Hey there, I’d like to bring the attention to a rather disheartening set of appeals I received recently, that I’d like to possibly have reverted - not only these seem unfair, but also I’ve had similar Wayspots accepted not only by the community but also the Niantic Team themselves via appeal (I get more into detail further down).
In this next section I’ll try to explain why these rejection reasons don’t truly reflect the significance of these Wayspots:
These pavement tile arts are a unique feature of the Centro Comercial Colombo (Colombo Shopping Mall), which the decoration pays homage to the Age of Discovery (Descobrimentos - Portuguese maritime exploration - Wikipedia ) led by the Portuguese sailors into uncharted overseas territories, which are still widely celebrated as one of our biggest historical achievements. Additional information about the shopping mall can be found here, which explains its unique and acclaimed decorative features: Colombo Centre - Wikipedia
Portuguese tile art / pavement art is widely celebrated around the World and is part of our cultural heritage, and these tiles also reflect that beauty, uniqueness and craftsmanship. More info about this iconic art here: Portuguese pavement - Wikipedia
The location of these tile arts is located around the center dome of the shopping mall, as you can see from the support pictures (below). There is no Street View inside (obviously) and the Photospheres are all inaccurate and all over the place, so they are not reliable to display the correct location of the Wayspot pins. On the other hand, the Wayfarer criteria clearly state that even if the location can’t be pinpointed accurately due to lack of Street View, the Wayspot can still be accepted if its location can be inferred based on the support pictures and additional information. Here are the support pictures by the way, in which the dome is clearly visible:
I don’t visit the capital too often, so I don’t have many opportunities to resubmit this. Here are all the unique tiles I found on my last trip (these are just a few of the tiles that can be discovered inside the mall):
I hope this is enough to clarify my reasons for this plea, as it’s disheartening to take the effort to submit something so unique, have it rejected by the community, and then appealing it to have it more carefully reviewed by a more experienced and thorough team of reviewers and still have it rejected!
First off, you haven’t appealed the 3 at the beginning of your post; they were rejected by the community if you have rejection reasons such as them not being unique or they can’t be located. If you did appeal, they would be marked as either appeal pending, appeal accepted, or appeal not accepted.
You can appeal 2 times every 20 days via Contribution Management; Wayspot appeals are not handled in the forums. If you have used up both of your appeals, you will have to wait 20 days before you can appeal again. I find it hard to believe that you were able to appeal all 3 since you submitted them on April 1st, as I doubt they were decided on that quickly.
Keep in mind that indoor POIs can be harder to prove, and reviewers may not have been able to locate the depending on your supporting photo/info. We also recently had a global review challenge, and it could have been that those not in your area were reviewing there and rejected as they didn’t find them distinct enough or were unable to visually place them at where you said they were.
Personally, I would have approved them, especially if some of the others were already approved and on the map, or if the supporting photos were similar to the ones you showed above.
I would agree that those mosaics have cultural meaning, and they would be great places to explore. I want to check them out myself after seeing those photos. My guess is that the second reason, inaccurate location, is probably why they were rejected. I know some apps lets you geotag your photos with GPS coordinates, so that may be something to try in the supporting photos.
Did you mention the location of the dome being visible from Google Maps in your supporting info? That could help reviewers estimate the location.
I have been brought here by this post, as a member of the community I’m in suggested I should try the same, since he did get his appeal rejections reverted. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered with the lengthy post.
Also, the submissions were submitted on January 24th (not April first) and were initially rejected by the community. Then afterwards the appeal was not accepted by the Wayfarer Team. I should have changed the language of my Wayfarer to clarify it further:
You need to provide the screenshots of what the appeals team said for not accepting these, and those are listed for each. Once you provide those, we may have a better idea, and staff may take another look at these. We can’t guarantee that staff will reverse the decision, but the screenshots of the reason that the appeals team gave are needed to see if these could possibly be overturned, or if you may have to just resubmit.
Also, that referenced thread doesn’t have any screenshots of what the appeals team said, so not the best example of how to proceed with these. Here are some that are better, and the OP provided screenshots of the appeal rejection:
As you can see, these clearly aren’t just “normal” or “generic” mosaics.
And this is what I wrote on the appeal on each of the submissions, if that helps:
“[DO NOT MARK THIS AS A DUPLICATE WITHOUT LOOKING VERY CAREFULLY] This pavement tile art is a unique feature of the Centro Comercial Colombo (Colombo Shopping Mall), which the decoration pays homage to the Age of Discovery (Descobrimentos) led by the Portuguese sailors into uncharted overseas territories, which are still widely celebrated as one of our biggest historical achievements. This is one of several such tile arts around the center dome of the mall, you can see here other examples I submitted recently, each of them being unique: Screenshot-2025-01-26-00-57-14-832-com-android-chrome hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; IMG-20250124-184733 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; IMG-20250124-184821 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; IMG-20250124-184850 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; IMG-20250124-185156 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; IMG-20250124-185042 hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB ; BY THE WAY most of the Photospheres inside the shopping mall are incorrect, so you can’t judge the correct location solely on that basis. I would make a Photosphere myself in this specific location as I did in the past, but GOOGLE HAS STOPPED SUPPORTING THEIR STREET VIEW APP TO WHICH I UPLOADED THEM. Anyways, hopefully this clears things up, as it’s extremely frustrating getting submissions wasted for being flagged by your sketchy AI bot. Hopefully this appeal can make the Wayspot available in the future for other players to enjoy and discover this unique mall that’s not only a shopping hub, but also an architectural wonder of the capital of Portugal. Cheers!”
If its rejected by AI you can resubmit with different angle and resubmit. Or you can appeal (you have 2 appeal , each with 20days cooldown)
If its rejected by community, i would say resubmit again. People are rushing review during global event that they may not look into review properly. I believe your local community will know more about submission like this. (Personally i like it). You must understand with community doing review, its important to know ur reviewer. How to convince the reviewer from reviewer’s point of view.
Appeal team may not come from your country and may not see your nomination in the same light. So submitter need to do extra work to explain. Sometimes community route is easier
The 3 in question were rejected by the appeals team. The OP is disagreeing with the appeals team decision, and asking staff to take another look. There isn’t a guarantee that the decision will be reversed, but staff asked us to let them know of appeal rejections we do not agree with:
