Need Supporting Evidence for Wayspot Edits

Please provide an official method with which we can provide a supporting statement and photo along with edits!

A recent AMA said players should not be using description edits to provide a statement along with their location edits. I would agree that this method is a horrible-cumbersome way to do things with a risk of resulting in bad descriptions. However, the number of players trying to do it is because location edits, as they are currently set up, are extremely random and difficult to accomplish. The idea that location edits should be done without bias, based on the satellite is pretty crazy given how often the reason they're needed is due to poor satellite and streetview clarity. Even adding a photosphere doesn't necessarily help, and many people struggle to do so with the current bugs in Google Streetview app.

Supporting evidence would also help with title/description edits. I've seen too many correction edits fail when reviewers can't tell which is the accurate title of a sculpture. Or they won't approve an updated name for a church when the name has changed, and OPS has recently been rejecting my adding photos with the correct names.

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Comments

  • I was the one who originally asked for that hopefully with more also asking it will happen. If things like location have changed for POI's in the real world and streetview isnt up todate then it could leave the POIin a bad or even dangerous location

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    Niantic has already stated that they don't want statements that try to influence the reviewers and instead want reviewers to pick the most accurate location. So there will be no supporting statements for location edits.

  • What about a supporting photo though? There are some horribly mis-located portals at the convention center near my work but trying to locate them from satellite view is impossible.

  • Haha So kinda like star wars?

    use the force.

    It's crazy that there happy for portals to be in wrong, possible even in dangerous places because statements or added support photos may influence a reviewer. Even though 9 out of 10 times you can see what people are upto.

    But support getting a added portal is fine because that doesn't influence anyone does it???

  • ElfFromSpaceElfFromSpace ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    No, they stated they don't want players using fake description edits to make those statements to influence reviewers. And I think everyone, even the people who have been using this method (and who currently may have many pending edits using this method since long before Niantic posted their AMA on the topic this month) would all agree that using the description edits in this way is not even remotely ideal.


    But tell me.... How in the word is anyone ever going to know that this wayspot (A small educational sign along a hiking trail) in in the wrong place? How are we remotely supposed to chose the correct spot based only on satellite?? It's impossible! So if we're trusting players to submit wayspots in areas with tree cover, why can't we trust them to fix those wayspots when they're wrong? Some of these I've seen are dangerously placed, and the ability to submit remotely from home after a hike does not help guarantee that all agents are getting them right.


  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    You can make a photosphere at the correct location. I always use Streetview where available.

  • give good evidence of why a new things needs to be in to sway the vote. dont give a thing about why a legit change needs to happen and what the change needs to be so change never happens because what it was to begin wiht is what it should always be and where it always was, even if it was half a mile off. good policy. and if they ever release edits to the PoGo crowd (heard a rumor its in the game file) then the edit system could be even worse with LEGIT edits that need supporting to pass somehow!

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

  • Unfortunately making photospheres is not as easy as people seem to claim. Google Streetview App has NUMEROUS reports of being horribly broken for many users. Every attempt I've made to get a usable photosphere with the app has failed and I have not found another, suitable, app. Photosphere cameras cost $200 easy which I am not willing to invest. I have been trying to find a solution to this problem, but until I do, I could show you dozens of attempts at photospheres that I took as carefully as possible that simply failed completely. Read the user reviews on the app store. Regardless, even with photospheres, it can be difficult to determine, and I've seen photospheres that were uploaded properly but ended up incorrectly placed, so I don't believe this is a reasonable solution to the problem, or a reasonable thing to ask of people trying to improve the portal network.

  • Unfortunately making photospheres is not as easy as people seem to claim. Google Streetview App has NUMEROUS reports of being horribly broken for many users.

    Amen. It is badly broken for me, as well. Currently, most of my photospheres are rejected for no apparently reason whether I use a 360º camera or my phone. To make matters worse, Google has been removing older photospheres with no clear rhyme or reason.

    Much of what I've submitted recently depends on photospheres (11 of my last 20 things aren't visible on street view and not obviously visible on satellite). I've gotten lucky so far, but I don't know how long that will hold.

  • I've never had a problem with street view and a Samsung camera second hand can cost as little as £30. So it's not really breaking the bank.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    Someone just writing their explanation won't help in situations where it's just a map either if it's not verifiable. It's not really going to fix the problem.

    If you have an Android phone just revert to the previous version of Street View and it will work again.

  • ZaltysZaltys ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019


    What about when there are already photospheres, but their locations are inaccurate. Because the POI is deep in the woods and there's GPS drift whenever anyone tries to submit a photosphere from there.

    What then?

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    You can manually fix your own photosphere locations.

  • ZaltysZaltys ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    Certainly, but I am talking about photospheres submitted by the original nominator. And with multiple incorrectly placed photospheres overlapping the area, there's no way even know which one the reviewers are actually seeing when they get the edit.

  • I've tried 5 different versions of older streetview after being told by others to do that. Unfortunately I have not yet found one that works well. And even if there IS a version that works well.... Is it truly reasonable to expect the average player to figure that out and or invest additional $ just to do free work for Niantic improving the portal network?

    How is letting the people who are actually THERE and can see the location give an explanation for the move NOT better? The truly bad moves tend to be obvious. When someone says "Hey please move this 15 feet over to make a gym and then we will move it back" LOL, they're putting the nails in their own coffin. If they're moving something that is visible off the correct location, reviewers can tell! But why NOT let people give an explanation for the moves? The majority of the moves are small, harmless, adjustments anyway. So many Ingress players are so paranoid about moves, so judgy about small moves that slightly tweak the location for better overall placement, when those moves are harmless. I believe the point of having people review the moves is to prevent someone moving their opponent's anchor just to break links, or moving their local park to their couch. And having supporting statements will not really stop people from seeing that the proposed new location is directly on someone's private residence.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    Not all people are stupid and are going to spell out their ulterior motive. If you play Ingress, you know moving a strategic portal even a little can break anchors and that's just as malicious. Small adjustments are entirely unnecessary and clog up the queue. If it's on the object, it's in the correct place. If a move edit isn't provable, just like submissions, it shouldn't be moved. Are we just supposed to take people's word? How is that better than using the tools we already figured out how to use to verify submissions? I understand the frustration but I don't think a comment box in edits are going to solve the problem either.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    As far as the photosphere thing, when it stopped working I just googled and found the fix immediately so not sure what exactly is broken for you guys. I don't love making photospheres but if that's what we have that's what we have. Again, don't think a text box is going to work better than Streetview.

  • I personally think it needs both. But if someone wants to do an edit that bad 360 is the best way of proving something. I do one for nearly every nomination so I know when reviewers are not following guidelines.

    I've also done on most of my edits and they work a treat. Google's own streetview app has been very reliable. no 360 camera need just takes a few minutes to do. I only bought a Samsung 360 camera because it made it faster to do literally 60 seconds from taking the picture editing me out and uploading straight to streetview.

    Second hand I have seen the newest camera for £40. Is it worth it 100%. If I you want to do nominations properly and effectively then that's the best method.

  • 99% of the editions were fake moves to create pokestops or editions to move portals that were misplaced to create pokestops! Some of them were editions to moves the object 1m when the rules says clearly it can be a few feet away! So I am sorry about the legit editions but I am glad people got warnings when doing the descriptions to “help” . We need to ban those accounts from wayfarer , the ones submitting fake portals and fake editions to game the system and I am happy Niantic did that ! If someone really care about accuracy, ask for removal and then submit the portal in the right place.

  • Ban ban ban! PoGo is SATAN!

    Jesus Christ. No wonder Ingress remains a small community with Chicken Littles running around everywhere.

    Not to mention the corporate worship of Niantic that comes with it.

    The logical solution is an edit description.

    I mean, ****, if you're not an Ingress player, you need to download Ingress, download Street View (**** broken as **** btw), download IITC- all to make sure you can get your submission through.

    No **** where does it state during the submissions process that a photosphere or Street View is necessary. I obviously do it because Ingress agents kept rejecting my subs because Google Maps is outdated as hell. Once again, all blame can fall on Niantic but cultists will never badmouth them.

  • BeeBeeZeeBeeBeeZee ✭✭
    edited December 2019

    ****, I already submit all the unnecessary additional shite because I already got rejections but nowhere does it state in the PoGo (or Ingress) nominations to submit a photosphere and all the other shite.

    Go on defending Niantic though.


    edit: M-a-t-e is a swear word according to Niantic. Beautiful.

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    Its up to the person making the request to insure that there is sufficient evidence to support the request. If Google Maps doesn't support the request because of outdated images or the object is hidden from view, then you need to make sure that reviewers can find the object.

