As a means of nominating pokestops, the Niantic Wayfarer system is fundamentally broken and borderline insulting to anyone who’s spent more than five minutes trying to contribute.
First off, the review process is inconsistent to the point of being laughable. You can submit a beautifully documented, historical marker or beloved local business and watch it get rejected for “generic business” or “not permanent or distinct" while I just watched a parking lot sign at my university get approved. The criteria are either too vague, constantly changing, or interpreted differently depending on the whims of whoever is reviewing it.
The Wayfarer agreement system incentivizes reviewers to be overly harsh because it rewards agreement with the majority for a users Wayfarer rating. Hence rejecting becomes the “safer” choice for farming agreements and maintaining a good reviewer rating. This creates a toxic loop: reviewers learn to nitpick and deny submissions for minor issues, while legit nominations get rejected, submitters grow discouraged, and the system becomes dominated by jaded users who reinforce the pattern. Basically leading to a system where Reddit and Discord mods seem chill by comparison.
Scopely, if you want to make PoGo better, start here. Either gut Wayfarer and rebuild it with clear standards, trained moderators, and actual quality control — or kill it and come up with a system that respects the people giving you free labor.
As someone who has been submitting for 11 years, I would say scrapping wayfarer is not likely to happen. OPR or wayfarer is born because its impossible for niantic employee to handle all the submission from all over the world. Hence they share the burden to community review. Doing so have its consequences and some of it might be what you are saying but its still better than receiving reply 2-3 years later after you submit nomination. On the other hand i also agree that wayfarer can still be improved. Few weeks ago i believe one of the ambo start a thread if we have any suggestion in future. I am eager to see if there will be any improvement in the future.
You state that everybody is rejecting nominations but poor ones are getting through…
Rejecting good nominations / accepting bad nominations on the hope that the majority of other reviewers is a risky gamble.
As you haven’t given details of the nominations that have been “wrongly” rejected but as you state “beloved local business” would be rejected by me. Local businesses’ need to be more than just loved by the locals…
Your response highlights exactly the kind of gatekeeping mindset that makes Wayfarer so frustrating and out of touch with the broader Pokémon GO community—especially for rural players. When I point out that good nominations are being rejected while low-quality ones are slipping through, it’s not a contradiction; it’s a reflection of an inconsistent system where the criteria are applied unevenly and often punitively. Too many reviewers cherry-pick what they personally think “counts,” even when nominations meet Niantic’s own guidelines.
Attitudes like yours about the generic business issue completely ignores the fact that in small towns or rural areas, a local café, farm stand, or general store often is the cultural hub as there is no art museum, no fancy mural, no park with historical signage. These places are where the community gathers, where memories are made, and where social value is clearest. By harshly rejecting them just because they don’t fit a narrow, urban-centric interpretation of what’s “significant,” you’re reinforcing a system that privileges dense, well-mapped cities while leaving entire rural regions barren of PokéStops.
And yes, reviewers do reject nominations not based on quality, but because they assume others will reject it too—just to preserve their agreement score. That’s not a “risky gamble,” that’s a survival strategy in a broken system where losing agreements tanks your rating and slows down your own submissions. It’s a system that punishes thoughtful, criteria-based decisions in favor of conforming to what the hive mind might decide. That’s not quality control—it’s crowd-sourced stagnation.
Wayfarer needs reform because it’s not serving the full player base. The current system empowers a minority of hyper-critical reviewers to gatekeep the game’s expansion, at the expense of fairness, accessibility, and inclusion—especially for the very communities that need more in-game resources the most.
There is no gatekeeping on my side, I have stated on several occasions on these forums that when I don’t agree with the criteria I am likely to skip than to reject.
You also assume that I live in a major city, I actually live in a village on the edge of a small town. At a quick count we have about 10 waypoints in a 1 mile radius. Not exactly Central Park…
The type of area you live in does not change the criteria. If all you can state is that it’s a “beloved local business” then this is not enough to meet criteria. Someone in these forums stated (paraphrased) “would you drive past other similar business to go to this one” and it is down to the submitter to show evidence why this is the case (Awards? etc).
