I understand your opinion, and there are points I agree with. It is true that Wayfarer was avoided due to excessively strict penalties. However, I will say just one thing. We who participate in Wayfarer are also members of the Pokémon GO community. That is your opinion, not the “consensus of general players.”
Too many people use this excuse and abuse the system but pretend to be innocent
After about a one year period of not much reviewing, I’ve recently increased my volumes of reviews, and I’m sort of shocked at the decline in quality of submissions, along with a definite rise in fake nominations. People who submit clearly fake nominations need to be strongly punished, including a ban on their pogo account. And while they are not fake, I’m also seeing a dramatic increase of crappy points of interest appear in the game that clearly don’t meet eligibility criteria. So this isn’t just a submission problem – reviewers are the problem as well. This has to be addressed with appropriate sanctions that stop this behavior or it’s just going to continue to get worse.
This is so true! I keep repeating to staff that not removing Wayspots that should not have been submitted or accepted in the first place is de facto confirmation to the majority of Pokemon Go players that these are good Wayspots. Anywhere you see one memorial bench accepted, you soon see every memorial bench accepted. Anywhere you see one neighborhood sign accepted, you soon see a nearby filled with neighborhood signs. Anywhere you find one disc golf hole accepted, you soon see the whole course accepted - unless someone aware of criteria reports it first. At least those they will remove. And this applies to location as well: if other Wayspots are live there, it must be an eligible location.
No matter how much staff or other regulars here say that each decision is unique and only applies to that situation, that is not how the majority of submitters and reviewers think. If they see similar in game, they submit and accept it.
I would only agree with the sentiment that more accurate feedback is required but I can not accept that the way to fix this is to rip away any threat that was there. The fix would have been to improve the feedback.
I will repeat that “nobody is cheating at Wayfarer” they are “cheating at Pokemon Go (or other game) using Wayfarer”. For this reason the threat to the game accounts is perfectly acceptable.
They seems to be some that are using the fact that some people have got suspensions that was later rescinded as evidence that the system was wrong. Nobody apart from Staff will know the numbers but my guess would be the ones found to be incorrect or why the nominator has shown that the error was an actual mistake would be a very small percentage.
I would have totally agreed with a 2 layer system (maybe 3).
Minor infractions: (1st offence of mis-placement or 3rd party image) are dealt with Wayfarer Only.
Major infractions: Repeat offenders = affect all accounts.
Abuse: Fake / AI nominations straight to suspensions affecting all accounts.
absolutely this!!!
(this is assuming the appeal process will remain in place so that the submitter gets to provide evidence that it does exist if something is incorrectly flagged, which doesn’t happen often, but occasionally has)
That would hurt a lot of innocent players that did nothing wrong, hardly ideal. Triggering a review of waypoints submitted by someone that’s abused the system I could see an argument for, but that’d also be a lot more work for the wayfarer team. Aren’t they already swamped?
In any case, punishments should be directed at those who are abusing the system, whether that’s submitting fake POI’s or maliciously reporting legit ones. Communities already suffer from people doing the latter & from real life changes that lead to waypoint removals. Let’s not make that even worse.
Hi, my Pokémon go account was also banned and I also submitted an appeal 3 days ago after seeing this reply but there has been no appeal submitted email or any other reply, so should i wait for a rely or submit another appeal?
Staff here can only help with the wayfarer side of things. I would guess that there is a huge wave of previously banned players making requests right now, so you might have to wait a while (plus, it’s the weekend).
By this time it should be caused by in-game activity. You should contact Pokemon GO support team instead.
EDIT: didn’t know that any previously banned accounts because of Wayfarer ban can appeal the ban…, although that mean they would stay banned in Wayfarer, right?
this explains
I totally agree, with the removal of the only deterrent to Abuse this was the only way I could see where there was a deterrent but everything remained within Wayfarer.
Hey @HAVERSS02 ,
If you have already appealed your suspension, please be patient and the team will review your appeal. Thanks,
What next?
My view is that although this change has been a shock to the system ( articulated very well by contributors to this topic) we need to move forward and take the opportunity to look at this system in an holistic way. I don’t think it is productive to focus on the sanctions part in isolation.
Wayfinders submit and review to add data to the map, and report inaccurate data for change or removal, to help curate the map. In my view all 3 of these elements need a better, supportive framework, in terms of systems, education and because unfortunately it is needed, enforcement.
Without the bite of affecting the game accounts, the wayfarer system as a whole needs to work well. The sanctions available have changed, and in my view there is very little bite in threatening a wayfarer account - there is the possibility to adjust your privileges through the rating and to remove access for periods of time. These may matter to long term wayfinders but I doubt they matter to new people.
