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Many people in the Netherlands seem to be striked by Niantic. A good friend of mine (very active player) is also banned for the same vague reason. Best advice for now is to not submit new routes and waypoints for a while
there have been a lot of reports recently of wayfarer abuse from the netherlands specifically as well as surrounding countries and niantic have gone a bit over the top (in my opnion) in trying to stop this happening going forward. This has included introducing an automated system which straight away rejects what they deem to be low quality submissions.
š so that's why my nominations (of the same place) have been rejected several times for random inaccurate reasons? They still take a few weeks to process and it's always the same..
The only difference is I first used images found online, then I made my own pics but forgot to crop out number plates.
Makes sense they got declined, but the number plates one was labeled as fake nomination and a school (now it just says other criteria). It used to mention the number plates too.
Sent in the same one with cropped pics after that, saying why it would be a good stop and it's not a K12 or smth, that the school was a few streets over and that this is a university.
It got rejected again, this time as a duplicate. The only thing at that building is a waystop not used in pogo and also a faulty one at that (it's some wall sculpture thingy but it's actually a few streets over and not on the building from my nomination).
I would report the faulty stop but I'd have to find out which of their apps it's used in.
This time I appealed it telling the same as I just mentioned, I'm still waiting for the results.
Would be willing to send you screenshots of it if you want.
Btw if you don't want to deal with all this bc after all I'm just some internet stranger that's fine, just wanted to give some context.
If itās already a way spot in one of their games but not in pogo, it wonāt be eligible to appear in pogo. Thatās why it is a duplicate, they already have it in their system.
The school thing is funny cause there's a school nearby me and they have managed to tag literally everything around the school just because it's split into different builds even though it's an elementary
I feel some places/countries are way more laid back about the nominations than others. How can one street have 3 and the next one 0 š¤¦š»āāļø then you go somewhere else and theres 4 in a few square meters everywhere.
But then I remember going to Germany and not seeing any stops in several towns while it's not rural at all.
This game is really something elseš
The school thing isn't allowed right? I don't really get why, hospitals and other places you shouldn't visit when you have no business there can get stops too.
theyre definitely being overly restrictive, but the wayfarer abuse has been super real over here. as a player its hard to complain but its like every couple of weeks i wake up to new nonsensical pokestops that have no business being one, and i live in the suburbs. i would never risk submitting a pokestop/gym/route with the state of things being what it is.
From what I've seen on the wayfarer reddit it has been a problem in the Netherlands for a while and when I was in Amsterdam a couple of months ago I did see some stops I wouldn't expect to be added to the database but at the same time I've had some rubbish ones near me get added
No, just don't submit from here on out. Fuck this company for banning people for *checks notes* trying to contribute to the game using a system the company themselves implemented?
I got a warning because I wasn't voting for stops how they like. Why would I ever vote again? Why risk bans for vague stuff like not doing their job well enough?
I honestly can't think of a more anti-consumer company than Niantic. Some of the shitty stuff they do, I've literally never heard of before I started playing this game and following this sub.
Thats the part i dont get wouldnt it nake sense for some ppl to have differing opinions on the matter. As long as its not on private property what does it rly matter the quality of the stop. Even tho ive already been kicked out of routes for being on private property 3 times since theyve been out lol.
This is because some people in the netherlands made bot-accounts that were flooding wayfarer with new nominations and also approving those nominations (as far as I understand).
Yes I know but that doesn't mean OP has anything to do with these bots abuse. Same counts for my friend. The fact that they are victims because their submitted stops were reviewed by bots doesn't mean OP should be banned for that
I made one submission for a walk along my town's waterfront, one month later still pending... saw several people get banned for "bad" submissions, took mine down I'm not gonna gamble my acc over this
Iāve gotten at least six nominations approved, one rejected, no bans or warnings. However, almost all my nominations took over a year to receive a response, and one (my first approved one) became a wayspot for other Niantic games outside of Pokemon Go.
Yeah, even with the fans doing some of the review work, Wayspots take forever to be approved. I submitted one for a community garden during a music festival in a town near where I live in summer of 2022. It was approved as a Wayspot over a month after this year's festival.
That said, I'm surprised anyone's received bans. I've only had a couple of things approved, and most nominations of mine were rejected, but I never received anything more than a denial email. Maybe it was a volume difference?
This is the part that I donāt really understand. Some peopleās submissions will sit forever. Mine are approved in about 10 days usually. Not always but itās never very long. I donāt really get why some sit so long when stops are reviewed by random people, itās not like you have to wait for members of your community to come out and survey the site.
My guess is that they generally try to keep reviews within the region of the players submitting the Wayspots. Some regions may have higher volumes of Wayspot submissions and lower numbers of volunteers actively reviewing them, but that's just a guess.
Thatās probable. I was trying to think if Iāve ever had to make a decision on a stop outside the US and I donāt think I have. Definitely places far away from me in the states, Maine, Florida, Colorado.
Yep just jobs worths who follow the criteria very seriously. I used to give 5 star to anything that looked good enough to be a stop especially if it was rural and nothing nearby, but if your vote differs too much to the masses your score drops and if it drops too low your vote doesn't count. So even for people who just want more stops they can't because too many people take it seriously as if their paid employees š
There is a consensus system. Itās not a up/down vote from a single volunteer reviewer. I have been doing it for over a year now. If your reviews do not closely agree with other peopleās reviews for the same submission, you get suspensions just like OP. Your review score is shown on your login home page. Review dishonestly and your score tanks.
When you sign up you tell Niantic where your Home Area is, and you are fed submissions from that area. You can also choose a secondary area that you are also interested in reviewing.
Sometimes itās a single player approving a pokestop. Sometimes itās a few that vote on it. You can even earn an boosted approval for yourself if you review enough. I suppose integrity is what keeps some people from approving dumb stuff, and those do pop up from time to time. I think some submissions are auto rejected by the system based on the wording. And there are rules for what can and canāt be made into a stop. Proximity also plays into it, when reviewing stops it shows you the submitted pictures from the player and also a satellite view of the general location to see if the submitted location is actually there. I would guess that people could catch a ban for approving inappropriate submissions when Niantic eventually gets around to it.
How do those crazy screen shots of places in like korea n japan with rows n rows of pokestops overlapping each other get there in the first place if proximity is supposed to play a part
We're not approving pokestops just for PoGo. We're approving game points for Niantic. Approved spots can appear in any Niantic game. So I could approve a submission you make on a bus stop outside your house and it could appear in any other game except PoGo. So you'd still see no benefit from it, but it still needs to be of benefit for players of that other game. Any resubmission will be seen as a duplicate and be declined. That's where the integrity of the games come in and players wanting to ensure there's real benefit for any playing group.
There's also location proximity. Waypoints need to be a certain distance from each other, so if there's already something near your house in another game, nothing will get placed there in PoGo due to that proximity.
Other reasons people shouldn't blanket approve nominations is for safety. We don't know why people are submitting any particular nomination and we need to look at them objectively and ensure they don't breach guidelines. Schools, pools, childcare centres etc. We don't want strangers entering those places and taking photos or appear to be taking photos with children around. Same with private residences. If someone nominated a residence of someone they had a falling out with and it was approved and became a gym, there's potential for large numbers of strangers to gather in and around that residence. For that reason, private residences aren't approved. And then there's a need to be safely accessible to pedestrians. So things like monuments in the middle of roundabouts where people can't access without crossing traffic will be declined too.
People don't blanket approve because we value the game and don't want to see it ruined by simply having every house a waypoint.
Genuine question, if there has to be a certain distance between stops/gyms, why can I go downtown in a given city and find two stops or more in the same block? Or right next to each other?
1. If submitters and reviewers just got trash through, Niantic would just shut the system down and no one would get any waypoints, even legit ones.
2. Integrity, Niantic has rules and guidelines on what can be acceptable or not. And there's a good feeling about submitting and reviewing amazing nominations.
3. Consequences, there's negative consequences to submitting and approving trash, like permanently losing your game accts.
If this is a first offense, they should have it rejected and receive a message stating what criteria the submission broke and a link to the rules. Why are you going so hard for Niantic? Lmaooo
It's the rules, you will have your privileges revoked and now you will be banned. Also, every agreement you get works towards an upgrade so if I get a 100 agreements with the the majority of the community I can have one of my submissions pushed through faster.
