Hi! I am new to these forums and I thought I’d come to y’all with my dilemma. It’s a bit specific and I couldn’t search the specific situation well to find threads for an answer. I’ll try my best to explain this because I can be bad with explaining(sorry it’s long!)
I have a Born Learning sign trail on a trail near me(Born Learning trails are just many spread out signs related to senses, development, interacting with surroundings etc. for children parents etc. they’re placed by the city and are sponsored by companies sometimes). I have photos of a few of the signs if anyone is curious.
Each sign is unique and tackles different senses and they seem to make good waypoints since they are in different parts of the trail, each sign is different and encourage people to take in their surroundings. All of the old signs are waypoints.
The dilemma here is they recently took out the old Born Learning signs and put down new ones. the POIs there now are totally jumbled or the sign doesn’t even have a new counterpart that’s the same words anymore. Some signs still have a newer version with the same words, but are a different color and are at a completely different location than the POI on the map is, so when I try to suggest a new location, I can’t move it to the new one, it’s too far.
Most of the signs there now don’t correlate with the waypoints. There’s one or two I think I can upload a new photo of because they’re the same sign but a new color. But for the rest I’m wondering what to do? Do I report them for being inaccurate or not there and then submit a new waypoint of the current sign? I know it’s going to be a hassle but there’s now more signs than before, but if I submit a new one it would likely be marked as a duplicate if one of the old stops has one with the same words. I wanted to ask for guidance before I do a designated walk where I try to fix this.
Thank you guys!
Hello and welcome @deathwalkingg
What an interesting problem.
The ones that are essentially the same that you mentioned should be able to be updated with a new photo.
It would be interesting to see more information about locations etc.
It may well be a case of remove and resubmit if locations and subject matter are different.
Yeah I was thinking of adding new photos to the ones that have the same worded sign but look otherwise almost the same(though they’re now orange instead of blue). I am unsure how the photo submission system works but I think I’ll dig and look into that before I try and update the area!
I am curious too! I’ve seen people post here and get waypoints moved if the location is too much for us to move by the suggestion option in game, but to do that for multiple waypoints and update all of them in appearance and titles I am unsure I could do here(since it’s a lot lol) and wanted to check first if I need to get them all down first. Hate having to report waypoints though especially since they’re not abusive, just out of date. Hoping I can get an answer at some point because ive been thinking about it for a while and recently gotten heavy into reviewing and submitting nominations so I feel like it’s finally my time to try and fix it!
Photos are really easy. It’s not unusual for something to visually change - a building gets a new coat of paint for example.
You simply go to the wayspot take a photo check it and lightly edit it if needed.
Then on the photo disc top right click on >
That brings up the details. Top right again click on the 3 dots
This shows all the edits you can do.
Choose add photo and upload existing.
Once approved on the details screen bottom right click on the photo and give a thumbs up to the new one
Forgot but I also meant to ask this(for anyone to answer) before I sleep because I will probably forget if I don’t ask now!
Would there be consequences for the original submitter of the waypoints if the suggested course of action is reporting to get them off the map? I don’t want them to have any issues since their submissions weren’t bad they’re just no longer accurate at no fault of theirs. Having many stops reported and taken down at once just sounds like it could be scary for someone’s account and I want to ask well before I do anything! I don’t want them to be banned because the city decided to change up the signs :')
Thank you so much! It’s the thumbs up aspect of photos that I didn’t understand and didn’t know how to get to. The park in my neighborhood has an outdated photo so I think I will test this before I work on this trail so I have an familiar with this feature first! Also forgot to say but thank you for the welcome!
If they are totally different
New location, new subject matter then it will best to remove - you will need photos to show they are no longer there.
You can use help chat.
At the same time you can start to do new submissions.
That’s a good idea.
Depending on the number of photo votes it already has you might need more votes.
Voting can be done via the postcards you get from gifts. Friends can decide if they like the up dated photo and vote.
