New Criteria and Cafes
eadgarc-PGO
Posts: 28 ✭✭
So with the "New Criteria" and the fact that lets say a single cafe in a town is eligible because is a place for people to meet, we will have a flow of cafes and restaurants from every town, saying it is unique and culturally important to that comunity.
Im my local group people are already talking about submiting every cafe in the city. I'm trying to bring them to reason and not do that but it will be crazy that new PoGo submiters lvl 38+ will start submiting every cafe and restaurant and submitions will take even longer to be accepted.
Just a rant but that particular clarification in my opinion only makes it worst.
Post edited by NianticGiffard on
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And that is a problem because? So long as it is not part of a chain or franchise, like Starbucks, I have no problems with this new standard.
Why stop at cafes and restaurants though?
" Somewhere or something that tells the unique story about a place, its history, its cultural meaning, or teaches us about the community we live in."
Local is typically defined as a neighbourhood, so can't see why you could have several coffee shops in 5km radius for example.
What is a "unique local shop"? Stuff like a bike repair store, skateboard / surf shop, thrift store, RC car store etc are all generally unique locally and a place where people gather? What about a local butcher / greengrocer / deli if it's the only one in the neighbourhood? All these teach us about the communities we live in??
And here we go with the "slippery ****" argument to justify rejecting all business as Wayspot. Niantic is very clearly drawing a line between which businesses would be eligible vs which that would not be. Let's stop trying to portray this as either "all or nothing".
So a cafe in a town is eglible if it's the only on in the town?
First generic business if they want to be a Wayspot, they can pay for it.
Second, it kind of distort the concept of wayspot as something unique, despite cafes having different names most of them are basically the same. Some are in fact unique but you need to prove it, otherwise I think it should be outright rejected.
According to the criteria, if you can prove it, yes it will be eligible.
I don't think we as reviewers should consider whether or not a business can or should become Sponsored.
Most cafes, pubs, and similar should be eligible as places that bring people together and encourage a socially active lifestyle. Many provided value back into the community. As long as some of that is conveyed in the nomination and I believe it meets criteria without meeting Rejection Criteria, I have no problem accepting.
Potential sponsorships is not something reviewers should be taking into consideration. If the restaurant or cafe meets the acceptance criteria, it should be approved. Besides, sponsorships are limited to just one game whereas a valid Wayspot potentially befits all games. And if it is the only restaurant or cafe in town and is not part of a non-local chain or franchise, than it is unique.
Local cafes have been elligible as gathering spot for quite a while. It's not a new rule. Look at the guideline clarification from the past. It was already legitimate as long as it's not generic like starbucks
**** think you've misunderstood. I'm all for having more stuff accepted, I'm sick of seeing submissions for stuff like Michelin-starred restaurants come back as generic business, or trying to jump through multiple hoops to find something submission worthy just outside a cafe because the cafe itself is continually rejected. Australia is terrible for it, right now they're tying themselves in knots to justify denying EB Games and Coffee Club stores because they're a chain and 'not unique' despite the fact there's often only one in a town.
From the EB Games Wiki:
EB Games Australia -
EB Games Australia is an Australian video game and entertainment software retailer......The company operates over 300 EB Games stores as well as over 80 Zing Pop Culture stores in Australia.
From the Coffe Club Wiki
The Coffee Club -
The Coffee Club is a coffeehouse-style café chain. Number of locations: 300 stores (Australia 2019),
I can't see how anybody in could argue they are not a "Generic business", even if there is "only 1 in town". Then again, having seen some of the arguments from some Aus reviewers justifying accepting Scout Huts, I'm not surprised.
"A generic business, chain, or franchise that is not locally unique"
People are missing the second part of the sentence, if there's only one in a suburb then it is locally unique.
Having said that, if one is approved cause it's unique and then another is built, who's going to stop that being accepted? We know that once reviewers start seeing something accepted it propagates through the system
I would read "locally unique" in this context to mean "unique TO the locality," not "unique IN the locality." For example, a place that's a chain, but the chain only has three locations and they're all within thirty minutes of each other. It's unique to that area; it doesn't exist outside of that area. Or a place that's part of a large chain, but this particular location has something that makes it special. It's unique to that location.
Hey folks,
I wanted to hop in here with some additional guidance here. When it comes to local businesses, it's true that we have "opened the doors" a bit wider to encourage nominators to submit local hotspots and reviewers to be more open to small communities' local hotspots that may also be a chain.
Deciding whether a location is generic or not is really up to the reviewer and their understanding of the impact of the location to the community. The burden is on nominators to include enough details in the supporting text to reinforce why a possibly generic / chain location is actually important to their community.
