For some time now, I, along with several wayfinders in my region (Franche-Comté in France), have noticed something very… irritating.
Indeed, a significant number of wayspot proposals are rejected for completely false reasons.
Par exemple, nous avons des refus pour : The most frequent comment is: “It is likely that the proposal is not permanent,” when in fact these are plaques, or other things, that have been there for a very long time… so the “non-permanent proposal” makes me chuckle (or not).
Even worse are the comments like “not secure” and “this may not be accessible to the public,” when the proposal is located on sidewalks, therefore on public property!
So, totally unreasonable refusals like that make me chuckle, while nonsensical proposals are sometimes accepted by wayfinders.
So, these completely unreasonable rejections make me chuckle, especially since wayfinders sometimes accept nonsensical proposals while rejecting legitimate ones…
I apologize for the writing; English isn’t my native language, so I’m using Google Translate.
So the rejection reason is that something is not permanent and district, and this has been confusing. Most likely it’s being rejected for being indistinct, as it should be asking if it’s permanent and/or distinct.
The recent AMA from staff did note that this is being worked on, to improve the wording of some of the rejection reasons, as well as a better way to reject nominations that do not meet criteria.
As for POIs located on or near sidewalks, they may not be on public property, depending on the boundaries of the area. It could also be in an area that is unsafe for pedestrians to access, so some examples would need to be provided for this rejection reason.
You are also welcome to use any language you feel comfortable with here in the forums, as there is a translator; English isn’t required, just the most used.
“Not permanent and distinct” comes up in three situations:
reviewers did not think the object is permanent
reviewers did not think the object is distinct
reviewers did not think the object meets any criteria (exercise, explore, social) and wanted to explicitly reject it, so reject for not “permanent and distinct” because that is the advice from Niantic
Sometimes, the rejection reasons don’t make sense. This may happen because reviewers feel they want to reject the submission and just pick a random rejection reason.
If an object is accessible from the sidewalk but actually on the exterior boundary of single-family private residential property or school property, it is not eligible. Reviewers might pick not accessible instead of private-property or school, because of not quite understanding the review flow.
Please have a look at these for understanding what makes a good wayspot.