I know trail markers are a very frustrating experience in some regions especially if they are not marked with shiny, flashy signs like in this case, but jumping from what seems crazy rejections to bot abuse is an entirely wrong conclusion. There are multiple factors that contribute to these results all the time without any malicious intent even if some reviewers certainly have one and get away with it:
-The marker is a sticker. In the past, definitions from Niantic staff and clarifications that no longer are valid said, stickers and painted markers were not allowed at all
-The overall allowed types of potentially eligible markers changed even more over time, in the past, even factors like quantity in areas (almost any marker vs only trail heads and crossings) and locations (marker on street = no, markers in the woods=yes [“Giffard Scale”]) were used.
-Unfortunately, there is no easily findable source that explicitly says that URLs in the supporting infromation are actually allowed. If you take for example Niantic Wayfarer , it requires reading comprehension to understand that URLs are only disallowed from the Title and the Description field, since the Supporting information field is not mentioned there.
You did the correct thing to include it as otherwise something very simple as a sticker representing a trail is impossible to confirm as legit for reviewers!
-Street View is not an obligatory tool to use for reviewers. Also, an object this small can easily be missed even if users look at that street view.
Your strongest point should therefore always be your supporting photo. From the screenshot you provided, there is a street sign that helps, but from this picture quality, it is not readable. If it also isn’t readable in full resolution then this is something you can improve on.
Finally, enough reviewers, especially non English speaking ones that you can find in noticeable numbers in Germany, Czechia and other neighbouring countries who can get your nominations fro review, all the clarifications and updates don’t really reach the users since they’re not (forum) or poorly translated (it took an enternity until Niantic changed incorrect trasnlations for In Queue and In Voting in Italian and French), and they also won’t even use online translators. It can sometimes help already to include an English or even Czech translation summary of your nomination in the supporting information, if you still have some space left.
With these things in mind, you need to prepare your nominations so that they are done good enough for appeal reviewers, the harsh truth is that, while the situation for trails as nominations is much better than a few years ago, a lot can still not be accepted in community review despite being perfectly fine. As long as now Scoeply doesn’t make sure to get more people to actually read criteria, this will be an uphill battle.
Wouldn’t it be great if they would just push the forum clarifications as an email to any user who logged into Wayfarer for the past 3 months for example?
