Intro: Several portals were removed although they are valid portals. We are going to submit the information on several portals as a group effort. More supporting photos with geotagging are on their way. We’ve also used the other reporting channels. We are posting this on the forum because around 10 portals have been falsely removed.
Mod edit: Removed irrelevant accusations.
List of portals concerned (to be updated):
Hvitträskin verkkokuvio
Juusjärven kalliomaalaus
Kivenlahden rantamaisema
Little Lovebox
Maio graffiti
Pink Skull
Pallokenttä
Portal name: Kivenlahden rantamaisema Location: 60,15581° P, 24,63387° I
Problem: The portal was removed although the valid wayspot is still there.
A Finnish language article on how artwork was used for decorating the construction sites of the new underground line:
In Finland, we have this tradition of decorating electric boxes with artwork:
I’ll try to find articles on the specific electric boxes whose wayspots were removed. All in all, artwork on electric boxes is widely accepted in Finland.
Thanks for the appeal, @Retiisi We have taken another look but stand by our decision to retire these Wayspots.
It would really help us to understand the situation if you could give us a reason for the removals. Were the wayspots removed because of a general policy change? Or why were they removed?
I believe there is a problem if the Finnish Wayfarer community votes “this is a great wayspot” and you find it invalid.
We understand the policy has been that wayspots added following the rules of when they were added will not be removed if a later change in the rules would make a new submission of a similar wayspot invalid. Are we wrong in this understanding of policy?
Terve, I tried to look into what you have provided here.
What you correctly tried to do is to show that these examples don’t fall under this clarification to be ineligible:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/t/unique-art/12459/2
And not fulfill other removal criteria.
The electric boxes website you shared is difficult to navigate especially as someone who doesn’t know Finnish. I would recommend to spoon-feed every single entry that had its Wayspot removed but is documented on that map to ensure the staff has seen that information.
Is Kivenlahden rantamaisema painted onto the wall of a construction site? If yes, this would be considered temporary and possibly unsafe to access so it should actually not have ever been accepted in the first place if this assessment about the location is correct.
Small disclaimer, I did not look at the other examples you shared here.
Apologies, I did not notice that I was actually not responding to the OP. @Retiisi this advice was more directed at you
Hi Kawin,
This was meant to be a group effort because several portals were removed at once. We have been talking about the removals for several weeks. Appealing dozen or more portals once seems like a daunting task, so it’s taking a bit longer.
We don’t know why the portals were removed but based on the response from wayfarer team, they might have been removed as ”vandalism”.
Anyway, I don’t think we should need to prove that the electric boxes with art on them are still great nominations. That has already been done when they were originally submitted. The artwork in question is quite old, so support information (newspaper articles etc.) might no longer be available.
The wayspots in question are not on that map, as it is another electricity company. It was to demonstrate art on electric boxes is common in Finland and widely accepted as wayspots.
We might find the time and energy to spoon feed staff if we know what to spoon feed them. But spoon feeding staff every reason we can and can’t think of really should not be what we should have to do. And I see it possible some or all of the wayspots have been removed of valid reasons. We just don’t know.
This should be a dialog. Now it’s mostly shooting at targets we can’t see.
