Wayfarer is BS
I'm a pokemon player who put more than a healthy amount of time into the game, and with that I have also nominated a few pokestops.
However it's becoming all the more clear to me that Wayfarer and the community for extending the playfield is a closed, elitist and *very* unfriendly to "casual" users. Basically you will obviously need to "know someone" to get your nominations through. :((((
I just recently got two perfectly good nominations rejected because of obviously false, fabricated reasons that makes absolutely no sense.
Most blatant example:
Nomination ID: vrP5b+eSpjVHnq10KVUaFMQQILJooa5kCsyG0/cz8bU=
I nominated a location on a local island where there is a small pier built so that it is easy for swimmers to enter the water. It is complete with a lifebuoy. A bench and a sign showing the name, exact location, and information that there are no lifeguard present. Should be very obvious nomination which can tick off several of the "good pokestop nomination" hints.
However: I get a rejection saying
This nomination has been rejected due to the following reason(s):
"The real-world location of the nomination appears to obstruct the driveway of emergency services or may interfere with the operations of fire stations, police stations, hospitals, military bases, industrial sites, power plants, or air traffic control towers, Nomination does not meet acceptance criteria, Nomination appears to be a natural feature (waterfall, mountain, lake, etc.) that is not connected to a man-made object."
This can not be further from the truth. This place is in essence made for people to hang out, swim, play and have a good time.
There is no hospital, fire station, police station, military base, industrial site, powerplant OR air control tower anywhere near this place. AND further: It is very CLEARLY not a natural feature. How on earth can this be rejected with the above argumentation? Something is rotten with your process!!
/OB1973 - Clearly not accepted as a member of this elitist "community" 😡😡😡
Comments
While two of the rejection reasons you got are completely wrong, you clearly missed another one:
"Nomination doesn't meet acceptance criteria"
Seriously though, what's so unique from a "no lifeguard service" warning(?) sign that makes it eligible?
Post this in nomination improvement and you will get the help you need. Beautiful photo but for a nomination it doesn't tell me anything. Share your photo, supporting info, and any other information. Also it's based on a limited review area unless you upgraded it.
shrug
No, i wont answer your Question. Your Attitude is Rude, and you havent Made Yourself familiar with the wayfarer basics.
Does not meet criteria.
Simple.
Honestly, I kind of agree with you about the elitism, gatekeeping and general unfriendliness towards casual nominators. I think this is something you would actually consider a very good candidate if the only things I had to go by were the guidelines. This is a great place for exercise and (jugding by your post) for exploration. According to nomination guidelines, this looks like a very good candidate and I understand your frustration. Also, 2 out of the 3 rejection reasons are BS, with the third one ("doesn't meet criteria") being the single most unhelpful one out there.
The thing is: lots of reviewers tend to reject anything that's not a perfect, without-a-doubt eligible candidate, because they see it a a much more safe way to earn agreements. So I've come to expect that any nomination that's not a playground, a memorial plaque for someone famous, a War memorial or a statue in a public park will be rejected several times before finally getting accepted. But this is something that comes with experience, and I remember how frustrating it was when I first started nominating.
Also, it really doesn't help that people in this forum shrug off legitimate "newbie" concerns. Yes, we've seen hundreds of similar threads, with hundreds of similar discussions. Yes, this is a perfectly expected outcome if you have years of Wayfarer/OPR experience behind you. But for someone who only nominates once in a while when they come across something like this, it's very far from obvious and writing it off with a "duh, get better at nominating" doesn't help at all. Empathy is a rare thing on Internet forums and this one isn't any different unfortunately.
As for your nomination: I would definitely suggest that you leave the "no grilling" sign out of the picture and focus on the "swimming spot" sign. We can't see your supporting photo or information, but you should definitely show the actual place where you can get in/out of the water in your support photo o emphasize the "exercise" aspect. As someone has already suggested, I think you should post this in the "Nomination improvement" section, together with the entire nomination (both photos, title, description, supporting infoo).
