The good, the bad, the ugly and the unimaginable about the result from my first pokestop submission
PDPower101-PGO
Posts: 23 ✭✭
The (very) good - I nominated the pokestop on Jul. 10th and I already have the result. I have 5 others in queue for as much as 6 weeks and that really isn't much considering that some take a year or more. I also feel great that my reviews contributed to 27 nominations being accepted which can improve some people's gameplay.
The bad - it was rejected (I understand that not all submissions will be accepted. It was more so disappointing). I think that it should (or could) be a wayspot so I'm simply going to resubmit. Should I also appeal it?
The ugly - The feedback, as to why it was rejected, is hard to find
The unimaginable - The fact that there may be no feedback at all
I'm new to wayfarer and pokestop submissions and I think that I know what I'm doing based on the fact that I follow the criteria when I review and submit. The problem, though, with the entire Wayfarer system, is that you get no feedback. I have done 100 reviews and have 42 agreements. Among the pending reviews, there is no way for me to know which have been resolved and which rejected. Did I miss duplications? Did I misunderstand a criteria? I'm ok with simply having different opinions than other reviewers (ie they "grade" tougher) but how do I know that I'm not missing something?
I have to admit that I'm a little salty about the rejection. I'm human and can't help it :) but this post is intended to be critical / constructive and not a complaint. There has to be a feedback system and my suggestion is to use an existing system(s) to provide feedback. If you get a 1* then that feedback should be passed along directly such as private residence, photo quality, etc. Otherwise, you can relay the "additional comments" on the review of one or two of the reviewers with a "great" wayfinder rating.
Comments
You do get to see the rejection reasons for your nomination. If you log into Wayfarer and check your nomination in your contributions page, then tap on your rejected nomination, it should show you one or two reasons below the red "not accepted" tag. It can only display two reasons at a time, but sometimes reloading the page may display a third reason.
Commiserations on the rejection but..... it looks like you are doing great and the 27 accepted far outweigh the 1 rejected, well done. If you post the rejection I'm sure people will be able to give advice either good or bad.
All of the frustrations you mention are pretty common themes throughout Niantic games unfortunately.
Poor communication, an unwillingness and/or inability to go into detail and many more along the lines you mentioned.
Great stuff though and I'm sure others appreciate your efforts, keep it up.
Just realised I misread but you will get 27 accepted eventually... :D
Why not post a photo of your nomination and supplemental photo and we can provide you either good, bad, ugly or even unimaginable feedback on the qualifications of your nomination.
Unless it was reviewed by Niantic, in which case it won’t show a reason I believe.
As everyone has said, you can see the reject reasons by logging into Wayfarer and checking your Contributions. As it’s your first nomination, I’m curious as to what it was.
Also a while back Niantic said;
More than 75% of a new Explorer's first nomination gets rejected which can be very discouraging. So we want to treat your first few nominations differently than ones you’ll do later, to let you ‘trial run’ the entire experience and learn early on how to succeed
As we are now nearly 7 months on from this announcement I wondered if the first nominations had been treated differently as yet.
Also, worth remembering game neutral language going forward. You nominated a Wayspot which may become a PokéStop.
I might be wrong, but I think that the op is using the language that Niantic uses in the nomination process.
Yeah, I understand that. It’s unfortunate that Niantic have yet to change it, would help with understanding when new Wayspots don’t appear in games.
Such an easy fix too. Just change some text :/
It's been SO long, for SUCH an easy fix, I've come to the conclusion that Niantic WANTS game-specific instructions. Keep the trainer or agent in their own game-world to nominate. (I just don't know WHY.)
Being new here, I have my frustrations as well. I had one rejection for pedestrian access and another for mismatch location. That doesn't match up with the supporting information I provided nor with what Google Maps shows. Frankly, I'm frustrated to the point that I think (rightly or wrongly) that some of the Wayfarer's reject things without even looking at the supporting information. Appeals appear to take months (let alone watching my own nominations ferment in the queue for months).
I try to accurately approve or reject nominations. My current rating is great with over 150 agreements. I think I've proven that I have a pretty good idea about what I should and shouldn't nominate. But it is still frustrating to feel that others might not take the same care.
