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Niantic state trails are a great place to exercise - the trail markers are placeholders for the trail - placeholders do not have to be distinctive if the trail section is distinctive.

A month after this was originally posted, a Ingress agent died kayaking home from a tiny island wayspot. Niantic hasn't been very supportive of tiny island wayspots since then. Don't get your hopes up.

Hi @Horusguard-PGO

I think that you received rejections with reasons like a flowerbucket is the result of Aarons statement. Some (or most but quiet) reviewer wanted to follow his giving clarification but there is no thumb area to say "mass product". So they try, in hope to do the best in this case, to use one of these categories to reject it.

Let's also not forget Niantic's financial incentive to be against trail markers.

Less Pokestops means less free items, which means people will be forced to buy items for Pokecoins or just not have items.

Less Pokestops also means less gyms, which means less free Pokecoins given away, which means people will have to buy them for actual money. Less gyms also means fewer raid opportunities, which means people would have to resort to the pricier remote raid passes to get their raiding done.

Less Pokestops also means less routes, which tend to give valuable items like incubators and lure modules upon completion.

In certain areas (mostly rural and suburban ones), trail markers account for A LOT of the Pokestops and gyms.

This also explains why Niantic is so determined to keep the trail markers out. If you submit them again, you'll get banned. I submitted like 40 of the ones that were removed, and after a few of them were approved by the reviewers, the rest went into Niantic Voting and were rejected. The approved ones were removed again, and I was banned for 30 days.

Niantic is certainly no stranger to making anti-consumer moves. Remember when they wanted to roll back all the game improvements they made during COVID because they made the game too enjoyable to play? Or when they doubled the price of remote raid passes and implemented the remote raid limit? Or when they tried to halve the range of the interaction circle until the immense backlash forced them to change it back?

This is just their latest attempt to stick it to their playerbase.

there's no probably about it - trails are great places to exercise according to both Niantic and most reviewers:

The trail markers are placeholders for the trail because Niantic want a physical object:

If anyone wants to get on board and start a revolution? We don’t HAVE to vote by these so-called “criteria” or “guidelines” or whatever they call it. I’ve been saying it for years. They have given the power to us, the community, to set our own guidelines. They didn’t want it anymore. It was too much work for them. So they gave it to US, to do, for FREE. Yet here we are, still chained to their ideas of what is and is not acceptable. Let’s break free of the old ideas, the old criteria, the old AMAs, the old, obscure forum posts! Who’s with me?!?

I have always received responses on my tickets. I doubt this is an issue with Niantic.

The current forums already have at least two ways to contact with the admin: tagging them and using the Flag button. I expect that the new forums will have similar options.

What's the problem with these forums (that will happen again in the new ones)?

That people think that their problem is the most urgent one and must be addressed ASAP. No wait, just now!

So the admins are overloaded by all the notifications and can't process the posts properly

This might change if the ambassadors are able to properly moderate in the forum, but they always have limited powers.