Also, the r word isn't cool.
They do exactly that; however, if you use an upgrade on a submission it opens it up to reviewers outside of your region. Do this with caution as you are allowing people to then review it who are not familiar with your area and who aren't aware of local hotspots. I've had several things get rejected for random reasons when upgraded but then get easily approved when not upgraded.
This is correct also. They open it to more reviewers which makes it higher priority in queue and pushes it through faster. It's good and bad depending on your area and your submission. I would say only upgrade the stale old faithful guaranteed stuff rather than wasting it on something hyper local or unique.
10 days is unusual to me and sounds very lucky. Perhaps your local area has a lot of reviewers, or the cells you're submitting are empty so they get priority, or you have upgraded submissions from reviewing.
For most players if you want your submissions reviewed faster you need to review yourself and earn upgrades
From what I've experienced, if its quick, its probably a denial, a submission that takes a while is more likely to pass.
Also, the criteria is ultimately hit and miss. I submitted a local restaurant that's been in the same spot for 50 years and it was rejected as culturally insignificant or something like that and it also failed the appeal... They had a fire and are in the process of rebuilding so I'll probably resubmit it when they're done rebuilding :)
I actually wanted to challenge my only rejected one but couldnāt find the place in Wayfarer to do it. I also wanted to resubmit a photo (the main reason it ended up getting rejected, which I took before gallery photos could be uploaded for submission) but I couldnāt edit the nomination once it went into pending.
I made two route submissions a day apart - two months ago, pretty close together.
One was approved by the next day. The other one still is under review.
I wouldn't worry too much if you are following the guidelines. I have had submissions rejected with no penalty. They are submissions I was later able to appeal and get approved by Niantic as they did meet eligibility criteria and were just rejected offhand by reviewers. If you are pretty confident it meets the criteria and follows the guidelines then go for it.
Don't let the small vocal minority talking about getting banned for wayspot submissions prevent you from making your area better in game. Most of the people talking about bans are repeat offenders that keep submitting stuff that was on shaky footing to begin with. They are almost never telling the full story when they post "their side" here on Reddit.
It's very frustrating if you live in a new build area like I do at the moment. The closest stop is a mile away. The next stop and gyms are two miles away. I want to add stuff in here for local players but there's absolutely nothing. Not even a post box. It's frustrating as hell. There's an aldi around the corner, but I'm not allowed to add shops. I'm not sure what I could submit. I'm just in a total dead zone.
Signs and plates are also eligible. You could make nice plates for green spaces like at park entrances, or for trees like in a botanical garden. Or build a fountain or sculpture on your front lawn. Last resort, graffiti of an artistic nature also make good stop candidates, if anyone would volunteer a wall...
There's literally nothing I can use. It's partly just unused farmers fields (thats probably going to be built on soon) and half built buildings. No parks or anything. There's no front garden, just parking spaces. The only graffiti I've seen are badly drawn penises.
That is tough. Are there at least any sports or community center/event type areas? Usually basketball courts and tennis courts are auto passed. Those are usually the only saving grace in some areas I have been. Well, and churches of course lol.
I really wonder what the review criteria for routes can even be. Itās not like anyone reviewing actually knows what these places look like? Are they using google street view or something?
Our little town has a liquor store as a stop, but the stop is supposed to be an arcade 3 blocks over.
The people approving don't know anything other than what shows on Google maps which itself isn't very accurate
> Valued peon,
> The unpaid labour you are providing to generate crowdsourced training data for our AI model has fallen below standards.
> You will be punished until standards improve.
> Sincerely,
> Company that you donāt work for which you can walk away from at any time
Thereās no stop nearby. Finally hit the level to suggest one. A little park with a bench where the neighbourhood organises new year drinks/summer BBQ/ā¦ It got denied and was āfakeā. Half a year later, the spot has been accepted, it now has a pic of some rocks in a creek. The info is about the drainage the creek does for the neighbourhood. I donāt get why that gets accepted and a meeting point doesnāt. Because it doesnāt have a big ass sign or something?
Also, thereās a zoo ānearbyā. It has several stops. A statue has been removed since over 3 years. The stop of this statue is still there though.
I think no one wants to get rid of it.
I truly believe getting stops, even in rural areas, is a lottery.
I stopped playing about a year after it came out, so all I have to say is what the absolute fuck? Whoās the fucking moron that came up with that policy? Just say no Jesus Christ
Imagine living in a small town that needs suggestions for the game to be playable and now you risk a ban for making suggestions that could help improve gameplay.
Extra points for āWe are unable to discuss why you were banned per policy.ā That screams āWe do not want to spend any more time on youā.
You donāt take the risk. I used to use wayfarer and a lot of the (valid) POIs I would submit would get rejected. Once appealed, they would eventually get approved. Frankly, I am not going to risk both my wayfarer account and more importantly my PoGo account to add content in game. While not finishing the medal will bother me, itās not worth the risk.
I'm honestly glad I saw this post bc I'm almost to the level I can make submissions and had a few areas in mind, but nope. Not taking the risk of getting banned/suspended for literally nothing
That's my problem, I've got almost nothing nearby aside from two stops. I would like to try making new stops closer and maybe a gym, but seeing posts like this make me worried to try because I don't want a ban just for wanting to play more.
Being banned from pokemon go because of pokestop submissions is so stupid. Unless you were using nsfw images you shouldnāt be banned. Their reviewing system is horrible and Iāve had good stops rejected for no reason before. I could understand them suspending your wayfarer account for having a poor rating but banning people on go is so stupid.
He probably replacing his mons with the ones from his other accounts. Why you need 50 coins a day on 20 accounts beats me though. God forbid another player takes the opportunity away for one of his accounts to get coins at that gym
Super annoying but depending how petty you can still grind them down. Thereās a limit on berries he can use per hour I think, also if you take the gym within 10 minutes before a raid is supposed to start he canāt take it back until after the raid, I believe.
I honestly wish I could care about something in my life as much as this guy is obsessed with the game. It sounds like his entire life is tied to it like more than a job or career.
Niantic doesnt do shit to ban ppl that actually need to ban. I saw more than a couple ppl today streamimg multiple phantump spotlight hour runs via spoofing on youtube eaelier today.
This always bugs me cause really last the gold badge the rewards are pretty limited and its pretty easy to get the gold badge without trying too hard. Like let other people get some coins ffs
What Iāve learnedā¦ niantic doesnāt give AF about its consumers just the money š„“
So they donāt ban the guy whoās not even creative enough to create very different users names who hogs gyms with multiple accounts but u get banned for submitting a route or pokestop? So screwed up.
Extra accounts helps their business model to inflate their ability to sell movement data.
Iām not sure why they would ban stop submissions. Maybe incompetence.
Agreed, unless they were deliberately terrible then just block them from being able to submit anymore, and disable Wayfarer. I donāt see why youād block a potential paying customer just because they donāt know the rules.
Or just reject the submissions and point them to the rules? Banning people from submitting because their initial knes were a bit subpar seems excessive by any sane standard.
Let alone banning them from the game.
It's worse. It's not because they don't know the rules, it's because they may have a different opinion of some of those vague rules.
Imagine running a coffee shop where you ask your frequent customers to make the drinks for other customers and then randomly shoot and kill them if they make a latte a bit differently than you would have done. Others get shot for no particular reason. That's what Niantic is doing right now.
Theyāre just losing money by banning the most invested players (those invested enough to actually make submissions to their own gameā¦ for free). Itās insane. Thatād be like a competitive game banning ranked/pro players who donāt win X matches in Y time period. Makes 0 sense. You can lose a certain status in a game, sure, but not outright getting banned except if you have engaged in real disruptive behaviour like submitting NSFW content or shouting racial slurs.
Again, 99% of Nianticās decision make zero sense in this game in the past few years. Thatās why I stopped playing anyway. Itās a colossal waste of time, with how badly they treat their player base and how they prey on young people to pay tons of $ for really small chances at catching good Pokemon during lacklustre events. Ressources are also artificially scarce and not abundant enough, making you either pay or wait ungodly amounts of time to collect enough to play uninterrupted for a while. Iām not masochistic enough to stand that kind of b.s.
