Hey guys, seldom seen and even more seldomly asked question:
If a potential wayspot has an emoji as part of its identity, is it OK to have it in the title of the nomination?
For example, I came across a nomination for college campus sign that literally says “I <3 MSU”, MSU being the initials of the college. The wayspot was of a giant colorful standing sign that says “I <3 MSU”, with a big red heart between the “I” and “MSU”. The nomination title used “<3” instead of " ".
Is that OK? The wayfarer criteria states that titles should not allow emojis. Is the ASCII version fine? Is Niantic’s concern that the full-fledged emoji might not be well-represented in their games and come out as blank boxes or codes?
I don’t know why emoji aren’t allowed and I don’t want to review based on speculation, but emojis do not show up in game - at least not as intended by the submitter. I don’t know if the gaming team didn’t want to code for them, Wayfarer dev staff (nee Ingress OPR) didn’t want “silly” emoji, or a combination of teams didn’t want the inevitable eggplant making its way in.
Especially since special characters are prevalent in daily written vocabulary and emoticons can be part of an official business name, I would typically accept their use, even when used to express an emotion.
Then I guess it could come to a matter of if it’s the proper name or a made up emoticon?
Should a business be rejected if it’s name is “I <3 NYC” or that’s the official name of a piece of artwork? As opposed to when it’s “A great hiking trail :)” in the description.
This is just one example of the common Niantic problem of poor communication. Any language could be ‘code language’ and some programming terms use natural language and vice-versa.
There are some things that they want to include or exclude, but they haven’t found a reasonable way to say what they mean. “George Washington Bridge” contains a ‘real name’, “NASA Museum” contains initials, etc. yet these titles are considered appropriate.
If ‘real name’ is interpreted to mean the TRUE NAME of a person, place, thing or idea, real names are what we have been encouraged to track down and include in our nominations whenever possible.
My best guess is that they wish for a catch-all to prohibit stuff like: “cyndiep00h’s clubhouse,” “ ,” “DROP TABLE,” URLs, etc.
We probably need to use: “I (heart) NY” to ensure smooth sailing, so maybe use similar for the MSU signs.
It doesn’t look like it should be an insurmountable task for somebody at Niantic to re-jig the language of their rules, yet they seem to regard this as somehow not worth the required effort.
Have to agree that it would depend on the official title. For example, if an art piece is called “Heart of Healing,” you wouldn’t accept “<3 of Healing” or “ of Healing,” as that’s not the correct title.
Earlier this year, I remember one of the featured Wayspots in my area was a mural in a nearby town that’s title was “I [Town],'“ but it was submitted as “I <3 [Town].” I really didn’t have an issue with this, because of the official title, but I could see others having an issue, due to the guidelines.
I’ve never nominated anything with an emoji in the title, but if I did, I think I would go with “I Heart” or “I Love,” as that better follows the guidelines. Still, I just don’t have much of an issue with <3, but some may, plus some may not even know what it means these days. <3 could also be read as “less than three” in math, if we want to get into a reason it could be seen as confusing to some.
I think with this example, the logical thing to do would be to accept the symbols meaning heart, because that appears to be how the piece is actually titled, but personally I think its better if the submitter wrote “heart” or “love” instead, just because I find the symbols very hard to read.
I think what is rejectable is trying to use a heart emoji, because that won’t display as text, where the symbol equivalent should display fine in a text field.
".
,” “DROP TABLE,” URLs, etc.
