Malicious Edits and How Could Niantic Approach It.
It seems to me of late, the more I review the more malicious edits I have seen over time. It is quite understandable that edits take a lot longer to get approved since it seems only local players see the edits in the area and as a result they take longer to get approved. I have been seeing of late edits of the same portal with clear deliberate edits in the description describing said portal to be on private property and then moving said portal in multiple directions on the map. A month later I see the same portal with another new edit which seems to be a reoccurring theme.
There needs to be a clear way to flag abuse in OPR regarding edits and there needs to be some consequence for players who engage in this. I am hoping with a edit rework in the future that this would be resolved. What things would you like to see in an edit rework?
Comments
Just let us report as abuse, goes for both edits and subs
I see edits from a much wider area than just my local one.
@LemoMcLemonFace How wide are you talking? I haven't seen an edit more than 200km or 300km for me. It's still far but nothing really further than that. Otherwise I would be getting edits from other major cities which are around 400km+ distance from my area.
I'm in the nw of England, I still see edits from the South Coast of England (I do have bonus area set down there, so possibly related), and I've seen edits in Scotland.
Still seems to be the local area by the sounds of it even though there seems to be quite a bit of distance. In comparison to normal candidates I see a wide variety of candidates across the US while edits seem to be still somewhere I can drive to within a few hours while the other US candidates would be 10+ hours at minimum and we get Hawaii and Alaska candidates too from reviewing in Texas.
Distance wise, I guess the UK is much smaller, I don't have any metrics really to compare it with.
Agreed, I'd like to be able to flag malicious edits, and existing descriptions and photos too. I've seen some sneaky malicious ones from pre opr where 'shopped photos or tweaked descriptions have somehow got passed Niantic staff.
Technically, if you find a malicious edit on OPR you may report it via the report cheating / abusive behavior channel: it worked when I did it. But there should be quicker way for doing it in my opinion, there are so many abuses on OPR.
There is a sort of ban for those who massively approve of wrong movements or fake things.
I'm not sure how these things are understood by the NIA, but it happened, maybe with the report cheating and abusive behavoir.
I would love to report the very obvious ones such as rural kansas, oklahoma and missouri had at least one agent near Jopin/miami editing all the post offices in town to wrong locations. These stuck out when I was voting on my way to Chicago last week as apparently we may have a home location but your voting area will move when you do to another geographic region.