How to nominate Starbucks
After the "3.1 Criteria refresh" of November 2020 we were told that businesses should be reviewed more favourably, and in one post, @NianticCasey-ING even said that something as synonymous with "generic and mass produced" as Starbucks could be eligible if in a small town.
Over the last few months, Niantic has increased their internal reviews. These are usually evident by the accepted nominations appearing (if proximity eligibility is met) in Pokémon GO but NOT in Ingress, which shares the same source. If rejected outright, the submitter is given a "." rejection reason.
Here is an accepted Wayspot a friend has shown me. It does not appear in Ingress and he confirmed it is not marked as "Sponsored."
The town it is found in is not rural, nor is this the only Starbucks. Apparently it just has to be a great place for "poke friends" for the Wayfarer team to accept.
Comments
I thought you couldn’t make any reference to games in the nomination title/description :/
That should have been rejected for the description alone.
Likely some collaboration in the review process, either across people, accounts, or both.
Did casey review and put it through 🤣🤣🤣
I forgot to provide the approx location in my original post.
35.1606667,-80.9727094
@NianticTintino & @NianticDanbocat glad to see the internal team is handling Starbucks, now!
It would appear in Ingress if reviewed by traditional Explorers. As noted, this isn't in Ingress so it was moved straight into the Lightship system by Niantic reviewers.
Niantic doesn't review to the same criteria we do. They accept ineligible text, private residential property, auto parts stores, third party text, even a McDonald's. Literally anything can be eligible!
It was reviewed by Niantic because it’s only in PoGo and not in Ingress. So it was an internal review and just proves they arnt reading just like real reviewers.
@BlameJamal-ING Tagging for visibility.
It would be interesting to see the review stats of some of the new review team before they started doing their new job. Heck, I'm freelance and the winter is a quite time for me - I'll happily quote Niantic for some reviewing sessions as part of the "in-house" team.
More pokestops means more money, for me it's easy to understand the priorities that have been provided to the people that have been added as "internal reviewers"
If people are spinning a non-sponsored stop compared to a sponsored stop, it actually means less money for Niantic.
Lol... I too would love to have a bit more of reviewing... My area is too quiet, i only had 1k review in 1 month 😅
And trainers who see this pokestop will nominate another Starbucks and receive a rejection email.
And then complain about "toxic / abusive reviewers".
Seeing the Foursquare stuff and then also seeing stuff like this is seriously making me question why I am bothering to review. It's insulting to us as reviewers to see things like this make it into the database, but yet our own nominations which are of higher quality than submissions like these get rejected time and again for nonsensical reasons.
Seriously, how have things gotten to be so bad? And what is going to be done to fix it?
or even worse, an acceptance email
May I and a question about how the Pokémon GO, Starbucks sponsorship works? Was it only the ones built at the time, or should new ones be made by Niantic rather than players nominating and messing up the system?
Also @WheelTrekker-ING yes more stops probably means more money, but I guess the reason the criteria is still strict is because, as they have emphasized, Wayfarer is for all Niantic games? Not just pogo. However wouldn’t more POI mean more money is any game? (Within reason, no one wants a trash can to be a stop, of course). Then again, some ineligible signs might be to bad, but that is for another discussion.
Anything to do with sponsorships is handled by Niantic. If a new Starbucks is build, then Starbucks needs to contact Niantic to have it added to the sponsorship contract. Nominations should not be made and reviewers should be rejecting them.
If it was all about creating as many spots as possible in order to generatemore revenue, then there is far better ways than having them tied to physical objects or places.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw a supporting info that said some variation of "most other Starbucks are pokestops so this one should be too," I could buy at least _two_ Starbucks coffees.
So many submitters either not thinking about the situation for more than a second or else just desperate.
@NianticTintino & @NianticDanbocat I was quite floored when I stumbled across this. I immediately submitted a "description" change to help and make it compliant. For clarity, this next to a very busy shopping mall, in a highly populated area.
Shameful.
This is the third "How was this even considered approvable" Poi I've personally come across. I saw an approved Chick-fil-A via Reddit, and have seen an edit for a Target that was approved at 36.0690, -80.3202.
Do you mean that Niantic's reviewers are not following the same criteria that the normal players?
Gasp ! 🤣
Ridiculous...
A Target was approved at 36.0690, -80.3202
And then there's a nice Reddit post of a Chick-fil-A PokéStop
They're not passing the test, they're not reviewing to standard, they're likely not getting cooldowns and "Nothing to Review" messages, and they don't seem to have any accountability or quality control whatsoever. They're causing bugs "on the game servers" with items not populating, and they're definitely not reading anything on these boards. @NianticTintino who is responsible for the internal team and its overzealous efforts to degrade database quality?
Niantics silence on this is pretty loud.
Would definitely love to see some sort of acknowledgment and hopefully a response from the Niantic team.
Someone can find the exact quote, but after the foursquare disaster, Casey stated that they would do some kind of internal improvement to prevent such issue to happen again in the future.
So, how much are worth the responses from the Niantic team?