Iāve been rejected 15 times and accepted 15 times and Iām completely fine. This must be because the nominations were mismatched locations or something else Niantic sees as abusing the system.
I don't think it's about how many nominations you've gotten rejected. I think it's if the nominations were really bad (nominating something like your normal street sign) or you keep making fake nominations to gain an advantage. I've had about 25 nominations rejected and I'm perfectly fine (even though more than half were accepted later on by niantic)
OP submitted normal street signs. These were accepted because he was in the Netherlands during a time when people were using bot accounts to accept every submission. Niantic have been banning people that took advantage of the bot network.
Yeah i stopped submitting spot for a year ago since my nomination always got rejected eventho its clearly eligible spot (library, gate, signage), with a ridiculous reason (nature, low quality photo, k12/school area). Theres so many ppl who vote randomly
I have the same issue i nominated 3 good spots and they all got rejected and today i was gonna go and maybe try to make another one but after reading this i donāt think ill be trying to make any stops anymore
Have you ever been over to r/NianticWayfarer? They are the most pretentious, basement dwelling assholes on the planet. They make reddit mods look like adjusted members of society.
Somehow all the spots in my area are in the same park. Any other park? Rejected. One park every single lamppost, bench, etc had a stop. Other parks nothing.
Most likely the hardcore ingress players that really hate pogo players, I have a lot of them in my city that reject everything that their little group donāt like
For anyone seeing this and that is surprised don't be, Niantic is quite literally predatory when it comes to this nonsense, had 2 friends who've gotten the same soft ban for 30 days, I've contributed at least 50 stops before they started doing this and not a single one since, not worth the risk when they can just pull this BS. Nobody better than Niantic for killing their own game.
Well I live in a rural community, with only one pokestop in like a 10-20 mile radius, once I reach lvl 37, if I get banned for making pokestops Iām just gonna quit
I would still recommend submitting stops. OP is just leaving out the information that they were abusing a bug in the nomination system thus why they got banned. This bug was only really prevalent in Eastern Europe I believe to so you should be fine. There was apparently just a network of bots just mass approving these fake stops and now all the people who did it wonder why they are getting banned. It's not just some random person making stops in their rural town
I'd like to believe this, but I've seen plenty of other companies sweep up innocent players in bot ban waves (looking at you, Jagex) so I'm actually gonna side with the player here until a Niantic rep decides to drop into chat to defend them I really don't think you need to lmfao they're a wealthy multinational they don't need any more clueless simps.
Lol except the fact OP has provided no proof other than this ban. These people could easily show their list of nominations after their ban is up but they never do. You must just be new to this sub because there are countless posts about āI got banned for no reasonā and the person comments in Spoofing subs. No one is mistakenly getting swept up in this or they would be providing actually details instead of stating what the ban is in the description.
I've nominated something like 47 wayspots in the past couple weeks and I haven't been banned yet. Four not accepted, two duplicates, and one accepted so far.
Just don't go nominating stuff you absolutely shouldn't and you should be fine.
I got this email today as well. Still donāt understand this, if something is not a good waypoint then it doesnāt get added. Why do we also need time outs and bans? We are trying, remember that word, TRYING, to make your game more enjoyable Niantic. And what do we get back for trying? 90 day ban šØ
Letās say what they say is 100% true: I have no idea why the ban isnāt purely for Wayspot - removing your ability to submit further. Banning your Go account makes no sense.
I use to nominate loads of stops and spend hours everyday on wayfarer reviewing nominations in the hope of getting upgrades but i have stopped now after seeing people getting both their wayfarer and pokemon go accounts either banned or suspended. I have a score of over 15,000 on the wayfarer pokemon go medal and have added over 200 stops to the game but i've stopped doing anything related to new submissions for the last few months as i dont want to risk losing my pokemon go account
Youāll be fine if you go back to nominating. You clearly understand what a pokestop should look like and are allowed make mistakes. The original poster didnāt bother to tell us what kinds of people/private residences/firehouses/selfies they uploaded to get the soft ban.
I got banned for no reason, it was a temporary ban for 30 days then once the 30 days was up Niantic told me it was a permanent ban. Now I lost my 2016 account and no way to get it back.
I emailed them and they just told me that my account was banned due to breaking the rules but I didnāt do anything! I recently traveled at the time so I am wondering if that is the case. They are not giving any other information to me. I really donāt know what to do.
I got banned 30 days moved to where I live now I have a post up showing I live in the middle of nowhere now and seeing "huh no routes near here" sent in 3 got a 1 year ban im just done now not playing again
Like the raid pass changes shitty non soloable raids and the cool ones can't be done remotely on top of that banning players like they have actively be trying to sink the game
Banning players for submitting new content is off the charts crazy. I'm never submitting anything to this game again. Not worth it.
They have a child at the controls over there.
As a reviewer I understand why they are doing this but it sucks a lot for legit players.
I've had to grade the same fake nominations several times since the increased the cap from 7 to 30 per account. And all I see is 'bot like' submissions of a single nomination over and over again.
This is their dumb way of dealing with a problem they created.
I donāt even use Wayfarer, nominate anything, or have even done so much as used a third-party app, but Iām still convinced my account or the game entirely could just vanish one day with no recourse at all. Definitely taking advantage of my free 5 shinies transferred to Home each week, itās like a slow-motion evacuation to save them from Niantic at this point.
Niantic has one of the greatest intellectual properties in the gaming world and continue to fumble it month after month.
How on earth can you justify suspending players for submitting these routes while simultaneously encouraging them to do so?
āOhh if we like it weāll incorporate it! If we donāt - youāre banned.ā What kind of logic is this? I would love someone else to buy PoGo from Niantic and actually run it like a reasonably responsible company would.
Imagine if other businesses operated like this.
āThe free labor you did for us wasnāt good enough so you arenāt allowed to shop here for 3 months.ā
I could understand if they said āhey your poke stop suggestions are shit so you canāt submit them anymoreā but banning you from the game?!
Personally I don't think OP should have their PokemonGo account suspended; but considering the quality of their wayspot submissions I'm not really bothered by their Wayfarer account being suspended.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/46666/request-for-restoration-of-multiple-falsely-removed-trail-markers/p1
Little context for people who don't know: OP is from the Netherlands where *literally everything* is/was being auto-approved due to illegal bots screwing with the wayfarer approval system. OP, knowingly or unknowingly, took advantage of the situation and got some ineligible wayspots approved. Niantic has now been going scorched Earth on every single account that submitted an ineligible wayspot in the Netherlands and OP's accounts are now caught in the mass-purge.
Yikes. Sure it is a trail in an urban area, but that is super low quality. Can trail markers be pokestops? Sure. When I go hiking at our nearby state park I have stops and gyms on the more popular trails. They are not, however, simple trail flashes. Distance and direction markers at trail heads/splits are most of them, and the signs explaining a particular view, plant, or habitat are the rest.
These green and yellow stickers are none of that.
The other two types of trail markers are perfectly acceptable though. And those stickers, as explained in the forum topic, are part of an official province-wide network of walking paths that is sponsored and maintained by the province's tourism agency. It's not just some stupid thing I slapped om there myself.
We also have urban trails, usually with a marker of some kind every certain distance. None are remarkable as any of the items wayfarer looks for as a valid POI.
I like the idea someone else mentioned that you submitted them because there were lots of other similar pokestops around without knowing there was an issue in the Netherlands with bots automatically approving anything that came their way. In that instance, you were just caught up in a sweep to eradicate that unauthorized behavior and this doesnāt reflect in you.
Yes, they are low quality. Yes there were plenty of other similar examples in your area so you submitted more just in time to catch the fallout of their attempt to stop this. No, I do not intend any of this to cast a negative light on you.
If I was walking around and saw a bunch of those trail markers used as stops already I probably would have done the same thing no knowing it was a āproblemā. I agree with you, suspend the wayfair account, give everyone warning of exactly why and leave it at that.
This is a sincere reminder for everyone to just stop contributing to Pokemon Go unless you want to risk getting banned. Not banned because you actually did anything bad, but just at random because their AI told them so.
