Greetings! I’m not quite understanding the permanent and distinct rejection reason.
It’s very distinct and should be pretty permanent with the stone work and all. It seems like an incorrect rejection reason. Was hoping someone could elaborate.
Let me know if you need more information. I’m happy to explain. Thanks!
How many of such signs exist? In some areas, it’s really common for them to be on every block.
What makes the location interesting? Note that what it can provide as a benefit for being a Wayspot doesn’t matter - it’s what the location currently is or represents that may make it eligible.
It appears to be subjective on the part of the reviewers. Some reviewers simply think neighborhood signs shouldn’t be allowed to be portals at all, nevermind whether there are others in the area already. Some think they should be allowed. Others think that it depends on the sign or the neighborhood.
When people are against them or think your sign isn’t interesting enough, they reject it as “not distinct”.
I will also point out that there is no consistency here. Partly because it’s “crowd sourced” a lot depends on which, specific reviewers happened to see your submission at the time.
Nominations need to be a great place to socialise, a great place to exercise, or a great place to explore, and neighbourhood entrance signs don’t typically meet any of those criteria as standalone objects.
Reviewers who gave the “Not Distinct” rejection reason are trying to tell you that they think it’s generic signage that isn’t distinct enough to warrant being accepted under the wayfarer criteria.
Not “distinct” is the closest thing we have in this “new” review flow to indicate “this is not significant enough to be a wayspot.” We were instructed:
Many of us use this rejection reason for builder’s neighborhood signs.
Wrongly
welcome to the forum! if you think that distinct is used wrongly, which reason would you use to reject?
Nothing wrong about it.
Mostly, I go back and forth between “Not Distinct” and “Generic Business” on these types of signs, depending on the context.
Click the bubble and it brings this up “when in the immediate area, the location is visually distinct enough to identify” and “a generic business, chain, or franchise that is not uniquely important to the local community”. Neither of these apply.
writely
I would like to point out this clarification in reference to your supporting text
and the inciting clarification on walking trails:
Another relevant angle for these is the sign itself as art where this is relevant
If true that it is a former golf course, what makes the sign itself worthy of exploration now?
As for its vicinity being used as a bus stop, traditional bus stops aren’t eligible by its lonesome so it may be viewed a weak reason for being eligible.
I’m confused where you think Cyndiepooh has provided specific feedback for this nomination outside of offering an explanation for the OP to start with.
Perhaps it would be better to keep the topic to things that might be helpful for the person coming here for help, and if you have other qualms start a new topic?
Thanks for your clarifications. I suppose my waypoint interpretation is fundamentally flawed because I was thinking that ordinary landmarks that are permanent and distinct become extraordinary opportunities through the power of Pokemon Go and other games. My reasoning was along the lines of what you linked in the trail marker.
A trail marker itself need not be an interesting object but its function on the trail should be unique to that location.
The neighborhood sign need not be terribly interesting itself but as a unique landmark it becomes a great reason to get more exercise and walk to something that I would normally never feel the need to go to. I think about 90% of the pokestops in my area I would never have gone to if it weren’t for Pokemon Go and the secret sauce is that Pokemon Go makes them a place I want to walk to almost every day. Very recently I got back into Pokemon Go specifically to better my health and see each Pokestop in the neighborhood as an opportunity to get more steps in or to create a new route between different stops. I’ve gone from walking less than 5km in a week to almost always hitting 50km+ each week so thank you to Pokemon Go for that! Before that going back 4 years ago when we first moved to this area it was a brand new neighborhood with just green on the map for PoGo and there was no real reason at all to get out and walk. If I wanted to play I had to drive which really defeats the spirit of the game imho and that barrier to entry just kind of discouraged me. It took me ages to muster up the gumption to just get out and walk in my own neighborhood. So I fell off the wagon as it were after the remote raid passes of covid times dried up. Fast forward back to now and luckily some folks in the area were really active in getting a bunch of stops approved and now we have a real reason to get out and walk around in our neighborhood since these stops exist. It’s a real boon to the community to have places to walk especially now with Pokemon routes (pure genius idea btw) so why not add community signs to the mix? There’s not much else in these self contained, tightly packed communities that’s outside of Private Property and/or deemed interesting/permanent/distinct.
I will try to reassess my wayspots nomination thinking from what I thought could be a great nomination because I could walk to it if it were to become a pokestop and try to assess based solely on what is interesting about a particular location. It may be difficult because I will always feel the nascent excitement of the early days of Pokemon Go where I was suddenly excited to walk to some random Gazebo or a sign or a park just so I could get more balls. To me any permanent and distinct landmark that has great pedestrian access will always seem like a great opportunity for exercise. I hope there would be some clarification on these items as the criteria seems to leave a lot to judgement call and sometimes it happens and sometimes not.
Congratulations on getting more exercise! That’s also a reason I love Niantic games.
