In my reviews, I came across a park entrance sign nomination that was, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly good nomination. Picture, description, location marker all good. However, about 100 meters away was an existing wayspot that was an identical entrance sign.
For context, these signs are each distinct “bookends” to one of the park’s parking lots.
The signs are exactly the same sign, but TECHNICALLY also individual signs and they do not share a single location on Lightship. I am not sure if these should be considered dupes, and I am torn. In my mind, if these signs were on opposite ends of the park, hundreds of meters apart, it wouldn’t be a problem and the wayspots could both exist without question. The signs would still be identical, but the entrances themselves would be distinct. So is the solution to have only one entrance sign wayspot for every one distinct parking lot, or is there a specific “distance apart” or “parking lot size” threshold that needs to be defined in order to accommodate 2 or more distinct entrance signs for one very large parking lot?
This feels sort of like a “letter of the law vs. spirit of the law” type of issue for me so I figured I would pick the brain of the community to help me in my own understanding.
I also want to say that I have read the “official” definition of a duplicate wayspot, per the Glossary of Terms in the Wayfarer Basics section, so please don’t just attempt to redirect me to that resource. Please don’t be that person. Thank you all!
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No. You just have to name one of them North entrance and the other South East Entrance to get past reviewers 
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But they are technically the same entrance, or at least the same parking lot. And these aren’t entrance signs I am trying to nominate. They are signs that popped up during my own reviews and they don’t have any unique directional distinction between them (i.e. “North Entrance” or “South East Entrance”), they just say “Insert Park Name Here Entrance”. So, I am the reviewer. Do I let them pass, or am I Gandalf (“you shall not pass!”)?
Here we are balanced on the horns of a dilemma. Several gray areas have been sketched out, and now we just have to go by the ‘feels’.
If the parking lot is small enough, the two signs may just seem superfluous. No one needs to say ‘meet me at the Western sign for the parking lot’, because you would see each other from one sign to the other and meet up anyway.
If it’s a huge park and a big lot, the two signs appear to have significance. So, use the orienting words in the title and description, and explain the case through wording and support photos.
When reviewing, try to reverse this same philosophy. It isn’t an inherent problem for things to seem similar when they have cause to do so.
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I’m just having fun with the way submitters try to get them a a pass.
I’m not sure these sort of things can have a yes or no answer but judge them case by case?
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I get what you’re saying, and I agree. That is how I am thinking about it, or at least trying to think about it, but I am still fairly new to Wayfaring so I wanted to get feedback in case I was way off the mark.
Out of curiosity, how would you handle it, personally? You have 2 entrance signs about 100 meters apart, they are both clearly within sight of each other and from anywhere in their shared parking lot. Neither one is distinguished by any sort of directional distinction in their wayspot title or description, they both just say “_____ Park Entrance”.
I have already made my decision and moved on from the review, but I am curious. Thank you for your thoughts and input
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I figured you were just poking a little fun at submitter nonsense. Lol. I was just trying to elicit some more discussion because I am genuinely curious how you, or the rest of the community views these situations
I’m rather near-sighted, so to me 100-meters seems far enough to perhaps merit the two nominations, I suppose it might depend upon the terrain.
Each time I review these things I have a little conversation: I see you want two nominations there. Is it warranted?
If the nominator did nothing to distinguish them, I’d probably call them duplicates in your hypothetical where they are well within sight of each other, and effectively share the same image and name.
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It would depend if they warranted being separate submissions.
If they led to a different areas or existed separately for a reason, fine.
If not I’d reject with Generic Business.
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It also might be a possibility that the submitter did not know the other wayspot exists. Perhaps it is just in the lightship database but not in the game they play. In that case they would not distinguish between one or the other. Although, personally I would identify them differently myself.
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Yes when you submit it is perfectly possible that no others existed. This can happen in areas where it takes time for submissions to reach a conclusion. So 6 months on from submission the situation a reviewer sees may be very different than the submitter did.
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