Best Of
Re: Gym removed one week after acceptance
I'm surprised that nomination got past the reviewers in the first place, given that in Australia most colleges are high schools and it even says high school in the description. I reckon someone submitted an invalid wayspots report under K-12 to get it removed once they saw it.
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
Once again I find myself extremely disappointed with miscommunication and poor decision making from wayfarer's management. How do you guys miss the plot of your own product so badly? Wayfarer is supposed to be here to allow us, the community, to highlight places of interest that others might find worthwhile to visit. And seeing as how us, the players across our respective communities, towns, nations, etc, have a better understanding of local culture and what's around, shouldn't it be us who makes the decisions on how good a nomination is? Niantic's job here is to give us a basic framework as a guide to start from. Things like the thee main eligibility criteria, the ineligibility criteria, and light guidance on what sorts of things to highlight in waypoint titles, descriptions, and supporting info, are what the wayfarer team should be focused on as far as determining what is eligible and what is not.
This however, is not it. This is an arbitrary limit, that the majority of the community clearly does not like, and which is unrelated to the main criteria...that niantic itself gave us. Trail markers aren't eligible "because they have the name and other information about the trail" on them, they're eligible because they represent the actual trail. Surely I do not need to explain how trails inherently encourage both exercise and exploration. Arguably, they also encourage social gatherings to at least some degree. Therefore, as long as both the trail and the trail marker are permanent, the marker is distinct enough that it's not hard to miss, and nothing about that portion of the trail itself would imply being ineligible (such as traveling through the grounds of a K-12 school for instance) it should be considered eligible. Full stop.
The one point you make that I can give some credit for, is that it is better when submitters include additional info about the trail, sights that can be seen from it, places the trail can take you to, etc. Even the most visually impressive trail markers might make for a "meh" waypoint if given a bland description like "Trail marker on X trail." Meanwhile a marker with just a letter / number designation that references where on the trail you are & the name in abbreviated form can be an excellent waypoint given a more detailed description such as, "Marker at the North entrance to X trail that connects parks A, B, and C through [city name.] The trail's [X distance length] is enjoyed by many for it's forest scenery and shade on hot days."
If the wayfarer team is just wanting to encourage more detailed info being included with submissions to increase quality, then that is reasonable enough. But if the goal is to limit which markers can be accepted based on things like how visually appealing they are, how much info they have written down, and/or other factors that are frankly irrelevant to eligibility in these cases, then it is going to create a crisis, both in wayfarer itself and the games that use it.
Please, do better. The people who have spent countless hours and given immense efforts to improve the game boards deserve better.
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
Perhaps Niantic needed to demonstrate that users are actively engaged on this forum?
An executive proposed cutting back to a bargain-level service-level, since participation appeared to be dipping.
'Aaron' sprang into action with a quick-witted application of Chat-GPT to produce a quick and immediate spike in activity and saved the day. Thanks, Aaron!
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
Since leaving a reaction felt insufficient, I'll leave a bit of anecdata here, as well. I worked on passing state park trail markers in a local area for a while since there are relatively few Wayspots deep in the forest (those were mostly historical and/or educational signs); they were previously mostly clustered in the parking lots at the trailheads. I could reliably stay in the one gym towards the "back" of the trail system for a month or two. After getting enough trail markers published to the game board to tempt other game users to venture further afield, I usually only can stay in that original gym for a couple days, and I'm evicted by a much more varied collection of usernames than before.
To me, that sounds like those relatively boring trail markers are demonstrating that they promote exercise and exploration, providing little digital breadcrumbs to make the journey in the woods of similar worth as walking the sidewalk next to a busy street that happens to have a few churches and a couple of "local hotspot" cafes along it. Trail marker Wayspots provide a valuable resource in wilder areas for users of the games to have a worthwhile experience, providing more users an equitable space to interact with the game boards outside of the built-up urban and suburban cores.
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
The trail markers are a mess right now with little to no communication from Niantic on the matter. My husband also got the same 'educational email' from Niantic and it was concerning a trail marker. He had nominated four of them that were long approved and they all disappeared. I went looking for clarity in the appropriate forums weeks ago now but it was ignored. I have noticed a trend among people asking for clarity or them to be reinstated but most of the appeals from the Netherlands are being overlooked and ignored.
