Generic Business Nominations
MickiTheStrange-ING
Posts: 2 ✭✭
Hello all.
I am from Ingress, but recently I am seeing a massive increase in nominations that are just signs of businesses, or signs that show all the businesses' names in a given **** mall, or commercial area. Then when I am doing reviews, and get to the portion where the person is adding comments for why they think their nomination should be accepted, I see statements such as "would really like more pokestops" or "we could use more pokestops in my town" and it immediately makes me want to ****.
I understand that smaller towns/rural areas may wish to have more portals/pokestop- but it is getting to the point of ridiculousness.
I am okay with people nominating their local eateries/ice cream shops/unique to their town business or historical building- that would be neat. But some of these nominations seem like poorly veiled attempts to get MANY MOAR POKESTOPS!!! and some are getting approved, and they're just generic businesses and/or chains. Like I literally just rejected one for being a wooden sign for a corporation listing all the local tv stations they own, that's located nowhere near people walking, along a road that literally is only driveable (no sidewalks, no parks, no residential, no nothing nearby.)
And the sign itself was not a permenant fixture... some of these nominations, like the one I've recently rejected are clearly attempts to get a portal/pokestop that people can hack as they drive by in a car.
Am I the only one that feels this way?
How could we get a suggestion to Niantic to add a criteria "generic business" category added? I feel like a lot of these poor quality nominations could be clearly rejected if Niantic had a "generic" category that would allow rejection of poor quality/attempts to get MOAR POIs accetpted.
Comments
Welcome to Wayfarer 2021, where 99% of everything is need moar stopz, because Nia removed the generic business rejection, and now people submit whatever shop/business is closest to where they live thinking they get a free stop out of it, I just reject them all pretty much, they aren't "sold" properly, they aren't significant or interesting. People submit a coffee shop and say "great place to meet/social"... but EVERY coffee shop is a place to meet and be social, so that argument isn't valid, that doesn't mean they meet criteria for me.
I know what you mean, but rejection for generic buisness was recently removed because it was used too much and because popular local restaurants/cafes/unique shops become eligible recently. Adding "generic buisness" rejection again will only make some reviewers reject every buisness nominated, even the one that are eligible. As getting any restaurant/cafe accepted is pretty hard now, adding something that would allow to reject them even easier isn't the best idea now.
I also see some not eligible buisness nominations while I review (and many, many fake/bad other nominations too), but I just reject them as "other rejections criteria", submitters in mail will get information that they nomination doesn't met acceptance criteria.
I know seeing some bad nomination can be frustrating, but Niantic stuff mentioned that they're now working on improving Wayfarer - we still didn't get any more information about it, but I hope we will get some sooner than later (I don't have expectation for getting it very soon, but maybe we get something this year).
So, until system won't be changed, it's not much we can do apart for rejecting them as "other rejection criteria". Some people will understand it's not eligible and won't nominate it again. Let's hope that most submitters of bad POIs will understand that they nomination wasn't good idea :)
Just adding this in here I just came across as evidence:
People are gonna hate me for this, but this is the definition submission of generic business, it's just -a coffee shop-, it's generic, not interesting, not significant, the same as 10 thousand other coffee shops... Instant rejection.
That coffee shop above might be interesting and significant, but we'd never know from the description and supporting info. I'm currently trying to get a unique, local, family-owned, well-reviewed, popular restaurant into game and am getting rejections despite supplying far more detail than shown above: meanwhile, I'm reviewing and people are putting in auto repair places, discount stores, urgent care centers and the like. My restaurant is getting rejected for the same reasons these truly "generic businesses" are and that's frustrating to me. Nevertheless, I shall keep trying.
Yeah, it very well could be the most interesting coffee shop out there, but that's what Wayfarer is full of right now, just people seeing "hey we can submit coffee shops now" and suddenly every coffee shop and random business is being submitted cause they do nice food... but hardly any of them have anything in supporting to back it up, most are just "meets new criteria", ah well easy agreements for me 😂
Based on that description and supporting g info, I'd maybe 2 star it at best, but, if they had sold it more (and taken the picture in the day when it might have shown people) then I may have 4 starred it
"Generic Business" was removed because after Niantic did a review, the overwhelming majority of nominations rejected using that rational weren't even businesses. Now, those same reviewers have switched to using "Location Sensitive" and "Location Inappropriate" rejection rationals.
Yeah, that's not a good nomination. This could be a good wayspot, but I wouldn't know from the description and/or supporting info.
When I googled it, they actually bake their own stuff, make traditional British food and have been in business since 1973. Imagine if the nominator had spent three minutes looking this stuff up.
Oh, it's all clearer now. I'm going to start rejecting football stadiums, after all, there's thousands of them, they're just generic. Add in restaurants while we're at it, there's like 3 restaurants in a block, generic. Churches, got thousands of those just sitting around, no need for more.
You would be correct in stating that the submission isn't well defended, that it lacks substance to make it stand out. But just blanket rejecting it because it's a coffee shop is flat out...wrong.
thats because every coffe shop is a legit poi. Its literally stated in the official eligibility criteria https://wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/criteria#eligibility. please do a better job
They're legit only if the submitter can tell what's unique or interesting of those coffee shops.
