Abuse Warning for Alleged 11-Meter Wayspot Misplacement — Request for Review

[R00tn00bDK]

Hello,

I am asking for help regarding a Wayfarer abuse warning that I believe was issued incorrectly.

The nomination involved is:

Jado Murales – Gamuza Shutter Artwork
Submitted coordinates: 41.401627, 2.208268

I personally visited the location, stood in front of the artwork and took the nomination photographs there. There was no intention whatsoever to move the Wayspot to another location or manipulate its location in any game.

After appealing the original rejection, I received an account warning for “Misplacement of Wayspot submissions.” The enforcement team subsequently told me that my nomination was approximately 11 meters away from the actual location.

I believe I can now see where this alleged discrepancy may have come from.

The nomination was not for the restaurant Gamuza. It was for the mural painted on its exterior security shutters.

As shown in the attached screenshots, Google Maps places the business POI for Gamuza inside the footprint of the building. However, the mural I nominated is physically located on the exterior shutters facing Passeig del Taulat.

My submitted Wayfarer location is correspondingly positioned at the exterior edge of the building, where the nominated artwork is located, rather than at the Google Maps business marker inside the building.

This distinction could very plausibly account for the approximately 11-meter difference reported by the enforcement team. If the Google Maps business POI was used as the reference point for Gamuza, then the two points should naturally differ: one represents the restaurant as a business, while the other represents a physical mural attached to its exterior facade.

I appealed the warning and explained this was a genuine on-site nomination. Nevertheless, the enforcement team maintained the warning, ultimately stating only that I had submitted the nomination at an “inaccurate location.”

I am not asking for the rejected nomination to be accepted. I am asking for the account-level abuse warning to be reconsidered.

I would also like to explain why this warning is particularly discouraging to me. I have previously successfully nominated approximately 15 Wayspots in my neighborhood, with the goal of improving the local map and giving players more places to explore.

According to the monthly Wayfarer statistics sent to me, Wayspots I nominated have already received 30,863 visits from 1,083 different players. I have attached a screenshot of these statistics as well.

I genuinely enjoy contributing to Wayfarer and seeing these contributions used by so many people. However, receiving an account-level abuse warning over an alleged discrepancy of approximately 11 meters — particularly when I believe that discrepancy can be explained by the difference between the location of the business marker and the exterior mural I actually nominated — makes me extremely reluctant to contribute further.

If a small location disagreement on a genuine object photographed and submitted on-site can result in an abuse warning, I cannot confidently make further nominations without worrying that another minor positioning disagreement could result in another warning or even a temporary suspension of my Wayfarer or game account. In practice, that means I would simply stop submitting new Wayspots despite wanting to continue improving my local area.

I completely understand that Wayspot locations should be accurate and that deliberate location manipulation should be sanctioned. What I am asking is that a distinction be made between deliberate abuse and a good-faith location placement where there may be a small disagreement about the precise position of an object.

I believe the attached maps provide a straightforward explanation for the alleged discrepancy and show why treating this particular case as intentional Wayspot misplacement is inappropriate.

Could a member of the Wayfarer team please review the original nomination and compare the submitted coordinates with the actual exterior location of the shutter mural, rather than the Google Maps business marker for Gamuza?

I am happy to provide the complete nomination photographs, correspondence with the enforcement team, or any additional evidence required.

Thank you.

[salixsorbus]

Welcome to the forum

Without the location coordinates (which are found in the initial submission receipt email below the photos), it is hard to be sure, but it looks like you have nudged the location southwest a little bit to get it over the border of the neighbouring cell, since the actual location is occupied by an existing shutter mural

You may need to provide photos that can matched to streetview images.

[kawin240]

That’s not possible because they actually did pin this on the wrong building:

Passeig del Taulat, 185

You can see it was pinned on the right edge of the grey building, instead of where it actually was, when you compare this to the satellite view

[salixsorbus]

I couldn’t find Gamuza on google maps, so was allowing a possibility it might be across the cell border, but can see now that Gamuza replaces Merello, so there is no evidence that could contradict the aerial and streetview imahes.

@R00tn00bDK The error might be as little is 7m, but it looks deliberate and abusive

[R00tn00bDK]

Thank you — this is actually very helpful, because this is the first time anyone has shown me where the location discrepancy may be.

