Since Niantic has once again not accepted a reported Wayspot as a fake, here is a short research on this fake Wayspot with the request to remove it and all duplicates and to block the account that deliberately submitted all these Wayspots for Wayfarer.
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Wayspot Title: Urlaub und Freizeit Eichholz und Franzhorn
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Fake Location 1: Ingress Intel Map
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Fake Location 2: Ingress Intel Map
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Fake Location 3: Ingress Intel Map
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City: Gnarrenburg
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Country: Germany
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Screenshot of the Rejection Email:
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Additional Information:
The map shows the GPS track of the circular hiking trail âEichholz und Franzhornâ, 3 red markers with a star, which mark the positions of the 3 fake wayspots and a green marker with a hiker, which marks the original wayspot, which - as you can see - is also located at the starting point of the hiking trail.
There are 4 Wayspots named âUrlaub und Freizeit Eichholz und Franzhornâ, 3 of these wayspots (the fake wayspots) all use the exact same photo, on the photo you can also see the location of the original wayspot on the map. The photo of the 3 fake wayspots is
The original wayspot uses a different photo with the same content and since the location is the starting point of the hiking trail, it can be assumed as the original:
Please Niantic, do your job and remove the three fake wayspots listed above, this must be enough evidence to make clear that these wayspots donât belong into the game. And please offer a way in your games to flag a wayspot as fake. None of the offered reasons matches fake submissions.
The only real (original) wayspot can be found at Ingress Intel Map
Please remember that Niantic staff are people, and understand that they must have an abundance of evidence before accepting a removal report. Faction wars are a thing.
That one isnât linking to a map like this for me. Maybe it has been removed already?
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Indeed, Fake Location 1 has been removed already, but the other two same fake wayspots are still present
Hi,
I understand your frustration but yes as said above itâs a pretty expected outcome for the absolute majority of in-game removal reports (though one of yours seems to have been acted on).
For the future, the best way to report a fake is to use the abuse form linked at the top of this forum with all of your evidence and a clear explanation. This gets very close to the feature you are asking for.
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I do remember that, but it is very hard to present evidence if you canât even flag a wayspot as a fake ingame. And to be honest, to a recent report for which I even produced a GPS map camera shot that clearly showed that the wayspot doesnât exist I only got the template answer
We took another look at the Wayspot in question and decided that it does not meet our criteria for removal at this time
here in the forum.
So forgive me if I am a bit of a sceptic. Being able to upload photos that you can take when you flag a wayspot ingame would be very helpful too.
And detecting identical photos in different submissions could be done automatically without any human interference. Itâs nothing else than the automatic check for flagged words.
But you have not presented evidence that identical maps are not placed at other points. That is a very common practice here. Sometimes I can point to a âYou are hereâ indicator on a map to show that the location is different, but I canât read your map to know if it has that.
Here is the example I am thinking of. There are many, many of these maps along the trail, and they all are valid Wayspots.
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Sorry, besides the fact that one of the fake locations that used the exact same photo has been removed already (my fault, I used a bot to retrieve the wayspot data) which can be validated by a simple binary comparison of the uploaded images, all 3 identical images and the image of the real wayspot show a âyou are hereâ on the map, that points to the Google Map location of the wayspot that I described as the original (real) wayspot.
Since the resolution of the uploaded photos in wayfarer isnât that good, you can still see the red hiking trail on the photo which matches the GPX of the hiking trail website that I mapped into a Google Map and in the red circle you can see the âyou are hereâ marker, even in the bad resolution I can make up the German word âStandortâ which is âLocationâ / âYou are hereâ and it is at the south end of the hiking trail which is somewhere in the north of Gnarrenburg town. Thatâs why I made the effort to download the GPX of the hiking trail from the hiking trail website.
On the website there is even a higher resolution image that shows the exact same sign. The website can be found here: Nordpfade Eichholz und Franzhorn
Since the two remaining fake wayspots are not located anywhere near the hiking trail, I think that this is more than enough evidence that these wayspots are fake. Even if there was no âyou are hereâ marker in the map, why should a hiking trail map be located far away from the trail?
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Thank you for highlighting that! This should make it much easier for the team.
Youâre welcome. I am really not interested in being a PITA for anyone. It was just really frustrating that I didnât see the wayspot (ref as Fake Location 2) when I was in situ, I then wanted to flag it ingame which only gave me inaccurate reasons, thatâs why I flagged it as âpermanently removedâ and when I got the rejection email, I used a wayspot bot to locate the wayspot and found 4 wayspots with the same name in the town of Gnarrenburg, 3 with an identical photo. For me as a German it was easy to see that the photo shows the map of a well known hiking trail and that these signs are only located at the hiking trail, not 1km away and not 2 km away. So the only and correct assumption is that the wayspot (that uses a unique photo) that is located at the hiking trail is the real wayspot and the others (all with an identical photo) are fake ones.
Additionally I have to say that I very often reviewed submissions from the town of Gnarrenburg in wayfarer which were obviously planted as fake submissions. I am sure that the time can access the author of these actual fake submissions and hope that this user be removed from the wayfarer community. You couldnât know nothing of that of course. I often made comments in wayfarer when I reviewed obvious fake submissions that these submissions in the town of Gnarrenburg are systematically planned as fake wayspots, but of course company policy prevents you from giving any feedback to reviewers, so in all these cases the suspicions, which are probably justified only added frustration on my side. I know that the team is going a great job, but itâs not that I didnât invest any time and effort to raise justified suspicions.
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Great, thanks for the info, I will see if this workflow is better suited for these situation.
2 Likes
Thanks for the appeal, @Gammelfleisch. After reviewing the additional evidence provided, weâve decided to retire the Wayspots in question.
