Done with wayfaring.
This **** is stupid and I’m gonna just stop wayfaring all together. Out of 18 nominations I’ve made only 2 or 3 weren’t rejected. Not trying to sound perfect here but all of them except for 1 or 2 were legit stops with great photos and were not duplicated. I’ve had rejections that were marked as low quality photo, yet the photo was not blurry, it was dead centered, and met all criterias. I’ve had some marked as private residence that were obviously not private and were obviously public and accessible to pedestrians (easily confirmable via maps and photos taken). I just really think Niantic needs to start making the process of becoming a wayfarer much harder. I don’t think all players should qualify to become one just because they reach level 37 because obviously even morons can reach level 37. I was so excited to contribute to my community and be able to become a wayfarer but this whole thing has turned me off to it and frankly has been very disappointing. My area is in the sticks as we say (very rural), we don’t have many pokestops at all, so with wayfarers rejecting all of these VALID, great places for pokestops they aren’t leaving many other places to even nominate at all. Very disappointing Niantic, I had more faith in this process than turned out I should have. Was really looking forward to more than 15 pokestops in the entire town. Guess that’s not happening.
Comments
I understand your frustration.
Have you considered sharing some of your rejected candidates so that you can get feedback?
I agree with @Hosette-ING, it would be interesting to see some of your rejected candidates.
Me too.
Some reviewers clearly don't know what they are doing and should definately not be alowed to continue reviewing.
But don't give up because you've run into a bunch of idoits, your town needs you! 🙂
Yeah, I don’t understand some reviewers attitudes of reject, reject, reject
They are just miserable little players with a mindset to ruin it for everyone else.
That's what I've heard anyway...
Now so annoyed I had to post a thread about it.
All are welcome (even the miserable ones!)
Here’s another example. This is a locally owned and operated public feed and farm supply store. It has been in our community since 1992 and is a staple to our community. Somehow it was rejected as “private residence or farm”. Lol…. Like seriously? It’s a business and is even listed on Google maps… geez…
Around here I see similar problems with poorly-educated, low-quality reviews, but from the opposite direction: we've had so much ineligible stuff accepted around here that I can't see any other pattern besides "5* everything unless you can identify the submitter by writing style and you hate them and know for a fact they're on the 'wrong' team or faction so reject everything they submit" which has a cascading effect onto future submissions. I'd love it if we could meet in the middle and have a pool of reviewers that look at each candidate carefully and accept/reject based on criteria and rejection reasons only, with each review a separate judgement call. Unfortunately, Niantic doesn't want to make criteria more concrete, as they supposedly realize that some subjective judgement is needed, and encourage reviewers to pretty much define what's eligible and what's not - but they don't stand behind those evaluations, and tend to punish reviewers whose subjective judgements don't match those of their internal reviewers or re-reviewers. Any careful reviewer who has received one of their famous "educational emails" has probably slowed their reviewing pace considerably, leading to fewer quality reviews overall.
And as a note - I would have rejected that Feed Store. I don't know about the Private Residence or Farm rejection, as I'd probably have gone with Other Rejection Criteria because I don't see how this is a GREAT place to explore, exercise or be social. The store's primary purpose is not any of those things: it's there to make money by selling goods. Is there some sort of refreshment stand? A seating area? Do they ever host events? Is there any eligible artwork inside that could be nominated instead of the building as a whole? Since the business has only been around for 30-some years, it's not historical.
Thank you for the example. Are you aware that the Google Street View watermark is visible in the supporting photo?
Link to Street View in said location... yep.
Please don't use photos you don't own in your submissions.
yes I only used Google street view for the supporting photo to show the surrounding area. The actual main photo was taken by me. I wasn’t able to get the supporting photo as I actually caught a ride with someone that was actually visiting the feed store and they were ready to leave before I could get a second supporting photo from further away to show the surrounding area. I didn’t think it mattered as much for this photo as it is not the photo being submitted in the game on the actual way stop. That’s why I didn’t worry that the watermark was in the photo. Wasn’t trying to hide anything lol.
