I would like to offer several suggestions that I believe could improve the Wayfarer experience for both nominators and reviewers while helping maintain a high-quality Wayspot database.
- Legacy Wayspot Updates
Many older Wayspots lack photos, descriptions, or other useful information. This can lead to confusion and duplicate nominations when contributors are unable to identify an existing Wayspot. I suggest allowing local users to submit photos and descriptions for these legacy Wayspots through the Wayfarer website, subject to location requirements and review. This would help improve the quality and accuracy of the database.
- Improve Category Visibility and Clarity
Some categories contain distinctions that are visible to nominators but not always clear during review. Examples include Indoor vs. Outdoor Swimming Pools and Indoor vs. Outdoor Soccer Fields. Displaying these distinctions throughout the review process would help reduce confusion and improve review consistency.
- Modernize Sports Categories
Consider creating dedicated categories for activities such as Pickleball and Disc Golf. These activities have grown significantly in popularity and are often distinct from traditional Tennis and Golf facilities. Separate categories would improve classification and reviewer understanding.
- Clarify Restricted and Exception Categories
Categories involving schools, emergency services, hospitals, cemeteries, gravesites, retirement homes, and retirement communities often generate confusion among reviewers. Clearer guidance regarding eligibility, ineligibility, and exceptions would help improve consistency and reduce unnecessary appeals.
- Review Appeal Limits
With the increase in available nomination submissions, it may be appropriate to reevaluate the current limit of two appeals per month. Increasing appeal availability or introducing alternative methods of earning additional appeals could help contributors address incorrect rejections while maintaining review quality.
- Clarify Poster and Sticker Categories
The inclusion of Poster and Sticker categories can be confusing because many examples are temporary by nature. Additional guidance, examples, or category revisions would help contributors better understand what types of nominations are intended for these categories.
Overall, I believe these changes would improve clarity, reduce reviewer disagreement, encourage higher-quality nominations, and help maintain a more accurate and useful Wayspot database.
Welcome to the forums.
To address the categories specifically, the right thing for Niantic to do is to remove them completely from the Pokemon Go wayspot nomination process.
Thankfully, they are not part of the web submission. They are redundant and serve no purpose to any user of any Niantic game. They do not indicate that something is eligible and frequently confuse people who (quite reasonably) think they they do.
This addresses points 2, 3, 4 and 6 in one fell swoop 
Appeal limits might be changing following the changes to reviewing ratings. We have to wait and see on this.
Edits through the wayfarer map would be useful.
If they amended the Pokemon Go wayspot nomination process, Niantic could also address the narratives and describe it as a wayspot nomination process (which it is) instead of a pokestop nomination process (which it is not).
I think this phrasing and the existence of the categories cause the most unnecessary (and avoidable) confusion, annoyance and frustration with players who dabble with submitting wayspots.
This is simplified: I design and manage a computer system. I get very annoyed with myself when I realise users are using the system incorrectly, because it is usually due to flawed design and my not realising how the system appears to the users. I always then fix it and don’t blame the users for my poor design.
As a general principle, I feel that if lots of people are making the same mistake, the process is flawed, not the people. Processes have to be made to work for people, not people made to work for processes.
Relevance to wayfarer? The number of people who wonder where their pokestop is and the number of people who think something being listed in the categories mean it is eligible. Also the number of people who get scared by the “educational” emails.
Thanks for your thoughtful input.
Reading through your suggestions, I think you are giving more weight to the categories than they deserve. Specifically, I think you might have fallen into the same trap that many Wayfinders have before you thinking that categories are what define eligibility. That is not the case.
Wayfarer eligibility is tied to 3 principles:
- Socialize
- Exercize
- Explore
And then a location has to NOT fall under one of the ineligibility factors, like adult location, single family private residential property, school for kids under 18, blocking emergency services, etc.
To adress #1. We can already do this. Any local wayfinder can add photos or edit descriptions through pogo by clicking on the photo disc and going to the 3 dots on the top right. Ingress is trickier since the nomination shutdown but I think they can still do photo edits. There is current no way to edit waypoints that don’t show up in any game but that doesn’t seem to be at issue. They can still be moved or deleted by reporting them on the wayfarer map.
As far as clarifications in #4 go, great strides have already been made here on our beloved Forum! The Criteria Clarification Collection is here to help.