I live in a rural area with really no places that would meet the guidelines, but unlike other nominations I've seen, I'm not trying to make up spots for the sake of getting something close. So, far, I've only nominated spots where I work ... which is at a university and is easy to find legitimate nominations to make. The campus is growing and changing, so I've tried to even keep up with reporting locations that are invalid (two of which were rejected, but I understand those given that google maps hasn't updated to more recent imagery and supporting documentation can only be provided through the appeal process) ... but a months long process.
At the end of the day, like the OP, I'm new. I get that new people are more prone to make errors. So, while I'm frustrated, I get it. It doesn't make it any better, but I get it. However, if I give up on a volunteer job because I feel others don't take my nominations as seriously as I would take theirs, I would hope that it would be equally understandable. I'm not there ... but I could see how one might end up there.
If you work at a university, then a photo of the building with the name of the building would be an acceptable nomination. If google maps are outdated, you can always take a photosphere to help validate the location.
If you don't like how it takes months for a nomination to go from the Queue to Voting to a final decision, then simply do more reviewing to increase your agreements and earn an upgrade. An upgraded nomination goes through much faster once in voting (usually a few hours but sometimes less and sometimes longer). I've used 80+ upgrades so far. I would say 90+% of my nominations have been approved so far but I usually stick to sure fire approvals.
Every so often the spammers will deny your nomination. For example, I nominated several trail signs at a local park. Two which are similar in design had one accepted and one was denied. The reason it was denied was for an Emoji & Pedestrian Access. The park has a logo which is on the sign so I guess that was the emoji (just look up Lake Conestee Nature Preserve if you want to see the "emoji" which is a physical part of the sign). Given it's a marked biking and walking trail, is on google street view and the trail is clearly marked on google, it was a casualty of the nomination process by people doing a poor job of reviewing. I'll simply re-submit it.
Yeah, I get that Portal/PokéStop are part of the branding of those games. The email to tell you’re eligible for Wayfarer even still says;
Wayfarer is Niantic's program for you to discover, map, and share the most interesting, unique, and awesome places in your community. What's more exciting is that your contributions are selectively featured across Niantic's games (as Pokéstops, Portals, Fortresses), and are available for others to discover and enjoy.
If they haven’t yet bothered to remove Fortresses from this email (someone got this a few days ago) six months after HPWU closed, I doubt they’re in a rush to change the in game text unfortunately.
I disagree that every building on a university should be a wayspot. Instead, go for statues and interesting things that engage visitors. Engage people in some way.
Most of the buildings I've seen at a university are waypoints. I'm not saying all should be but most are. That's what I see when reviewing.
Yeah. I've seen the same, but on our campus, it's primarily objects within and around the buildings (fountain, ecolab points of interests, statues, wall art, and so on). The folks that did the nominations back during the ingress days did a great job of picking things ... however, some of those things are gone now ... it's been more difficult trying to clean those up because flagging something invalid is more difficult then nominating something. :P
"Every" is a very strong category, but if a building individually fits criteria set out by Niantic then it should be an elligible waypoint, despite how reviewers personally feel/think.
Agreed - my main problem with campus buildings is that some submitters have "caught on" to criteria, and so label dorms and frat houses simply as "academic buildings" to make them appear to meet criteria. Easy enough to google, but many reviewers don't take that step and just accept them all.
I get the sentiment, but at the same time is a building full of students not an academic building? I'd argue that it could be. It could also be historically significant, and is definitely a place to gather and socialize.
I'd also argue that the games are far better off having more waypoints around areas like that encouraging and enabling participation.
If Im on the fence about a nomination, as long as Im like 55/45, why not encourage and enable people to play the game? Im erroring in favor of the game and player when considering middle-of-the-line nominations (Not trash cans and sidewalk chalk, of course)
Just because you could argue it doesn't mean the argument is correct. A building on a college campus is no different than any other building.
After reading some of the comments here, I re-checked the main photo and found that a woman walking her dog had photobombed. You had to zoom in as she was in the corner of the photo but may have been reason enough for some to reject.
I re-took the photo and re-submitted and I'd love to have the community's feedback as to whether there is anything I can improve in the title, description, supplementary info or photos and if it qualifies as a wayspot. I checked carefully and it's not a duplicate of a pokestop in Pokemon Go but didn't check if it's an existing wayspot (I don't know how to do that).
