There ought to be a feature that allows you to upload videos as a part of your support info

I was doing a quick round of reviews tonight when I came across this particular nomination:

It may not seem like anything ground-breaking at first, just your usual park rest area submission, but when I looked at the support info, I realized this guy had uploaded a video and had linked it there.

I watched the whole thing, and it made life so much easier for me when it came to verifying exactly where the POI was since he started by a building that I could more easily see from Maps, and walked all the way from that building to the spot where his nomination actually is, adding more details through narration about the nomination as he walked.


It was an amazing idea, since for this spot and many others like it the area itself has tree cover obstructing satellite view, and it was far enough from a road with streetview available that sufficiently verifying the location would have been tough for me without the video.

It’s got me thinking now: imagine if there was an option while making a Wayfarer nomination to directly upload a video of your nomination and the surrounding area after you record one on your phone, without needing to go through a 3rd-party platform like YT. That would make piecing together the actual location of POIs which don’t have great Google Maps coverage so much easier, and would make reviewing such nominations much more clear-cut, especially if the area doesn’t generate a ton of search results when you look it up.

Hi @Meargler
Thanks for sharing this interesting thought :hugs:
On the one hand that would be incredible helpful (like in your example).
On the other hand, you have no chance to prove the incoming content before a reviewer see it. So IMO that abusing this by influencing reviewers (voice, direct asking for voting, take a Teddybear with you, clothes …) is more than possible.

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While this is an interesting idea, I do have a mobile plan with a data cap, so uploading a video might not work for me and others as well. Photos don’t take up as much data as videos, and videos might be required to be under a certain size to get uploaded quickly. Resizing a video to a smaller size makes the quality go down, so it may not be as clear as a good supporting photo.

I also agree that this could be abused. One thing I worry about would be if there are other people that can be identified in the video. Another is someone editing the video trying to place a POI where it isn’t, basically trying to create a fake Wayspot.

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Do you mean a Scan, which you can do in both games where you submit from? :thinking:

I think it has been suggested previously.

It could be something like that.

People used to Photosphere places they were putting Wayspots. Many in this group were militant believers in it. But Google stopped supporting the Photosphere app to add them. Many are still on the map - outdated and maybe doing more harm than good.

Niantic already has its own scanning for existing wayspots. BUT not every phone type can do a scan. I’m sure that it will be an option while submitting, whenever they can get the coding for it done. (Maybe required once phone technology catches up.) They want more scans, to make the Lightship database more marketable.

Niantic LOVES their VPS system, which stitches scans together to make 3-D images. The wayspots, plus their scans, are available to app developers. Here are some examples Partners – Niantic Lightship and Bringing the Cannes Lions Festival into the Real-World Metaverse – Niantic Labs

Also, Ingress has a feature that uses the 3D images - if the portal has enough scans (10-100). A small number of portals do, and a small number of agents care. If every portal started with one scan from the nomination process, it would be one less needed.

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perfect for rick rolls…

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I did the video thing on an appeal once.

No narration though. Just the sounds of my out of shape body breathing heavy while walking. Kind of creepy actually.

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I appreciate that. I actually do not like videos with overlay, and I detest obnoxious music over them. Worst is the TikTok AI voice. Thank you for just letting what you were taking a video of be, like, 100% of the content :slight_smile:

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If someone used the video method to try and directly influence reviewers to vote one way or another, that would just bring up the rejection criteria and a report for abuse. Apply the same nomination rules to the video that you would any nomination you review already.

The amount of work put on Niantic just to sort through videos reported for abuse would be so absurd.

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You can upload video to some 3rd party service (youtube, google disk) and add link to this video in additional info.

That’s exactly what was described in the OP.

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