So, for some context: I’m pedantic on spelling and grammar. I do try to be a bit lenient because it wouldn’t seem right to have a nomination rejected because of a minor grammar mistake, but I’m a little unclear on what is meant by “poor quality” for titles and descriptions.
Obviously, it says no emojis or copied text, but some things are driving me a little nuts. One such case was a nomination for a mural featuring a Cockatoo, but the title called it a Cockateil (incorrect bird and spelling). Other cases include several typos in the description as well as a lack of capitals after full stops (so a sentence like this. formatted like this). It doesn’t count towards what Niantic calls “poor quality”, but I’m conflicted because if I saw a Waypoint spell a park sign differently from the image, I would see it as a poor proofing.
Am I just being too picky? Should I stop caring so much for bad spelling/incorrect descriptions?
Hello and welcome! That’s a great question that gets brought up from time to time, often with very passionate opinions.
It’s up to you to make the judgement call and if you think information is inaccurate, misleading, or conveys a pattern leading you suspect abuse you may certainly reject. I’ve also rejected for spelling/grammar errors resulting inappropriate words or phrases.
I don’t want to accuse you of being pedantic or picky - that’s not fair to you and it’s great you’re asking. Not everyone understands how to write well. Punctuation and comma usage nuance is often lost on the phone. Spell checking exists but not natively (or intuitively) on every keyboard. Sometimes it’s hot (or cold) and the sun is too bright for me to make a coherent sentence while submitting.
I encourage using the “I don’t know” option unless egregious or the scenarios I mentioned before. An old guidance once said “edits can be submitted once approved” and there are people who enjoy that sort of thing.
I do suppose that last point is true. I’ve seen a few waypoints at a park near me spell the park name in their own different ways, and all it took was a suggestion to fix.
This could also be a case of the banned word filter being bad again. It may not allow cockatoo for some unknown reason, but cockatiel is allowed. Thus, the submitter had to get around the banned word filter with a word that passes.
To add to all of the great points made above, for example in Pokémon GO [at least on my device] all of the text you typed into the currently active field disappears if you tab away. You could tab away to a website to check the exact title of something, to check a spelling, or to find a proof link to copy into your supporting info, and immediately come back to all of your text being deleted. After 1-2 attempts this just greatly frustrates the submitter (which is exactly what you don’t want your user interface to achieve, but nevertheless) who will then just proceed to type the most basic information in from memory.
I firmly believe that this highly clunky nomination interface that doesn’t let you take advantage of what is a given on literally all other apps is actually the cause of a lot of subpar nomination text, and try to stay mindful of that when reviewing. I know there are heroic people on here who pre-write their three text fields in note apps and keep that in their copypaste buffer, but I don’t think that’s the kind of hoop a new submitter should expect to have to jump through.
(I am of course aware that we are all here because we know you can edit your text on the Wayfarer website, but realistically, the number of nominators who are aware of this option is likely a huge minority, and we are all at the mercy of fast ML processing anyway. I personally submit with placeholder text and frequently pay the price of that.)
Similarly, I am aware of spellcheck not being compatible with the Pokémon GO nomination flow on other devices than mine. I do not know if this has been fixed at any point.
No, you are not being too picky. If something is incorrect by even only the smallest degree, it’s still incorrect. I’m also very “picky” when it comes to this stuff.