I still do not understand the “everyone rejects to get agreements” when most submitters are getting decent percentage accepts. I now have to psychically mind read what a random selection of reviewers are going to decide so I can match them… Makes no sense.
I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of the rural submitter. But i have been submitting in rural, suburban, and low POI density areas for a while now. I’m always able to find things to submit in areas that have been “barren” for years. And i have a very low rejection rate.
I don’t want to point the finger back at the submitter. But there are ways to be successful. Everyone, submitters and reviewers, needs to improve their skills.
appeal instead, but since appeals are limited, also learn to submit stuff which is accepted
report and get it deleted
Now, since ingress nominations are not handled by wayfarer anymore, in theory, there is a room to increase appeals limit from 3/month to 6/month, or to invest into the quality control. Which I hope Scopely will do)
Anytime someone says “_____ needs to either this or that”… I know that’s someone who isn’t able to see the kaleidoscope that is this world.
There are always other options, other views.
What if Scopely documented the process better, and was better at explaining to both nominators and reviewers?
What if AI gets smarter?
What if they give more weight to “proven Wayfarers” reviews and nominations than newbies?
Or maybe they could require more reviews than currently required? Or fewer?
There are LOTS of things to potentially tweak.
And lots of opinions. I think Niantic thought it through very carefully, and the current system is pretty good. Once you understand what they want you to submit (it’s their database, not yours), you’ll find that nearly all your nominations are accepted.
Such places are very much included in the current criteria, and many people on here have had success with cultural hubs in rural areas, often with the support of peers on this forum or other discussion communities. We would be happy to help work on your nominations so that the aspect you highlighted in this paragraph comes across to community or appeal reviewers.
bonjour ! je suis évaluateur et propose des wayspot depuis 6 ans.
j’ai eu 175 propositions validées, 2 doublons, et 46 refus.
je prend soin de toujours faire de longues explications en rapport avec les critères …
sur les 46 refus, je me suis rendu compte, au fur et à mesure de mon apprentissage que 5 d’entre elles étaient réellement irrecevables vis à vis des critères et j’en ai pris bonne note !
pour les 41 restantes de mes refus, la plupart ont été validées par d’autres joueurs de ma communauté qui ont bien moins d’expérience que moi, soit !
ce que je veux dire c’est que le système est loin d’être optimum et que souvent je propose des wayspot avec “la peur au ventre” du refus. je passe énormement de temps à faire mes propositions, parfois tout un week end, et certaines réponses me laissent perplexes !
alors je suis d’accord que l’on peut toujours s’ameliorer et decrire encore mieux les choses, mais à force de refus inexplicables de beaucoup de propositions qui finissent par être acceptées sans modifier quoique ce soit, cela fini par instaurer un doute dans mon esprit sur la fiabilité des évaluateurs ou tu du moins sur le système d’évaluation !
loin de moi l’idée de voir quelque chose de l’ordre du complot, juste une vilaine sensation d’incompréhension bien trop présente sur les réponses que je reçois !
merci de m’avoir lu, je retourne de ce pas faire des propositions, j’en ai encore des dizaines en préparation et je sais que je devrais accepter des refus injustifiables. j’ai fini par accepter que c’est le jeu mais si le système pouvait évoluer et s’améliorer ca m’irait très bien !
bon week end
kevin
Salut et bienvenue sur le forum, merci pour tes retours et tes expériences!
Personnellement je trouve tes statistiques de réussite vraiment très bien pour quelqu’un qui a commencé en 2019 en région francophone, et je me souviens de même qu’à mes débuts dans le système mon pourcentage de réussite était absolument horrible (je n’ai pas substantiellement changé ma façon de faire des propositions au fil des années). Ça s’est rééquilibré à terme mais ce que tu décris me paraît absolument normal.
Ce n’est pas pour défendre les refus peu compréhensibles ou injustifiés, c’est juste pour dire que comme c’est un système qui passe par la communauté, c’est compliqué de faire en sorte que chaque votant individuel soit toujours parfaitement informé sur les critères. Avec cette optique, au fil des années, les rejets ont commencé à moins me stresser. Le mieux qu’on puisse faire c’est vraiment avoir tous les arguments et preuves en main directement pour être prêt.e à soumettre un appel si nécessaire.
