The Situation: I am trying to nominate a unique, permanent landmark in my community. It is a vintage yellow SUV chassis that has been completely gutted, painted with branding, and permanently bolted to a raised concrete wall to act as a volumetric sign for a business (the first self-storage facility in Lithuania).
It is 100% stationary, elevated off the ground, and serves as a permanent art/advertising installation. There is a safe pedestrian walkway directly in front of the concrete wall it is mounted on.
The Problem: Because it is made from a car, it gets instantly rejected.
When I submitted the full photo, the ML filter auto-rejected it within 24 hours.
I tried cropping the photo to focus just on the branded door to bypass the ML, but it was still rejected.
I used my Niantic Appeal, explicitly stating in the text that it is bolted to a concrete wall and is not a parked car, but the appeal was also rejected.
My Question: How can a permanent, stationary installation like this be successfully nominated when reviewers (and the automated system) seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything resembling a vehicle, regardless of context? Is there any way a staff member can take a second look at this to see the concrete mounting in the supporting photo?
I have attached my main photo below for context. Any advice from Ambassadors or Staff would be greatly appreciated!
I am only talking local (UK based) but I am not sure this is as unique as you may think. Locally we have several that just look parked up but they are left 24/7.
We have 2 that a definitely not moving…
A local Scrapyard has the following on an out building
and a Local car dealership is quite famous (at least locally) for having had a car on the roof since the 1950s. Remember then using ramps to remove a Rover SD1 in the early 80s.
Because I’m confused, you can see wayspots like simple signs, or even trash cans which sounds ridiculous, but normal things are just not accepted. So some kind of better understanding would be great what is the criteria
There will always be gray areas in what people feel meets criteria. It is very frustrating to compare what you are submitting to what you see in game. They could have been accepted under different criteria, incorrectly accepted, or have more to the submission that you can see on the Wayspot.
If you feel this is truly something of significance to the community, you can try again. You didn’t show us the Niantic Note, but usually it says something along the lines of “if this is not a correct assessment, please resubmit with more evidence.”
I read those criterias but it does not make my view clearer unfortunately.
This is what I got:
Thanks for the appeal, Explorer! The nomination in question does not meet the Wayfarer criteria as it is a typical Advertising Installation that seems non-distinct and lacks significance.
As I see like many wayspots with either signs, kid playground equipment (each separate is a pokestop), mailbox’es - I’m getting confused about the criterias
By comparing notes here, we have determined that this is the way the rejection reason reads when reviewers select “Generic Business”. This makes sense for this nomination if they only saw it as an advertisement for the business.
It is allowed to submit business art, but it is hard to convince that it isn’t just business art. Unique Art
It would depend on what the sign is for. Signs that are not eligible in themselves may be used as an anchor for the actual point of interest. Regular used for parks (meets all 3 criteria, social, exercise and explore). It would be the park that is the nomination not the sign.
Unless there is something special these should not be eligible and should be reported.
Play grounds do meet the 3 main criteria but should be nominated as an whole. Multiple pieces of equipment should be reported for removal.
Again, does not sound eligible, should be reported for removal.
As stated above, do not use what’s on the map as evidence that something is eligible. Scopely Explore (Niantic) are trailing Street Corners and Bus Stops in certain areas. Still not eligible to nominate.
I do believe that your nomination falls in to the grey area. Reworked on another day with another set of reviewers and it could get through but I definitely reckon it will be hard work.
There should be no problem if you did try to nominate again, staff have stated that Spamming obvious bad nominations can cause warnings / suspensions but re-trying a “grey area” nomination a 2nd time should not cause issues (disclaimer: I am not staff and will not be held responsible for any problems you encounter).
I tried 3 times from different angles and different descriptions. Plus 1 appeal. So now came here to learn a bit more on these. But in general as I see it is more on spending time of proving something rather then adding value to the game itself.
