Nomination location deliberately moved to residential address - discuss

Review Support
1

Hey guys, so I’ve read a few posts on here and on reddit about how people approach nominations in which the wayspot would be eligible, if it were not deliberately moved to a residential address. All mentions of residential property in this post is in reference to Single family homes (SFRP). I give 3 similar scenarios:

  1. Wayspot nomination is of a photo of a piece of exercise equipment (fitness station) on the edge of a park , which is mere metres from a residential address. On google street view, the equipment is nowhere to be seen and neither photos submitted can accurately pinpoint which edge of the park the actual equipment is on.

On one hand, I’d like to give the nominee the benefit of the doubt and suggest that the equipment is really new and has only been installed since the google street car last visited. On the other, I feel like it should be the onus of the nominee to accurately prove the real location of the object (hence why I upload photospheres if they’re not visible or not yet recorded on google street view). I also can’t help sense that there might be malicious intent in generating a wayspot close to their address, especially when it seems as like they’ve intentionally ommited detail in their supporting pic or text etc (or they could just be sloppy/effortless). This case I feel is a little trickier and nuanced and the majority of the time I just reject based on “inaccurate location”. I seldom choose “I don’t know” for this for fear of generating a pokestop in the wrong/innapropriate location. I use “I don’t know” for shitty titles but I’m quite firm on my decisions for locations. After all, it’s harder to get a pokestop removed than to change it’s title.

  1. The nominated location is clearly visible on the map but the marker has been moved to up to a dozen metres away.

If the real spot is not hard to find, I move the marker using the “suggest new location” button and give them the benefit of the doubt. If the old marker appeared over a residential address, I start getting suspicious. Generally, these are tend to be more benign and I let them through after suggesting a new location. However, sometimes while reviewing, I find these old nominations that got accepted are placed where the original, erroneous marker was. In these cases i might report location edit with the help chat.

  1. The nominated wayspot is legit but it’s basically nowhere to be seen or difficult to find and the marker that was nominated is dab-smack in the middle of the street, in the centre of a residential area. And the nomination is usually something small, put permanent, like a Natukong shrine, here in Asia. I’d say it’s like one of those “free mini library” in that it can be close to or in the neighbourhood and is publicly accesible, but it’s small and hard to spot on street view, and also this is a religious structure. Almost always, the marker is placed on a residential property.

For these types of nominations, I hit inaccurate location and be done with it. I might scroll up and down the street on street view for a min but I tend not to waste too much time on a nomination that either doen’t put in enough effort, or channels that effort into potentially maligned goals. Which brings me to my next point:

Is a simple rejection enough? Does this kind of activity warrant reporting abuse? Wayfarer suggests reporting as fake if they are “wayspots/nominations that do not exist in the location or blatantly do not match our eligibility or acceptance criterias” but also, “An obviously fake nomination due to a combination of abusive behaviors such as doctored photos, copied photos, or screenshotted photos with generic or falsified titles and descriptions, based on your local knowledge of the community.”, which doesn’t neccesarily apply here.
Does this count as a fake nomination? Would it be a little over-zealous to call these that?

What do you guys think?
How would you treat the above scenairos?
Is what I’ve been doing up till now sensible, in your opinion?
What goes through your minds when you see nominations like these?
Would you consider reporting these?
What are the consequences of reporting & being reported for fake nominations?

2

Where I can be 99% certain that a location error is deliberate, I’m rejecting as abuse as well as incorrect location.

A recent example was a bench that was eligible, except it existed right next to an existing wayspot and the submitter had put the pin some distance down the road. That is abuse and it is deliberate.

I don’t call abuse if I can’t find something on streetview but it possibly exists [edited to correct poor phrasing].

1 Like
3

We’ve been promised a Wayfarer map. Because I really hate fake wayspots (and the voting rings that sometimes accept them), I’ve started to take a note of the more obvious fake submissions so I can look them up at a later date. I used to do that with the Ingress Intel Map and Lightship.

If it’s misplaced slightly then I’d probably just use the pin. Something we don’t know is how the back end processes those, we do know that Wayfarers can get on the abuse ladder for misplacing pins so perhaps if the bulk of the reviewers move the pin then it may trigger something.

I can think of only a few occasions where I’ve submitted a wayspot with the pin in the wrong place and in those cases it has been wildly wrong because I didn’t wait for PoGo to bring up the map and I submitted in the same place as an earlier submission.

1 Like
4

I completely agree. Another example is when players know that there is no visual confirmation of the location of an object, thus trying to fill as many cells in a given area as possible. In one of the cities in my country, there’s a large shopping mall with a large area. Inside, there are many different establishments, truly socially significant and simply ordinary businesses. In addition, there are various decorative elements that are used as photo zones and are also acceptable. However, there are no panoramic views inside the shopping centre, and the roof clearly makes it difficult to determine the location. Players take advantage of this and place nominations in such a way as to fill more cells, rather than the actual location. The only thing that helps in this matter is 2GIS – a navigation application that lists not only boutiques and establishments, but even decorations inside the building. It’s pretty obvious that most reviewers won’t bother with this and will likely accept the nomination, as there’s simply no doubt that the object is inside a building (but where exactly?).

5

Yea I find it frustrating when a low quality piece of roadside furniture gets accepted just because it’s readily visible from street view, while amazing/community-defining attractions are pulled either way just because the google street car can’t fit in a building or is not allowed into a gated-and-guarded community. That’s why if i find the street view to be sparce in that particular area, I’ll upload a photosphere onto Google Maps. Btw, the app I use is called “Go Street View” by Foxpoi. It allows you to take the 360 photo and publish it to google maps at the same time.

I just wished more people put in a little more effort into their nominations and that the rest of us (my community specifically) could raise our bleeping standards.