What can be done against an Ingress player who intentionally destroys Pokémon Go POIs in my city and surrounding areas? He keeps deleting perfectly good POIs (I don’t know how he can do this and since the creator doesn’t receive any notification of the reason for the deletion) and when this doesn’t work, he requests a location change to move the POI so that it no longer appears in Pokémon Go but only in Ingress. He even adds fake photos to some POIs and votes for them to become the main photos of these POIs hoping that this will make them easier to delete.
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If you think there is abuse going on there’s a form right at the top of this page.
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Just regarding the below
Any player can report a Wayspot, and it is then reviewed by Niantic to see if it should stay on the maps, or be removed. What kind of things got removed, as Niantic don’t remove “willy-nilly”, they will investigate and make a decision.
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Hi @Naercynn , welcome to the community!
There are a few aspects here.
Generally speaking if you believe there is abuse in your area, you can use the form linked at the top of the forum (update: @PkmnTrainerJ was faster 
) explaining the issue in detail. Note that all of your statements will require evidence, for example the support staff might ask for proof in the form of geotagged photos.
Note that if an incorrect location has been corrected and it has resulted in the POI disappearing from Pokémon GO, that is a valid move, and if a POI that has been removed in real life or that was completely ineligible is gone, that is also a valid removal, no matter how disappointing. However if a wayspot that otherwise meets criteria has been removed, you can appeal on this forum in Wayspot Appeals. Here too proof will generally be requested, usually in the form of recent geotagged photos showing that the object still exists.
Photos that do not match the object or are otherwise abusive can be removed through the Wayfarer help chat.
If you’d like to share examples of moves or removals that happened or of photos that have been abusively added to show what you mean, we can try to advise further.
Generally speaking it’s difficult and unlikely to get whatever incorrect change you want done to benefit a single game. Unless a specific user has shown you every single one of their edits and removal requests, you also can’t assume they are all done for the sole purpose of spiting Pokémon GO players, so I would refrain from assigning blame.
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thank you for the article for abuse reporting but I don’t think it’ll work: the location edits are perfectly valids: he do not ask the portals to be placed where they should not be, just enough meters to move them in a cell where there already is another portal in pokemon go.
for the good poi: a building with a listed façade, a trail/cycle path marker (he seems to have a grudge against them because he has them removed everywhere he goes)
It sounds like with the location edits, reviewers decided that the location someone else suggested was more accurate.
As mentioned, we do try to avoid any mudslinging between games here, and you can’t know for sure it is one player doing this.
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I’m not one to assign blame without proof but we are many who have had problems with this player, he even got banned of every messaging groups because of his behaviour. And every disappearing portals happen some days after he was active in ingress where the portals were.
the location were indeed more accurate because in pokemon go we have to sometime place a portal some meters away from their real position because of the cells, so he just have to suggest the exact location for the portal to be deleted in pokemon go but still be in ingress
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Please note that this is considered abuse by Wayfarer. Wayspots should be placed accurately, not misplaced to fit in a certain cell.
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Not to pile on but this is exactly the kind of thing we should not do in Pokémon GO to avoid exactly the kind of disappointment you describe. I’m sorry some of your wayspots went missing from Pokémon GO but this is exactly the kind of risk every wayspot misplaced for cell purposes takes.
I feel like we keep having this discussion over and over on here, but the only way to avoid abuse, disappointments by specific games when locations are corrected or wayspot removal is to have the map match reality. Which is exactly the aim of Wayfarer. It’s not a database just for Pokémon GO.
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technically it’s not abuse as long as it is some meters: it’s not as if we place the portals fifty meters away from its real location. If a large portal, for example a church, is on several cells we place it on the cell that is free; this player will ask a location edit for it to be placed on a non empty cell: that is abuse
No, this is the definition of abuse: placing a Wayspot where it isn’t actually.
I say over and over to find things that are actually IN an empty cell if you want them to show up in Pokemon Go, don’t just put them there.
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Don’t believe what you hear on a certain podcast. Misplacing Wayspots is still abuse, even if just a few metres, especially if to manipulate game boards.
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For a church the pin should be at the main entrance, the same for other several examples. Locate stuff in free cells instead of the accurate place can be considered abuse, please avoid doing it.
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Wait a minute.
OP is describing as an example a church that occupies part of several S17 cells.
The criteria say that one can choose a spot that represents the whole, like a sign or recognizable feature or an entrance, and goes on to say that multiple points of interest may be found within the same grounds or structure or area.
Yesterday someone near Atlantic City was scolded for complaining that their three nominations were mashed into one Wayspot.
Now, everyone is crying ‘abuse’ and claiming that there is precisely one allowable point-placement on an entire church?
This is not reviewing to criteria, it’s making stuff up out of whole cloth.
If these two cases are normal there is little or no motivation for anybody to nominate anything. They’ll just have it snatched away or brigaded for alleged abuse.
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No, we are addressing the statement that
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The disparity between map and satellite, and your phones GPS-based line-of-position, and the spot from which you snap your successful primary photo innately allow for a few meters of room.
The circle of uncertainty is a few meters in size.
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No one said that. The OP said that the Wayspots were placed away from the actual objects in order to put them in empty L17 S2 cells. That is what we are calling abuse.
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Allow me to introduce you to ‘no one’.