Not sure why this one never showed up, it was the first example I posted but here it goes again… this nomination is a camillia tree with plaque placed in honor of an important person to our community. It is located right in our downtown historic district right next to a paved walking path and across the way from our historical town hall museum and a public park and a baseball field. It is MOST DEFINITELY a public place and is purposely placed to be accessible to pediatric traffic yet still… it was rejected as “private residence or farm”… make it make sense lol…
You see, I find it hard to believe you took the main photo yourself because it matches Street View right down to the exact position of the clouds behind the building, and the exact position of the car parked in front of it, as well as plenty of other details. I can take a screenshot but it'd take hours for it to go through the forum moderation. It's very obvious in my link to SV posted above, though.
You can just admit you've made a mistake, but please don't lie.
Nice try. The main photo is clearly from the same Street View, just zoomed in.
I understand that Niantic says nominations are best to be places that are great for exploring, but it definitely has a lot of social activity there. Being in a small rural area lots of locals shop here and “**** the ****” as we say. Hang around for hours. It’s also a trading post for guns and in our rural area that attracts a lot of conversation. In this area we don’t really have a lot of well… ANYTHING. As I stated before, it’s like living in the woods lol so if we don’t have local businesses approved we wouldn’t have many things to make into pokestops. I have been playing for years and have seen many less explorative and less unique places approved as stops before. I guess our community will just have to settle with having 15 pokestops and not be able to have anymore because the same rules don’t apply here as elsewhere…
Here's another example... Of people ranting about bad reviewers, and yet they're the ones making bad submissions. I see it all the time here
For this one, it’s not clear about the cultural significance of this person.
You need to be clearer about why they’re important in the description and supporting information.
You may have people who are not local to the area reviewing it.
Tell us / the reviewers about the person that's being honered. What made her special? We love information! And links for further documentation.
And a bit of friendly advice: Avoid using words like pokestop or gyms in your nomination. It can be a red flag to some reviewers as what you are nominating is a wayspot that may be included in any of Nianics AR based games.
How is this an important person in the community? Your didn't say anything about this person in your description.
Your problem is that you fixate on the rejection reasons that don't make sense, instead of trying to make sure your submissions actually meet the criteria as a good place to explore, exercise, or socialize.
A shop/farm shop doesn't meet any criteria and would rightly be rejected.
The tree/plant would also be a rejection even though there is a plaque because it's a memorial to someone random. If the person's name on the plaque was someone famous or had some story/important place in the community then there would have been a possibility of it going through.
Thanks Roli for assisting with the photo through the forum moderatiohn - that's the area on Street View used as the main photo in that Feed & Farm nomination.
I hope you weren't part of this, but there's some pretty gross abuse going on with Wayspot placement here.
I can’t see how you can claim you didn’t just crop this from Streetview @PaperTech89-PGO ?
You say it's a good place to be social, so why didn't you use your description to show that to reviewers?
Omg my apologies everyone… I had several pictures I had screen shot from Google for the supporting photo to choose from and apparently you all are correct, when I looked back at all the photos I accidentally used one of the screen shots and not the picture I took myself. I perhaps got into too much of a hurry when submitting it. But yes, you are right and that’s not the photo I took. Explains why it’s a little blurry too cause I knew for a fact my photo wasn’t blurry as my phone has an awesome camera. As I stated before, I was not trying to hide anything and definitely wasn’t trying to lie about anything. I love Pokémon go but guys at the end of the day it’s a game and I’m not getting that upset to the point that I would try to manipulate and lie about something so silly. Lmao.
Granted, your town isn't swimming in wayspots, but you should be able to find some if you look.
I don't see this in the database. First thing that pops up in google when you type in Interlachen...
It's pretty common for new people to show up on the forum fuming about bad reviewers rejecting their great candidates. What I've learned from reading this forum for a while is that about 2/3 of the time the great candidates actually don't qualify, and many of the rest do qualify but they were presented in a way that made it difficult for reviewers to accept them.
I wish there was a structural fix for this, because it's causing a lot of frustration for new submitters and often means they abandon the Wayfarer system immediately.
Yeah when I first started nominating, I had a lot of things rejected, mostly from not knowing criteria. But each rejection I tried to make my nominations better, realizing that I can’t change the reviewers, but I can change myself.