To provide a personal example, the town I grew up in is very small and doesn't have a lot of small businesses but we do have a Starbucks where EVERYONE goes to gather and catch up and grab a coffee. I would take visitors there as a highlight of a tour of my town (no joke). As a nominator, that context is important to include so that the reviewer understands that this particular location is more than a normal Starbucks.
Hope that helps!
@NianticCasey-ING Could you give an example of what you would write if you were to nominate that Starbucks? While it's good to know that being part of a chain does not preclude being eligible, I can't imagine a submitter successfully convincing reviewers to accept one given the lack of trust between the two groups.
Honestly, this just muddies the water even further regarding local businesses. Starbucks is a massive chain with 1000s of store, if there was ever a "Generic Business" location Starbucks is it. Now you are effectively saying "Well, it is a Generic Business but that doesn't matter in this case because it's a really small town and there is only one of them".
You know how far some people will go to justify their submission, and to be honest I fully expect to see a comment along the lines of "@NianticCasey-ING said Starbucks are ok to be a POI" at some point. At what point does it become a "Generic Business"? One store in town, 2 stores, how many?
What we need are proper criteria with "yes or no" definitions please, otherwise we are going to see more and more low quality submissions and more and more complaints in the community one way or the other. The new Guidelines are a good outline, now fill out the specifics that the community is asking for.
Suddenly every bar 20 meters apart/in it's own L17 cell is the local hotspot where everybody meets.
If this means I can finally start getting breweries and local pubs that are famous city-wide through, I'm all for it. I've been 5-staring rural pubs for years too, but very few made it into the game. Pokebooze/Beergress for everyone!
Theres a cafe near me that used to be a bank, which have it the bankroll cafe. Its the only cafe in the area, so would you say its good or bad? I'd say good as it meets criteria
How can a nominator prove it's a local hotspot? Should he refere to some guide (google review, tripadvisor, yelp, etc)? Also, why should the reviewer trust the nominator it's a hotspot?
And the guide must be trustworthy.
Again, it's up to the nominator to explain why the bar they're moninating are worthy, not just "plz we need moar stopz" over and over.
Tbh, guides are great for big cities, but for small towns, villages, suburban areas they won't even exist, so guides shouldn't be the be all and end all of accepting something as a hotspot
Thank you I think this is helpful.
The most important thing is for submitters to have good descriptions and additional information which perhaps includes a link.
This info needs to be clear to all reviewers.
We have a local cafe - it is nothing fancy because it’s not a fancy area. But the food is cheap and it is warm, and outside of covid it is always busy with people meeting up. It doesn’t have a web page. But it will be my job as a submitter to explain all this and make the case for it to be a poi.
I've seen about 8 Starbucks nominations in the last 24 hours, (coincidence?). Sometimes they will say, "brand new Starbucks in town." If it's brand new, how can it be a local hotspot? I search the area for coffee shops using Google maps and if there are other Starbucks reasonably close, or other mom and pop coffe shops, I reject for generic business.
That seems sensible - as per Casey's example, when it's the only Starbucks it can be a great meeting place, but if there are several of the same chain, it's unlikely to be very special compared to others.
I think overall this is common sense based on what else is in the area - we can consider what we would feel if this was our local area - would we meet friends there for coffee? Take a visitor there? If so, then it can probably be eligible, especially if the submitter gives a good reason.
Even if it is the "only Starbucks in town", I still wouldn't approve it because it is part of a national chain/franchise UNLESS it is the ONLY coffee shop or cafe in town.
Thats still subjective, there could be another cafe in town, but that cafe might only fit 5 people at a time while the Starbucks can fit 50, in that case, based on casseys example, that would be a local hotspot
Yes
Can we only nominate if they have some history or restaurant get stars or somthing special or local pizzeria are ok if small town and lots of people visit the pizzeria and popular place for the small town?
@NianticCasey-ING
Results are back in...
Every tavern and unique cafe I know about submitted in my area since the criteria update have been rejected as generic business.
This update will not have any teeth unless Casey can arrange for wayfarer to flooded with significant business honeypots which hit reviewers with a cooldown/explanation that they voted wrong when they reject them.
With no push-notification or advertisement of the new criteria tab, it might as well not exist. Only the few reviewers who follow niantic socials know about it.
I feel like we've been set up to review more (I used 100 agreements on this) trying to get things to pass that can't and won't pass review either due to insufficient voter education or people doing 'reject as you feel'.
For this reason I think people arguing about whether 'the only chain store in town' should be accepted are getting a bit ahead of themselves. We haven't even got the voter base on board with approving 'the award winning, unique, only tavern in town' yet!