Playgrounds as portals
Playgrounds has been popping up like pimples on a teenager around here. As a grown man I'm very uncomfortable when approaching these. Why aren't they rejected? Children's schools is off limits.. Very often they look like **** altso and I wouldn't take my own kid there
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They are explicitly allowed by Niantic.
I believe the reason is that they help out a lot in suburban and rural areas where there are often very few things that qualify to be wayspots.
Because according to Niantic, these should be accepted as a place to socialize with others. If you want Niantic to change their mind about that, it's best to take it to the Wayfarer forums, as Wayfarer is now responsible for accepting or rejecting new portals. The Ingress team is not responsible anymore.
If you're not comfortable approaching.......then don't. I would think the radius gives you enough distance to not feel like a weirdo (I understand being at a playground alone, as an adult male, is....weird, lol).
Regardless, if I take my niece to the playground, I'm glad there is a portal/Poke Stop there to take advantage of while she does her thing, lol. I'm sorry you being uncomfortable makes you think none of them should exist. Pretty big difference between school property and a playground...
FWIW, a while ago I looked at a ton of playgrounds on the map to figure out what typical interaction ranges were. I did it because I was curious about whether pin placement mattered for playgrounds.
The Ingress interaction range is 40M. Based on my sample, most playgrounds have a diameter of 10-15 meters. I worked really hard hunting around the San Francisco bay area and only found one or two playgrounds that were 40 meters across or larger. In other words, nearly 100% of playgrounds can be interacted with from a significant distance away.
My writeup of this is here: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/12994/study-where-should-you-place-the-pin-for-safe-access-to-a-playground-from-outside
Playgrounds are great for agents with kids, and sometimes people even get together for family fun and chats and barbecues and the like.
Ingress can help you find a lot of fun playgrounds for your kids, and playgrounds can find you a lot of fun Ingress.
Removing them would be a bad thing!
Of course, when on your own you try not to act like a ****, easy :)
The beauty of Pokémon Go is people should mostly just assume you’re a nerd playing Pokémon and ignore you.
I just focus on the game, keep my phone and head down and either keep moving or just sit on a bench.
No one has ever asked me what I’m doing there.
LOTS of people walk through playgrounds while looking at their phones. it is normal behavior.
I'm not talking about well established public playgrounds or parks. Around here it's normal with private housing cooperatives that has a simple swing or sandbox. Everything goes even if it's 12 inches of grass in it.
I understand the point of areas for socializing and that's difficult too sort them out under one rule.
As mentioned above I may should have mentioned it in wayfarer instead. But I feel like I'm swimming upstream :)
@Nextrond I think you're fighting a losing battle.
Making its games playable in suburban and rural areas has been a challenge for Niantic... in many of them there's really not much around that is interesting. Allowing playgrounds is a deliberate decision on Niantic's part, even ones that are just a swingset in an apartment complex. I completely understand why you find them problematic but I really don't think Niantic is going to change their position.
I don't like playground waypoints at places where parents leave their children in the care of others. Schools, day cares, churches, synagogues, etc. For example, parents leave their children with Sunday School teachers, who take them to the playground. And the church could have a M-F kindergarten. Random non-gaming people don't hang around on church grounds. Teachers are often trained to suspect unknown men could be a non-custodial parent. Or worse.
However, park playgrounds are fine. Parks are open to the public. It's normal to have people walking around them.