I have seen NUMEROUS welcome/place name signs just like this while reviewing nominations, and while playing POGO in-game, and there are countless examples on the Wayfarer map.
My question is two-fold:
What makes this submission different from the neighborhood and apartment signs / welcome signs that have been accepted, and how should I present the appeal - or how should I re-submit it for a better chance at being accepted?
And, if this is what SHOULD be rejected, should I be rejecting all the neighborhood/welcome signs that Iâve been seeing while reviewing? I just reviewed one this morning, and the nearest wayspots in the area were all entrance walls/signs to other neighborhoods and apartments around it (four others in this example). Should all of those not be wayspots (even though they are already in-map)?
Reviewers provided these top reasons for not accepting this submission:
The submission lacks uniqueness or historical and cultural meaning
A: It is unique, there is only one Heights Apartments in Montgomery, and this is the only welcome wall/sign.
B: It might not be historic, but it may be significant to those who live there, and it is visible to everyone walking in the neighborhood. For me, its significance lies in the fact that our downtown is coming back to life with developments like this. This was a derelict corner of abandoned warehouses and buildings for decades - and now itâs a thriving community and hopefully will attract more development of the surrounding blocks.
Description: overlooking the river valley sitting at one of the highest points in downtown are the heights Luxury Apartments.
Supplemental Information: thank you for reviewing the submission! this is a new development that sits in the historical Cottage Hill Neighborhood overlooking downtown and the Alabama River Valley. sidewalks enable pedestrians to traverse the neighborhood easily and there are lots of pokestops and gyms and spawns that make this area a ton of fun to play in.
Lastly, thank you, whoever you are, for taking the time to read and contribute to this conversation. I want to be a better wayfarer, both in my submissions and in my own reviewing - I need to know if Iâm making mistakes and what they are.
The neighbourhood entrance signs are a point of contention and there is no consensus.
Often, they are on/attached to single-family private residential property, so strictly ineligible, but reviewers accept them.
Sometimes reviewers accept them because they look vaguely interesting and everyone (!) wants more pokestops.
Sometimes reviewers reject them because they arenât interested simply in more pokestops but in eligible wayspots.
For a neighbourhood sign, think about how it meets criteria. It does not meet Exercise criteria, as it does not specifically target exercise (being able to walk past it is no no merit). It doesnât meet Social criteria, as it is not something focussed around being social (being able to meet up near it is of no merit). That only leaves Exploration.
An object is eligible under Exploration if it is something that people would be interested to find and would show to other people. Obviously, not everyone has to be interested in something, but it has to be something that a decent number of people would be interested to find.
People might see one and use it to help work out where they are, but that doesnât make it eligible as a wayspot, since people can also do that with street name signs.
I hate that Niantic will not make a clarification on these signs. I believe that most of them you see on the map have been incorrectly accepted, but Nianticâs internal removal policy is not the same as acceptance criteria, so they rarely get removed once accepted.
As to whether you should appeal, a recent forum post here shows the appeals team rejecting a sign for being a neighborhood sign, even though it wasnât. I would not appeal this.
I donât think they can. They definitely cannot say they are all acceptable; they canât say they are all ineligible, because some of them could be eligible. The best they could say is that they might be eligible if they meet criteria, but that doesnât clarify anything, because that applies to everything.
The Criteria Clarification Collection section is full of clarifications on when the type of point of interest is eligible and when it is not. That is exactly what I want.
Adding to already said⌠Normally neighbourhood sign are usually not considered eligible unless there are some artistic or historic value to it. I might reconsider if the sign is quite pretty but there are some sign thats quite plain. Those plain are usually rejected but wayfarer is like voting system, so neighbourhood sign can get approved somehow if enough people say yes
We do get similar âApartment Signsâ in the UK and I will always reject unless they have something âdifferentâ about them.
A âsign on a wallâ is never going to get an Accept from me.
Is it extra artistic? Does the structure include something else such as a waterfall?
Even when they have a flower display I try to decide whether its just a sign with a planter attached or is it an artistic flower display with the sign incorporated.
As the majority of âApartment Signsâ are quite generic I would reject including the 1 in the OP.