Sorry if it’s a dumb question since I’m not familiar with help chat, do I use help chat to get them removed? I think I looked at it earlier to see if I could actually ask this there but the options for help chats seemed to mainly be about raid help, bugs, and abuse etc rather than waypoint help, though I could be missing something since I am not familiar with it. Does a chat option regarding the report open like a ticket for example? I’ll try to look at help chat after posting this reply and see if I missed something in the new conversation reason lists
If you have a question, it’s daft if you don’t ask it 
And there are a lot of questions to ask .
There are several ways to remove.
The worst option ( in my opinion ) is the in game one.
This page is a good starting point
Ignore all the stuff about being the property owner etc but you can use the property owner form. This allows you to add the evidence such as photos or a weblink to demonstrate it has gone and you should be able to do the sequence in one go. You will get an email confirmation. Ignore the first response which is an auto response, a human will respond.
Alternatively you can use wayfarer help chat
The option there is for location movements - so any that have just moved you can use that. You can ignore most of the wording and work through to attach a document with photos etc. you get a ticket number but no email to track.
If I were doing a big clean up project like this, I would probably make a video walking the trail and talking through how the signs have changed, probably standing at some that have changed and showing what’s in PGO. Then I would also take photos at each of the signs with GPS enabled on my phone.
Then I’d write either a document or a spreadsheet to catalog:
- What needs to be removed
- what needs to be moved
- What needs to be updated
I would use the Owner form mentioned above to provide links to all that documentation and upload all the photos. (Make sure all the support photos have obvious file names.)
The video thing is a really good idea I appreciate this a lot! I plan to walk it and try to fix it with my partner so I should be able to video the trail and show what it says in Pokemon go on his phone. I assume it gives you a place where I can link a spreadsheet/document in the process of that form? I haven’t done it before!
So what I do for videos is to open the camera app but don’t hit record. Then open PGO in the background. Then do a screen capture video with sound from your mic. (This is all natively possible in Android, and I’d guess it is possible on iPhone.) Then you walk around showing the outside world through the camera app and bring PGO up when you want to show what it looks like in-game.
It’s much cleaner if those are the only 2 things you have open. And remember that whatever image is your phone wallpaper might be visible when you switch apps around, as well as any app icons on your main screen.
Gotcha! With that submission form, so it doesn’t matter if I’m not the property owner, I can still use it? and do I submit each inaccurate waypoint report through that form or could I make one report to encompass all of them as long as each stop is in a spreadsheet(if I can link one in the report) and they’re all shown in the video so they can see which ones aren’t accurate? I appreciate your help I’ll definitely do the screen record thing so it’s more trustworthy looking than panning from the trail to my partners phone on camera
I would just do one report. No, you do not have to be the property owner.
Thank you so much! You and Eli have been very helpful! I’m going to try and get this at least started this week and hopefully I can update in this thread with it and consider it solved and explain how it went hopefully anyone else with the same problem can see what to do. I appreciate the help from you guys!
@elijustrying mentioned this earlier, but when you submit this report, even though you have checked that you are not the property owner, the automated acknowledgement email may ask for your credentials. ignore this email. a human will reply.
when i have made the mistake of replying to the acknowledgement email, the report went nowhere.
Thank you for this! Without this knowledge I probably would have replied on instinct :') i appreciate the help a ton!
I did my trail rounds today and got all the info. Now I’m stuck because the report submission won’t go through! it’s been stuck on the loading submit button for half an hour. I tried it before and it also got stuck but thought it was a bug so I tried again. The reasons for removal are also not that similar to the situation(closest I can get is one about being inaccessible due to body of water, because one of the stops is inaccessible because someone put it deep in the woods).
Would it be better to just make a post with all the information here and hope a Niantic official is able to help?
When I am submitting a wayspot and pressing the Upload Later button does nothing (I don’t use the Upload Now option, but it’s probably the same behaviour in this regard), I back out and retry with placeholder text, which solves the problem. This could be coincidental, but I feel that there is some unidentified and unidentifiable text which is blocking the upload. It’s much easier to edit this in later.