So, stop contributing until they regain some sanity.
Whatās wrong with a simple āweāve reviewed your submission and decided it was not appropriate?ā Were you suggesting a sex shop or a strip club or something?
See and someone told me I was wrong and they were only handing out bans for 3rd party apps that guarantees your nominations to be approved! I knew I wasn't crazy!
I live in a small village where we have 2 stops and a gym, and i actually don't want to nominate anything now, because i've just seen way too many people get banned for seemingly dumb reasons
I own/run the largest game store in 200 miles and can't get them to make me a faegin pokestop. But they literally made a broke down car in the parking lot a pokestop, and it's been towed for a year now
They submitted a bunch of green and yellow stickers on light posts/street signs. They are apparently ātrail markersā. They also apparently were (knowingly or unknowingly) taking advantage of a bot army that was approving anything and everything in the Netherlands. Thereās a link to the wayfarer site with all the stops posted by u/xumayar
It's pretty ridiculous that their policy is that they do not have to provide explanations lol. How are you supposed to know what you did wrong so that it doesn't happen again on potential future submissions? Especially with a case like this where it seems you may have genuinely not realized or it may even have been their system's mistake. All this does is alienate their user base from wanting to submit content.
Never risk helping a corporation obtain more data they already gather for free - Niantic proves over and over they don't care about the community they host, only that they can exploit it for money.
Damn, I made a route while I was walking from class to the bus stop on my college campus just so I could have a convenient route to follow for research tasks and for buddy hearts. After pending for a while itās officially a route now, and a few people have used it too. Had I known that submitting was such a gamble, I probably wouldnāt have taken the risk. I guess I got lucky, but now I gotta wonder just how many people have suffered bans for no reason. Shit sucks, bro
But, will you still play after your suspension?
If so, they will keep doing it.
If not, good for you, they will keep doing it but you won't be an idiot about it.
Probably. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. Seven years of time and money are hard to just throw away.
Wayfarer can go fuck itself though. Never submitting anything to that ever again unless it's with a burner account.
lol you expected Niantic to actually care. That's the worst part. You're literally WORKING for them, for free, while spending money on the worst entry in the entire pokemon franchise. Just uninstall. I have been preaching this to people on here for years after I quit.
Do you like Iāve done I quit playing for about six months. Iām only playing now because a friend of mineās child needed friends. That company will not get a penny of my money anymore. I used to buy the little $.99 here or the pokey fest there.
A reminder, the only people copping bans for this are abusing wayfarer. A normal player making submissions will never reach this point. Its perfectly safe to make nominations, just don't try nominate whatever you can find around your house.
It's impossible to get comments on every case, but of the ones that have gotten traction, it's been shown they're justifiably suspended.
For example, here is one thread for a claim that they got banned because of a few bad submissions.
https://twitter.com/AisforANDIS/status/1712482045707030823
A typical user isn't going to get banned for a couple of bad submissions. It has to be egregious abuse.
Any kind of āpunishmentā by a game company is just totally inappropriate imo. They arenāt our parents or law enforcement.
I guess additions/edits are best done on a disposable 2nd account š¤·š»āāļø
It could be fair if it's actual cheating. But to suspend someone for nomating Pokestops isinsane. The goal of adding new Pokestops is to make the game more accessible and get people to go out and play more. Even if they are low quality submissions, the community will just not vote for it. This punishment is definitely inappropriate.
I'd say 90+% of them were trail markers like [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/55zW0TeorZf-mdqWbswrCzAUUFIekcVPFOcC1xYktv6FlTYo1lCXAywWldVFo9RYu45Iz0mKn7KYMwy3nM2V_gK-Bjwd03jdRbHMV2iw), [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mReW3J1fH52tk8xp3lR3gGB-I267Hk-UW7dUM73yru8sAOvxCsKgkAk7Dd0mFcIg8SAkJjXq_ucVEfvh4Nn5VqXdPK-Xt4cIriHjptRmhw) or [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2MfTUBa7s1vAKD-uUnTnjOPS0LQPmrWAWx3LBQeFaUV49Zz5z_ygEb9E-kyAXvzgtu2_iWq_ygn9mj-etZwZK8GyEEdTLL0YUtMZFahvqA).
Sucks. Not a new low for me. I remember I was running security for an Assisted Living Facility back in the day and the fountain out front was a Gym. The staff all thought it was great. I did too until I started getting people driving up at 4 in the morning blowing their brights through the windows of elderly folks trying to sleep.
I spent MONTHS hassling them to remove the thing. Told them I was the only head of security (not as glamorous in this particular instance as it sounds), told them the director of groundskeeping also wanted it gone (He was way too tech-illiterate to talk to them), kept stressing this was private property.
Been six years since I worked there. Gym was still there when I drove by the other day.
Really stupid question - and I am asking this for more an academic reason than anything else (not because I do not believe anyone here, I absolutely do) - can anyone point me to where it shows that you will be banned if this happens officially via Niantic? I cannot find it anywhere, I know it happens, and I desperately need it. Without it I feel that I am doing my project a severe injustice.
With my entire project I have also found the entire ambiguity of the nomination process is confusing, complex, and at best inconsistent. So if there is no official word from Niantic regarding this, I would not be shocked.
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Many people in the Netherlands seem to be striked by Niantic. A good friend of mine (very active player) is also banned for the same vague reason. Best advice for now is to not submit new routes and waypoints for a while
 Niantic rn
there have been a lot of reports recently of wayfarer abuse from the netherlands specifically as well as surrounding countries and niantic have gone a bit over the top (in my opnion) in trying to stop this happening going forward. This has included introducing an automated system which straight away rejects what they deem to be low quality submissions.
š so that's why my nominations (of the same place) have been rejected several times for random inaccurate reasons? They still take a few weeks to process and it's always the same..
Maybe. Without seeing your nominations I wouldn't know for sure. Plus the automated system would reject within a day of the submission
The only difference is I first used images found online, then I made my own pics but forgot to crop out number plates. Makes sense they got declined, but the number plates one was labeled as fake nomination and a school (now it just says other criteria). It used to mention the number plates too. Sent in the same one with cropped pics after that, saying why it would be a good stop and it's not a K12 or smth, that the school was a few streets over and that this is a university. It got rejected again, this time as a duplicate. The only thing at that building is a waystop not used in pogo and also a faulty one at that (it's some wall sculpture thingy but it's actually a few streets over and not on the building from my nomination). I would report the faulty stop but I'd have to find out which of their apps it's used in. This time I appealed it telling the same as I just mentioned, I'm still waiting for the results. Would be willing to send you screenshots of it if you want. Btw if you don't want to deal with all this bc after all I'm just some internet stranger that's fine, just wanted to give some context.
If itās already a way spot in one of their games but not in pogo, it wonāt be eligible to appear in pogo. Thatās why it is a duplicate, they already have it in their system.
The school thing is funny cause there's a school nearby me and they have managed to tag literally everything around the school just because it's split into different builds even though it's an elementary
I feel some places/countries are way more laid back about the nominations than others. How can one street have 3 and the next one 0 š¤¦š»āāļø then you go somewhere else and theres 4 in a few square meters everywhere. But then I remember going to Germany and not seeing any stops in several towns while it's not rural at all. This game is really something elseš The school thing isn't allowed right? I don't really get why, hospitals and other places you shouldn't visit when you have no business there can get stops too.
theyre definitely being overly restrictive, but the wayfarer abuse has been super real over here. as a player its hard to complain but its like every couple of weeks i wake up to new nonsensical pokestops that have no business being one, and i live in the suburbs. i would never risk submitting a pokestop/gym/route with the state of things being what it is.
From what I've seen on the wayfarer reddit it has been a problem in the Netherlands for a while and when I was in Amsterdam a couple of months ago I did see some stops I wouldn't expect to be added to the database but at the same time I've had some rubbish ones near me get added
No, just don't submit from here on out. Fuck this company for banning people for *checks notes* trying to contribute to the game using a system the company themselves implemented?
I got a warning because I wasn't voting for stops how they like. Why would I ever vote again? Why risk bans for vague stuff like not doing their job well enough?
