The "cemetery" problem
LukeAllStars-ING
Posts: 4,625 Ambassador
One point that I (and also other wayfarers I know) realized is the "cemetery problem" Niantic has. What exactly do I mean? It's pretty simple:
New Waystops on cemeteries are eligible
Of course, there is a special condition in order to make a nomination on a cemetery eligible, but that's not what this post is about. New Waystops like central places of worship, bell towers, churches, chapels, or even historical gravestones are eligible under the current criteria. And that's good! I personally understand that a cemetery is not the best place to play AR games. However, it is still important to show some historical objects, even if they are in cemeteries. War memorials, the gravestone of Elvis Presley (which is even used as a good example of a Wayspot), sculptures or other places of worship, everything named is a great wayspot. But there is a different problem.
Niantic constantly removes valid Waystops if they are on (or even close to) cemeteries
As an example, I want to use this discussion. A perfectly valid Wayspot got removed and its restoration appeal got denied. The Wayspot wasn't even on the cemetery like the OSM map shows.
Fun fact:
The POI got removed because it was misplaced. But instead of editing it, the Wayspot got removed.
Another example:
This Wayspot got removed even though it was another valid object
Being located in a cemetery is not a reason for removal. The reasons for removal are named on the "report a wayspot" page on the ingame scanner. So we cant report Wayspots on cemeteries but if we want to increase the quality of the portal network, we are getting removals of wayspots.
Now to the problem:
New Wayspots on cemeteries are valid but they are getting removed even though they meet acceptance criteria. Technically, you can resubmit everything that Niantic removed and it should get accepted again. So there needs to be a change here. There are two possibilities:
- Niantic stops removing Wayspots on cemeteries
- New Wayspots on cemeteries are getting completely ineligible
Personally, I would go with the first idea, stop removing them. Cemeteries can be way more historical and culturally significant than you think they are. I only submitted two Wayspots on them: the memorial of a famous poetrist and a sculpture of a famous artist. Both got approved first try. Both got great descriptions about the person and the historical meaning of the object.
Another example:
https://intel.ingress.com/?ll=48.861455566004125,2.393735675468634&z=16
The main cemetery in Paris has a high density of wayspots. What happens if I post an edit there? The Waystop in question will most likely be getting removed. But why will only this Wayspot be getting removed? Technically, every Wayspot there should get removed. But in the past, Niantic only removed the Wayspot in question. Another quite strange behavior.
Another important topic:
I would remove the rejection reason "Location inappropriate" and "Location sensitive" since they are only used wrong and starting to get super frustrating. They can be replaced with the simple rejection reason "other rejection criteria". More to this topic can be found here: (Click)
Here I have three cases as examples for this reason:
1.
A historic gravestone of a famous captain of a small island that was dependent on trading with other islands. Memorial and highly historical significance. Restored with information via a QR-Code, supervised by a museum. Made for visiting, taking photos, exploring.
Rejected for:
- Private property (lol)
- Third-party photo (lolololol)
- Inappropiate location
2.
A sculpture/art installation. Named "Cemetery of big lyrical people", an imaginary cemetery for famous fictional persons from classic german poems/stories/books. Unique and not existing twice, 8* nomination.
Rejected for:
- submitter identifiable (looooooool)
- Inappropriate location
- doesn't meet acceptance criteria
3.
A playground/sandbox. Generally a good Wayspot, not special but eligible.
Rejected for:
- Bad title/description
- Inappropriate location
4.
A central place of worship in a cemetery. High historical/cultural meaning. Correctly accepted.
Honestly, this shows that the rejection reason is misunderstood or just simply overused quite a lot. It's on every rejection. It's getting used on everything. Because no one knows how to use the rejection reason.
Hopefully, this will lead to something, it will really help to clarify this topic. Thanks!
Comments
@LukeAllStars-ING tbh i didnt expect this sort of rejection-criteria post by you. You know the game, you know the deal.
There is something broken, and something old, and something blue. And people that cannot click right, or havent read the manual.
We have talked here about this often, and it doesnt get better.
Also, your Thread was about the Cemetery-Problem you have, but that has taken a slippery **** into just another thread about rejection-criteria.
I wouldnt have accepted den Grabstein von Käptn Rickleffs, as this is a local person, that might be famous in your place of germany, but is not known anywhere else.
Also, i would not have accepted the mess that is "Friedhof für liter. Gestalten" - isnt there a info sign in the left corner? why didnt you submit that?
Also, i wouldnt accept the little sandbox, as it is, well, maybe a little too far fetched to be a playground. Isnt there a slide or a swing? This just looks like something the cat dragged in. maybe clean it up and resubmit? it just looks like the mess on photo #2
Srsly? Shame on you, that you also are starting to goof off whole threads by nitpicking the given examples.
