Is there a way to judge pokestops in your own city? Because if there isnt I think its not fair because many of the nominations are not in my area and how can I judge if I havent been there before? Or am I wrong? Just a question. Thanks
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Hi @Anikisamma
The reviewing range is much larger than the city you life in. That’s pretty normal and the same for all of us.
You need to evaluate the presented nomination after the recent criterias. You can find them on the help tab of your wayfarer menue. Additionally you should use the “i” (tooltips).
Switch through diffrent map views if available or follow given links to make sure:
it follows one of the three main criterias (good place to explore, excercise or being social), it is where it claims to be and it doesn’t fullfill rejection criterias (like on school ground or by using 3. party photos).
And do ask here in the forum if you’re unsure.
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Hello,
Have you made sure to set your home and bonus locations? Your home location should be someplace you’re familiar with, while your bonus location can be anywhere in the world. Some ideas for home locations include hometowns, places you have frequented, etc. More info can be found here:
Keep in mind that you also have a play location, which is determined by where you are currently playing in PoGo, and this will also provide you with nominations to review. Right now, I’m away from home for the holidays, so I’m getting reviews from where I’m currently playing, as well as my home and bonus locations, which are not my current play area.
You will almost never see an area you’ve been to before or recognise well enough to know the object in question.
Reviews might be from your whole country, or even from neighbouring countries depending on where you live. I live in the UK and get to see most of England and some of Scotland and a little of France in my reviews. Sadly there is no way to change this.
When Niantic talk about local reviewers, they simply mean people from the same country.
Its maybe there to reduce review circle where group of people work together to approve ineligible wayspot in their area. Doing review circle is punishable up to 10years suspension. And secondly, you dont have to be there to do review in certain area. You can use google streetview and /or satelite to determine if the wayspot is there or no.
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They are not saying that they aren’t getting theirs or their friends submissions, just that they aren’t getting submissions from where they live. While there are things in place to try and detect review circles, I don’t think this is the issue the OP is referring to.
They also have not said where they are located, so we can’t tell them how big their regular review area may be, as well as where their upgraded review area is.
This is an assumption. Kindly wait for the OP to speak for themselves.
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My experience in my area has been that I see a lot of the nominations in my city in my review queue (but it takes a while to get to them). I’m not sure how this works nowadays, but review areas were based on the S2 cell system with regions broken down into L6 cells. This is roughly the size of a US state or a European country.
In my particular region, my city is the most populace city in the L6 cell and roughly one in ten “local” nominations I see in review are from my city (bearing in mind that a “local” nomination can be a hundred miles away). I know they also used to have a system for prioritizing nominations from areas with less wayspot density, so this could be a factor as well.
My guess is that if you aren’t seeing any nominations from your city, one of three things are true:
- Your home region is not set to that city
- There aren’t many nominations currently in queue for that city (compared to other areas in your region)
- You didn’t review very many nominations (if you’ve only done ten, try a hundred and see what you see).
I also found that I did not get many nominations from my city - so much so that at one point I had my home, bonus, and play area all set to Cary to try to get them. I have since learned that doubling down like that does not increase the likelihood of seeing local things and moved the hometown and bonus pins when I could set them. I think it is more what @TjoeMi said - that it is probably intentional that you don’t see everything in your home location.
And I have done a lot of reviews, so it isn’t that.
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Someone provide more details but the locations you set for reviewing cover a rather large S2 cell yes? It’s not like a level 10 cell that would get you a whole small town.
So because it covers a large geographic area it’ll depend partially on how active submitters are within that area. If you’ve got 5 active submitters hitting their max 50 miles away and only 1-2 submitters in your town occasionally submitting, it’ll seem like there’s nothing local.
If ML or Niantic takes the local submissions that’ll make it worse.
And if there are a ton of reviewers in your area and you don’t review very often then the submission may get decided before you can see it.
If the submission is upgraded then even more people will see it.
The Wayfarer Discussion Discord has this note:
What is a “review area”?
You get up to 4 types of reviews:
Play Area
This is based on the L6 S2 cell you normally play in, and includes that cell and the 8 surrounding it. Ingress activity seems to be prioritized in choosing this location, but Pokemon Go and other Niantic games can also affect it. Your Play Area should be reflected by your current Featured Wayspot.
Home Location
This can be set to a location of your choosing; strongly recommended not to set it anywhere within the “play area” grid. This is the L7 cell you picked + 8 surrounding. Once chosen it cannot be reset (unless Niantic gives us an event that allows us to, it has happened before but no guarantee it will again)
Bonus Location
This is also set to a location of your choosing, but this one resets after three months. This goes off the L7 cell you picked + 8 surrounding of that size.
Upgraded Nominations
These come from anywhere in the country of your Play Area. This includes territories and offland areas and sometimes nominations across border countries.
This means a reviewer anywhere in the US will see nominations from all 50 states, Puerto Rico, US (word not allowed) Islands, Guam, etc.
Other Info
in very high northern latitudes, each of these cell sizes will go up one level to cover a wider area.
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Yeah all that!
Thanks cyndiepooh
My opinion just on my experience is…
Over 10,000 reviews
Home Location set local (South Yorkshire, UK)
Bonus Location set in Scotland.
This does give me reviews in most of the UK.
- I have only once received my own nomination to review. This was an edit and assume it was an anomaly.
- I have received a few reviews in my local town but this would be a tiny percentage of nominations I know have been made due to new wayspots appearing.
- The largest amounts I receive are the surrounding towns and around the Bonus location.
- After that I receive from the rest of the UK.
Works great for me as I would not be confident reviewing out of the UK (not a well travelled man 
).
Although this is only an opinion I have read that “voting rings” where a large problem in the early days.
Players that joined a “community” where more likely to reach the level to use Wayfarer (I heard it was originally Level 50? ).
We have never been informed how many votes are required but if you are in a large group of eligible wayfarers and this is a large percentage of the eligible reviewers it was possible for these groups to Accept a nomination that should have been Rejected.
Wayfarer was originally released with a level 40 requirement in PoGO.
Level 50 wasn’t released until a while after Wayfarer launched.
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