Hi, about two months I made an wayspot nomination and it was not accepted because of the “rejection criteria: generic business”. I understood because it is a franchise and moved on. But then the same place suddenly became a Power Spot in Pokémon Go and it made me a little confused.
I live in a city where there is not too much to do, so many of the Pokéstops are water towers, tiny evangelical churches, graffiti art that probably do not exist anymore and lots of places that I would consider “generic business” because they are literal chain stores and that I think were automatic generated because most of them don’t have any pictures.
Since I reached lvl37 in Pokémon Go I thought I should try to make the playability better because the map here in lots of places don’t reflect the reality or just have poor waystops that if you actually use the criteria that is asked, would never became accepted in first place. But to be honest, if was not that, this city map would be so empty. So I’m just wandering if I should try to mass report Pokéstops and then try to submit new ones, I don’t know…
If you believe that the Wayspots are ineligible, you can choose to report them. One thing to note is that rejection criteria is not always same as removal criteria. So, not all them will be removed. You can also submit Wayspots. If you need help identifying eligible locations, you can drop the coordinates here and the good people here will be happy to help. We can also help you frame nominations if you need help with that.
Power Spots are either wayspots that are unused in PoGo, or they are from a completely different dataset bought in by the PoGo team that includes commericial properties that would not be acceptable as wayspots. They’ve been discussed elsewhere, I think the opinion of Wayfarers is that the Power Spots are very low quality, often dangerously inaccurate in location and also often are private residential properties.
Niantic have consistently shown for many years that their rules and criteria for Wayfarer only apply to us and are happy to ignore them when it comes to Wayspot sponsorship or if they need to implement a new feature.