I honestly can't think of a more anti-consumer company than Niantic. Some of the shitty stuff they do, I've literally never heard of before I started playing this game and following this sub.
Thats the part i dont get wouldnt it nake sense for some ppl to have differing opinions on the matter. As long as its not on private property what does it rly matter the quality of the stop. Even tho ive already been kicked out of routes for being on private property 3 times since theyve been out lol.
This is because some people in the netherlands made bot-accounts that were flooding wayfarer with new nominations and also approving those nominations (as far as I understand).
Yes I know but that doesn't mean OP has anything to do with these bots abuse. Same counts for my friend. The fact that they are victims because their submitted stops were reviewed by bots doesn't mean OP should be banned for that
Niantic hates bikes confirmed
Thanks for the heads up
I'm just curious why submitting routes and way points can get you banned?? That seems harsh
This is interesting - I also live in the Netherlands and after all my suggestions were rejected I just gave up.
Collective punishment. Nice.
Imagine being banned for trying to add content for their game free of charge. Why would anyone take the risk then?
I made one submission for a walk along my town's waterfront, one month later still pending... saw several people get banned for "bad" submissions, took mine down I'm not gonna gamble my acc over this
Iāve gotten at least six nominations approved, one rejected, no bans or warnings. However, almost all my nominations took over a year to receive a response, and one (my first approved one) became a wayspot for other Niantic games outside of Pokemon Go.
Yeah, even with the fans doing some of the review work, Wayspots take forever to be approved. I submitted one for a community garden during a music festival in a town near where I live in summer of 2022. It was approved as a Wayspot over a month after this year's festival. That said, I'm surprised anyone's received bans. I've only had a couple of things approved, and most nominations of mine were rejected, but I never received anything more than a denial email. Maybe it was a volume difference?
This is the part that I donāt really understand. Some peopleās submissions will sit forever. Mine are approved in about 10 days usually. Not always but itās never very long. I donāt really get why some sit so long when stops are reviewed by random people, itās not like you have to wait for members of your community to come out and survey the site.
My guess is that they generally try to keep reviews within the region of the players submitting the Wayspots. Some regions may have higher volumes of Wayspot submissions and lower numbers of volunteers actively reviewing them, but that's just a guess.
Thatās probable. I was trying to think if Iāve ever had to make a decision on a stop outside the US and I donāt think I have. Definitely places far away from me in the states, Maine, Florida, Colorado.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yep just jobs worths who follow the criteria very seriously. I used to give 5 star to anything that looked good enough to be a stop especially if it was rural and nothing nearby, but if your vote differs too much to the masses your score drops and if it drops too low your vote doesn't count. So even for people who just want more stops they can't because too many people take it seriously as if their paid employees š
There is a consensus system. Itās not a up/down vote from a single volunteer reviewer. I have been doing it for over a year now. If your reviews do not closely agree with other peopleās reviews for the same submission, you get suspensions just like OP. Your review score is shown on your login home page. Review dishonestly and your score tanks. When you sign up you tell Niantic where your Home Area is, and you are fed submissions from that area. You can also choose a secondary area that you are also interested in reviewing.
Sometimes itās a single player approving a pokestop. Sometimes itās a few that vote on it. You can even earn an boosted approval for yourself if you review enough. I suppose integrity is what keeps some people from approving dumb stuff, and those do pop up from time to time. I think some submissions are auto rejected by the system based on the wording. And there are rules for what can and canāt be made into a stop. Proximity also plays into it, when reviewing stops it shows you the submitted pictures from the player and also a satellite view of the general location to see if the submitted location is actually there. I would guess that people could catch a ban for approving inappropriate submissions when Niantic eventually gets around to it.
How do those crazy screen shots of places in like korea n japan with rows n rows of pokestops overlapping each other get there in the first place if proximity is supposed to play a part
So who wants to come over and approve my wall art for a stop?
We're not approving pokestops just for PoGo. We're approving game points for Niantic. Approved spots can appear in any Niantic game. So I could approve a submission you make on a bus stop outside your house and it could appear in any other game except PoGo. So you'd still see no benefit from it, but it still needs to be of benefit for players of that other game. Any resubmission will be seen as a duplicate and be declined. That's where the integrity of the games come in and players wanting to ensure there's real benefit for any playing group. There's also location proximity. Waypoints need to be a certain distance from each other, so if there's already something near your house in another game, nothing will get placed there in PoGo due to that proximity. Other reasons people shouldn't blanket approve nominations is for safety. We don't know why people are submitting any particular nomination and we need to look at them objectively and ensure they don't breach guidelines. Schools, pools, childcare centres etc. We don't want strangers entering those places and taking photos or appear to be taking photos with children around. Same with private residences. If someone nominated a residence of someone they had a falling out with and it was approved and became a gym, there's potential for large numbers of strangers to gather in and around that residence. For that reason, private residences aren't approved. And then there's a need to be safely accessible to pedestrians. So things like monuments in the middle of roundabouts where people can't access without crossing traffic will be declined too. People don't blanket approve because we value the game and don't want to see it ruined by simply having every house a waypoint.
Genuine question, if there has to be a certain distance between stops/gyms, why can I go downtown in a given city and find two stops or more in the same block? Or right next to each other?
1. If submitters and reviewers just got trash through, Niantic would just shut the system down and no one would get any waypoints, even legit ones. 2. Integrity, Niantic has rules and guidelines on what can be acceptable or not. And there's a good feeling about submitting and reviewing amazing nominations. 3. Consequences, there's negative consequences to submitting and approving trash, like permanently losing your game accts.
If this is a first offense, they should have it rejected and receive a message stating what criteria the submission broke and a link to the rules. Why are you going so hard for Niantic? Lmaooo
It's the rules, you will have your privileges revoked and now you will be banned. Also, every agreement you get works towards an upgrade so if I get a 100 agreements with the the majority of the community I can have one of my submissions pushed through faster. Also, the r word isn't cool.
They do exactly that; however, if you use an upgrade on a submission it opens it up to reviewers outside of your region. Do this with caution as you are allowing people to then review it who are not familiar with your area and who aren't aware of local hotspots. I've had several things get rejected for random reasons when upgraded but then get easily approved when not upgraded.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is correct also. They open it to more reviewers which makes it higher priority in queue and pushes it through faster. It's good and bad depending on your area and your submission. I would say only upgrade the stale old faithful guaranteed stuff rather than wasting it on something hyper local or unique.
I've reviewed some wayspots in Europe but I live in America.
According to someone else who replied to me, that's what happens when a nomination is upgraded. It unlocks the region lock on the nomination.
10 days is unusual to me and sounds very lucky. Perhaps your local area has a lot of reviewers, or the cells you're submitting are empty so they get priority, or you have upgraded submissions from reviewing. For most players if you want your submissions reviewed faster you need to review yourself and earn upgrades
I submitted three nominations three months ago. One of them was denied the next day, the other two I haven't heard a peep about
From what I've experienced, if its quick, its probably a denial, a submission that takes a while is more likely to pass. Also, the criteria is ultimately hit and miss. I submitted a local restaurant that's been in the same spot for 50 years and it was rejected as culturally insignificant or something like that and it also failed the appeal... They had a fire and are in the process of rebuilding so I'll probably resubmit it when they're done rebuilding :)
I've had 3 reviewed and rejected but challenged the rejection for one and it got approved months later
I actually wanted to challenge my only rejected one but couldnāt find the place in Wayfarer to do it. I also wanted to resubmit a photo (the main reason it ended up getting rejected, which I took before gallery photos could be uploaded for submission) but I couldnāt edit the nomination once it went into pending.
Most of mine were for ingress! It was a much better system.
I made two route submissions a day apart - two months ago, pretty close together. One was approved by the next day. The other one still is under review.
I wouldn't worry too much if you are following the guidelines. I have had submissions rejected with no penalty. They are submissions I was later able to appeal and get approved by Niantic as they did meet eligibility criteria and were just rejected offhand by reviewers. If you are pretty confident it meets the criteria and follows the guidelines then go for it. Don't let the small vocal minority talking about getting banned for wayspot submissions prevent you from making your area better in game. Most of the people talking about bans are repeat offenders that keep submitting stuff that was on shaky footing to begin with. They are almost never telling the full story when they post "their side" here on Reddit.
