Inaccurate edits resulting from Pokemon Go

Background

There have been a great increase in the amount of Pokemon Go related edits that is adding/making up inaccurate data to influence Pokemon Go spawns. This is not desired behaviour for OpenStreetMap because the inaccurate edits affects applications beyond Pokemon Go which utilises the same data source.

Examples

  • Taxi applications
  • Map/Data repositories

By making up incorrect data, you are affecting all other applications depending on the same set of data.

Identifying Bad Data

You may use Overpass Turbo (source: Silph Road, Reddit) to query and quickly root out inaccuracies. These are typically one of the following…

  • Parks that cover the entire neighbourhood, or overlaps buildings (influences EX-Raid eligibility, spawn)
  • Paths that are drawn despite path not existing (increases spawn)
  • Incorrectly tagging buildings/landuse

For Pokemon Go users
Please refer to Tips & Tricks at the following post on how to contribute to OpenStreetMap correctly. The general rule is to map what’s on the ground, and not create fake locations/POIs.
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/12/30/tips-pokemon-go/