Until now I was glad, that such toxic "argumentation" attempts come only from people, that are kept apart from me by big amounts of salty water. I guess you read to much in this forum. Just don't do this and calm down.
😝
The word toxic is tossed around too much these days.
i am not nitpicking, i am only telling @LukeAllStars-ING why his submission might have been rejected.
@Raachermannl-ING just don´t do this and shame me, call me toxic and put me into something!
Nethertheless it's underwhelming argumentation style, when a general point is talked down only by "attacking" the given examples. The author might be aware, that there are concerns or difficulties, but that doesnt even touch the general point of the whole thread.
And that happens here in each general thread, that argues about rejections or removal criteria in any way.
Version A: the thread has examples (like evry good argumentation should include) ==> the usual suspects appear, that only run down the examples.
Version B: a general thread skips examples by intention (no good argumentation style, but a consequence of A) ==> first comment asks for specific examples "to help the author" ..... 🤦♂️
In the end it's simply not constructive. If people don't have to say something about the general point of a thread (unimportant of pro or contra the topic), then they should be quiet. Whole threads drifting to nitpicking discussions about the examples destroys the whole work of the thread creator, since the discussion leaves the topic.
So in the end there is no need for Niantic to answer anything, only closing the thread is left as their job. The aim of the community should be to press statements out of Nia .... the main point of this thread is, that there is a big logical problem in how Nia deals with cemetery wayspots. I fully support this, and I want to hear a statement about this, since we saw lots of stupid decisions about this topic. @BochumJules-PGO and his 400 years inactive graveyards ruins, @WayfarerMSE-PGO with his dissappearing village churches, etc.pp. .... there is need for a well reasoned answer by Niantic.
But the problem: My own expierience here is, that Nia doesn't answer to stuff, when people point out propositional logic faults of Nia. So there is need for a lot of pressure. When community members water whole threads down by only nitpicking at examples, then the Nia-staff can do more important things: the great office Mario cart tournament, like @BleedBoss-PGO would say ....
Nethertheless I'm also partially with you, since I don't like sand pits (aka giant cat toilets) as wayspots. So 2* rejections for me. But I shut up about that, since that is totally unimportant for the main point of this thread. But that is no reason to run down a thread this way. I'm simply hard disappointed, that this behaviour is not exclusive to UK and its former colonies....
Cemeteries do need clarification.
Being locally famous should be enough - I don't expect you to know who Billy T James or Jonah Lomu are but where I'm from they're icons.
Signs at the entrance should be ok too but where I'm from cemeteries are public land and many serve a recreational purpose. In other countries, they're a generic business and the rules have to cover both circumstances.
I do get that my submissions might not be perfect, but why they got rejected should be named in the Mail. And there stands "inappropiate location".
To still answer on the possible rejections:
The grevestone is in total something historical and interesting for everyone. The "speaking stones" are a perfect example of old myths and legends.
The sculpture has a sign but I would never be able to get that approved
The "submitter identifiable" rejection reason propably comes from the supplemental picture. However, you cant photograph the sign without holding it. Its a wet piece of paper.
Enough of this, back to the real topic: Wayspots in cemeteries and how Niantic deals with it.
The logical issue should be clear. And Niantic doesnt seem to be sure about it. So maybe, a clarification is needed.
Love this whole response and would have marked it as insightful if not for the bleedboss tag
I love you too mat. e 😍
Yeah I've brought that up on a post a couple of weeks ago, someone asked to get a portal reinstated but niantic didn't, so I asked them to clarify if cemeteries were now not allowed full stop, seeing as in my area I literally just found and nominated a famous architects grave, well, famous by Glasgow standards as he designed a lot of buildings and a famous fountain in one of our parks
I fully agree with your post, @LukeAllStars-ING. What I'd like to add to it is that cemeteries shouldn't be written off as places that are "inappropriate to play in".
Different places and cultures can have wildly different approaches towards cemeteries, so I think that a blanket statement about them is wrong. Sure, there are cemeteries that are excusively a place for quiet mourning. However, there are also very different cultural traditions. As the original post shows: Père Lachaise is a very popular tourist destination in Paris. Assistens Kirkegaard is a popular picnic spot in Copenhagen. Westpark in Dortmund, which is an inactive cemetery, with loads of tombstones perfectly preserved, is a popular recreational area, with playgrounds, picnics, events etc. (I'm particularly partial to Westpark myself because I reached level 40 in Pokémon Go there.) These are perfectly fine places to play any games, not just AR ones.
Also, in small rural settlements that have a long history (at least in Europe), cemeteries are quite often the only publicly accessible functional green spaces in the whole village. These are often located around the church, and memorials of community importance (World War memorials, Holocaust memorials, statues of local heroes) are almost always within them, simply because there is no other place for them. This also means that cemeteries are often meeting spots, cultural hubs within these communities, people go there to meet and talk, and communal events are often held there. In rural villages, almost everything other than the cemetery is usually occupied by agricultural land, forest and/or houses. Banning all cemeteries would essentially mean that the vast majority of points of interest in such communities are banned for no particular reason.