Lots of reasons to hate Wayfarer, sure. There is elitism sure. Your photograph is showing nice scenery. However, I'd need more convincing that is a good nomination. Some reviewers may argue a nomination in that exact spot is blocking the life preserver, which they argue should not happen. Without more information, I do not know if your nomination is a good nomination.
What is even being nominated here?
The three criteria are:
From what you’ve said, it seems you’ve nominated under the last one. Without reading your full description and seeing further details I can’t offer much. But I can understand the two of the rejections.
This will be where reviewers think you’re nominating the body of water itself instead of the pier, so if your title or description isn’t clear, perhaps fix that.
This will be where reviewers think you’ve nominated or included the lifebuoy in your photo. Try a photo without it. This would block emergency services such as lifeguards if they’re trying to save someone, if you have a bunch of Pokémon GO players crowded around for a raid battle etc.
For the last one, without seeing the rest of the nomination I can’t say why it’s noted as not meeting criteria.
Fundamentally, it doesn't meet criteria. But since part of the focus is the lifebuoy and the other part of the body of water, then the "obstructing emergency services" and "natural feature" both fit as rejection reasons. They wouldn't be the reasons I would chose, but their selection is understandable given the context. Add to the fact that there is no lifeguard present and there is not controlled access at the location also further disqualifies this swimming hole.
I think this is another “Wayfarer’s Paradox”.
It’s similar to the café required to show a long queue of customers for popularity, but no people may be visible in the nomination.
Scandinavian towns always provide a life ring at local swimming sites. It’s difficult to show the amenities and ladder without including the life preserver, and the ring is the most telling proof that this really is a place to swim.
The pier, ladder and ring are the man-made objects that constitute a ‘swimming spot’, and the water is the proof of real-world location, as it is the locale that is the subject of review.
I think these should be fine nominations, but people pretend the life ring itself is the candidate. Bad reviewers say ‘this is a boring mass-produced item at a natural location.’
Niantic disallows in-use fire hydrants over the concern that players will block access with their cars. That could lead to tragedy and bad press.
There are no such concerns around life rings. They’re an object serving in proxy for a place of activity. A great place to explore. A great place to exercise. Even a good place to socialize.
He should take a photo of the whole pier and not the view from the pier. Fishing piers are very common here in Florida in our parks and trails and are easy nominations, but you have to photo that actual pier. If the photo is the water where you are swimming or casting your pole, that won't work
Yes, I think this nomination could be improved and eventually accepted. As mentioned before, try to focus on the man-made items for the main photo, and stress their significance to the community, maybe some history, in the description and supporting detail. You're competing with a lot of local natural beauty, it looks like, so draw focus to the man-made element and its use in swimming (exercise). Your spot looks lovely, but I'd likely skip or reject unless I was convinced.
And no, one does not have to know people or use undue influence to get candidates approved: I'm not exactly a social person, but I've had candidates accepted both with and without upgrades. It takes some stubbornness at times, but overall it works.
The pier is not the nomination, though. That would be ineligible. The nomination is the designated swimming spot, marked by the information sign and the life ring. Which is included in the original post.
Why is the pier ineligible? What constitutes a "swimming spot" and is that not a natural feature? The pier itself is a good focal point for the nomination, is man-made, and if needed could be titled "(Place Name) Swimmer's Pier" with a description indicating its value as a spot promoting exercise.
There's definitely aspects of Wayfarer that result in bad experiences for submitters. And since almost everyone first interacts with Wayfarer by making a submission, this colours people's first experiences.
The primary incentive given to users is upgrades to speed up their own submissions. And the best way to earn upgrades is through agreements. A review decision that results in an agreement (wayspot acceptance, rejection or duplication) is worth about 10 times as much as a decision that doesn't get an agreement.
So if I see a borderline nomination that doesn't obviously fail a listed criteria, I'll likely get a better reward if I give it a one star rejection rather than two or three stars. As more people follow these same incentives, then the one star option is more and more likely to lead to an agreement.
The obvious problem is that once you've earned your upgrade, your nomination now needs to navigate this more hostile review process.
A pier is a generic piece of infrastructure, not unlike a generic footbridge.