If the satellite/building comparison shows that I placed the pin several meters onto the neighboring building, then I accept that my placement was inaccurate. I genuinely believed I was placing it on the exterior facade where the mural is located.

However, I want to be absolutely clear that I did not intentionally move the nomination across an S2 cell boundary. I was not paying attention to S2 cells at all when making this nomination.

In fact, at approximately the same time I was also nominating another, separate mural nearby. When placing the two nominations on the map, my concern was simply to represent them as two distinct physical artworks and make clear that these were two different objects rather than duplicate nominations. I was not looking at cell boundaries when doing this.

Until this discussion, the only explanation I had received from the enforcement team was that the discrepancy was approximately 11 meters. Looking at Google Maps, I assumed this could be explained by the business marker being inside the building while the mural was on the exterior shutters.

If the actual discrepancy is around 7–11 meters in the direction shown here, then it was simply my mistake when positioning the pin on the map.

I completely understand why the resulting placement may look suspicious when an S2 overlay is added afterwards. But the fact that an inaccurate pin happened to cross a cell boundary does not mean that I deliberately placed it there for that purpose.

And this is the part that I find particularly discouraging. I have been contributing to Wayfarer in good faith, following the criteria and successfully adding Wayspots to my neighborhood. As I mentioned above, my accepted nominations have already generated more than 30,000 visits from over 1,000 players. I genuinely enjoy contributing and seeing these locations being used by the community.

I absolutely accept that I can make a mistake of several meters when manually positioning a pin, and now that it has been pointed out to me I will obviously be much more careful. What is difficult for me to understand is receiving an account-level abuse warning for such a small, unintentional positioning error despite otherwise contributing in good faith.

The warning also states that further violations could result in suspension of my Wayfarer or game account. That puts me in a very uncomfortable position: how am I supposed to confidently continue contributing if another honest mistake of a few meters could potentially escalate the enforcement against my account?

I do not want to stop contributing to Wayfarer, but right now that feels like the safest option. It is unfortunate that a system intended to encourage people to improve the map can make a regular contributor afraid to submit anything because a minor mistake might be interpreted as deliberate abuse.

I am not asking anyone to pretend that the pin was perfectly accurate. If it was misplaced, I accept the correction. I am only asking that there be a reasonable distinction between an honest positioning mistake and intentional location manipulation.

Thank you again for taking the time to investigate this and for actually showing me where the discrepancy appears to be.

[salixsorbus]

It is hard to distinguish between these two situations:

• a 7m location error that caused a submission to cross over into an empty cell which was accidental

• a 7m location error that caused a submission to cross over into an empty cell which was deliberate

You have not shown that you received an infraction against your account, only that this submission was correctly flagged as abusive. If you have not got a separate warning, you simply need to be more careful about your locations, but have not yet stepped onto the enforcement ladder.

[R00tn00bDK]

Thank you. Unfortunately, I did receive a separate account-level warning because of this nomination — this is the main reason I opened this thread.

I appealed the warning through the official enforcement process. The team confirmed that it concerned this specific Gamuza nomination and said that the issue was an approximately 11-meter discrepancy.

I explained that the placement was not intentional and asked them to reconsider classifying a small positioning error as abuse. After another review, they explicitly refused to reverse the warning.

So yes, unfortunately I have stepped onto the enforcement ladder because of this.

And I think your distinction between an accidental ~7 m error and a deliberate ~7 m error describes the problem perfectly. Looking only at the final coordinates, I understand why the result may look suspicious. But in my case it was accidental, and now that you have shown me the map comparison, I understand where I made the positioning mistake.

My concern is specifically that this accidental error has resulted in an account-level abuse warning, rather than simply a correction/rejection of the inaccurate location. This is what I hope the Wayfarer team can reconsider.

Mod edit to remove personal information

[ScopelyExpAaron]

Hey @R00tn00bDK ,

We stand by our decision. I have sent you a DM with the relevant details. Please check it at your convenience.

Best,

[00witsd]

@R00tn00bDK

how am I supposed to confidently continue contributing if another honest mistake of a few meters could potentially escalate the enforcement against my account?

Just be a little more careful. Make sure you are placing the pin as close as you possibly can to the actual location.

Most of us have been subbing for years without any warnings. They aren’t that common when compared to the sheer number of subs, so providing you are careful, you probably won’t have another issue.

In any case, I believe that any player’s slate is wiped clean after a year of no infractions.