Answers to questions asked a lot of times
LukeAllStars-ING
Posts: 4,624 Ambassador
Just a little compilation of answers to questions asked often in the last times. Feel free to copy and paste. You can save it via the "bookmark" feature. For this, click on the little star on the right of the discussion title.
Q: My medal is not accurate/I lost agreements on my medal. What to do?
A: You only have to wait for a few days. Your account is out of sync.
Official Niantic statement:
Hi folks,
Thank you for the report. Please note that from time to time, stats in your Profile can get temporarily out of sync. Your stats should update and catch up soon, usually in a few days.
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/8638/lost-agreements-in-wayfarer-medal#latest
Q: My accepted submission is not ingame. Why?
A: There are three posibilities:
- Your submission is in the 20 meter radius of a different POI (not all POIs are in Pokemon Go, but still count for the distance-rule). If your submission isnt in ingress, it got autodeleted after the approval by the Nia system. You can submit it again with a different location (only if you got a specific area, for example on a playground, do not fake the location because of this rule!)
- Your submission is in a full lvl 17 s2 cell (only for Pokemon Go)
- Your submission is newly accepted and you have to wait a bit until it is getting synced to Pokemon Go (up to 34 hours)
Q: My submission got marked as duplicate, but the object doesnt exists ingame. Why?
A: Not all POIs are visible in Pokemon Go. Check out Ingress, you will most likely find it there. If not, it was wrongly marked as duplicate. In this case, you can report the automatical added picture on the wrong POI in the "Wayspot Photos appeals" category. Here is an example how to do so:
Q: How can I appeal rejected POI submissions?
A: You cant do this currently, the community review is not changeable. You have to resubmit it. I would suggest posting your submission in the "Nomination improvement" category first getting some feedback before rushing to a new submission. This can also help you not waisting any upgrades.
Q: Why does my nomination stay in quere/voting for so long?
A: You have to make use of upgrades, which you can recieve, when you are reviewing other nomination of other players. If noone would do this, nothing would happen with the 100% community based feature, so dont be too anoyed by long waiting times, when you are not reviewing anything. Times can also go up to over two years or even longer. But with an upgrade, you can speed it up very fast.
Q: I can't withdraw my submission. Why?
A: If you marked your submission as "upgrade next", you can't withdraw it. You can withdraw it when it recieved the upgrade, but I won't reccomend withdrawing an upgraded submission.
Q: I can't edit my nomination. Why?
A: If your nomination has the "in voting" status, you can't edit it anymore, because it alrady got reviewed and this would make it possible to change the rating.
Q: I want to edit the location of a POI, how can I do that?
A: Edits over 10 meters need to get reported via this form:
Nintics statement:
You can't attach pictures, but you can create weblinks to such pictures and link them in the form. This is very helpful and made every of my edits successful.
Rejected location edits can get appealed, but you need to add a screenshot of the rejection mail.
Q: My counter of submissions is not going down from 14 days. What to do?
A: No worries, you will get your submission back exactly 14 days (13 in Ingress) after you submitted the last one. You can check the verification mail you get when submitting a nomination on what time of the day you will get your submission back.
Q: My submission is on "upgrade next" and I have a stored upgrade. Why isnt my submission upgraded?
A: Stored upgrades needs up to 24 hours until they can ge used. Just wait a bit.
Q: What happenes with recieved, but not used upgrades?
A: You can store up to 10 upgrades. If you got open submissions, they will get used automatically.
Q: I got a cooldown. Why?
A: Niantic stated the following:
You might encounter a cooldown if anomalies are detected, regardless of your performance rating. Please ensure you follow the Candidate criteria while you review and aren't using any third party tools/pluggins or shortcuts. If you had any of these in the past, please change your account's password to secure it, which should work.
So slow down a bit while reviewing. You can also get cooldowns if you review in patterns. A cooldown get prevented, when you wait for at least 20 seconds between eyery review.
Q: I cant review, I keep on getting a screen saying "Come back later"
A: Dont worry, you are not banned. You need to wait for around 4 days any then you should be able to review again. This problem can get caused, because you reviewed too much in the last time, but also to new wayfarers. Use the time to improve your own nominations and maybe improve your criteria knowledge.
Hope this helps, feel free to copy and paste.
If you have any more ideas for questions, feel free to put them in the comments, I can edit them in this post for 24 hours. Also please correct me if I made some spelling/grammer mistakes, I want this to be a good source, also for others to use. Thanks!
Comments
I added two questions. Are there any more questions I can add? Please post them in the next time before I am unable to edit my post. :)
Q: My submissions are not showing up in Wayfarer. Why?
A: You only have to wait a bit. You will also recieve the verification mail when your submission is finally registered by the system. Also, the Niantic team might do a check for abusive submissions.
Official statement:
NianticCasey-ING
This is often because your nominations require an additional round of review to ensure they're not abusive. Once your nominations pass this review, you'll receive a confirmation email and your nomination will be visible in the management queue. This applies even if you've used an Upgrade on a nomination.
Q: My newly accepted POI is not spawning in Pokemon Go. Why?
A: This is propably because of a syncing error. Sometimes, this can happen. Normally, it takes a few days until this error is fixed. No worries, the POI will spawn, if it fits criteria for spawning in Pokemon Go.
@LukeAllStars-PGO I love these! Can I suggest one minor edit?
