Does anyone else feel that Niantic themselves dont know their own eligibility criteria? I have recently had 4 nominations rejected by Niantic themselves (rejection came in while they still showed ‘in queue’ the day after submitting them, with no upgrade).
A couple were for benches with a scenic view. There are no other waypoints in the space, and is pretty much what they show as a great example in their guidelines
The other couple of rejections were for pocket parks. These are large bit of green space, with dog waste bins. In one supprting photo you can just about see a dog walker in the space. Obviously I cant show a pic full of people as that is against their policy. It is also an expanse of grass, so what else can you do with the pic?
For the bench photo, you don’t show the whole bench. My guess is that the ML model could not decipher those slats as anything significant. Try turning your camera sideways for a new photo more similar to the ones you linked.
For the park photo, there is no visual anchor. Something needs to be in the photo that will allow folks to identify that they have reached the Wayspot. A bench, a sign, something besides just a lot of grass, as in the photo example here:
Note that the clarifications above do not guarantee that every “bench with a view” nomination is categorically eligible and will be accepted, you still need to convince reviewers with something other than “this is eligible” in your supporting information field, or reviewers could have doubts about location for example. I would also suggest going for a photo (maybe square and more zoomed out) that includes the entire bench and the view, and being clear in your description that you are nominating a bench or a viewpoint, not multiple benches.
Yep, i think your odd photo ratio is hurting you here. Trying for a more square crop and showing a lot more of the item should help. But im almost positive your nominations are being rejected by the ML. Appeals are the only way to fix that.
I am submitting all these throught Go. When you take a photo, the app auto crops. In the app, the orientation i have used is best for how the photo shows in the app (so it is shown as 1:1 rather than portrait). There is no way for me to crop, which is an issue with the app submittal process and not anything i can do about.
You are incorrect. It does not have to have a “sign” but you do need to be able to recognize the spot when you arrive. That is what is meant by “visual anchor.” Maybe you would prefer the word “placemark”
It doesn’t actually. You should ignore what the submission process does to your photo as it’s inaccurate. I understand why you’d take what you’re being told by the game at face value though, it seems like it should be a reasonable thing to do.
You can either change your camera settings to use a reasonable aspect ratio, like 4:3, or you can take pictures outside of the app, crop them, and then use an existing photo in the nomination.
As @NvlblNm explained, the app does not auto crop. Reviewers, ML(ai) or human, are shown the entire photo. I always take my photos first, go through them to select the best ones, and straighten or crop as needed, then choose the existing photo options. Many times a thumb or something else disqualifying can be in the full photo, and not in the thumbnail you see when you select the photo. The photo can’t be edited from the contributions page, so that needs to be done before you submit the nomination.
I also just checked and i cannot crop photos within Wayfarer when trying to edit a submission that is in queue =/
I guess ill have to set my phone default when initially submitting
or take the photos first, then adjust them in your gallery before you even start the nomination. When you do, you can choose to use an existing photo. You are correct that the photo cannot be adjusted from the contributions page, or the pin, either.
I haven’t used the games to “take” a photo in years. I always take the photos first, make sure they look good, and then select them from my camera roll when making the submission.
Sorry, I didn’t explain properly. As others have said use your phone camera then crop and either auto adjust or contrast, brightness fix etc if you want. Upload rather than use Go to take the picture