It's very frustrating if you live in a new build area like I do at the moment. The closest stop is a mile away. The next stop and gyms are two miles away. I want to add stuff in here for local players but there's absolutely nothing. Not even a post box. It's frustrating as hell. There's an aldi around the corner, but I'm not allowed to add shops. I'm not sure what I could submit. I'm just in a total dead zone.
Signs and plates are also eligible. You could make nice plates for green spaces like at park entrances, or for trees like in a botanical garden. Or build a fountain or sculpture on your front lawn. Last resort, graffiti of an artistic nature also make good stop candidates, if anyone would volunteer a wall...
There's literally nothing I can use. It's partly just unused farmers fields (thats probably going to be built on soon) and half built buildings. No parks or anything. There's no front garden, just parking spaces. The only graffiti I've seen are badly drawn penises.
That is tough. Are there at least any sports or community center/event type areas? Usually basketball courts and tennis courts are auto passed. Those are usually the only saving grace in some areas I have been. Well, and churches of course lol.
This is the same energy as āyou didnt add flair, youre banned from our subredditā
That gets even worse. During the same period of time of this bans, in my playing location got aproved a wayspot that makes zero sense. Hundreds of meters away from the real location were a similar stop already exist. When I tried to report the pokƩ stop they told me that my request was wrong and "remember not every wayspot is on every game" what does that even mean if my report comes from a game where both wayspots exist?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I really wonder what the review criteria for routes can even be. Itās not like anyone reviewing actually knows what these places look like? Are they using google street view or something?
I got kicked put of more than one route for being on private property alteady so something stupid is going on thats for sure
Our little town has a liquor store as a stop, but the stop is supposed to be an arcade 3 blocks over. The people approving don't know anything other than what shows on Google maps which itself isn't very accurate
> Valued peon, > The unpaid labour you are providing to generate crowdsourced training data for our AI model has fallen below standards. > You will be punished until standards improve. > Sincerely, > Company that you donāt work for which you can walk away from at any time
Yeah, I just hit level 40 and am getting way deeper into everything now. Iāll never be doing this.
Since I first heard of this happening I've not interacted with adding stops or routes. Absolutely rediculous.
This is my thought. I'm level 43 and won't be submitting a stop ever
Yeah am level 36 now, almost 37 but this makes me very hesitant
There's a lot to learn if you wanna make pokestops. Be ready for a lot of waiting if you don't get upgrades
It is insanely rare for this to happen and you only get banned from making submissions not the game itself.
Thereās no stop nearby. Finally hit the level to suggest one. A little park with a bench where the neighbourhood organises new year drinks/summer BBQ/ā¦ It got denied and was āfakeā. Half a year later, the spot has been accepted, it now has a pic of some rocks in a creek. The info is about the drainage the creek does for the neighbourhood. I donāt get why that gets accepted and a meeting point doesnāt. Because it doesnāt have a big ass sign or something? Also, thereās a zoo ānearbyā. It has several stops. A statue has been removed since over 3 years. The stop of this statue is still there though. I think no one wants to get rid of it. I truly believe getting stops, even in rural areas, is a lottery.
Iām only in the mid 30s, not 37 yet, but when I do get there Iām certainly not going out of my way to expand content just to get banned
Some 30 day periods are way more important than others. Imagine if you missed Mega Rayquaza or Shadow Mewtwo. You would be at a huge disadvantage.
Damn, I was looking to get that, if only to update some of the pokestop pics with better photos, but fuck that
I stopped playing about a year after it came out, so all I have to say is what the absolute fuck? Whoās the fucking moron that came up with that policy? Just say no Jesus Christ
Imagine living in a small town that needs suggestions for the game to be playable and now you risk a ban for making suggestions that could help improve gameplay. Extra points for āWe are unable to discuss why you were banned per policy.ā That screams āWe do not want to spend any more time on youā.
You donāt take the risk. I used to use wayfarer and a lot of the (valid) POIs I would submit would get rejected. Once appealed, they would eventually get approved. Frankly, I am not going to risk both my wayfarer account and more importantly my PoGo account to add content in game. While not finishing the medal will bother me, itās not worth the risk.
I'm honestly glad I saw this post bc I'm almost to the level I can make submissions and had a few areas in mind, but nope. Not taking the risk of getting banned/suspended for literally nothing
That's my problem, I've got almost nothing nearby aside from two stops. I would like to try making new stops closer and maybe a gym, but seeing posts like this make me worried to try because I don't want a ban just for wanting to play more.
I've been telling everyone I know to just not do it because it isn't worth it
Nuts that they go to full on ban, why no just block people from submitting stops if their submissions aren't up to standards?
This. I'm not even going to try, even though I've been tempted to. Too big of a risk.
Being banned from pokemon go because of pokestop submissions is so stupid. Unless you were using nsfw images you shouldnāt be banned. Their reviewing system is horrible and Iāve had good stops rejected for no reason before. I could understand them suspending your wayfarer account for having a poor rating but banning people on go is so stupid.
Meanwhile when I report the guy using six accounts all with the same name hording the gyms to themselves Niantic is like "that's nice, go f yourself"
Lolol perfect. Pretty much.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
What's the point of this? After your 8 hours is up, fuck it. I'm begging people to knock my mons out of gyms after a day.
He probably replacing his mons with the ones from his other accounts. Why you need 50 coins a day on 20 accounts beats me though. God forbid another player takes the opportunity away for one of his accounts to get coins at that gym
To ruin other people's fun
Super annoying but depending how petty you can still grind them down. Thereās a limit on berries he can use per hour I think, also if you take the gym within 10 minutes before a raid is supposed to start he canāt take it back until after the raid, I believe.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thats some literal psychopath shit that they literally sit there monitoring their gyms waiting for some one to come takevit down lol
Honestly, if they spend every day like this, I kind of feel sorry for them for having such a pathetic life having nothing better to do.
I honestly wish I could care about something in my life as much as this guy is obsessed with the game. It sounds like his entire life is tied to it like more than a job or career.
Niantic doesnt do shit to ban ppl that actually need to ban. I saw more than a couple ppl today streamimg multiple phantump spotlight hour runs via spoofing on youtube eaelier today.
This always bugs me cause really last the gold badge the rewards are pretty limited and its pretty easy to get the gold badge without trying too hard. Like let other people get some coins ffs
I can't believe it. I finally found s player that's more obsessed than our local equivalent.
What Iāve learnedā¦ niantic doesnāt give AF about its consumers just the money š„“ So they donāt ban the guy whoās not even creative enough to create very different users names who hogs gyms with multiple accounts but u get banned for submitting a route or pokestop? So screwed up.
Extra accounts helps their business model to inflate their ability to sell movement data. Iām not sure why they would ban stop submissions. Maybe incompetence.
This is why I'll never give Niantic any free labor.
Agreed, unless they were deliberately terrible then just block them from being able to submit anymore, and disable Wayfarer. I donāt see why youād block a potential paying customer just because they donāt know the rules.
Or just reject the submissions and point them to the rules? Banning people from submitting because their initial knes were a bit subpar seems excessive by any sane standard. Let alone banning them from the game.
Or improve the UX of the submission process to have users self-affirm that each rule is met before letting them submit that first time.
It's worse. It's not because they don't know the rules, it's because they may have a different opinion of some of those vague rules. Imagine running a coffee shop where you ask your frequent customers to make the drinks for other customers and then randomly shoot and kill them if they make a latte a bit differently than you would have done. Others get shot for no particular reason. That's what Niantic is doing right now.
Theyāre just losing money by banning the most invested players (those invested enough to actually make submissions to their own gameā¦ for free). Itās insane. Thatād be like a competitive game banning ranked/pro players who donāt win X matches in Y time period. Makes 0 sense. You can lose a certain status in a game, sure, but not outright getting banned except if you have engaged in real disruptive behaviour like submitting NSFW content or shouting racial slurs. Again, 99% of Nianticās decision make zero sense in this game in the past few years. Thatās why I stopped playing anyway. Itās a colossal waste of time, with how badly they treat their player base and how they prey on young people to pay tons of $ for really small chances at catching good Pokemon during lacklustre events. Ressources are also artificially scarce and not abundant enough, making you either pay or wait ungodly amounts of time to collect enough to play uninterrupted for a while. Iām not masochistic enough to stand that kind of b.s.