Title: Mimetisme by Jean Brillant
Description: Informational sign about local Montreal artist Jean Brillant
Supplementary information: Informational sign about artworks by Jean Brillant. This should be a wayspot because it made me look into artwork by local Canadian artist Jean Brillant and will hopefully do the same for others. https://www.jeanbrillant.com/
Main photo:
Supporting photo:
Thanks in advance for any feedback :)
I had always read before that you saw the reasons for your nominations being rejected but mine had nothing noted.
After my post, I decided to re-check my main photo. I zoomed in and found that a woman walking her dog had photobombed. It was in the corner and very small but I think that is why it was rejected. I took a replacement photo and resubmitted. I'm going to post my new submission in separate comment for the community's feedback to find out if I potentially missed something else.
@PDPower101-PGO My only question about that would be about your supporting photo. What other information is available to reviewers? Is the post visible on street or satellite view? If not does the supporting photo provide enough context for reviewers to verify the location?
Thinking like a reviewer is a really good way to analyze your own submissions and can help get things approved more easily.
Nope, any building full of students that sleep, snack, or whatever in the building as a domicile is no different from an apartment building that gears itself primarily to a student population. I know one of the Niantic reps here has noted that Niantic does not consider dorms or frat houses eligible - but that's not to say that any artwork, recreational facility, or other eligible POI within a dorm would not be eligible. It certainly would!
Do you happen to have a link to that? I would be interested in seeing it but couldn't find it in search. I would think that some dorms could easily fulfill the social criterion. Many dorms have group study rooms, lounges, seminar rooms, recreation rooms, and dining halls, or at least some combination of these facilities. Now, if the dorm is no different from a non-college apartment building, where the only common areas are foyers, hallways, and elevators but with none of the social facilities, I'd say it wouldn't be eligible.
After reading some of the comments here, I re-checked the main photo and found that a woman walking her dog had photobombed. You had to zoom in as she was in the corner of the photo but may have been reason enough for some to reject.
I re-took the photo and re-submitted and I'd love to have the community's feedback as to whether there is anything I can improve in the title, description, supplementary info or photos and if it qualifies as a wayspot. I checked carefully and it's not a duplicate of a pokestop in Pokemon Go but didn't check if it's an existing wayspot (I don't know how to do that).
Title: Mimetisme by Jean Brillant
Description: Informational sign about local Montreal artist Jean Brillant
Supplementary information: Informational sign about artworks by Jean Brillant. This should be a wayspot because it made me look into artwork by local Canadian artist Jean Brillant and will hopefully do the same for others. https://www.jeanbrillant.com/
Main photo:
Supporting photo:
Thanks in advance for any feedback :)
The photos look good. If you can’t see on streetview then do a photosphere- Google streetview app.
The description feels a bit thin…..he is a sculptor so say that.
My French is very rusty ☹️ And you can’t translate easily off a photo. So it would be worth pulling a few key points about why this sign is here into the description.
For supporting info I would avoid phrases like “this should be a wayspot” as it may come across as telling a reviewer what to do.
Simply state why it meets eligibility criteria - encourages exploration.
Provides info on a notable local sculptor
Is this still of information post common or is the style a reflection of the artists style.
Be clear about location eg photosphere up loaded.
I agree the nomination looks good and you could make a few changes in the description and supplemental as suggested by Eli. Sometimes, we run across reviewers either making bad decisions or spamming auto denials on everything.
For example, I had 2 recent noms denied which are inside a large 400+ acre park with a network of trails. One trail sign was denied for Pedestrian Access despite being on Google Street View and other POIs nearby on the same trail. The second was a boarded footpath i.e. a boardwalk between a trail sign and the trail observation deck. It was denied for Live Animal. The only animal was my dog in the Supplemental Photo. The nomination photo had no animals of any kind. A little salty yes but I will just re-submit. I have over 60 nominations in this park and 30 of them have already been approved.
@FireFly73-ING I would be careful about recognizable animals in any photos. I ran across a string of submissions a while ago where the submitter had deliberately posed their dog in each supporting photo. That crossed over into submitter identifiable.