A fairly generic coffee shop with nothing special nominated because of 'need more Pokestops'? Meh, next nomination, please.
I’ve had a few coffee shops accepted recently. All highly recommended and all supporting information provided. Took 4 attempts for one. “Inappropriate Location” rubbish. Except when it’s a “Tea Room” they are almost immediately accepted like all pubs (most pubs are generic businesses). I’ve got one in voting now. Let’s see what happens. All supporting information provided. HOWEVER cafes/restaurants/coffee shops are actually nothing new. Few in my area that have been in the game from the beginning of Ingress. And I’d like to see the supporting information for them. One is a pizza place nothing really significant about it.
All I see on that page is the entry "Favorite coffee shops" in the list of examples of things that could meet the social criteria. That is absolutely not the same thing as saying "every coffee shop is a legit poi."
To continue off of that coffee shop example. I would 1* or 2* that. If you submit some jank looking decrepit dirty building, or generic boring shop, and all your description/supporting info says is "this is a 5* nomination" "This meets the Criteria Under>this>directory>Category". "Needs more poke stops" You're getting a reject.
If you actually take 2 minutes and say, hey this place has been open since 1910 local unique only place, or this is the original and they have expanded to 2 other locations because they're so great! THEN it might be a 3+*...
Especially when it comes to places that super nondescript you HAVE TO explain. No explanation = reject.
Turns out people do know the criteria…
I would like to be able to feeback that a nomination has potential, so in essence meets the submission criteria but needs improvement (eg better photo, more direct information etc) in order to meet the acceptance criteria.
So in the case of the crossroads coffee shop it needs more work and for someone to understand that rather than get a discouragingly worded rejection.
When I think of generic business, I think of a big national chain, I don't think they're very interesting. McDonald's shouldn't be submitted, for example. I would think Niantic would want to enforce that, because McDs should be paying for sponsorship or advertising.
They do in Mexico? Or maybe Brazil. IDK but Ive been invited to raids in PoGo at a McDonald's sponsored gym.
But everyone has their favorite coffee shop. So yeah, pretty much all of them are eligible. I don’t drink coffee so have never tried to nominate one.
for the example given yes the description could def use work but I wouldn’t reject it for that.
as someone else mentioned…….if one is to reject something just b/c there are a ton of them around…..that really limits what one can nominate. I mean parks are everywhere. As are sporting fields. If you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. 🤷♀️ And the descriptions for those things are almost always lacking. Yet I doubt most of you reject them.
For what it's worth, I wish they had used a better word there. But it is my strong opinion that they couldn't possibly have meant "[someone's] favorite coffee shop" for this exact reason: the word "favorite" would be completely meaningless. The fact that they didn't just write "coffee shops" implies that there are some additional standards in play beyond just "coffee shops." So I interpret "favorite" here to mean "[community] favorite coffee shops."
And no one is saying you have to reject a coffee shop just because there are a lot of them around. You just have to convince reviewers that it really is a community "favorite." (By contrast, note that the entries for "Parks and plazas" and "Sport fields" don't have any extra adjectives added to them.)
Finally, I would like to reiterate that the list on the Criteria page does not necessarily mean that everything that falls into that category meets the acceptance criteria. They're just examples of things that very often meet the acceptance criteria. For example, "a great place to be social with others" includes the entry "Gaming/Comic stores." That doesn't means that an independent store where you walk in, buy a board game, and walk out necessarily meets the "social" criteria if there really isn't a social aspect to the store.
So I've got a local McDonald's with a wall of history of my City. I submitted the wall, and got denied "Generic" I thought we liked history? learning? Do we just really not like McDonald's? Third time's the charm I suppose?
Well, I was told yesterday in a conversation with another Pokemon Go player that "every kind of business is acceptable now" so I don't see why this community-significant, historically-factual display would be denied.
That looks like corporate propeganda that is probably mass-produced and in hundreds of McDonald;s.
I'd have given that stars. While it may not be unique to just that one McDonald's, I'm sure it's not in very many. I'd try again.
I had a local buisness I nominated 4 times got denied each time, used an appeal and Niantic accepted it.
Might try that route.
Can you explain to me what you think the purpose is of what we're doing here? What is the actual goal of creating new wayspots, in your mind?
lol.. you think there are "hundreds of McDonalds" locations JUST in the Santa Clarita Valley?
I would be shocked to find out there were more than 120 locations in all of Los Angeles County.. Mind you, it's most populous county in the entire nation.
There are probably like 4 stores in SCV.
And this sloppy design is not mass produced. Nothing about it even reflects any component of the brand's visual guidelines.
It's clearly a one-off passion project, likely made by a franchisee who personally has very deep local roots in SCV.
It's a perfect Wayspot. The fact that it's located inside of a McDonald's is irrelevant, outside of consideration that the restaurant makes it publicly accessible.
Forget the business part. I would resubmit it as something like "Santa Clarita Valley History Mural." It certainly looks specific and unique to the area, and the history is inherently interesting. Doesn't matter if it happens to be located inside a global corporate chain, or the most unique independent book store on the planet.