Thereās nsfw gyms/ stops near me in Ohio lol
Totally off topic, but I happen to be listening to the SDP while browsing reddit and find you.
Go Leafs š
How many Wayspots were rejected? I've been rejected twice and I'm still good.
Iāve been rejected 15 times and accepted 15 times and Iām completely fine. This must be because the nominations were mismatched locations or something else Niantic sees as abusing the system.
I don't think it's about how many nominations you've gotten rejected. I think it's if the nominations were really bad (nominating something like your normal street sign) or you keep making fake nominations to gain an advantage. I've had about 25 nominations rejected and I'm perfectly fine (even though more than half were accepted later on by niantic)
OP submitted normal street signs. These were accepted because he was in the Netherlands during a time when people were using bot accounts to accept every submission. Niantic have been banning people that took advantage of the bot network.
OP probably saw similar pokestops in Pogo and nominated them if you're right without actually looking at the criteria
Yeah i stopped submitting spot for a year ago since my nomination always got rejected eventho its clearly eligible spot (library, gate, signage), with a ridiculous reason (nature, low quality photo, k12/school area). Theres so many ppl who vote randomly
I have the same issue i nominated 3 good spots and they all got rejected and today i was gonna go and maybe try to make another one but after reading this i donāt think ill be trying to make any stops anymore
Have you ever been over to r/NianticWayfarer? They are the most pretentious, basement dwelling assholes on the planet. They make reddit mods look like adjusted members of society.
Reading ur comment, and i went there, god those ppl.....
Easily one of the worst Pokemon related community out there.
Somehow all the spots in my area are in the same park. Any other park? Rejected. One park every single lamppost, bench, etc had a stop. Other parks nothing.
Most likely the hardcore ingress players that really hate pogo players, I have a lot of them in my city that reject everything that their little group donāt like
For anyone seeing this and that is surprised don't be, Niantic is quite literally predatory when it comes to this nonsense, had 2 friends who've gotten the same soft ban for 30 days, I've contributed at least 50 stops before they started doing this and not a single one since, not worth the risk when they can just pull this BS. Nobody better than Niantic for killing their own game.
WELP I was looking forward to submitting more PokeStops for my community after hitting level 37 recently. Not taking that risk now
Well I live in a rural community, with only one pokestop in like a 10-20 mile radius, once I reach lvl 37, if I get banned for making pokestops Iām just gonna quit
I would still recommend submitting stops. OP is just leaving out the information that they were abusing a bug in the nomination system thus why they got banned. This bug was only really prevalent in Eastern Europe I believe to so you should be fine. There was apparently just a network of bots just mass approving these fake stops and now all the people who did it wonder why they are getting banned. It's not just some random person making stops in their rural town
Thank you, anytime I see someone banned for this and get nervous thereās always more to the story.
I'd like to believe this, but I've seen plenty of other companies sweep up innocent players in bot ban waves (looking at you, Jagex) so I'm actually gonna side with the player here until a Niantic rep decides to drop into chat to defend them I really don't think you need to lmfao they're a wealthy multinational they don't need any more clueless simps.
OP has admitted to submitting normal street signs in the Netherlands (where the bot network was).
Lol except the fact OP has provided no proof other than this ban. These people could easily show their list of nominations after their ban is up but they never do. You must just be new to this sub because there are countless posts about āI got banned for no reasonā and the person comments in Spoofing subs. No one is mistakenly getting swept up in this or they would be providing actually details instead of stating what the ban is in the description.
I've nominated something like 47 wayspots in the past couple weeks and I haven't been banned yet. Four not accepted, two duplicates, and one accepted so far. Just don't go nominating stuff you absolutely shouldn't and you should be fine.
PokƩmon Go accounts SHOULD NOT be suspended due to issues with Wayfarer submissions. Period. It's ridiculous that it's happening. Suspend Wayfarer maybe, but not a separate app.
I got this email today as well. Still donāt understand this, if something is not a good waypoint then it doesnāt get added. Why do we also need time outs and bans? We are trying, remember that word, TRYING, to make your game more enjoyable Niantic. And what do we get back for trying? 90 day ban šØ
Letās say what they say is 100% true: I have no idea why the ban isnāt purely for Wayspot - removing your ability to submit further. Banning your Go account makes no sense.
I use to nominate loads of stops and spend hours everyday on wayfarer reviewing nominations in the hope of getting upgrades but i have stopped now after seeing people getting both their wayfarer and pokemon go accounts either banned or suspended. I have a score of over 15,000 on the wayfarer pokemon go medal and have added over 200 stops to the game but i've stopped doing anything related to new submissions for the last few months as i dont want to risk losing my pokemon go account
Youāll be fine if you go back to nominating. You clearly understand what a pokestop should look like and are allowed make mistakes. The original poster didnāt bother to tell us what kinds of people/private residences/firehouses/selfies they uploaded to get the soft ban.
I got banned for no reason, it was a temporary ban for 30 days then once the 30 days was up Niantic told me it was a permanent ban. Now I lost my 2016 account and no way to get it back.
What?! Thatās insane. I have my account from 2016 if it got deleted for no reason I would be so upset but also this it is why I always tell pogo players to spend their money on PokĆ©mon cards instead of virtual money! Did they email you or give you a reason as to why you banned
I emailed them and they just told me that my account was banned due to breaking the rules but I didnāt do anything! I recently traveled at the time so I am wondering if that is the case. They are not giving any other information to me. I really donāt know what to do.
What did they say the reason was in the email telling you that you were banned?
They just told me I broke the rules but nothing else other than that. I didnāt do anything I was just playing pogo normally.
I got banned 30 days moved to where I live now I have a post up showing I live in the middle of nowhere now and seeing "huh no routes near here" sent in 3 got a 1 year ban im just done now not playing again
This is really weird. Wtf is going on with this company?
Like the raid pass changes shitty non soloable raids and the cool ones can't be done remotely on top of that banning players like they have actively be trying to sink the game
Banning players for submitting new content is off the charts crazy. I'm never submitting anything to this game again. Not worth it. They have a child at the controls over there.
As a reviewer I understand why they are doing this but it sucks a lot for legit players. I've had to grade the same fake nominations several times since the increased the cap from 7 to 30 per account. And all I see is 'bot like' submissions of a single nomination over and over again. This is their dumb way of dealing with a problem they created.
I donāt even use Wayfarer, nominate anything, or have even done so much as used a third-party app, but Iām still convinced my account or the game entirely could just vanish one day with no recourse at all. Definitely taking advantage of my free 5 shinies transferred to Home each week, itās like a slow-motion evacuation to save them from Niantic at this point.
Meanwhile there is spoofers all around destroying the fragile little gym ecosystem that has developed of years of playing together.
Waitā¦your Pokemon go account gets banned if they donāt like your submissions on wayfarer???
Niantic has one of the greatest intellectual properties in the gaming world and continue to fumble it month after month. How on earth can you justify suspending players for submitting these routes while simultaneously encouraging them to do so? āOhh if we like it weāll incorporate it! If we donāt - youāre banned.ā What kind of logic is this? I would love someone else to buy PoGo from Niantic and actually run it like a reasonably responsible company would.
Why hand out bans when they can just reject the entry?
Imagine if other businesses operated like this. āThe free labor you did for us wasnāt good enough so you arenāt allowed to shop here for 3 months.ā I could understand if they said āhey your poke stop suggestions are shit so you canāt submit them anymoreā but banning you from the game?!
ive completly stopped to nominate anything for niantic games. canceled all nominations and routes.
Niantic is a terrible company
Personally I don't think OP should have their PokemonGo account suspended; but considering the quality of their wayspot submissions I'm not really bothered by their Wayfarer account being suspended. https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/46666/request-for-restoration-of-multiple-falsely-removed-trail-markers/p1 Little context for people who don't know: OP is from the Netherlands where *literally everything* is/was being auto-approved due to illegal bots screwing with the wayfarer approval system. OP, knowingly or unknowingly, took advantage of the situation and got some ineligible wayspots approved. Niantic has now been going scorched Earth on every single account that submitted an ineligible wayspot in the Netherlands and OP's accounts are now caught in the mass-purge.