The nomination process asks why it would make a good Pokestop (or portal, if you’re nominating in Ingress). But actually you’re nominating a Wayspot, and it’s in-game benefits have nothing to do with whether it would make a good nomination.
In reality, the wayspot needs to be a great place to explore, socialize and/or exercise before it’s nominated. By people who don’t play any games.
I appreciate your spirit and hope this isn’t the end of your attempts. Even the sign you nominated isn’t strictly ineligible but I don’t think anyone suggests trying it again as is. Reassess criteria, reassess the area. At face value, mentioning the golf course sounds “interesting” to me but that alone I don’t think is enough. Is there other history you can reference? Can you connect that to “exploration” criteria and provide an earnest connection to convince others of genuine eligibility?
As for the area at large, I know it sucks, but a lot of these neighborhoods or subdivisions are simply built to be “uninteresting.” They may have walking paths but lack “required” signage. They don’t have commercially zoned area for businesses or churches and sometimes the utilization for housing means no parks.
What are all those sand looking plots? Are they are play areas or open spaces?
Is there a neighborhood association you can get involved in to suggest nature signage, things like bioretention cells with signs, or trail markers? An area I nominated had a bunch of distance markers so people could track their walking distance. This could help improve your actual community.
There’s nothing incredibly interesting about the sign itself besides being well constructed and the only sign like it in the whole world; there’s no other Larkhaven Hills in the world that I can find in a google search. The golf course bit I thought was interesting, I discovered my backyard was built on top of a sandtrap. From the reviews of the now defunct Larkhaven Golf Club it seemed like an incredibly generic course that was good for beginners but in the end not well liked due to all of the construction of turning it into residences. To me the little tidbits are interesting but nothing that’s going to make it onto wikipedia and 4 years isn’t that ancient of history. Maybe in 20 years people would give more value to being on the grounds of a formerly mediocre golf course, but there’s probably only so much lipstick I could put in the supporting info/description to sway anyone that’s wavering and from the responses and emojis in this thread it seems like folks have pretty much made up their mind on signs like these. Like what @teamnoir mentioned it all comes down to the luck of the draw of who’s reviewing and what camp they are in.
For the sand looking plots, assuming your looking at the sat view, those are probably the retention ponds in construction. There’s also a couple of open spaces where the builders decided they couldn’t quite squeeze a house in and just put a few landscaping trees in but no signs; I tried nominating a couple of those but they got rejected because they weren’t really distinct and were close to private property. There’s a nature trail you might see from the map view pin which I’ve nominated and is in the pipeline but there’s no signage so I have lowered my expectations. I will talk with the HOA to see if we can muster some signage for trails as that seems to be the best tack.
In the end there are still some stops around the neighborhood. I’ve mostly been nominating stops for somewhat selfish reasons as there are only so many routes you can cook up going back to the same pokestops and the wife has refused to go on more walks with me due to lack of variety in my routes. I was trying not to sacrifice getting pokestops on my walks but that may become inevitable for the peace of the household. I will keep trying with the various things around the neighborhood. I’m not too chuffed about the rejection as it is just a game and I still very much enjoy playing it, however the lack of review consistency is a bit frustrating as another neighborhood sign I nominated made the grade, I just wish I could get my own neighborhood sign in so I can send it in poke gifts.
I get this sentiment however I quoted another excerpt that shows the gist of why a trailmarker need not be unique in order to be eligible: the trail itself is the point of interest, the trail marker only acts as a placemarker.
I also get this as I have used the games to go out for leisure. As pointed out by others, the real world significance wrt eligibility is the best bet at getting game objects through Wayfarer. Here, we can only reflect the real world and what already exists.
IMO many things are judgement calls in an attempt to reflect a nuanced, wild real world. If you look through the clarifications, one thing that is recurring is that the submitter should back up any nomination with proof and good content.
I don’t see them making a rolling yes/no decision on this category of objects as there are some that may make an interesting case. It’s all nuance, context, and how it is presented.
You don’t need specific stops to aid walking in Pokémon Go. You just need 1 stop to start and end a route. And you can have multiple different routes from the one stop.
Yes it is much nicer to have more as you go along but sometimes there are just no suitable points of interest.
I’m glad that we don’t have a black and white ruling over these as I have seen some on here that clearly are interesting places/objects because of their different design. I am happy for wayfinders to vote to accept those. But the majority that are presented here are not in that category so will not be accepted.
The use of real places brings with it a randomness and we just have to accept that not everywhere will have something that fits the guidelines.
Do keep looking but meanwhile enjoy the walks.
I want a black and white clarification that there has to be something interesting about them like we have for memorial benches and that otherwise they are just advertising for the real estate.
@rongo42 Hey! I’m from Charlotte. I can help you. I have a lot of experience in getting signs approved.
