Please define "Spam" and reconsider what should be counted as that for the challenge

General Discussion
21

Looking for some further clarification. So, I know some people may not check their emails and/or Contribution Management pages to make sure that their edits/photos have been received, and may accidentally submit the same edits/titles again. I know this happened to me during the challenge, as some of my edits/photos weren’t appearing in Contribution Management, so I resubmitted. One photo that I submitted twice was accepted by ML, and the 2nd submission went into Niantic voting and wasn’t approved before I could withdraw it.

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So, would an accidental edit/photo submission be considered spam/abuse, simply because someone isn’t paying attending to their emails or Contribution Management, or accidentally submitted more than once?

I know my case is only 2 of the same photos, but I just want some clarification if someone accidentally submits more than 2 of the same title/description/location edits, and more than 4 of the same photos by accident?

22

Until now I had thought: by Niantic having such vastly different crops in different games, they WANT pictures with different crops. IOW: If they wanted one picture to serve all the games, they would have made all games crop pictures the same way.

As it is, 16:9 looks best in Ingress, with the focus perhaps a little above center because the game writes stuff across the bottom. PokemonGo looks best with a square picture, focus centered. That’s VERY DIFFERENT.

5 Likes
23

@NianticThibs could you please give some clarification about town names in the title? There were few cases where the Team warned users for submitting wayspots named like “city name - Church of St. Paul” or trying to edit existing ones by adding the town name before it. This is an old ingress thing, but some people are still trying to do it today for various reasons.

Is this allowed or is it considered spam/abuse?

Thanks

24

I had one portal edited twice. I found this out later, it was by mistake when using the COMN to find more edits. I haven’t received a warning from this one.

25

The reason why we decided more than 2 was to prevent the situations where explorers unwillingly or out of forgetfulness submit the same edits. Essentially to allow users to make one mistake per wayspot (for the given timeframe).

7 Likes
26

You are fundamentally missing the point of the issue.

Basically, current editing can only be done on a smart phone.
Yes, it can only be done on a smartphone, which is fatally inferior to a PC when it comes to text input.
If you type locally, you will face many problems.

There are people who think they are not transmitting due to poor reception and retransmit.
There are those who resubmit because of minor but fatal particle errors.
I don’t think you and Emily are fully aware of such mistakes.
And if you judge them as SPAM and penalize Wayfinder, fewer and fewer people will be willing to contribute to Wayfarer.

Then, like the current nominations, if we allow people to edit later if they hold, there will be far fewer such mistakes.
Alternatively, your database will improve its quality faster if you remove the distance limit for editing and allow editing in a manner similar to Wikipedia.

Let’s not think of ways to keep people away who are willing to contribute.

27

Here’s the thing: if there isn’t good reception, edits/photos will get uploaded once there is good reception, or if you go to Uploads and manually push them through. I had this happen a couple of times during the challenge, and I just had to click on the Upload button in Settings to see there were some waiting, and push them through. And no, I wasn’t in an area with bad reception, but sometimes service can act weird for me.

I do agree that we should be allowed to edit edits in Contribution Management, especially if we find an error in spelling or grammar, instead of having to withdraw them. Alas, as it took quite a long time for edits/photos to just be added to Contribution Management, this may be a feature that takes time as well.

1 Like
28

This is the very thing that happened me and I asked about some time back. I updated a local stop withe it’s name, a proper description and all went fine, but, when I uploaded the photo I hadn’t realised my reception had dropped out and my phone was showing full 4g reception so I taught it was just my phone being slow and pressed the submit button again, still same result. Done this about 5 times and it eventually went through. Didn’t realise until I looked at contributions page that each press had actually gone through without notification to me. I didn’t get a warning but it could happen in the future as has happened to a lot of people.

For this reason I have stopped all edits and won’t be doing anymore until Niantic seperate game accounts from wayfarer when doling out punishment. I have no issue with clear cut abuse, like uploading an inappropriate photo deliberately(as in pornographic or otherwise) not someone accidentally tapping on the wrong photo in their camera roll(it happens,I’ve seen several family photos while reviewing that were submitted by mistake), or a deliberately abusive description or title once it is actually inappropriate and not the ridiculous filter classing of abuse which we have all ran into when naming something genuinely.

Even location can be completely wrong for a simple reason, someone goes and takes some nice photos of a wayspot then plan to submit, they go home and then do it while having a mug of coffee, 1st mistake they make most commonly is, they forget to move the pointer to the actual location they were at and inadvertently submit the location (normally their house) that they are at when submitting, I’ve done this myself but luckily realised it in time to remove and resubmit it.

Simple things like this happen and to threaten someones game account, that they could have spent a lot of money and time (sometimes years) building, while at the same time getting free work from those very players that helps build new mapping software for Niantic is pretty rich.

There will always be abusers in any game but they are generally a small minority, the people I’ve meet in here like @cyndiepooh and others are genuinely trying to improve the whole environment across the games for everyone and don’t deserve to be treated like that.

Anyhow, that’s all I have to say on things. My opinion, separate game and wayfarer accounts when it comes to doling out punishments. Punishments should be applied to wayfarer accounts only and only when there has been a clear discussion and proper appeals process. If it is a simple mistake then remind and move on, little more serious (like multiple breaches over the course of a few submissions ( over a period time and if already warned, then maybe removal of privileges for a short space (1-2 days)if it is deliberately inappropriate or abusive the longer term or permanent removal of privileges for wayfarer, But if it is because of confusing or misleading information from Niantic then obviously, no punishment,

4 Likes
29

The problems involved in an edit are not so simple that they can be solved by punishing identical duplicates.
Yes, it could have been solved a long time ago.
Pokemon gyms were often won by wayspots with more photos and more Likes, so abusers and their communities sent out dozens of identical photo nominations along with alternative accounts in their groups and then just flat out pushed Likes once they were approved.
It was more than 3 years ago that I discovered several such instances and filed charges in the Wayfarer forum for particularly egregious ones.

