3rd-party photo rejections

exculcator-INGexculcator-ING Posts: 67 ✭✭✭
edited February 2022 in Misc Appeals Discussion

As a level 8 "Google Guide" I've added a lot of POIs to Google Maps, and included a lot of photos of them as well.

Unfortunately, this results is me sometimes getting Wayfarer nominations rejected as "3rd party" photos. This is particularly galling in that I live in Japan, but tend to submit my nominations (mostly) in English, partly in an effort to stop people from from rejecting them as 3rd-party: if the nomination is in English, and the sole Google Maps review of the POI is likewise in English, and all of the photos of the POI are likewise taken by the same English photographer, then maybe Wayfarer nominators would put 2 and 2 together and conclude that perhaps the nominator and the reviewer are one and the same person...

Could Niantic please issue some guidance to reviewers about what constitutes a 3rd-party photo, with "it's on Google Maps" being specifically pointed out as NOT being a sufficient reason to consider something as being 3rd-party.

Ionically, the one reason I started contributing to Google Maps in the first place was because, back in 2017 and 2018, I kept getting rejections because OPR reviewers couldn't see my POIs either on Google Maps or as a photosphere. Now I have hundreds and hundreds of photo spheres, and thousands and thousands of photos for reviewers to see, and in many cases, it doesn't help anymore.

I would like to explain on my nominations "the photos you see on Google Maps were taken by me, on such and such a date...", but there is almost never enough space to do so, because unlike in the past, there is now a very tight 300 (?) character limit for the description field. I guess this wouldn't be such a huge problem if we still had sufficient description space: can we please go back to the old regime? Why does Niantic feel the need to limit our description to such a miserly character limit? How are we expected to describe "th importance" o a nomination AND "what agents will see there" AND a whole bunch of other things - all in less than 300 characters (not words).

Comments

  • HankWolfman-PGOHankWolfman-PGO Posts: 4,857 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2022

    In theory your photos should be fine, but reviewers don't necessarily know that. What you're saying about the submissions and the photos/reviews on Google maps being submitted in English seems fairly logical, but not all reviewers will think that way.

    I do have two possible suggestions though:

    1) don't upload your wayspot photos to Google until after the wayspot has been approved, or

    2) take a couple of extra photos that are specifically for Wayfarer and will not get uploaded to Google Maps with the rest of your photos

    Also, the supporting info character limit is actually 3000 characters, not 300. You do have to edit within Wayfarer to get the full amount of characters though, they're not immediately available when submitting in app.

  • exculcator-INGexculcator-ING Posts: 67 ✭✭✭

    Ah, that expanded 3000 limit in Wayfarer but not the app is good to know. Useless if the nomination is in voting of course, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue, as I submit mostly from home, and can always head on over to Wayfarer as soon as I submit.

  • ExPlatypus35z-PGOExPlatypus35z-PGO Posts: 23 ✭✭

    Some reviewers are incompetent, my recent upgrade was just rejected for fake reasons.


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