Education and a cycle of improvement should help deliver good, compliant participation Encouragement and reward for good behaviours - more carrots please 
Which optimistically should mean less poor and bad behaviours and hopefully less need for any use of the sticks.
Why not have a goal to have less enforcement actioned because things are better overall 
.
A fundamentally different ethos? Naive? 
maybe?
I hope not, just optimistic and trying to think outside of the box.
Let me wander slightly off topic to give a flavour of what I mean …..
Submitting
From my experience of engaging with wayfinders over the years on this forum, a large number have the intention to only submit a handful of wayspots - to place an order for a pokestop to be delivered.
I think an entry level wayfinder (Novice) should have better scaffolding around them to support those first few submissions.
For example: Perhaps there should be a more explicit, guided process in submitting as part of being a Novice. There are ways to make a submitter engage with the understanding and process and drive home that submitting is not transactional. That there are actions and consequences. An educative approach to submitting aiming to avoid sanctioning someone who is learning the ropes.
Improving the system framework
A growing problem in the fakery category has been the use of AI. Repeatedly there are points made on this forum along the lines of “why does the system not pick this up?”
The system needs to pick this up.
Stop the flow of these unacceptable and identifiable nominations entering the queue.
This can then feed back to the submitter for education and when appropriate enforcement.
It should not be on reviewers to have the stressful task to pick this type of fake up.
Improvements in reviewing
We should expect a reviewer to follow guidelines. There are judgement calls, grey areas, so it is not straightforward. There is a need for a framework to support improvements in reviewer behaviours with education to address instances of repeatedly getting things wrong.
Reporting
This appears to be an activity that has grown without a clear direction - it is not even identified as an activity on the front page of wayfarer. I perceive that enabling it via the map has seen a growth in this activity.
It should be a simple and effective process for the wayfinder. Having reported, it is up to the Wayfarer Team to determine intent and if action is appropriate- Education or enforcement to the submitter and if appropriate education back to the reviewers.
Reporting should involve that same cycle of feedback and improvement of their wayfinder experience and enable tracking and self review. There also needs to be safeguards of education and enforcement, for those wayfinders exhibiting poor reporting behaviours.
Wayfarer is a community based activity. It needs to be enabled by a system providing support and opportunity to learn, amend ways and to reform behaviour and when appropriate protection through sanctions.
Sorry I have rambled on so long ( bad habit, I talk too much 
) but I want to illustrate how the removal of the game sanctions opens up the opportunity to reshape and hopefully improve, deeper change. We should be aiming to create a wayfarer where people are not frightened to try, get the taste, like what they eat, want more and want to care more that the data is accurate.
I understand what you are trying to state but that would have been great if the announcement was…
“We are making improvements to the education of Wayfarers that make mistakes with nominations, introducing methods to stop “honest mistakes” being treated as Abuse and improving staff knowledge, for these reasons we are removing the sanctions link from PoGo”
what we got was…
“We are removing the link from PoGo, we are not going to state why, just deal with it”.
Not likely as a direct link to the change but linked to the system not dealing with abuse correctly I have 2 posts on the forum where removed wayspots have re-appeared on the map. 
I think this one works.
This is really an opportunity to implement some new zero tolerance ban categories, such as submitting AI images. A guided process for beginning Wayfarer users really would be helpful. The complaint in many of the comments made here is that there is already a flood of low quality submissions, even before the decoupling of PGO accounts. But that very fact shows that the deterrence was not working. I don’t understand why PGO accounts ever needed to be banned, except out of a misplaced desire to be punitive. How does not banning game accounts make it more likely that someone returns to Wayfarer, where they have also been banned?
It isn’t a desire to punish, it is a desire to make submitters think twice before committing abuse. It was a preventative deterrence factor that is gone now.
I would be thrilled if there were no abuse to punish. If this move gets abuse out of the system I will be thrilled. But I do not think it will.
As Tintino mentioned above, the reason why Pokémon GO accounts had to be suspended is because players could continue submitting candidates from the Pokémon GO app even if their Wayfarer account was banned. My memory is a bit hazy, but I believe someone from the Wayfarer team staff or an ambassador mentioned a similar reason when this ladder policy was first launched.
This would make sense but the announcement states that Wayfarer suspensions would include edits through PoGo.
This sounds like they are saying that banning all accounts was not what they wanted and that it was not seen as a good idea but they had to do it with nominations being in PoGo and it was not possible to suspend the wayfarer sections in PoGo without suspending PoGo itself.
Now they are doing just that…