After waiting for months for several of my nominations to go into voting, I’ve had two of them come back as “generic business” as the only reason for them being rejected.
I’ve had other, similar objects approved in the past. One is a green space with a bench in the middle of a city area (a good place for exercise and resting) and the other is an old flour mill, which has some historic value, and others have been accepted as waypoints elsewhere.
I’m going to guess these were automatically voted on, not by the community, because they went from in queue for months to instantly being rejected, having been in voting for almost no time at all.
I also don’t have the option to appeal, so I’ll have to remake these I guess, but what can I do to make them not get rejected as generic businesses? Apart from adding more information? I’ve not had this problem with the past outside of a couple of cafes (which could be generic businesses but cafes are super popular social spots here).
Does the rejection email say “our team” decided instead of the community? The usual rejection reason from the ML model is “Wayfarer criteria” so if it was our team, this may have gone to a human in-house reviewer.
You get 2 appeals, each on a 20 day counter before you can use them again. I usually do try a nomination a couple of times before appealing, but if you don’t want to remake the nomination, or if it is difficult, you can wait and appeal later when you have one available.
We would need to see the rest of the nomination to advise you on resubmitting. I could see myself voting either way on these from the main photos.
Thank you for the response. It says “our team” so maybe someone did see them, but I don’t understand why a human would say “generic business” rather than “Wayfarer criteria” (which would make slightly more sense). I’ll probably just go back and remake them, but I need to wait for the weather to improve - I submitted these before it was dark at 5pm and when it wasn’t cloudy.
I have seen in the past where Niantic has said that “Generic business” wasn’t exactly what the appeals reviewer was selecting, so maybe this is similar and they were trying to just say “Generic.”
I will edit in the link to that conversation when/if I find it.
When humans review they aren’t always clear on the distinction between “generic business” and “not distinct”. We appear to overlook the word “business” in favor of the word “generic”. And there isn’t much difference between “generic” and “not distinct”.
Your rejection came from “our team” but may well have been reviewed by a human. I had one that was “in review” last night turn out to be rejected this morning as a “generic business”. Mine isn’t anything to do with a business. It’s a foot bridge. So I can only assume that they intended to convey that they didn’t think is was sufficiently distinct.
this absolutely used to happen in the old review flow, and was why “generic business” had been removed in the 5* system. many of us predicted reviewers would go back to using it this way when it was added back to the “new” no-star review flow, and it has happened.
First off, if the emails say “our team,” it could have been rejected by ML or Niantic staff. ML uses Wayfarer Criteria for its rejection reasons; staff uses the same rejection reasons as the community, but the emails still say “our tam” instead of “our community.” If you ever see a submission in Contribution Management with the status of Under Review, this is a staff review, and I think this is what could have happened here.
Yes, I have to agree that they chose generic business as a rejection reason instead of not being permanent and/or distinct. There are still reviewers in the community that choose generic business to say something is indistinct and not unique, when a downvote on Permanent and Distinct is the better rejection reason for something that is indistinct and not a business.
I wouldn’t have marked the mill as something indistinct or generic, as it does seem to have some historical value that makes it worth exploring. You didn’t explain any of that in the description, and being the supporting info wasn’t provided, I can’t say if that was included there or not. I also can’t tell where exactly it’s located, which is another aspect needed to judge if the nomination is eligible.
As for the pocket park, these can be hard to get approved if there isn’t something in the main photo that placemarks it, such as a sign, benches/picnic tables, etc. The other rejection reason on that one could be anything other that generic business, such as Permanent and Distinct, but generic business was chosen more by reviewers (and yes, this one seems to have been rejected by the community, but could have been rejected by staff as well). I’m not seeing anything in your main photo that placemarks this as a pocket park.
I can see why reviewers do that. “Not Distinct” doesn’t really apply to a memorial bench or neighborhood sign - if you’re there, it stands out. But they are generic.
Since the nomination page shows two rejection reasons, if you got these two, it’d be clearer what reviewers think is the problem.
It’s imperfect, but seems to be what Niantic wants.