Niantic games all tell you to pay attention to your surroundings, be respectful of local laws and communities, and be mindful of others in general. I see no reason to enforce any strict policy about Wayspots in cemeteries beyond that. There are lots of unquestionably eligible Wayspots that have more or less strict behaviour rules - places of worship, playgrounds, museums are all places where you're expected to behave in a socially acceptable way. Still, I don't think anyone would seriously argue for removing, say, the Sagrada Familia or the Louvre as Wayspots.
The topic of cemeteries is worth going over, but instead, this thread went WAY off into the weeds of TLDR.
i am totally with you in cemeterys. But, this thread already went way off the topic in the OPs initial post.
Agree to disagree. OP illustrates real issues. I would let him have a little room to maneuver.
It seems pretty clear that the rules are intended to avoid behaviour that would result in complaints to Niantic. It would be off putting to be at a cemetery paying respects, and to have a bunch of people gathered near by staring at their phones and being noisy. If there's enough complaints and the cemetery administrators link them to Pokemon or Ingress, they'll blame Niantic. The exceptions they've outlined are cases where locations in a cemetery might be tourist attractions even without these games.
For the main cemetery near where I live (in Australia), it isn't uncommon for people to walk or cycle through. During the panemic, I even saw an uptick in people using it for exercise. But having a large group of people loitering around (e.g. for a Pokemon Go raid) would probably look a bit weird and suspicious.
Surely, but why removing misplaced Wayspots instead of all wayspots? Also, why calling new worthy objects on cemeteries eligible? This is clearly an unlogical way of dealing with this topic.
Removing wayspots interferes with the games built on top of them. So I can understand deciding to keep the grandfathered cemetery wayspots around provided there are no complaints. However if there are complaints, it's not surprising that they err on the side of deletion.
If the wayspot really isn't on the cemetery grounds, then perhaps resubmitting it would be the best option?
@LukeAllStars-ING Interesting write up. Many solid points made, but I think you may be overlooking one big one.
In the examples you shared you show us three examples of rejections and one example of a properly accepted, one of things that we do not know and can't know on any submission, be it accepted or rejected, is the spread on voting. How close did something come to getting approved but ultimately fail, or how close did something come to getting rejected before it squeaked through. Was it universally accepted or was it one vote from the trash bin before it got the nod to the big leagues, or vice versa.
My point is, this argument around cemeteries could easily be applied to other items and locations as well, local business, trail markers in Europe (from what I've read) etc, and a slew or other similar topics. The issue in my opinion comes back to a poorly construction review process and voting equation that rewards poor review habits, be it purposely or from lack of education.
"No" votes are far more powerful then positive reviews.
I also think think that giving something an average review is completely useless these days. If I think something is an average to above average submission in my mind, my cynical side thinks that it is destined to fail because things are so broken. That is the current power of the rejection vote.
So in your examples, you could easily and my opinion rightly assume that the rejected items failed by slim margins and the one that made it through was for the most part universally accepted. However I think most submitters make the assumption that on rejected submissions a simple majority of folks disagreed with them an on acceptations that the inverse happened. Based on several writeups I've read I believe this not to be the case. It is not a majority rule (51% wins) on voting. By my research I believe it to be closer to a 70/30 or worse split. Their may be some wiggle room in their based on an algorithm and star percentage but if you boil/dumb it down to a yes/no question, I believe this to be the case.
I know this is all conjecture, since Niantic does not give us this info, but it leads me to my larger point. Until they fixes the review process to require every review to be a true review, weed out the junk, and properly incentivize reviewers to continue to engage with this platform on a semi regular basis, all the AMA's and clarifications and wishywashy forum posts in the world will do nothing to fix any of the issues you raised in terms of the peer review process. An while I wish education of reviewers and submitters was a valid option, its just not enough. There is too much intentional grey area from Niantic to make education the solution.
As for the inconsistency within Niantic responses when it comes to appeals, or wayspot reviews.... kind of what we have come to accept at this point. They will do the minimum to quiet a squeaky wheel, but not put in the work to fix a larger issue, especially one that would require hours of manual work.
TL;DR? We need to see how the new review process looks before we can ask/hope for these other things to be fixed.
I know more than one cemetary that is a Wayspot. I know how to spell cemetery. I suggested the correct spelling at least twice. Each time got a no. I dislike reviewing cemeteries but will. If the nomination was the cemetery or cemetery gates, I typically give a no since the nomination is ineligible. If I get a gravestone nominated, I try to learn if that should be a no/yes before deciding. Yes, I do see the date. This is where I accidentally went.