What is the difference between Wayfarer and Explorer

General Discussion
1

And does creating routes using POIs created by everyone make you an explorer or wayfarer or because I create POIs to create routes what am I?

2

Routes have nothing to do with Wayfarer.

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3

I guess I never thought about it. @NianticTintino seems to call us all Explorers. Maybe inside Niantic they see the Wayfarer Team as Wayfarers, and the rest of us as something else.

What is Wayfarer? Where is Wayfarer? Why? How?

These are all existential questions. Perhaps we may never truly know…

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4

Wayfarer help calls us Explorers, regardless if we just nominate, submit edits, or review. So an Explorer is a Wayfarer user; Explorer is the official term, whereas Wayfarer is the unofficial term used by most users.

As a Wayfarer Explorer, you can nominate new Wayspots in your community, review others’ nominations, and contribute information or edits to existing Wayspots to help the Niantic map evolve in tandem with the real-world.

5

Yes they do

They are created and exist on POIS created by Wayfarers… They are removed due to POI moderations.

Users edit and or nominate POIS because of Routes

Route removals often related to issues with POI positions.

Issues with POIs and Routes are interchangeable.

Routes in the beginning were all created by Wayfarers/ Exploreres what ever we are

6

Routes are only used in Pokemon Go. That is the only place they exist.

7

I guess that makes sense.

Thanks. I saw a Niantic post that said it where Wayfarers and Explorers can

And I was like. Looks like there is a difference :slight_smile:

8

Existential questions

Hilarious

But I wonder then if Wayfarer is a product for which people support/work on

and Explorers are users who partake in Wayfarer

I am off to navel gaze now… Taa

9

That’s like saying ‘Pokestops’ are Wayfarer related, or ‘Portals’ are Wayfarer related.

Yes, a (selection) of Wayspots are used for these things, and the Wayfarer process is involved in curating them, but the Wayfarer team has no ownership or control over Routes any more than they do picking which raid boss will be next released. Routes is a PGO feature, from the PGO team, and is not Wayfarer related. The only link was that Wayfarer users were used as the beta test group, but that time has long passed.

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10

Interesting… :thinking: I always took Explorer to be the collective term for all Niantic game users, with Wayfarers specifically being those of us that actually participate in the Wayfarer program.
The grey area in this way of thinking is whether those who have no idea about Wayfarer but submit edits through their app of choice would be considered a Wayfarer, even if they’re completely unaware of it and have never laid eyes on the Wayfarer website :thinking::sweat_smile: