Hey, I have a group of portal that don’t really seem like a fair/proper setup.
I’m talking about 4 portals that are located around this one:
Specifically
Tablica Alojzy Tujakowski
Otto Freymuth
Popiersie Kopernika
Zygmunt Mocarski
They are 4 portals that as you see (according to the map) are scattered all around the library, and the photos are taken in such way to hide the fact that those portals are literally on top of each other because it’s a work/leisure portal of one of the players. In reality, these 4 portals look like this:
You can clearly see they are not 20-30 meters away from each other, like the player who placed them says.
How do I proceed? Do I report all of them? Do I report them as duplicates? Or do I submit incorrect location and literally place 4 portals on top of each other? That just seems dumb. I think all of them but 1 should be removed. What do i do?
P.S.: this is the closest forum I could find that fits my thread, so sry if it’s supposed to be General Discussions. Figured since it’s regarding Portal Nominations, I should post here.
P.S.S.: After contacting support they all been moved to correct locations and now they’re sitting on top of each other. Since they are different objects there’s no reason to remove them.
I agree that this is frustrating. One thing to keep in mind is that the geospatial map of wayspots has no distance rules. So in this case (without researching the specific wayspots), I’d recommend updating the locations to be accurate as I think they are all eligible.
This will cause several of them to no longer show up in Ingress based on its proximity rule. But keep them as available options in other Niantic games.
It may be tricky to prove the location of indoor wayspots, so I recommend going through the help chat.
Unfortunately the forum does not do location edits. In theory you could recommend these location edits through Ingress — but that leaves it up to a community vote to approve or deny. They may not be able to tell and deny the changes.
That leaves the Help Chat. You can share this photo on help chat with other supporting information. Some folks recommend gps tagged photos or doing a Splat to help prove location.
If you feel that these Wayspots were created to give an advantage to someone in-game, that would be considered abuse and can be reported here:
Your photo does show all 4 in the same area, but the Wayspots are quite a distance away from each other. The plaques seem to honor a different director of the library, and I’m assuming that’s what this area is called or something similar above the plaques. The bust looks to be a part of this, too, but maybe the 1st director. In all, I see 2 distinct Wayspots should come out of these 4, since the 3 plaques are part of one honor wall.
I would see if you can tell if any of the existing plaque Wayspots are at or near any of the current ones, and request that the ones at inaccurate locations be removed. You can also edit the Wayspot closest to these to represent all of the plaques on the wall, and possibly ask for the bust Wayspot to be moved to the correct location.
As for location edits, these can be less tricky if you request them via help chat on the Wayfarer website, by providing geotagged photos; photos can’t be provided for location edits submitted in-game. The reason it can be tricky at times is due to these all being indoors without any satellite/Street View. If you use Scaniverse, a splat link can also be helpful. Staff handles these location edits instead of ML and/or the review community.
I wouldn’t file an abuse form, unless you know they were added recently.
They could have been added in 2014 when phone GPS wasn’t very good, and rules for nominating were laxer. This would not have been considered abuse until maybe 2020.
I have submitted abuse reports for Wayspots that clearly do not meet criteria via the form or help chat, and I am not that concerned about who may have submitted the Wayspot originally; some may no longer be Wayfinding or even playing any Niantic game still, others may be newer and whoever submitted did so based on current Wayspots out there, thinking their nomination meets criteria when they don’t.
I just got a Wayspot at a funeral home removed via help chat, which doesn’t meet criteria, and that’s all that I cared about: getting an ineligible sensitive location removed as a Wayspot.
The last time I tried to get something removed through chat, @NianticAaron told me that is not the correct procedure for removal. Are they doing removals again now? This was back in 2023:
It’s only for Wayspots that clearly do not meet criteria. Like I said, I just got a funeral home removed, which is a sensitive location, and doesn’t meet criteria.
There is an option to report abuse for fake nominations and/or criteria issues, both in help chat and the form. I haven’t been told not to keep doing this by staff, especially with Wayspot that may not even be in the games.
Back to this situation, as it does seem that it’s possible that the Wayspots were created abusively to give an advantage to a player or group of players. The plaques and bust are in the same location at the library, so the OP may need to ask staff to assist instead of asking ML/community to help with edits. Manipulation of the game board is against the TofS, and this does seem like it could be manipulation.
