a friend of mine [name removed] has a wayfarer ban of 30 days. The reason is unclear.
Niantic gives a generic meaningless answer as the reason namely: Hello Explorer,
We have thoroughly investigated your account and have concluded that your account has violated the Wayfarer criteria. This includes, but is not limited to:
Trying to influence reviewers to vote a certain way
Bullying and/or harassing others through contributions (nominations, edits, etc.)
Sharing personally identifiable information
Patterns of incorrect ratings and/or participation in voting rounds
We have a strict policy against policy violations to keep Wayfarer fair. Your suspension will end in 30 days.
We would like to remind you to review the Wayspot Criteria (Wayfarer — Niantic Technical Support and Help Center).
She has not harassed or tried to influence anyone. I wouldn’t know how to do that with wayfarer reviews either. Indeed, the nominations may not all be the same, but niantic refuses to give explanations and just says: sit out your punishment.
Do they want everyone to stop requesting stops and help judge stops?
It looks pretty much like it!
Mod Edit: the name of the wayfinder has been removed for their privacy.
Thats a list of possible violations, not a full list of what theyre being accused of. There should be a seperate email with at least 1 waflyspot example ofbthe violation.
As noted previously, this is just a general list of what may cause a ban to be enforced. Wayfarer does provide a link in the email to appeal the ban, and your friend is more than welcome to do so. They may or may not receive more info, depending on what may have caused the ban, as Niantic is not required to provide more info, which is something we agree to in the terms of service (see sections 3 and 6).
If your friend no longer has the email, there is a link to appeal on the Wayferer Abuse Enforcement Policy page, which can be found here:
It is really hard relaying messages from a friend. It seems from your original post that she has already appealed the suspension and the appeal was denied. Niantic sends multiple emails, and one of them would have had an example Wayspot mentioned, so maybe she just didn’t show you that one.
You are right! she found the reason: the first email was "Following an internal investigation performed by our team, we have confirmed that your recent behavior has violated one or more of our policies.
You have violated the following policies: Bad quality submissions. For more details, look for previous emails sent by noreply@nianticlabs.com."
“Bad quality” or “Low-quality” can mean a lot of things. It could be something like submitting a temporary object, or an ineligible location, or a location pinned far away from where it actually exists. They don’t normally go straight to a 30 day ban, although they can, so they must have thought this was pretty bad, or was a pattern. And I believe from the word “submissions” that it could have been an edit or a nomination. If she shares the example with you and you want to share it with us, we could try to figure out what happened. Niantic staff does not discuss ban issues here in the public forum.
Yes, it could be either nominations or edits. As far as edits, we recently were given some additional info about spam edits, which may or not apply to your friend:
Also, the Rejection Criteria section may provide some more info about what may be the issue at hand, as it lists examples of what can be considered low quality, like using 3rd party photos or copying and pasting descriptions from another source. Even submitting a title/description edit that only adds 1 character, like a period, may be seen as low quality.
the other mail form niantic said about the same: “You have violated the following policies: Bad quality submissions, Misplacement of wayspot submissions. For more details, look for previous emails sent by noreply@nianticlabs.com.” without explaining what she did wrong.
She cannot in her account, but one wayspot is near a school. But is that e reason for a punishment? There is a powerspot on the same place!
Near a school or within a school? A powerspot being there doesnt excuse submitting at ineligible locations, if it is there it should be reported for removal.
Ugh Powerspots. Niantic imported a database to supplement the approved Wayspots that don’t show in Pokemon Go for this feature. We told them from the beginning that people would think these were acceptable Wayspots, but they aren’t necessarily.
We have clarification on Power Spots, and that they may not always follow Wayspot criteria, especially the imports:
Many of the Power Spots in my area are at generic chain businesses, like banks, fast food places, grocery stores, apartment buildings, etc. They don’t meet Wayspot critera, and should not be used as examples for submitting new Wayspots. I rejected a nearby apartment building that someone submitted, most likely due to a few apartment buildings having Power Spots from time to time, but it doesn’t meet Wayspot criteria.
Did she pin any nominations away from the object so that they would be in an empty L17 S2 cell and show up in Pokemon Go? I know some people have misunderstood the explanation of how the cells work as license to pin away from the point of interest. But that is abuse.