But now it is too late.
Abuse has already moved on to the next phase.

If Wayfarer Team could accurately determine the presence or absence of malicious intent, then we wouldn’t have had the incident 2 years ago where you turned a deaf ear to the advice of several Good Wayfinders and were tricked by a spoofer into deleting a portal.

30

Agreed

People should never be banned from playing a game because they tried to engage with Wayfarer. So many players do not know that what they are doing would be considered abuse - because these facilities are in game and do not require any engagement with the wider wayfarer community to start using them

2 Likes
31

Okay I am changing my mind. I used to whole-heartedly support that abuse in Wayfarer should extend to bans in all games, because the reason for committing abuse in Wayfarer is for advantage in the games. But after seeing how arbitrarily these suspensions can be activated, I am beginning to agree with this viewpoint. If Niantic doesn’t like the data I am submitting, then stop me from submitting it, don’t block me from playing the games. Rather like certain Pokemon Go players can no longer do scan tasks because Niantic did not like the data they were submitting, but have not been blocked from the game completely.

4 Likes
32

I agree with your point. If someone is abusing the submission of Wayspots, they should be banned from submitting nominations on all games linked to that account. However, inadvertant abuse shouldn’t result in a ban if the person didn’t know that they were abusing the system.

3 Likes
33

Yeah agreed, just prevent players from continuing to submit abusive or low quality data but dont wipe out 8 or more YEARS of time and investment and enjoyment.

People are banned for things that common sense (no wayfarer knowledge) would say isn’t bad! They may not know the in depth rules. And they lose their game account for that!

3 Likes
34

Yes, that is fully my point. What happened to you should never have happened, simple, that goes without saying.

Actual abuse as in, pornographic photos, racist or derogatory titles or descriptions (with the caveat of translation often fails on some so this would need to be carefully implemented). I have no issue with a wider ban on something like this.

Location as I explained earlier is something people can get caught out on so, if it was a continuous pattern of doing it, then a suspension on wayfarer account only, would be fine but i’d give a bit of leeway because I nearly got caught out myself doing a submission at home, only I realised my mistake in time and managed to pull and resubmit…that was with experience so for new player submitting I can understand it.

But game accounts should not be affected by arbitrary decisions that a lot of the time are not explained properly and even if explained are a lot of the time so vague that even experienced wayfarers can fall foul.

1 Like
35

Not to mention, employees have indicated that referring to wanting a PokéStop in your Supporting text is abuse.

Always remember to be intentional with what you want to flag as abuse and not pointing it at everything you disagree with.

4 Likes
36

I don’t play ingress but I know that location edits can be tactical for advantage to block other players, this could be looked at more in depth and if there is a proven history then I can understand suspensions for the players involved as it gives unfair advantage in that game.

Pogo on the other hand, A pokestop or gym does not give an advantage, everyone can use the same gym/stop so it doesn’t negatively affect any player and doesn’t stop them enjoying the game. Once it is not blatant abuse as I described above or submitting a completely fake submission then a wayfarer suspension or ban would suffice.

Obviously this is just my opinion, but this is a big bugbear of mine.

37

I’ll be honest with you, unless something is blatant I tend to look for a reason to reject other than reporting abuse for the simple reason of people make mistakes and in wayfarer it is so easy to that even with experience you walk a gone line at times.

I have had racist and disgusting submissions that have somehow snuck into voting, these I have reported as abuse.

Locations, if close to where it should be I:LL correct when reviewing, if far of I’ll make as inaccurate and reject.

1 Like
39

Well, then they should fix the text in PoGo when nominating. So many new Wayfarers from PoGo have supporting info such as “I believe this would make a good stop because…”

Oh, wait, it takes forever for changes to be made…I forgot about that…

4 Likes
40

History shows that if a Wayfarer account was banned, the game account was not affected, so the abuse became more severe between 2018 and 2023.
Abusers created a community of people with alternative accounts and built a pile of rubble by maliciously false nominations and arbitrary displacement for S2 cells everywhere in the world.

For this reason, I support the banning of game accounts per se.

However, the root of the problem is that the Wayfarer team’s knowledge has deteriorated to the point where they are unable to determine whether or not there is malicious intent in the nominations and edits.

In other words, what needs to be done most is to educate the Wayfarer team staff.

3 Likes
41

Where I agree with you in one way I disagree also.

If proper investigation of the account shows a history of bad voting, bad submissions then by all means ban the wayfarer account. If it is deliberate fake submissions or any of the type I mentioned above the I have no issue with the account being banned, once it has been properly investigated and there is a history of that type of behaviour.

The thing with it is, a community approved submission still happens as most of us have probably seen in various places( I personally have seen betting offices, off-licences, masaage parlours etc) this so it didn’t stop the problem back then and what it has done is opened up genuine submitters to get flagged for genuine submissions.

I agree with you on the Wayfarer side and this is the main reason I wish they would seperate them. Genuine top notch wayfarers are basically risking their accounts for doing the right thing then having the goal posts moved after the fact or having vague on badly explained descriptions of what is/isn’t ok and falling foul of it.

I know a lot of players that just won’t do it anymore because their accounts are 6+ years old, they’ve spent a lot on them and just don’t want to take the risk even with a history of good submissions and reviewing. Most of them are well above 1500+ agreements with various levels of submissions depending where they are located. They might have the odd one rejected for various reasons like most do from time to time but because of the way it’s gone now they have stopped completely because it’s gotten so complicated and because warnings seem to be getting more frequent and a lot of the time they are blindsided.