95% of the spots I’m given to review are for places in other states nowhere close to me and that I’ve never been to. My settings have my home area and the bonus location is the big city I’m close to (where I work and travel to daily). Is there a way to have it show me more local contributions for me to review?
Good day!
This seems to be the usual setting for reviews, the area influenced by the bonus and home location is not necessarily just one city. This is also to balance the review so as not to have very local reviewers skew the process and/or accept ineligible POIs for the sake of game objects.
The reviewer should use the resources available to verify the details in each nomination. This includes the satellite photo, Streetview map, links (if any provided), etc.
I highly suggest reading Criteria Clarification Collection for common POIs encountered. The small (i) icons at each review query also contain tips for reviewing.
The bonus and home locations draw nominations from a fixed area based on S2 cells
Where you play determines which country you will receive nominations to review from. So for those in the USA that covers a large geographic area.
It is set this way to ensure that across the country there is a good rate of flow of reviews happening. For those that are in less populated areas this is really important as without this their nominations may take a long time to resolve.
Your nominations for example may be getting reviewed from people based across the USA which helps the speed of resolution for yours.
Unfortunately i dont think there is anything you can do but set your bonus same as your home location so that you minimize any submission from outside your “home area”. While its understandable that you want to review your local nomination, there are some note to consider. Voting ring is subject to abuse ladder system so you need to be careful about it.
I definitely have no intention to abuse the ladder system. I just like to give accurate reviews and it’s hard to know things like safety, group size, and accurate descriptions/locations/photos when you’ve never been there or even heard of the places.
Almost all wayspots that everyone reviews will be of locations they don’t know and have barely heard of.
To establish safety and group size for social, you look at the location and evaluate pedestrian access. This can nearly always been done from the photos, but very occasionally you need streetview or something else.
To determine accuracy, the same holds.
Expecting to know an area well enough that you can evaluate every wayspot from your own knowledge is not reasonable. The wayspot should be evaluated from the submission. If the submitter hasn’t made it possible to evaluate, then they’ve made a mistake,
Current system have a very wide range, personally my area review including neighboring country. Wide range means remote nomination will have better chance to be reviewed.
It’s great that you want to do this to the best you can.
I wouldn’t worry about the question of group size…..I feel I am not in a position with the information provided to make that assessment so leave it blank.
For a lot of the other aspects a combination of street and satellite view help establish if it’s there and does it look as though someone can safely access it. If you are unsure then selecting I don’t know is a voting choice just as much as 
Not everyone realises you can switch to streetview.
An issue to work out is if it is on school property or a single family private residential property.
Also for description and title we are looking for something that seems accurate. It doesn’t need to be hugely detailed, and it doesn’t need to be perfect.
Take your time to begin with.