  • ElfFromSpaceElfFromSpace ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    So, moving a portal a small amount might have an adverse impact on players in one game. But that same portal being poorly placed definitely has a negative impact on players in another game. Your point is that your bias, based on your preferred game, is the only one that matters. You claim that location edits are trivial and unnecessary because they mostly impact the other game but your real reason for wanting to reject them is fear that someone might in a small way mess up YOUR game. Funny thing is that the leadtime on location edits going through would make it very difficult for players to succeed in maliciously moving an anchor, and the attempts at this are in the vast minority of portal edits. This is a one-off situation that could be handled in another way, such as introducing a lag time so that a portal location edit does not go live in Ingress until the active links to that portal are broken. But you don't care, because, in spite of the fact that these Wayspots are used for 3, soon more games, you only care about the tiny minority of cases as they apply to your one game. We should be working together for the good of the portal network, not locked into backwards paranoia.

    Yes, we should take player's word that the portals are poorly placed! We take player's word on the placement in the first place. Some players make mistakes, that's why there are so many that are off a bit. And it makes a big difference.

    They recently installed a fantastic informational plaque about Lincoln in my town. But the plaque is right on top of a portal for the community theatre. The theatre takes an entire block and a minor location move would give room for a fantastic portal to be added which currently cannot be. Another "minor" location move I have pending is the sign for an art museum that is not pinned on the sign, but at the front door. This museum was converted from a mansion and has suffered some vandalism and they really, really don't like random people walking up to the door at all hours. The sign would be a safer, better, and more accurate pin, but is not seen on satellite since it was installed 1 year ago. These edits are things that would be hard to demonstrate via photospheres even if I could get the app to work. Does that make it less valid to want to move a Theatre to an equally valid location so that a really interesting historical plaque can be added to all games?

  • There is a difference between a move that is equally valid but has other benefits such as new stops/better access/room for new portals, and a move that is entirely fake where the location is being set to an inaccurate position. The ones seeking to make things inaccurate should be reported, but they are also a much smaller percentage than your exaggeration. As for the suggestion to remove and resubmit poorly located portals, that is entirely unrealistic since most portals reported as invalid are denied and left in the game, even ones I've put in for murals that no longer exist, and sculptures that have been relocated to a new position 5 blocks away.


    The Streetview app in most of its versions is completely unusable on a significant percentage of phones. The issue seems to be linked to the type of phone being used, I believe many Samsung models are worst. If people wish to be productive, rather than unhelpful, and know of a working version, it might be helpful to post links to it for people who have been unable to get it to work. Even if people technically could use streetview, it is kind of backwards to expect that all users will be reasonably able to, and it does not help with some moves. I am aware of the abuses and vote down or report numerous location moves that are blatantly abuse. However we should all want a portal network where placement is considered, and things aren't left in poorly accessible spots simply because people reviewing don't know the whole situation.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    I play both games and at the moment primarily use Ingress to submit because my Ingress community is pretty repetitive right now. But thanks for assuming I only care about one thing because I'm not as biased as you.

    What I actually care about is Niantic saying to use location edits if the wayspot is in an incorrect location. If a pin is on the center of the fountain but a move to a left corner would make it appear in Pokemon that's not a legitimate edit request according to Niantic. We didn't set up the cell system and the restrictions on PoGo, Niantic did. When I make submissions I do take all of the games into account if possible but that's not always the case. Until Niantic says those adjustments are kosher, they're clogging up the system. And people who try to use edits to influence reviewers are stated to be abuse.

    And also, we do not take submitters word, we verify. And that's what Niantic wants us to do with location edits too. If you cannot supply the information needed to verify your request is legitimate, you can't reasonably expect people to take your word.

    Also! Location edits **** up submissions too. My community had submissions that were denied for being within 20m because someone decided they wanted to move an existing *correct* wayspot to a different area on a building and now we wasted submissions and can't resubmit because there is only one true placement for the piece of art, which now robs the other games of more wayspots. So your argument works both ways.

  • OchemistOchemist ✭✭✭
    edited December 2019

    I use an iPhone, so can't revert. And if I could, it would make no sense for me to do so, as the previous version didn't support the newer iPhones. I have had a problem with both my phone and a 360º camera.

    I know one Android user who can't get any photospheres accepted. I'm lucky in that my batting average currently is about 30%. This is almost as miserable as the iOS bug in Redacted that kept many submissions stuck on the phone in perpetuity.

    They have also been seemingly randomly removing many of my older photospheres. This is another problem that that's been widely reported and affects my current submissions.

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    Oh yes I completely forgot about that iPhone issue, my apologies. That does make things more difficult. I tend to do the photospheres for my community because they're too shy, I suggest trying to get a group together who can help you get your submissions approved because it's just as beneficial to them.

    I can't give you advice on the rejection, I think that is happening a lot with the new version on Android, once I reverted I haven't had a problem at all.

    But the main problem remains. You typing something in a text box that nobody can verify isn't very helpful is it?

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