Si jamais on est toujours là pour revoir une proposition avec un œil externe pour éligibilité ou pour essayer d’aider à augmenter ses chances si quelque chose paraît éligible mais ce n’est pas abondamment clair, peut-être que discuter avec la communauté par avance peut aider à estomper la peur au ventre - hésite pas à poster ici!
Thanks for starting this discussion with some interesting observations.
The fundamental question you ask in the title seems to boil down to what might be the role of wayfarer if there is a more direct relationship with Pokemon Go under Scopely. I think we need to see how this develops. It’s not a question to lose sight of, but a bit early in my.
Inconsistency in reviewing is an issue that crops up regularly. I’m certain we have all felt the frustration that you have expressed.
Seemingly good nominations rejected and at the same time we bump into ones we consider poor.
When we submit we do so because we feel it is worthwhile and it feels rubbish when rejected. Having appeals has been a huge improvement. It pushed me to review my back catalogue of rejections ( there were several ). I had either done a better job of submitting again to get it accepted or on review I have decided it’s not that great after all. I’m human, they weren’t all up to scratch.
We regularly get people posting in Nomination Support about rejections and we help them to be successful. Do have a read. Perhaps you could post an example or two? It always helps to have something concrete to discuss.
Do you review much?
If you review then you will also be rejecting. I always remember when scoring something as poor that someone thought it was good.
I Approach reviewing as looking to see if I can find positives. I really appreciate that there are very few hard lines. I view the greyness as a real chance to consider and vote positively. I would not like to lose that.
I continue to learn about wayfarer. To me that learning is ongoing. I can always do better at the various aspects. Being open to being wrong is i feel important when it is something that is not simple yes or no.
This forum has a really important role in peer support.
As a global crowd sourced way of adding data for gaming use I think it does very well. There are over 80k forum users alone. Of course it’s not perfect and this forum (and it’s previous version) have provided lots of feedback and suggestions.
I don’t think OPR/wayfarer has been stagnant, it has evolved and improved. It is in the business world so changes have to be costed, justified etc etc. so we are never going to get what we want instantly….but to quote the Rolling Stones sometimes you get what you need.
Suggestions of specific changes are welcome.
I do agree there needs to be some changes in education, but I don’t agree with scraping the whole system. Do you have a suggestion to how it ought to work? I don’t want to go back to the days when submitters sent an email to be reviewed by Niantic staff, or when Pokemon Go players couldn’t make nominations.
No case made for the significance of the person, not interesting on its own. I rejected per my understanding of criteria. However, anyone who is less confident about the criteria would look at all those accepted ones on the nearby and assume it should be accepted. I am sure I will get a disagreement for rejecting it.
Realized I didn’t get the supporting statement in that screen snip. Here it is:
And having been accepted, I don’t believe these meet removal criteria. So they will stay on the map, and people will continue to submit and accept them. I don’t have any answer to this kind of issue. How much will Scopely care about the quality of the Wayspots?
The problem would be that there would have to be a rule book that instructs on every single type of waypoint including differences in every country. With the amount of different types of waypoint there is always going to be some judgement.
Example: I am going to cause another war by talking about trail markers (sorry everyone).
Full Trail Markers at start / end / “What you may see” type signs I have no problem with.
Little coloured circle with an arrow, “I” don’t beleive are good POIs but I am aware that criteria states that they are eligable so I will not reject.
I am recently seeing more “Public Footpath” signs marked as trail markers. These are generic signs with no trail name and I believe should be rejected but I have seen them accepted in game so not everybody agrees…
ps: Hope to be informed that “Public Footpath” signs are acceptable, there is 1 abount 20 metres from my front door
I’m certain we have all felt the frustration that you have expressed.
). I had either done a better job of submitting again to get it accepted or on review I have decided it’s not that great after all. I’m human, they weren’t all up to scratch.
I really appreciate that there are very few hard lines. I view the greyness as a real chance to consider and vote positively. I would not like to lose that.
To me that learning is ongoing. I can always do better at the various aspects. Being open to being wrong is i feel important when it is something that is not simple yes or no. 
