Sports gyms next to school grounds

Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited March 2021 in Criteria Clarifications

I'd like to know, what Niantic thinks about borderline cases like this:

In small towns here in Germany it is usual, that the town only has one sports gym. So sports clubs and similar instances may share the gyms usage with a school. The school uses it in the morning, sportsclubs in the afternoon and evening. So now there is the big difference, whether such a gym is on school ground, or not. As long as it is for sure on school ground, it is ineligible because of K12 ..... but what about gyms, that aren't part of the school ground, although the school is in the neighborhood?


So here an example:

Red marking is a primary school and its schoolground.

Orange marked is the sports gym complex.

The orange arrow depicts the main entrance of the gym, that can easily be identified because of the glass roof of the entrance hall. The red arrow is how the teachers and pupils can access the gym complex through a back entrance (that is a bit hard to see, because of the roof greeneryof teh conjunction between the two gym parts.

Further I want to add a few more details:

The school is only allowed to use the northern part of the gym, that contains a classic sports gym. The southern gym part is full of fitness equipment, that is owned by the local sports club (or maybe the town itself, dunno). Further I could present proofs, that the gym (especially the northern part) is also used as:

  • multiple uses of the local sports clubs (Volleyball, Aerobic, .....)
  • regularly used as polling station
  • location of town council meetings, when the city council has a lot of guests (and also during Corona to ensure the social distancing)
  • place for animal breeding exhibitions (especially poultry farming)

Now a few pictures:

The main entrance (and in my oppinion a good portal picture)

That's what i tried to use as supporting picture. It shall prove that the gyms entrance is accessible without passing any kind of iron fence. gate or something like that, that is usually surrounding a school. Please compare it with the sat view - there is no kind of barrier to enter this area. The buildng to my left here with the yellow wall is a residential care home for old people. south of me (to my right here) is the head quarter building of a local nursing service (that's why the lots of white cars are there). So the area in front of the main entrance is kind of parking area for the gym, parking area for the residential care home, and it is obviously public accessible and for sure not school ground.

So I'd like to ask - is a wayspot somewhere around the main entrance of this gym (so away from the school) eligible?

Post edited by Raachermannl-ING on

Comments

  • Jtronmoore-PGOJtronmoore-PGO Posts: 1,581 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2021

    I would say in a case like this the gym is eligible it isn’t apart of the school grounds and isnt meant for only k-12 students as its used by the community. You also have clear distinctive separate entrances as well to both. In the nomination I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way to mention the school uses it at all. Would focus on it being the community gatheringspot and gym

    if it came across my screen I would accept it

  • Maxyme99-PGOMaxyme99-PGO Posts: 954 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I also think it should be accepted, especially if it has separate entrance and fence. I would also not mention that school might use it, I would try to prove to reviewers it's really not a part of school ground and it's just close to it - I think this might be the main issue here, because some people will see school location on map just near it and will reject it as part of school.

    I think it shouldn't be difficult to get it accepted, because it is eligible and you can easy prove it's not a part of school (main entrance of it is from other side of the road (the even have them on different roads), you have different entrances, there's a fence etc. If you can take a photo with some plaque with this gym name it would be even easier, but even if you can't I think it should be accepted - maybe not at first try (if you get reviewers who reject everything when they see school nearby), but it will be accepted for sure.

  • Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭

    There is no real plaque, that can be seen from outside, but there is a big headstone right in the entrance hall, that says "Mehrzweckhalle <town>" (Mehrzweckhalle = multi-purpose-hall). It's somewhere there, but if I remember right .... it's black and so impossible to appear on a photo from outside xD

    Further there are a few guidance signs of the town, that mention the Mehrzweckhalle. Those with white background are official buildings (1st one is the townhall (=Rathaus), 2nd one the multi-purpose-gym, 3rd one the soccer field) of the town. Right under the white ones are few green ones for local businesses, and then there are brown signs, that are local cultural sights like the church and the castle. So that may be an additional hint, that this gym is not part of the school, when it appears between the town administrations property on this sign:

    So thx for this idea to use something with the word Mehrzweckhalle on it. So I guess I'll do it as part of a collage of 3 pictures as supporting photo. I only need to acquire a picture of the headstone in there xD

  • Maxyme99-PGOMaxyme99-PGO Posts: 954 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think it's a good idea if you can add collage as a support photo, it really might help here :)

    Good luck with your nomination, I hope it will be accepted soon :)

  • Raachermannl-INGRaachermannl-ING Posts: 1,070 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The soon is the problem. 😅

    It's in a dry voting zone. The waiting time is already roughly a year, but since April '20 I got nearly no answer without upgrade, although I have ~100 candidates in queue in the dead voting area for months and even years xD

    So my plan is to prepare this one to be able to be accepted even with upgrade. (Don't know whether this phenomenon is a general problem or only a central european thing because of the lots of different languages: we observe here, that upgrades decrease the chances for difficult candidates for being accepted harshly. So in general we are only upgrading ****-proof candidates like churches or world war memorials)

  • Oakes1923-PGOOakes1923-PGO Posts: 419 ✭✭✭✭

    (Don't know whether this phenomenon is a general problem or only a central european thing because of the lots of different languages: we observe here, that upgrades decrease the chances for difficult candidates for being accepted harshly. So in general we are only upgrading ****-proof candidates like churches or world war memorials)

    It's an everywhere problem. According to the most recent AMA it sounds like Niantic is looking for other ways to reward reviewers as upgrades tend to lead to instant rejection, with the few notable exceptions.

    As for this submission I would vote yes assuming you made it clear that it is not on the school grounds. Unfortunately I also think some reviewers will see you writing specifically its not on school ground and assume it is and you are lying and trying to pull a fast one and reject it anyways, especially if you upgrade. Unfortunately its a razors edge sometimes. Best of luck.

  • Maxyme99-PGOMaxyme99-PGO Posts: 954 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't live in Germany, but in your neighbour country and as for now my place isn't in that bad dry voting zone (I also must wait much longer when I don't use upgrade, but it's not that long like in your case), but still upgrades are something I need to use often 😅

    I also have problems with using upgrade or things that aren't 5* candidates, as they're almost everytime rejected with upgrade. Well, I even got 3 playground nomination rejected when they were upgraded (and they were visible on streetview, map view, photos were good etc.), they were accepted when I didn't upgrade them. Now I'm afraid to use upgrade on anything that isn't church or historic monument/building now, because they might be rejected only because it was upgraded xD So I think it's a big problem of our region. I also think it might be about language differences, because I think we have pretty much similiar things nominated, so it's hard to reject them because of some culture difference ground (because we have pretty similiar culture here) or something, at least for me ;)

    So, I hope your nomination will be accepted on upgrade without any problem :)

  • Pennry-PGOPennry-PGO Posts: 41 ✭✭

    I look for a couple things when reviewing points that are close to schools. First thing I look for is signage. Does the sign match the title/description? Are there any sign for the school on it or is it between the school sign and the school structures? Next is the map. How does the area look on the map. Around my location there are a lot of parks connected to schools, so we see a lot of the park's amenities submitted. Here's where the map really helps. Most of the time, I find (around here) the school is mapped separately and the park is marked the green with it's own park label. This tells me that the park is indeed separate from the school and I can consider the point submitted. In this topic's case, I would be looking at how the structures are labeled on the map and if these labels match what's in the title/description/supporting info (and in this case, that makes them all easily translated so there's no "take my word for it").

  • Xmacke7x-INGXmacke7x-ING Posts: 220 ✭✭✭✭

    The question I would ask with those nominations is, if you have to enter school grounds to reach the gym. In general if the entrance is open to the public without entering school grounds it should be eligible. This seems to be the case here.

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