When submitting a Wayspot Appeal, make sure to include as much of the following information as possible:
Wayspot Title: 전남대학교 용봉탑
Location (lat/lon): 35.175261, 126.906127
City: Gwangju
Country: South Korea
Additional Information (if any):
Recently, a gym has disappeared. This wayspot is a symbol of the university and has a long history since 1976. It’s located in the center of the university, and it disappeared one day. It’s an act that I can’t understand, and I wonder if it’s been reviewed properly. This has been around for years since the game’s service, and there’s no justification for it to be deleted. There is a sidewalk nearby that is accessible to people, and the car must drive below 20 km/h because it’s located inside the university campus. It’s not a major downtown road, so there’s less traffic, and there’s a sidewalk right under the tower for people to access. You can see it by looking at the webpage I’ve linked. There were many routes in the game starting from this wayspot, and it was one of the core symbols of the region. It must be restored and designated as a gym as before. Please refer to the local map and press articles I’ve linked.
It appears that the location in question is in the middle of a roundabout with no marked crossing point to the centre of the roundabout. By the Wayfarer guidelines, this would mean it lacked safe pedestrian access, as you need to be able to walk up to and touch the object in question.
네이버 지도 look at the street view. it can be access.
There are already two crosswalks. And the width of the road is so narrow that I don’t think there’s a problem with the street even if you just stand on the sidewalk. You don’t think it should be accessible enough to touch that road, do you? You can cross the road if you want. It’s such a small road, and there’s little traffic, so the university didn’t install it.
I have looked on Naver at the roundabout, there are crossing points on the outside of the roundabout, but none that are to the centre where the object is located. There’s also no footpath on the centre of the roundabout.
Niantic have been fairly clear that objects in the centre of roundabouts should be rejected for unsafe pedestrian access unless there is a visible crossing point to the centre of the roundabout. They even removed a load of wayspots from the middle of roundabouts a few years back for this very reason.
It’s not on an inaccessible highway or motorway, it’s just what it looks like in the picture… I think this is too strict. I’d like to hear the official opinion of Niantic.
Now that NianticLC has replied, I wanted to provide some extra clarification here.
Wayspots need to be accessible at the Wayspot in question. This means there needs to be safe pedestrian access right up to the object so you are within a touchable distance from it. In cases of suspended art, where the wayspot is located above you then simply being underneath the point of interest is sufficient.
As this is at ground level, the burden of pedestrian access falls to being able to get to the point of interest safely. As @hankwolfman said:
You can see from the satellite view that there is no pedestrian crosswalk that leads from the sidewalk to the center of the roundabout. This makes it ineligible. The size or traffic level of the road is irrelevant when it comes to determining safe pedestrian access.
This is something that Niantic has been stringent, and consistent with so I’m not surprised they’ve come to the conclusion they have on this.
I hope that this information is helpful and that you have a better understanding of why this was removed and subsequently not restored. It sucks when Wayspots are removed, but maintaining a clean map is very important to Wayfaring.
Thank you! But why didn’t you give me a notice if you were going to delete it? One of the gyms was moved far away because of you guys. If I had known in advance, my community would have liked or uploaded pictures somewhere else nearby, right? All the routes related to this now are not available, and have you ever thought about this??
Although under the Niantic umbrella Wayfarer is separate from Pokemnon Go.
Wayfarer deals with the base data - the wayspots - that Pokemon Go along with other games uses.
The daily sync between the Wayfarer database and Pokémon Go keeps the game up to date. It is up to the game how that information translates into ingame content,
This is great when new points are added. As creator of a wayspot we are told it has been approved for addition to the database for potential use.
However once in the Wayfarer database we cease to have any link to it. So we are not informed if it is edited in terms of location, text, picture or if it is removed.
Unfortunately removal from the game does have impacts on things like routes or gym location if the removal of the wayspot triggers a recalculation.
The hard fact is that nothing can be done. You need to come to terms with the new situation. Routes are easy to remake, gyms may be impossible.
To keep feeling frustrated is not good, so I would advise accept and move on.
I know you can’t do anything. I’m not trying to blame the community. I just want it to be communicated to the Niantic developers. If they really cared about the users, I think it was possible to notify the users in various ways in the game before it disappeared. It’s amazing that this issue has been raised steadily for over seven years since the game opened, but nothing has been done. For example, a very simple mark on a disappearing wayspot is enough, but I don’t think it’s a technical problem. Thank you
The trouble with that is that Pokémon Go synchronises with the database once per day. So if a Pokéstop or Gym was marked for removal, the sync that added that mark would be the sync that also removed it from the game. Prior to the sync happening, the game doesn’t know that a particular Pokéstop or Gym will be removed. It’s only when it syncs with the database and the database tells the game “this Wayspot no longer exists” that the game knows it should be removed from the map.
Additionally, Niantic don’t want people to try to influence gym creation in Pokémon Go. They view it as abuse. If there was some advance warning, it would likely lead to more of this behaviour, which Niantic doesn’t want.
Also, there are millions of users for the different Niantic games that use these way spots, and probably millions of way spots. I can’t imagine how they could possibly reach out to a small group of individuals who use any given wayspot every time there is a change in the database.
The issue is there is currently no mechanism to pre-warn Pokémon GO that a Wayspot is being removed. As far as we can determine, a Wayspot is removed from the Geospatial map and the next time that Pokémon GO performs a sync between that map and their gameboard the Pokéstop/Gym is removed.
Niantic has been very consistent in removing things that they determine to meet the threshold for removal. They do so swiftly and without delay, so their gameboards are as clean as possible.
I doubt they would have much interest in a system that delayed the removal of a Wayspot as they would have to start differentiating between Wayspots that are being removed because they are unsafe and ones that are being removed for other reasons. Frankly, I don’t think they care either way if I’m being honest, if it’s going it’s going.
Either way, this isn’t a Wayfarer problem this is a Pokémon GO problem and you should address your concerns to that team specifically. The Wayfarer team, and the inhabitants of this forum, can only answer or help with Wayfarer-specific issues.
