A Survey Marker
I think most people who use this forum are aware that there has been some discussion and debate over the eligibility of survey markers. For those unaware, according to the original "candidate action guide," these were typically eligible:
Candidate: Survey Marker
Policy: Accept
Suggested Vote: ★★★★
ACCEPT if on a trail or helps you explore the location. Falls under the criteria of off-the-beaten-path tourist attractions.
While on a recent travel, I was excited to spot my first survey marker - I've never seen one before (not that I'm actively looking) so I thought that I would nominate it. To probably nobody's surprise, it was rejected.
For supporting information, I used:
Rejection reasons thankfully didn't include "not visually unique" or "not historically significant," but I of course find the first rejection reason erroneous:
For those curious about the location, the coordinates used for the nomination are 45.309468,-107.93112. This is an extremely rural Montana town - getting the game to open wasn't even possible in a few areas for me, and each nomination felt like forever to upload.
I'm curious if anyone has any feedback on ways to improve this nomination, should I ever return to this area.
Answers
Although it is outdated because its an OPR statement (easy to see because of the 4* guideline), Nia should specify about this.
The word "survey" has way to many meanings and connotations. So Nia should say something more about this topic. The German community interpreted "survey marker" in most cases as medieval border markers or milestones like these ones:
(totally ridiculous why this one was rejected, but thats kind of normal nowadays)
The main point, why we interpreted the guideline in this way, was the "accept, if" statement. Those markers help to explore and are "off the beaten path", because they are usually somewhere in the woods and provide at least an idea of directions to some places. Then there are also geodetic survey markers, that fulfil the "accept if"-statement undeniably because of historical significance:
This one is form 19th century, one of ~200 geodetic stones of the Electorate/Kingdom of Saxony (No136 in the list)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6niglich-S%C3%A4chsische_Triangulirung
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So your example has a few problems:
So this plaques with examples like yours should be clarified by Nia. I don't know, whether these are intended to be accepted or rejected. For me I can only state, that I would never use 1 or 5* on something like your example. There is too much space for interpretation.
For reference, I've got a lengthy detailed post about survey markers here. Hopefully one day we get an answer from Niantic.
As @Raachermannl-ING pointed out, survey markers like the one posted in this thread are tiny and are generally scattered around every 500m+ (so there could be thousands, if not, millions in your region). They are extremely common, uninteresting and don't adhere to the criteria that was previously laid out under the guidelines.
Typically, the types of survey markers that are more desirable are the larger trigg markers. They can usually be found atop mountains, which qualifies for the adventurous off-the-beaten path eligibility description.
Now if the survey marker above was notable and had some kind of significance, I would recommend conveying that in the description field. Otherwise, it's just a generic, common, mass-produced marker.