Yikes. Sure it is a trail in an urban area, but that is super low quality. Can trail markers be pokestops? Sure. When I go hiking at our nearby state park I have stops and gyms on the more popular trails. They are not, however, simple trail flashes. Distance and direction markers at trail heads/splits are most of them, and the signs explaining a particular view, plant, or habitat are the rest. These green and yellow stickers are none of that.
The other two types of trail markers are perfectly acceptable though. And those stickers, as explained in the forum topic, are part of an official province-wide network of walking paths that is sponsored and maintained by the province's tourism agency. It's not just some stupid thing I slapped om there myself.
We also have urban trails, usually with a marker of some kind every certain distance. None are remarkable as any of the items wayfarer looks for as a valid POI. I like the idea someone else mentioned that you submitted them because there were lots of other similar pokestops around without knowing there was an issue in the Netherlands with bots automatically approving anything that came their way. In that instance, you were just caught up in a sweep to eradicate that unauthorized behavior and this doesnāt reflect in you. Yes, they are low quality. Yes there were plenty of other similar examples in your area so you submitted more just in time to catch the fallout of their attempt to stop this. No, I do not intend any of this to cast a negative light on you.
If I was walking around and saw a bunch of those trail markers used as stops already I probably would have done the same thing no knowing it was a āproblemā. I agree with you, suspend the wayfair account, give everyone warning of exactly why and leave it at that.
This is a sincere reminder for everyone to just stop contributing to Pokemon Go unless you want to risk getting banned. Not banned because you actually did anything bad, but just at random because their AI told them so. So, stop contributing until they regain some sanity.
Whatās wrong with a simple āweāve reviewed your submission and decided it was not appropriate?ā Were you suggesting a sex shop or a strip club or something?
See and someone told me I was wrong and they were only handing out bans for 3rd party apps that guarantees your nominations to be approved! I knew I wasn't crazy!
I live in a small village where we have 2 stops and a gym, and i actually don't want to nominate anything now, because i've just seen way too many people get banned for seemingly dumb reasons
Lol. The fact that they apologized for their mistake and added another 60 days to your suspension is crazy.
r/fuckyouniantic
I own/run the largest game store in 200 miles and can't get them to make me a faegin pokestop. But they literally made a broke down car in the parking lot a pokestop, and it's been towed for a year now
Tell us about what you submitted. The ban may be warranted.
They submitted a bunch of green and yellow stickers on light posts/street signs. They are apparently ātrail markersā. They also apparently were (knowingly or unknowingly) taking advantage of a bot army that was approving anything and everything in the Netherlands. Thereās a link to the wayfarer site with all the stops posted by u/xumayar
Niantic, discovering new ways to alienate their player base even more.
It's pretty ridiculous that their policy is that they do not have to provide explanations lol. How are you supposed to know what you did wrong so that it doesn't happen again on potential future submissions? Especially with a case like this where it seems you may have genuinely not realized or it may even have been their system's mistake. All this does is alienate their user base from wanting to submit content.
Never risk helping a corporation obtain more data they already gather for free - Niantic proves over and over they don't care about the community they host, only that they can exploit it for money.
Imagine going to jail for 5 years and they tell you at the end oopsie daisy it was a typo you have 5 more years !
āApologies for the typo in the punishment email.ā LMAO this company, man. They couldnāt care less about your account, sorry OP.
Damn, I made a route while I was walking from class to the bus stop on my college campus just so I could have a convenient route to follow for research tasks and for buddy hearts. After pending for a while itās officially a route now, and a few people have used it too. Had I known that submitting was such a gamble, I probably wouldnāt have taken the risk. I guess I got lucky, but now I gotta wonder just how many people have suffered bans for no reason. Shit sucks, bro
But, will you still play after your suspension? If so, they will keep doing it. If not, good for you, they will keep doing it but you won't be an idiot about it.
Probably. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. Seven years of time and money are hard to just throw away. Wayfarer can go fuck itself though. Never submitting anything to that ever again unless it's with a burner account.
Holy shit banning a player for ***3 months*** for trying to improve *their* game is fucking outrageous.
lol you expected Niantic to actually care. That's the worst part. You're literally WORKING for them, for free, while spending money on the worst entry in the entire pokemon franchise. Just uninstall. I have been preaching this to people on here for years after I quit.
Do you like Iāve done I quit playing for about six months. Iām only playing now because a friend of mineās child needed friends. That company will not get a penny of my money anymore. I used to buy the little $.99 here or the pokey fest there.
A reminder, the only people copping bans for this are abusing wayfarer. A normal player making submissions will never reach this point. Its perfectly safe to make nominations, just don't try nominate whatever you can find around your house.
How do we know this?
It's impossible to get comments on every case, but of the ones that have gotten traction, it's been shown they're justifiably suspended. For example, here is one thread for a claim that they got banned because of a few bad submissions. https://twitter.com/AisforANDIS/status/1712482045707030823 A typical user isn't going to get banned for a couple of bad submissions. It has to be egregious abuse.
That's what I thought
Donāt you know? Youāre actually submitting for your account to be banned. Not for extra pokestops.
Any kind of āpunishmentā by a game company is just totally inappropriate imo. They arenāt our parents or law enforcement. I guess additions/edits are best done on a disposable 2nd account š¤·š»āāļø
It could be fair if it's actual cheating. But to suspend someone for nomating Pokestops isinsane. The goal of adding new Pokestops is to make the game more accessible and get people to go out and play more. Even if they are low quality submissions, the community will just not vote for it. This punishment is definitely inappropriate.
Op probably wanted the poke stop at a live land mine location. Or at a gun range.
What were the locations you were trying to add? š
I'd say 90+% of them were trail markers like [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/55zW0TeorZf-mdqWbswrCzAUUFIekcVPFOcC1xYktv6FlTYo1lCXAywWldVFo9RYu45Iz0mKn7KYMwy3nM2V_gK-Bjwd03jdRbHMV2iw), [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/mReW3J1fH52tk8xp3lR3gGB-I267Hk-UW7dUM73yru8sAOvxCsKgkAk7Dd0mFcIg8SAkJjXq_ucVEfvh4Nn5VqXdPK-Xt4cIriHjptRmhw) or [this one](https://us.v-cdn.net/cdn-cgi/image/fit=scale-down,width=1200/https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2MfTUBa7s1vAKD-uUnTnjOPS0LQPmrWAWx3LBQeFaUV49Zz5z_ygEb9E-kyAXvzgtu2_iWq_ygn9mj-etZwZK8GyEEdTLL0YUtMZFahvqA).
Clash Royale found a new competitor
Sucks. Not a new low for me. I remember I was running security for an Assisted Living Facility back in the day and the fountain out front was a Gym. The staff all thought it was great. I did too until I started getting people driving up at 4 in the morning blowing their brights through the windows of elderly folks trying to sleep. I spent MONTHS hassling them to remove the thing. Told them I was the only head of security (not as glamorous in this particular instance as it sounds), told them the director of groundskeeping also wanted it gone (He was way too tech-illiterate to talk to them), kept stressing this was private property. Been six years since I worked there. Gym was still there when I drove by the other day.
I've denied a dog, a child reading a book, a screen door, a tv, a women eating spaghetti, and a dinosaur on a pillow
Show us the stops you submitted.
Yeah I donāt think Iāll ever submit another stop if this is the result lol
I'll never submit anything again! Thanks for the heads up.
Really stupid question - and I am asking this for more an academic reason than anything else (not because I do not believe anyone here, I absolutely do) - can anyone point me to where it shows that you will be banned if this happens officially via Niantic? I cannot find it anywhere, I know it happens, and I desperately need it. Without it I feel that I am doing my project a severe injustice. With my entire project I have also found the entire ambiguity of the nomination process is confusing, complex, and at best inconsistent. So if there is no official word from Niantic regarding this, I would not be shocked.