened. I hope you get some resolution.
A player who wants to make a new stop waits for a rainy and cold day so that there are no people and it is easier to take pictures, takes an umbrella and goes around the city. He finds an interesting place to stop - takes pictures, writes, searches Google for more information and submits an application. Then he waits a few days for it to be approved for voting. Then he waits 8-10 days for the vote. If there is approval, he waits another 2-3 days for the new stop to appear. The reporter lies on the couch, sees the new stop and decides that it is not interesting enough. He clicks on the stop and presses report. Hours later, the stop has disappeared. The nominator has to go into the forum and complain that his work disappeared for a moment, there everyone finds a small detail to explain to him that the nomination is not correct. He waits a few more days for the official result, which is more often than not a disapproval. But that’s how it is in life - it’s hard to create, it’s easy to destroy. Then the nominator calms down - Well, another cold and rainy day will come! He can’t regret the nomination because he’s afraid of a ban, but he loves the game and wants to play it.
I have an idea how to stop this - delete the report button from Wayfarer, Campfire and from the game. Let everything be transparent - when there is something to report here - publicly, and that way we will understand the reason. Now we are in complete ignorance - neither who reports, nor why. So these reporters do not even need to enter the game, why is this a convenience. And yes, they must be on site. The game is called Pokemon Go - you have to walk. I’ll give you an example - a stop is watermarked, from home you directly report it for deletion, but if you are on site you can simply change the photo. Isn’t that more correct? Or he sees on the map a stop sign in the middle of an intersection - yes, but underneath it there is an underpass with shops, arcades, restaurants, etc. - pedestrian and safe, a place for meetings.
The game needs to change, because it doesn’t respect the work of real players, those who live with the game and give emotions and money for it. I’m an example - I used to give money for every event, for all kinds of accessories. Now I get angry at every missing stop and decided to give only for fest and for research for a new shiny, nothing else. Who doesn’t care if there are stops or not - those who don’t play or spoof. No stops = no research, no showcases, no routes, no raids. Is this the goal of the game? But the saddest thing is that instead of being encouraged for wanting to create something, we get punished. And incognito reporters always win, hopefully they sleep better. This cannot continue like this, changes are needed!
PS I played a French game for 3 years - they invited me to work with them, they were impressed by my perseverance, I played an American game, they invited me to promote the next one, and I’ve been playing this game for 10 years and as a reward I get attention and fear of being banned. Is this correct?
You have no fear of ban if you done nothing wrong. If you got incorrectly suspended /warned, you can appeal it. People complaining in social media never tell whole story.
I don’t intend to write constantly and about everything, it’s a waste of time, I didn’t even understand the reason. I’ve been playing for 10 years and I’ve never even thought about doing anything wrong!
That sounds like a long winded way of saying “I nominated something that should not have been accepted but it was, it was then reported and removed. Now I am not happy”.
People should not be put off from reporting a wayspot that should not be on the map. It is not the reporter that removes the spot anyway as all removals are investigated by Niantic staff.
Recommendations is to add another photo then use help chat to get the old one removed. Staff are reluctant to remove a photo if there is not another to replace it.
If the nomination is in the underpass then there should be no problem. Otherwise it is correctly rejected / removed under Safety. IMO: The vertical rule does not work here, nobody is being encouraged to climb the side of a skyscraper to get to the mural where as they will be encouraged to interact with 1 in the middle of an intersection.
Many players have great success with Wayfarer when they stick to the criteria.
What money you spend in Pokemon Go as nothing to do with Wayfarer, there is no “Pay to Win” here.
Again, only punished if you don’t stick to criteria.
I for one disagree.
And this is relevant because?
So you should know the rules by now.
I have no fear of being banned, unless you are constantly breaking the ToS you shouldn’t have either.
I understand that it can be frustrating to lose wayspots in your area, especially if you have submitted them yourself, but I personally think it’s a little bit of an overreaction to give up playing the game just because a couple of questionable wayspots got removed.
If I was in your position, I would be going out there trying to learn from what’s happened, and searching out new things to replace what was removed.
How can I learn when I don’t understand why it was removed and why my appeal is not accepted? I don’t even know what was reviewed and what wasn’t.
Social creation laboratory- meditation, yoga, Buddhism- what’s wrong with it being closed for more than a week
Art studio- artists, gatherings, drawing, selling - it’s clearly not attractive
About animals - I have no comment, for me they are more important than people