Thank to everyone here who weighed-in on this conversation, especially with links to other conversations of the same nature. It looks like this is a HIGHLY contested type of submission, and MOST folks here would agree to immediately reject it. Iâm now changing my reviewing to reflect this. Unless its a really unique and artistic welcome wall/sign I will be rejecting them.
That said, during todays reviews, the second one Iâm confronted with is this:
How do I reject this for the reasons mine was rejected??? ie: âThe submission lacks uniqueness or historical and cultural meaningâ
That isnât a choice as far as I could tell from any of the pull downs or down-vote options. Ultimately I had to give a thumbs up for Appropriate, Safe, Accuracy, & Permanent and Distinct (I tried down-voting it for distict, but the pop-up reads: âDo you want to end the review? We cannot accept a place that isnât permanent, physical, tangible and identifiable. Answering no to this question will end the review flow. Do you want to end the review?â) Clearly it meets all those requirements, but oddly doesnât mention âdistinctâ or âuniqueâ or having âcultural meaningâ - so I had to give that section a thumbs up too.
I gave it a thumbs down for: Socialize, Exercise, & Explore - though I realized down-thumbing each one of those gave no pop-up.
I hit submit and that was it⌠so, now Iâm truly perplexed as to how people are straight-away rejecting these if they see them. Insight would be much appreciated.
I believe this is the âGeneric Businessâ rejection, which I have used on these, since they are just signs builders put up to sell real estate. I think more people use the ânot Distinctâ rejection to indicate that they are simply not something significant enough to be a Wayspot.
As you noticed, thumbs down on the last three does not reject, and an old AMA (2022, I think) told us to use one of the first four reasons to reject.
I am so upset over this. They do not meet criteria, but the appeals team even sometimes accepts them. And once accepted, they rarely meet removal criteria, which is for internal use and not shared publicly.
I would have approved this. TBH I think some of the people on here are way to strict. There is a category called âPlace Name Signâ and to me, this is it! and itâs not fully generic. If I were you, I would just submit this one again, it will eventually get approved.
We want more pokestops in the game, and to me this is fine, I seen tons of these in game as Pokestops already. Try again I say!
This was the logic that led me to review and submit the way I have been for years now - not realizing that it was considered incorrect by the wayfarer community. Itâs made doubly confusing by the place name signs that are in-game and on the wayfarer maps (obviously accepted and kept), and by the âplace name signâ category. Itâs been made clear to me ther must be something more compelling to the sign than it just being a place name sign - it must be interesting or compelling or something worth going out of your way to see or visit. Unfortunately, Iâm torn on this whole matter, as a rural / suburban player and seeing all the emptiness that is the POGO playable map, anything at all that stands out as a landmark, be it one of the signs or a huge boulder or whatever, could be the difference in someone having 1 pokestop near them, or a vast sea of nothingness. And in most of those places thereâs nothing that would qualify as interesting or significant to someone whoâs lived in a large city - but to those people living in the boonies (or suburbs) it would absolutely qualify. At the end of the day I too want a fuller more rich playing environment to be a part of - but the growing pains and learning curve for reviewing & submitting wayfare spots is REAL. Iâve been at it for years now, and I still feel like a total newb most of the time
You just gotta sell it like a used car dealer! I did a quick search of your address, I think this can work with the other stuff nearby. Try mentioning the nearby playground and the Riverwalk in the area. Generally across the street I see a lot of other pokestops and places to explore.
not realizing that it was considered incorrect by the wayfarer community.
I think itâs worth reflecting that you are part of that community.
It is the wayfarer team that set out the guidelines and criteria that they expect all to work to. So just to be clear the community of wayfinders donât decide these guidelines. We help each other interpret as cases are different. And because itâs use your best judgement we donât always reach agreement.
So what you are seeing with this particular set of circumstances is fairly normal for wayfarer.
To reject something, you have to thumbs down for one of Appropriate, Safe, Accuracy, or Permanent & Distinct.
When you cannot thumbs down for the first three, you need to thumbs down for Permanent & Distinct, which is used in three situations:
you do not think the object is permanent
you do not think the object is distinct
you do not think the object meets any criteria (exercise, explore, social) and want to explicitly reject it, so reject for not âpermanent and distinctâ because that is the advice from Niantic
Saying it is doesnât meet Social, Exercise and Exploration does not reject the submission.
