Hi, I’ve not been around for super long, but I’m a champion rank, with over 60% agreements and made plenty of submissions. I say this to explain that I have seen and experienced enough of the process and system to say that it’s not great right now, and I think it creates a feedback loop that will continue to make it worse.
Currently about 60%, maybe even 70% of reviews I get are copies of the same trail markers. I live in the Netherlands and there’s probably more trail markers (bike, hike, mountain bike, horse, etc) then there are people. And they, together with a couple of other categories are held at a completely different standard as everything else.
I’ve recently uploaded a newly opened shopping plaza, the welcome sign of an older shopping plaza, an official community center, a unique bench, a carved wall stone with the build year of a building, some (not the greatest but still decent) artworks, a park, bike tunnel with mosaic tiled walls, and a plant cutting trade box.
All of them got rejected, and most for lacking uniqueness or historical or cultural value.
But when I upload 4 “go straight ahead” arrows trail markers in the same street it’s “Ah yes, thank you, this is the uniqueness I crave”. The same goes for dog park signs and utility boxes with anything on them.
And a park without a “dogs can run free” sign as it’s image only rarely passes by the ML, let alone the voting. With the sign you need the simplest description and title and can ignore the additional info no matter how big or small, but without one you need to proof it’s unique to a level that does not even remotely exist in the same plane of uniqueness of having a simple dog park sign.
And thus when I have to choose between something that looks aesthetically pleasing, is a social hub, looks unique and different.. or upload another arrow, little free library, utility box or dog park.. I’ll take the arrow, because I know it’ll pass without any issues or need for appeals with the most basic effort description.
For example the tunnel with mosaic tiles walls I mentioned earlier has a hiking trail run trough it. I mentioned it, even uploaded the stickers to add exercise to the location. But after it got rejected I uploaded just the hiking trail sticker which passed without issue. Now the stop will have another arrow sticker as the photo instead of a nicer unique looking mosaic tiled wall.
So whenever I find an area that doesn’t have many stops yet for people that live there, my first step is to check the hiking and biking trail map of my country to see if any run through that area.
And I think many people do the same thing.
Looking for anything else is held to such a high standard it feels punishing and a huge uphill battle for very little returns. And I am sick of reviewing those stupid trail stickers. But I don’t blame those who upload them, I do too. Because I get it. The ML doesn’t like anything unique, and if something is unique, it’s such an enormously high bar to be unique enough.
And that’s what I think the problem is right now. The system punishes trying to make fun or “good” waystops, while it reinforced and rewards lazy duplicate looking ones. Which means more people will choose it over the others, only training the ML to further prefer them making it harder and harder to get anything else through.
I don’t know if people that have been here longer than me have noticed the same, or see things different. I don’t know how things have changed over the last 10 years. But I do know that right now, it’s not good.
