My trail marker submissions are being unjustly removed again

[GeneralSecura]

Let me take you back to just over a month ago, when I made this topic.

I wanted countless trail markers of five different varieties restored. @NianticAaron in this reply said that they restored the markers that are part of a named trail. Out of the five different kinds of trail markers I brought up in that topic, they restored two.
All of these:

And all of these:

Clearly this is an obvious sign that these two types of trail markers are considered “worthy” enough to be placed in the wayspot database. Why else would @NianticAaron restore them?

So I decided to go follow bits of the cycling trail Rondje Eindhoven at a time (as it’s a pretty long trail to follow in one go) and submit every as-of-yet unsubmitted marker sign I encountered. This resulted in FORTY-SEVEN submissions so far, and all of them were approved by the AI within a day of being submitted (except for one which the AI skipped over for some weird reason).

So consider me surprised when I’m in my local Pokemon Go Discord server and see this:

Countless of the new Rondje Eindhoven signs I submitted recently have been removed.

So, @NianticAaron, what’s up with that? Did you not restore dozens of these wayspots just over a month ago? Why are they being removed again? Did something make them ineligible between June 11th and today?

Clearly this is a massive screw-up and all of these wayspots need to be restored. @NianticAaron had dozens of these restored just over a month ago, so these new ones I submitted are just as eligible as those and would need to be restored as well.

And CLEARLY whoever is responsible for getting these new ones removed needs to be punished. Last I checked, getting eligible wayspots removed is downright abuse of the Wayfarer system.

So here’s a list of the wayspots that were removed and need to be restored. All of them share a city and a country, so I will only be listing those once.

City: Eindhoven
Country: The Netherlands

• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Eindhovenseweg
• Location (lat/lon): 51.485414,5.491447

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Amazonenlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.464841,5.501053

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Henegouwenlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.484239,5.485517

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Veldmaarschalk Montgomerylaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.460495,5.475873

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Dinantlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.483962,5.481674

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Hondsruglaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.484229,5.469538

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven & Fietsroutes 10/03/08 - Vauclusepad
• Location (lat/lon): 51.487069,5.442051

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven & Fietsroute 08 Castilielaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.490750,5.451280

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Nuenenseweg
• Location (lat/lon): 51.467374,5.504339

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Amienslaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.491981,5.448236

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Javalaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.452487,5.511593

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Johan de Wittlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.454460,5.509968

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Van Hogendorplaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.455885,5.508513

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Koudenhovenseweg Noord
• Location (lat/lon): 51.456670,5.506928

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Van Oldenbarneveltlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.457658,5.502307

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven & Fietsroute 97 - Sterrenlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.467779,5.504500

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Kosmoslaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.467947,5.506308

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Kosmoslaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.470565,5.504575

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Italielaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.483765,5.504833

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Bokt
• Location (lat/lon): 51.490629,5.495945

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Anconalaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.486344,5.495820

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Tempellaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.483965,5.477681

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Generaal Pattonlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.460625,5.476827

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven & VVN Verkeersexamenroute - Lehmbruckstraat
• Location (lat/lon): 51.460645,5.475496

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Blixemboschpad
• Location (lat/lon): 51.487469,5.467300

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven & Fietsroute 08 Castilielaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.491714,5.455981

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Castilielaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.490824,5.452126

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• Wayspot Title: Rondje Eindhoven - Sedanlaan
• Location (lat/lon): 51.492341,5.450609

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If any more of them are removed in the future, I will be back for them. But hopefully, Niantic will properly punish the people responsible for this atrocity so this doesn’t happen again.

[chappy7]

I will never understand why people would want to delete wayspots that are in safe locations. Even if it was kind of iffy (which these are not) it seems to help nobody to remove them unless they are causing issues. Someone removing trail wayspots seems mentally unwell lol.

[GeneralSecura]

Oh, I can think of some people for sure.

[NianticAaron]

These Wayspots have been reinstated.

[GeneralSecura]

Thank you, Aaron. I do have some lingering questions that I hope you will be able to answer.

1. Were all these wayspots removed because of player reports? If so, has/have this/these player(s) been punished for his/her/their actions?

2. If these wayspots were not removed because of player input but by Niantic itself, what can be done to prevent erroneous removals like this from happening again in the future?

[GeneralSecura]

No answers?

[androsa]

I could hazard two reasons to why a waypoint is removed.

One is that a player in the game is choosing to remove these stops - whether they’re doing it with malicious intent or just believe they’re doing the right thing removing “bad” waypoints, that’s not known.

The other is that it depends what is deciding on the removal. If it’s the AI removing them, then there’s not much that can be done except to appeal their removal. If it’s removed by community choice, it could just be human error - people think a hiking trail isn’t a valid waypoint and reject it on the basis of “not unique or identifying”. The latter can be chalked to a rookie mistake.

It is worth considering that most submissions are given to reviewers who are also local to the area, though “local” is a bit of a stretch - I’m about 400km away from some submissions I look through. I would say the AI is removing the stops, or someone unfamiliar to the area is rejecting them.

[JakeElwoodB]

Hi GeneralSecura, did you have any luck in restoring the wayspots from an older post you made with the sticker arrows on the lampposts from Wandelroute het Groene Woud? Some have been removed here some time ago, but I’m unsure if I should appeal via this forum. I’m hesitant to nominate them again because I don’t want to get banned.

[GeneralSecura]

No, they absolutely hate those sticker markers at Niantic. I resubmitted them a bunch of times and their AI and employees would quickly approve them, but then someone at Niantic removed them again.

[JakeElwoodB]

So annoying that they are approved and later (manually?) removed. It IS an official trailmarker. It should not matter if the trailmarker is on a wooden pole or the lamppost. But i guess appealing won’t stand much chance then.

Thnx for your reply and sorry for highjacking this thread. The other one was closed Hopefully you’ll get a reaction here soon!