"(up to 34 hours)" -> "(up to 34 hours, but sometimes Niantic has sync issues so it can take longer)"
Doing that would add a nod toward the sync issue problem in the question that we hear most frequently.
Im sadly unable to edit this post due to the 24 hours edit time after posting. But I could comment it here^^
I know you also copy/paste this on threads periodically, and I was really just thinking about that case.
I appreciate the work that you're doing on this. It's useful.
Q: My accepted submission is not ingame. Why?
A: There are five posibilities:
@Hosette-ING better? :)
Fabulous!
For the first point, you mention "If your submission isnt in Ingress, it got autodeleted after the approval by the Nia system.", but during the Harry Potter Wizards Unite Australian beta, POI's that had previously been rejected or accepted, but too close, were displayed in game for a day or so. So it's not right to say that they are deleted, obviously Niantic are keeping them all in the database but flag them differently so that they don't appear in the games.
I would also suggest in being more neautral when mentioning the games and instead of mentioning just a single game (mostly PoGo), mention all the games or throw them under the banner of "Niantic games". Different games have different rules, but generally the same isssues will apply.
Other than that, great work and initiative!
There’s another set of reasons that come up: geofences
Sometimes a property owner has requested “no game X here please”. Niantic tries very hard to appease the owner, but sometimes it doesn’t work out.
In my city, one business hated that their location had a Gym, and Niantic tried multiple resolutions, including limiting gym hours. In the end it was reduced to a Stop. But other options do include removing it from one or more games.
And another location, a cemetery, all new wayspots are ingress-only. No matter their eligibility according to wayfarer rules (ie appropriately historic gravestones, or other things that are allowed despite being in a cemetery), none of them will appear in Pokémon Go.
Is the HPWU spawn still active? For me, this doesnt really make sense to keep them when you could easily resubmit it with a different location with > 20m distance to other POIs. This way, the POI exists two times in the database.
I will add it. Sadly, this is uncheckable for the asking players. I hope, that they will understand this.
No it was switched off after about a day. It's more damaging to lose data in a database than it is to simply not make it available when called. Plus Niantic can do internal queries to find all submissions from people or find patterns of abuse, including those POI that were rejected or accepted but not accepted. Not to mention that those submissions are still listed in your Wayfarer profile, so the database record still exists. So it isn't right to use the word "deleted" at all.
Q: My nomination is not showing up in Wayfarer? What can I do?
A: Your nomination is coming soon, there might be an extra check for abusive behavior on it by the Niantic team.
NianticCasey-ING, December 2020
Hi there,
There are sometimes backend checks that need to happen, which will prevent your nomination from appearing in Wayfarer until they've been fully processed. Once they go through our additional checks, they'll appear just like your other nominations.
Q: My nomination disappeared from Wayfarer. How can I get it back?
A: This is only a visual glitch. Your nomination still does exist. No worries.
NianticGiffard
I have looked into the nominations and can confirm that they are working as intended. What you have experienced is a temporary visual glitch. You will be notified of the outcome through an email once the nominations have been reviewed. Thanks!
Update to the last question from the big post:
Q: I cant review, I keep on getting a screen saying "Come back later". Why?
A: You are normally able to review again after four days (based on own experience). More information in Niantics statment below:
NianticCasey-ING
Hi there,
When you receive the message that there are no more locations for you to review it simply means that, for your location settings, you have reviewed all possible locations able to be reviewed by you at that time. The number of reviews you're able to do may change from session to session depending on your review activity and agreement rate but this just means that you've run out of things to review.
This has no impact on any pending nominations.
Idk if this question asked so frequently, but after seeing this in Invalid Wayspot Appeal section, here goes.
"Why did Niantic reject my appeal and write "In order to make any adjustments to the location in question, we need to collaborate directly with the property owner or Director."? What does it mean?"
It means that the owner of the property or site where the Waypoint is situated has asked Niantic to place some restrictions on the Waypoint in one or more games. This can range from the complete removal of the Portal / Pokestop or just the removal of a Stop or Gym leaving the Portal in place, to only having the Stop playable between certain hours of the day. If Niantic have done this, then any subsequent changes need the approval of the person who requested these restrictions, either the site owner or site manager.
Q: I found a weird PokeStop without a picture that clearly doesn't meet criteria. What to do?
A: Those PokeStops were more or less added without checking them. Those POIs which are clearly not okay should get reported via this form: http://bit.ly/3t7JMqd
NianticGray
Could you please report these PokéStops and Gyms with our dedicated team via this form: http://bit.ly/3t7JMqd The form also contains a link with more information on the newly added Wayspots. Thanks!
Q: My nomination disappeared from Wayfarer/is not displayed in my nominations? What happened?
A: Some nominations need extra approval before they enter the voting. Your nomination will get displayed Also, some nominations will get reviewed by Niantic. Those nominations will appear after they got reviewed. This can take some days.
NianticGiffard, August 30
Hi there! This happens when we manually review nominations. Don't worry, you should receive a mail once a decision has been reached for the candidate.
Nice list!
But "wait for at least 20 seconds between eyery review" is bad advice. It should read "spend at least 20 seconds interacting and exploring the nomination."
Q: What does the little Niantic logo (or Airship) next to my nomination "in voting" mean?
A: It means, that your nomination will get reviewed internally by Niantic and not by the normal community.