Live in Wayfarer 3.1 is a new set of acceptance criteria! Please browse the information in this category with caution as it is in reference to the previous review guidelines. To learn more about the new criteria, see here: https://niantic.helpshift.com/a/wayfarer/
Answers
Yep, the featured wayspots are still broken. This is pretty well known. Just because local reviewers accept certain things don't mean they are eligible. Niantic even specifically said not to use these as educational/as things that are eligible. They are working on fixing this issue and replacing it with something useful, hopefully.
Normally the best place to report this would be through the in-app channels, and eventually through to https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/categories/removal-appeals if they don't remove them.
But occasionally when patently ineligible things show up in the Featured spots, @NianticCasey-ING or other staff has intervened more quickly.
Wayfarers from Brazil that read this forum in order to learn if something is valid or not: let's say 100, and increasing an order of magnitude you could hope for a thousand.
Wayfarers from Brazil that now think that a plain phone tower is a perfectly valid nomination: all of them that don't read this forum.
Congrats Niantic. No one can fix the harm that you do to your own system.
8. With regard to “featured Wayspots,” could a new system be investigated that shows nomination tips, actual Niantic curated nominations, or other relevant information to turn this into an educational opportunity for reviewers? Yes! Thanks for your feedback, based on the input from the community, the Wayspot Showcase is being redesigned with these goals in mind and you should see an updated version in the next few months.
@NianticCasey-ING is the plan still to see this updated Soon™? Seeing this improved has been something I have advocated for improving this feature for a long time.
I'd like to point out that somebody from Niantic must have removed the photo from the Portal (interesting they took this action but did not remove it altogether), however they missed one immediately next to it that also has a Google proprietary watermark:
https://intel.ingress.com/?ll=46.357206,-73.353475&z=17&pll=46.357206,-73.353475
I would have expected the Cheating & Abuse team to more thoroughly look for Wayspots associated with abuse once detected.