Hello, I recently sent in a contribution for a pokestop and made the error of using images of the location from google instead of taking my own. While I understand the reason for the stop being rejected, I also received a secon reason stating “The text or photo contains abuse, ridicule, or harassment of a specific person or group”
I logged into my pokemongo and was given a warning for violating guidelines.
Do people just troll submissions? How can I contact Niantic aside from submitting an appeal?
Welcome to the forums!
The phrasing of that rejection reason/warning often causes problems, because it can be read in many different ways. The key thing to take from it is that any rule breaking is abuse of the system, which is why this is flagged as “abuse”. Since you know what the abuse is - using third-party images which is strictly against the rules - you don’t need to worry about the rest of that phrase.
An appeal is unlikely to be successful, because there is no doubt that you did commit the abuse.
This will be a strike against your account, so please take care, as any further abuse will be dealt with more harshly (e.g., using third-party photos, deliberately mis-locating a wayspot). The strike will remain there for a year before being wiped.
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It could be possible that, when a reviewer chooses the 3rd party image rejection reason, the abuse rejection reason may be sent, along with the 3rd party image rejection reason. It may be meant to teach, but it’s a somewhat confusing teaching, if you ask me.
Reviewers could select abuse for rejection, too, but when I get a nomination with 3rd party main photos, I just reject as 3rd party and low quality, so it makes me wonder if the abuse rejection reason gets added by the system if abuse isn’t chosen.
Anyways, just make sure that you are following the Wayspot Criteria, and you should be good. We aren’t told fully how the system works in terms of rejection reasons, but as long as you know you made a mistake and now understand the criteria, you should be good.
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Thank you all for the responses, this made me feel better, I wasn’t sure if it was a more serious matter. Will be more diligent when proceeding next time!
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