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TL;DR: Online game company Niantic Labs uses OSM for a game, restricts certain features to beaches and other natural and artificial elements. Then, Niantic La
by randunel 2y ago
TL;DR:
Online game company Niantic Labs uses OSM for a game, restricts certain features to beaches and other natural and artificial elements.
Then, Niantic Labs users edit OSM to add fake natural formations to game the system. Beaches and parks are added to cities where they don't exist.
OSM community tries to tackle the phenomenon by guiding users to correctly edit map features before reporting them.
- vintermann 2y agoI remember in Ingress a few people managed to convince Niantic that their garden gnome was a landmark statue.
- makeitdouble 2y agoIt was almost a requirement to hit certain achievements. Ingress is/was a wild game, with an avid community but also crazy chalenges, like keeping control of a portal every single day for a full year.
- eythian 2y ago"Guardian" no longer exists, as it was causing (slightly more) toxic play. It was retired in 2018. Very annoyingly, when I was just a few days away from getting the maximum of 150 days.
- makeitdouble 2y agoThanks for the correction, yes Guardian was "only" 150 consecutive days. I mixed it up with Sojourner which is 360 days, but has no location requirement.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y agoAnalogy: this is like editing Wikipedia articles to add fictional data, because you play a game that consumes that Wikipedia data and the fiction benefits you in the game. Wikipedia calls this "Vandalism", and it's definitely true that the downside in general far outweighs the benefit to the person making the map edit. Externalities and mis-aligned incentives.
- InsertUser 2y agoIt's called vandalism on OpenStreetMap too. New users often make mistakes though and some Pokemon Go users might become more productive when they realise the map is used for other things too so a bit of guidance can be useful as the changes get reverted.