Obviously made by ME if you look at the username. So how on God’s green Earth is this rejected for using a third-party photo? I took the blasted photo myself.
Yeah, I had this happen in the old forums, when I posted the main photo of a submission there before appealing it. It’s always best to wait to upload any images that you take for submissions to upload them elsewhere after a decision has been fully made.
@NianticAtlas @NianticAaron @NianticLC Can you take another look at this? Seems likel a mistake.
Hello! Could you share the full nomination showing both photos and all the text used please?
It’s part of an art project depicting historical photographs of the city of Eindhoven. Each banner is unique and numbered. This is number 35. It is bolted to the wall, so it is definitely not temporary or seasonal. It is visible on Google Streetview if you look closely into the lobby of the apartment building. The StreetView picture is from 2018, so that also proves that this isn’t a temporary thing.
Located on multi-family residential property so clearly it’s eligible.
I think there may be a problem over the photograph you… err… photographed. From Niantic Wayfarer
Ineligible photo
Photo includes one or more of emojis, tags, or personally identifiable information such as codenames, personal names or initials, or addresses; copyrighted material or watermarks, including screenshots of someone else’s photo; is obviously doctored; includes people, body parts, or live animals as the subject matter; is blurry, over/under exposed, taken inside a car, contains a watermark, or is improperly oriented.
In effect, this contains a third-party photo and presumably at one point at least that was the copyright of someone else. A crop removing the photo and concentrating on the text may be more likely to get through.
That has never been a problem before. I’ve gotten 16 of these banners accepted so far, most of which have been through appeals because reviewers don’t seem to know or care about the private residential property rules.
This occurred to me, but that would be a really bad interpretation of that rule, IMO. We are encouraged to submit art, and all art basically has a copyright as soon as it’s created (in the US).
That may be so, but the rejection reason states a third-party photo.
But it doesn’t clarify whether it’s because it’s a photo of a photo or because they found the exact same image on Reddit in a Google image search. I recall seeing other threads either on this forum or the old one about people who had appeals rejected for third-party photos because they also uploaded the photo they used for the wayspot submission to Google Maps or something, so there is precedent for that.
I have the feeling that is because it appears on Reddit when searching with Google Lens, it makes more sense for me than being rejected because is a photo.
Yes there was a previous instance on the old forum of someone’s own photos that had been made available on the internet after submitting the nomination.
There are plenty of instances of photographic art that are part of or the focus of wayspots.
This seems to be a decision that needs review as this is not what the 3 party photo ruling is about in my opinion.
Yep, that was me, for a Thai restaurant. It was rejected for 3rd party photo by the appeals team after asking about the nomination after the community rejected it.
And the appeal for the second banner was just resolved, and the outcome (and Niantic’s understanding of their own criteria) is just as horrendous as the one in the original post in this topic.
Seriously, who is handling these appeals? Are they even being trained?
Its sad to say, but is based on luck who you get!
And that luck can be changed with better training.
The appeals team is basically a customer service team; I’ve had past online customer service jobs. If we were making mistakes, we would get retrained.
Besides, there are many apartment buildings with publicly accessible areas these days. Access to the apartments and other community only areas are restricted, and the residents and management are usually the only ones with a way to access those areas, such as with a key, keycard, number lock, etc.
What you’re describing is precisely what is supposed to be allowed under current criteria.
Yeah, I know this, and most of us here know this.
Really hope that you can get the other one looked at too, these are fantastic ideas for waypoints
What happens if we post the images here for help - does that make them 3rd party too? 
I think the idea is supposed to be not to steal someone else’s photo and represent it as your own, not “do not post your own image on the Internet for feedback etc”
I try to take each positive result as it is. 
We have a saying Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
Maybe your other one is just in a queue somewhere and it’s a case of wait and see.
