private property borders sidewalk spots

Fredwanzt-PGO

Hi,

i'm curious now when a spot should be rejected for a location on private property and when not. If a statue is located in a private garden, but you can see it from a side walk it should be rejected i guess. But what about poi right on the property border. For example whenever i rate spots i get nominations for artwork hanging on fences. The fence is tecnically still on a private property, but you can touch the art from public space. Should that be accepted or not?

Elijustrying-ING

If the fence is part of a single private residence then the fence or anything on it will be considered part of that. It doesn’t matter that you can touch it.

So you should reject

MargariteDVille-ING

I know some people just want yes/no rules, and some people want to understand WHY.

The WHY here is because Niantic settled a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. by promising not to put wayspots in places that could cause a nuisance to homeowners. The plaintiff's lives had been upended when PokemonGo came out. Trainers blocked driveways, made noise all night, ran through gardens, looked in windows. What if Niantic has another game that popular?

Page 4 of the settlement, item 7, includes:

(f) Niantic will add specific instructions to the current review form that Niantic’s user-reviewers use to evaluate new POI submissions that direct user-reviewers to increase scrutiny regarding any proposed POI that may be located on or within 40 meters of a private single-family residential property, and POI that appear to be located in neighborhood parks. At a minimum, such instructions will include directions for the user-reviewer to examine the proposed POI using a variety of sources, including but not limited to mapping services maintained by private companies such as Google Maps. After such review, Niantic will use CRE to avoid placing the POI on any property that appears to the reviewer to be a single-family residential property.

(g) Niantic agrees that it shall manually review a statistically significant percentage of new POI submissions via a Niantic employee or contractor for the principal purpose of trying to avoid POI that are more likely to lead to issues with nuisance or trespass.