There is a “Christian High School” and an adjoining “Christian Elementary School” in my community, and I recently discovered (via Wayfarer Map) that these schools had over a dozen Wayspots on campus. Most of them are/were falsely labeled (in title or description) as belonging to an adjacent church (“Shadow Mountain Church”), which is affiliated with the schools, but these Wayspots are specifically in areas used for students during school hours and facilities used primarily for the school physical education classes and high school team sports.
I feel that these deceptive titles and descriptions indicate a pattern of abuse meant to get these Wayspots approved despite their ineligible locations at schools.
I reported all of them, and some reports have been accepted (six, as of this posting), but others were rejected (four, so far) and still others are not yet resolved.
(I did not report another eight Wayspots, which are located to the southwestern portion of the property, in areas primarily used as church space. This area can be recognized via satellite images as it has white pavement while the school campus areas mostly have black pavement, excepting a small white area across the front of the gym and swimming pool.)
The following is an example, one of the rejected ones, where the school use is clearly visible in the photo. (Message board with name and sports team name of the high school, and no mention of the church named in the Wayspot title and description.) However, as mentioned, there are several other Wayspots nearby that are part of this same pattern and should also be removed.
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When submitting a Wayspot Appeal, make sure to include as much of the following information as possible:
Wayspot Title: Announcement board at Shadow Mountain
Location (lat/lon): 32.800486,-116.902289
City: El Cajon, CA
Country: United States
others rejected so far :
In memory of Jason Kelly Lyon
Update: based on today’s refresh of the Wayfarer map. The six reported Wayspots which were resolved as “accepted” are now gone. The four listed above and four others not yet resolved are still showing in Wayfarer.
The four not listed above, are all located NORTH of the Ryan athletic Center latitude:
Historic Chapel Belltower (in same S17 cell, southwest of “Announcement Board”) and three clustered around “Announcement Board” and “In memory of…”
To be clear, the eight Wayspots south and west of Ryan are on the church portion of the property and should remain.
I just re-reported the four remaining Wayspots (of the original 14) on the school campuses. (These are the same four listed in the initial post in this thread. The other ten have been removed.)
While doing so, I noticed one new Wayspot has been added in the church area of the property (there are now nine there rather than eight). While it is in an eligible location, this may indicate that the person(s) responsible for the removed Wayspots are still actively submitting and may try to submit new Wayspots in the ineligible portions of the property.
Update: The re-reports have been resolved, with one (“In memory of Jason Kelly Lyon”) accepted and the rest rejected. Despite my specifically explaining that these are at a school. “Announcement board” is especially puzzling, as the photo contains the school’s name, sports team name, and sports logo, and no mention of the church that is named in the Wayspot text, and was literally surrounded by the now-11 Wayspots that have been accepted for removal…
Also, due to the entire lack of any responses whatsoever, by anyone (excepting one thumbs up emoji), I feel like this thread is not being read. If ANYONE is reading this… what does it take to get the seemingly simple “no Wayspots at schools” rule enforced?
I suspect no community members were responding because there was nothing that could be added. Wayspots on schools are absolutely ineligible, so even a single rejected removal report for something that would take 5 seconds to check on google maps would be concerning.
Niantic don’t always (often) respond, but they do read every thread. I’ve noticed they aren’t entirely comfortable with sticking their hand up and saying “whoops, we stuffed that one up”, which I do understand, however great it would be if they could.
I do exactly what you seem to be doing. Report and provide links that prove what I say. If one way of reporting isn’t working, I try another. There are so many different avenues available to us now, but it seems you are well aware of how to do reports. I hadn’t made any comments because I didn’t have anything to add.
Thanks for letting us know how this effort is progressing for you.
Well, as it stands, I just don’t know what else could be done. “Announcement board” seems clear just from looking at the Wayspot photo itself, even consulting Google feels like it would be unnecessary. And it was surrounded by nearly a dozen other Wayspots accepted for removal, yet it has been rejected for removal twice.
The other two remaining are a sports gym and a set of outdoor basketball courts. The front of the gym is visible on Google Street View, which the other two (the basketball courts and Announcement Board) are not, but these two again are within the cluster of Wayspots removed (one, representing a football field, was southeast of them). In Street View there are barriers separating this area from the church portion of the property, and some fuzzed out portions in pictures.
Google Maps does not have icons indicating the two schools at all (nor a third school that is affiliated at a different site. There is a fourth affiliated school that I have not checked).
EDIT: I checked and that fourth affiliated school is also unmarked on Google Maps. However, the two schools not on this site, have no Wayspots (properly) and therefore are not a concern.
It’s hard to comment from a distance because I don’t know if the wayfarer map is up-to-date. It would be easier to comment a day after the removal reports have been accepted.
What would help is a map showing what is school, what is church etc. Without that, “In memory of Jason Kelly Lyon” looks like it is attached to a church, for example.
I thought I addressed that point in the fourth paragraph of the initial post; the two areas have differently colored pavement visible on the satellite imagery.
They are a single property (as these are religious schools affiliated with the church) so a government property line map doesn’t separate them.
The ten removal reports that were accepted in the first pass, have already been removed from the Wayfarer map. They were largely clustered around the Announcement Board location, but also included the swimming pool and football field located south of the basketball courts.
On google streetview, this looks like a church. Google streetview has even gone inside the grounds, which never happens with schools, and I didn’t spot any signs saying this is a school.
I don’t have the time to pick out where the school grounds are, but I saw what looked like a church in the video on the home page, indicating this church is part of the school grounds.
It is a church affiliated school, so it’s admittedly a little fuzzy. The original submitter(s) took advantage of this, abusing Wayfarer by falsely labelling the Wayspots as belonging to the church. (Ten of the affected Wayspots have already been removed, so the pattern of abuse is less obvious now than it was.)
Street view actually does include one of the school parking lots (with student painted parking spaces). But two of the three remaining Wayspots aren’t visible on Street view at all, and the one that is is the exterior of the sports gym which has an interior shot shown on that link.
The section of the property used as church has white pavement (most of the school portion has black), and there are currently nine Wayspots over there (one newly approved since I started this thread) which I am not challenging.
There are four currently showing in Wayfarer which were the subject of my second round of reports, all four with coordinates given in my initial post. One of those four has been accepted for removal and will probably disappear in the next update. The other three are the ones that have been double rejected.
Update: After today’s Wayfarer refresh, these three are still on the map. I don’t have a current removal request on them simply because I don’t know what to say that isn’t already in this thread.
Announcement Board, Ryan, and Don Palmer - coordinates and full names are in the top post of this thread.
Update: I watched the campus tour video on the school’s website; all three remaining Wayspots (previously mentioned) are clearly visible in it. I submitted new (third) reports, each with a statement regarding the video and a link to it.
Just looked on Wayfarer map, it has refreshed and Announcement Board is now gone, which makes 12 of the original 14 stops reported for removal. The other two reports with link are still pending (Ryan and Don Palmer).
I’m at a loss. Apparently high school gyms are now allowed? I mean, if even linking a video that shows it’s part of the school, and was partially shot inside the building, isn’t evidence for removal, or even enough for more than a form letter response?
If so I need to know because I’ve had several others come up for review, have I been wrongly declining them?