This swimming spot is designated by a sign. It's right there on the original picture. You don't need to speak Norwegian to understand it. I think it is a perfect anchor point for the "place for excercise" and therefore a good Wayspot nomination.
The municipality has provided pedestrian access to this benign location on a waterway, given it a name (in most cases), and supplied whatever infrastructure they deem appropriate (life ring, signage, ladder, etc.)
Unless this was submitted as "Swimmer's Pier" or "Swimming Access Point" or some other man-made object, I'd likely reject as a natural feature. The Swimming Place itself is a natural body of water, not a constructed public pool. "Swimming Spot" (at least in my native language, and I do realize that this might be a translation flaw) seems to indicate that it's the body of water that's being nominated, and thus can lead to reviewer confusion.
Didn't we have some updated guideline that allowed natural features, like waterfalls and pools and such? I remember something about that, and it said that some signpost for the feature was preferred, but that those features were still acceptable if there wasn't one.
Or maybe it was an upcoming change, but I know I read something about it somewhere.
Is there anything difficult to understand about a municipality choosing approved locations for swimming/bathing and providing signage/infrastructure to back it up?
The world is full of places where it is physically possible for people to approach the water, but only a subset are publicly owned. A subset of these are within the purview of a municipality. The town chooses safe candidates under their control, names them, and ensures safe access via infrastructure and signage. These may be called beaches, lakes, ponds, rivers, swim docks, etc.
There's nothing difficult to understand about that. What's difficult to understand is the reviewer perspective. A municipality may have a park with a fishing pond in the middle of it, and a dock for people to cast from (although the banks of this pond can also be used). The whole pond wouldn't be eligible as a waypoint in this case, because the location is too non-specific - but that dock, it's a fixed, pinpoint-able, man-made object that's a good clearly defined spot for a waypoint. I agree this "swimming spot" is eligible - I'm just suggesting ways to make it more palatable for reviewers, which can be done by some tweaks to title and description only. Make it clear that you're nominating the access point and not the water itself.
Most of us here have had similar valid nominations rejected. The best way, I've found, to deal with those rejections is to do what I can to improve my nomination and then resubmit. I look at each rejection as my failure to "sell" the candidate well enough, not on the volunteer reviewers. Most of my rejected candidates have later been accepted in game. I'm a player of three Niantic games, having reached Level 50 in Pokemon Go and Level 16 (only once) in Ingress, and my Wayfarer medal instantly went gold/platinum when it was released. My experience level is at least Intermediate.
If we are suppose to reject community pools because most of them are "swim at your own risk", then I don't see how that would be different from "swimming spot" that are also "swim at your own risk".
We aren't, though. We were told to reject PRP, hotel, and "other residentially-focused" pools without any explanation of the underlying reasoning. You can't generalize a rule based on speculation about the reasoning behind the rule.
I don't know what happened to my longer post, but the summary is as follows: many of us have had perfectly valid nominations rejected. What works for me is to improve the description, title, or any other elements as needed to do a better "sales" job, and then resubmit. The system is not BS because a few reviewers and submitters disagree.
In the case above I think it could be more clearly stated that the nomination was for the access point, and not the body of water altogether. That's all. I think that would help with getting this apparently quite valid candidate approved. When I first looked at the image, I thought it looked like a beautiful spot I'd like to visit! I'd say it's worth resubmission, but a few improvements would not hurt.
I believe I also may have mentioned that I, too, have invested quite a bit of time in the three Niantic games I play, and am a Level 50 Pokemon Go player on a minority team so yeah, I know there are struggles. My Wayfarer badge was instantly maxed as soon as it was released. I try to be the best reviewer I can be, but as a frequent submitter I've learned to give some thought to each nomination and what verbiage would sell it best.
I can understand your frustration with nonsensical rejection reasons, which we all experience, but your comment about having to know someone to get your nominations through just isn't the case.
A very eligible nomination. A public swimming place: a great place for exercise and a community gathering place.
It is not equipment/station for professional-only life saving, so it's not an emergency service. Players can use it to save someone's life.
It's official and man-maintained as indicated by the sign. Supervision is not a requirement for swimming places. Not a natural feature.