I know communication is not Niantic's best area but it would be nice if some clarity comes soon. Trail markers meet the criteria and tick the boxes of the three pillars of their vision for the game and people are nominating in good faith that they are doing something that meets criteria only to get a warning or 'educational email' or even a 30 day ban later on is confusing. If the criteria has changed it needs to be clarified. Something is going on with trail markers but it seems so silly not to have any updated information on the criteria. If they are no longer or allowed or only specific ones or in specific places they need to update this. Until then people are either going to continue to nominate them not knowing they are risking their account or they are going to give up nominating anything all together, like my family has. We won't risk it and that is a shame that many players are now so scared they are not going to nominate or vote on anything anymore and I would think that would go against what Niantic wants. A bit of clarity and communication is all the community is asking for. Until they do, I am not bothering with voting and nominating anymore.
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
Wayfarer emails have been unclear since December 2021. It's fair to conclude that this is company policy. Save money by never proofreading or testing. What Niantic says to Wayfarers is throwaway, unimportant, untruthful. It's their philosophy. A way of doing business.
- Your edits and photos are on your Contribution page {wink}.
- You can appeal rejected photos {wink}.
- Your appeal will be reviewed in the order it was received {wink}.
- Photo and edit "submissions take approximately 30 minutes to sync with your management page" {wink}.
- When you submit a new portal, it can immediately be seen on the Showcase page https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/new/{wink}.
- Your rejected nomination could take 48 hours to appear {wink}.
- Your appeal was submitted on the same day the nomination itself was submitted.
- Photo submissions email subject starts "Thanks! Niantic Wayspot Photo received". Photo results emails subject starts "Niantic Wayspot media submission decided".
- Duplicate nominations get the same email as rejected.
- "Educational" emails use the word "warning". {shrug}
At least the "educational warning" is pretty new - a breath of fresh air, right?
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
Hello! As ambassador we are aware about this situation and we will try to flag it. Thank you for your patience!
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
@RyuuVanDraco-PGO thats very well said.
One of my major points of critique is always that Niantic tries to have people vote universally. Its just impossible. People in the city can submit all sorts of fancy things, here in the countryside its a different world.
They never walked a wandering trail in their life. I would love to welcome Tintino and Team here in my Home, and show them how awesome, adventurous, clean and surprising our wandering trails are.
Thats where the real pokemon adventure is, not in a walmart parking lot.
Re: Trailmarkers - warning received
You kinda made me laugh a little. When we lived under a dictatorship and in the following years, teachers also had a very... shall we say interesting approach to education, that also ended in punishment. And as with Niantic's emails, it ended up causing more harm than good for the students who were "educated".
Perhaps Niantic might want to hire someone who actually understands about the subject one of these days instead of relying on unqualified hands, AI and outsourced lowest wage employees fresh out of school. That and someone who actually writes English to write and proof those horrendous emails, notices and blog posts they often churn. I swear illiterate influencers on Instagram have a more professional approach to PR than Niantic. Never before have I seen such a large company be so atrocious at communicating. It feels like something straight out of Terry Gillian's Brazil. Nothing makes sense and nobody asks themselves why.
Trailmarkers - warning received
Hi,
I’m getting more and more confused about trailmarkers and when they are (not) eligible.
Based on what I was understanding for when something is eligible I nominated a trailmarker last year(august 2023). It got rejected by the community, but after appeal it was approved. I nominated another trail marker, and the same thing happened. Rejected by the community but approved by Niantic after appeal. So I thought I did good. I mean Niantic said it was good.
I haven’t nominated more than these two. (Nominations before these two were in 2020).
Today I received an email that I was submitting things that aren’t eligible. And as example my second trail marker. The first marker is still in the game.
I’m a bit confused about the email stating submissions while only one is removed (don’t know about the one’s from 2020, but only 1 or 2 were accepted back then).
It also feels confusing that something that is accepted after appeal, so checked by Niantic, is now resulting in me getting a warning.
And from my understanding trail markers are a great place to explore and therefore eligible. The marker is a sticker with the coloring and logo from the trail. So it is something recognizable from being from that trail.
I also replied to the e-mail I received. But since I don’t know if I will get an response, I decided to also post here because I’m just really confused about this and really need some clarification.