As many of us know, Niantic has decided that trying to update a POI through editing the information is now considered abuse, and many users are being flagged for well intentioned edits.
Sometimes it is a piece of art that is replaced, or a business that closes and reopens as something new, and oftentimes these new things are still eligible in their own right.
Niantic wants us to instead report the old POI for deletion and resubmit the new one, to clear old data and to try and curb abuse where a person nominates an old, eligible thing into a new, ineligible thing, but I believe this decision was also made without consideration for the chaos this can cause in-game.
The Impact of the Current Decision:
I can only speak for pokemon go, but for example, when a stop is removed, as Cyndiepooh has pointed out, showcases are affected, as well as routes and many other aspects of gameplay.
By the time the new POI is approved and reinstated, the local players have lost a key part of their game, and the reintroduction of the new stop does not fix that. Likewise, if a gym is removed, a new gym may be promoted, but it will not be the same one- a location is chosen seemingly at random to become a gym. This often causes the new gym to be less accessible, and if players were working on progress, such as a gold medal, this data is lost forever. *This passage has been edited since I posted. Scroll to the bottom to see what changed.
It is this shuffling that players try to avoid when editing a POI, and it cannot be considered a nonissue as it affects us directly. If similar issues occur in other niantic games I’d love to hear it.
My Solution:
Each game should have its own option to replace a POI in addition to its other reporting and editing options when tapping on it. In Pokemon Go, for instance, the screen looks like this, and a Replace Pokestop button could easily fit here, or under the Report Issue flow.
The way this would work is simple. A replacement would be treated more like a nomination than a single edit. The player would have to write down the new information as if they were nominating a fresh POI, and it would be subject to the same eligibility and reviewing requirements as any other, including reporting the change as abusive if players believe it was done to manipulate the game.
Voters and Niantic’s team would be able to see and compare the old POI with the new one, similar to the single edits we can already vote on.
This would ensure that people couldn’t simply edit an eligible POI into something ineligible by leaving out details. All the information would be in one place.
What would happen next? If it is approved all previous information would be replaced wholesale at Niantic’s discretion, including such things as scans, which would likely be deleted, and the new information would occupy the same spot. In-game records like your badge progress, its status as a Raid Gym, routes, and showcases would ideally remain in place.
If it is ineligible and rejected, the old POI would persist as is, unless of course someone feels like seperately reporting it for no longer existing with the usual option for doing so.
What I am suggesting would accomplish exactly what Niantic is trying to do now- make sure POI are completely up to date, but without reshuffling and affecting gameplay for its users.
We all want an accurate, up to date map full of interesting things to interact with and explore, but not at the expense of our gameplay, and certainly not at the expense of our records for just trying to help.
Thank you for reading!
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- Edited. I had previously stated that gyms can be demoted if a neighboring stop is removed. I have received multiple replies to the contrary, as well as more information, and have updated and credited input appropriately.
