Upgrade = Rejection
My last six upgraded nominations were all rejected. Even the once reliable playgrounds and baseball fields have been rejected recently. It has reached the point where I don’t even like to use an upgrade because the odds seem overwhelmingly stacked against your success. Other members in my community have been having the same issue. The nominations without an upgrade have fared slightly better, but who has the time to wait months for an agreement? I still have nominations without upgrades from last July that haven’t even left the queue. I’m getting seriously burned out by the spam rejections or whatever and having to backtrack all over town to resubmit nominations that met all criteria the first time around. Upgraded nominations are just quickly rejected with no explanation other than the ‘Other Rejection Criteria’ option, which isn’t really an explanation and definitely doesn’t tell you what you can do to make the nomination better for resubmission. I really hope Niantic takes a closer look at this issue because everything was fine up until a few months ago.
Comments
It has surely gotten worse and I always feel iffy when applying an upgrade. Things get rejected for the most ridiculous reasons. Only use it for things that I can easily re-submit. But even no-brainer 5* submissions get rejected when upgraded, so by now I am already expecting an upgrade to go wrong to get less angry about the rejection.
Can we see some of these rejected upgraded nominations out of curiosity?
Yes it does seem very curious. However, it can certainly happen in Europe, where an upgrade can send your nomination to other countries with different languages.
I'm fortunate that that doesn't happen to my upgrades, so I'm on a streak of about (I've stopped counting) 40 upgraded acceptances in a row.
It would be interesting to see one of your no-brainer 5* submissions that got rejected.
I don't think your rejections have anything to do with upgrades.
Of my 2021 nominations, 36 have reached conclusions:
This is a very nice community - if you share your rejected nominations, you will get considerate suggestions that you wouldn't have thought about otherwise. It just takes a while to get the knack of nominating.
In my observation , once you click the upgrade button, the area which can review your nomination will also be expanded. Because of this, the subject you used to recognize as a 5* , will be viewed differently in other area.
Yes this is also what I experience, and other countries might indeed have difficulty with language or cultural differences.
@EONloveu-PGO Yes, the way upgrades work is that they get sent to a larger pool of reviewers.
I look at upgrades as "I can't be sloppy in the way I submit things". I have to make sure that my submission is in excellent condition, including my title/description/photo and enough supporting info (photos and text) for any random reviewer to understand what I'm submitting and why it should qualify. Really I should do that for everything I submit but sometimes local reviewers are more accepting of flaws.
The last upgraded thing I had rejected was in April 2020. When I got the rejection I looked at it to understand why reviewers had difficulty understanding it then re-crafted it to make those things clearer and resubmitted it. It was accepted.
I'm sure you're never sloppy in the way you submit things... but yes, the lesson to take away from this is always do your best work, and learn from rejections.
I often wish that I would be able to see a read-out for the nominations that I make that are accepted. I feel like it would be beneficial to know where my nominations fall on each of the rating criteria.
Yes knowing star ratings would be helpful to honest reviewers. But when we asked for it, Niantic said no - that could help dishonest reviewers "game the system". 😖