People have been getting “Various Rejection Criteria” as a rejection reason since shortly after the reviewing rework in October 2023, much to the frustration of those who received it. What’s it supposed to mean, anyway? It doesn’t help the submitter in any meaningful way. Initially, it was speculated that this may have been the return of the “partial duplicate” rejection bug (which has existed for years) where the site uses a placeholder rejection reason instead of the Duplicate rejection reason when some reviewers downvote the submission as a duplicate. However, just in the past few weeks, several people have reported really bizarre rejections from this reason, and in almost all these cases, there were no nearby Wayspots that could possibly be considered a duplicate. Some of my own examples:
Just a random thought… whilst churches in general are accepted without contention, how it’s presented could affect peoples ability to accept it. Shadows from lampost won’t be an issue. However, the car may play a part. Would you be able to take a photo of the church when the car isn’t there?
Yes, we need an answer to what this rejection reason is supposed to indicate so that we know what to address in an appeal or a resubmit! Early on I thought that we had narrowed down that this was the same as the bugged reason for the previous review flow where it spits it out when some reviewers mark it as a duplicate but not enough to have it rejected as duplicate. But that no longer seems to be the case. This is not helpful at all.
Absolutely, many are almost useless if we can’t decipher what they are supposed to mean. How can we improve nominations or write a good appeal if we have no idea what they were really denied for in the first place.
ML typically uses Wayfarer Criteria as its main rejection reason, but I certainly can see it using Various, even though both are very vague. Both reasons do bring newer Wayfarers to the forums, Reddit, Discord, and other sites asking what they may mean, and we can only guess.
And yes, 25 hour rejection after submission by the community seems super quick; I’m lucky if my submissions go into voting with the community within 25 hours!
Definitely not the best title and description, but this certainly is an eligible nomination under the exercise and socialize category. Instead it got “Various Rejection Criteria.” What does this mean?
