Agree. Even just the amenities may look worse because rural areas don’t have as much money to spend on upkeep or modernization. I’ve been to county parks in deeply rural areas where it’s clear that the population is moving away. The tennis courts are cracked with weeds growing up through them, no nets, and the fencing torn down around the court. Does that mean those courts aren’t used for something? Probably not. If I was a parent in that area, I might bring my kid there to roller skate. Normally roller skating on a tennis court would be frowned upon, but not if the court was in such obvious disrepair.
Other places may only have a hoop with no net on basketball courts. I remember that my cousin would bring his own net to put up and then take it back down with him when he wanted to play a good game of bball at the local court that was kinda run down.
So while those may look janky, they are what municipalities provide and we shouldn’t apply harsh judgment to them.
Obviously if you are visiting some rural location, you can just get your boots on the ground and have a look around. But sometimes it pays to do some research first. Here are some things I find useful:
Ingress Intel Map. You’re probably familiar with this if you play Ingress, maybe less so if you play PoGo or one of the other Niantic games. It’s an easy way to see (most) of the wayspots in an area, you need to sign up for Ingress first. https://intel.ingress.com/
Wikipedia. If there’s something really notable in an area, it’s often in Wikipedia. Remember that local-language Wikis may have more information than the English-language one.
OpenStreetMap. Often has much more data than Google Maps, it can also be good for finding walking trails (hint: right-click, Query Features). Easy to provide a direct like for reviewers too. https://www.openstreetmap.org/
OldMapsOnline. This site allows you to look in detail at old maps for any location in the world. Depending where you are, sometimes those can be very details maps (great in the UK with old OS maps, for example)… othertimes they are not. You can use this to find features not marked on modern maps, e.g. historic buildings or structures, or names of natural features such as hills and woods which aren’t on modern maps. https://www.oldmapsonline.org/
Great list. I also try to look for the city or county website, especially anything like Parks & Rec. Or like a local news site that would have information about big events in the town.
This is a great tip! I find a ton of my nominations swapping between the intel map and google maps. I’ll look back at this and see if I can work that into the tips sheet as a section!
Wanted to add this Wayspot I got approved in an area where Street View hasn’t been updated since 2012. It’s for some religious statues and prayer area at a church that was installed about 2 years ago. In my supporting info and supporting photo, I make sure to show some of the places that can place the statues at where they are at, including the sidewalk and parish office, which can be seen on Street View, as well as the street and homes in the background of the area. Just thought I’d provide it to show what can be done to increase your chances of getting a nomination approved without Street View or without an updated Street View.
This game and this system is utter BS. I moved to a rural area recently with plenty of potential Stops that comply with the standard criteria (even more, considering these Rural exceptions) and I still get most of them unnaccepted AS DUPLICATES!
IN A VILLAGE THAT BARELY HAS ANY STOPS TO EVEN MISREAD AS SUCH!!!
From the 15 or so I submitted over the past 2 months, 4 were accepted (but only 1 was actually created) and the remaining unique, valid and adequate ones have been flagged as duplicates or “not unique enough” when there are barely any already existing in the area.
My Wayfarer rating went to SH*T also because of this. I never even tried to abuse the system. Literal monuments have been refused. Different exercice stations in a park are all flagged as duplicates of each other. HECK! THE ONLY DOG PARK THAT EXISTS HERE IS NEW AND IT STILL GETS FLAGGED AS DUPLICATE. LMFAAAAAAAAAAO.
Fix you game, fix your system and fix your reviewers, ffs.
First, your Wayfarer rating has nothing to do with your own submissions. Your rating is based on how you vote on other people’s submissions and whether or not you are voting the same way the others in the community are. When your vote agrees with the majority of other reviewers, that results in an Agreement. An Agreement can mean that everyone voted to accept, reject, or duplicate a submission. As your Agreements come inline with the community, your Wayfarer rating improves.
The best way to improve your Wayfarer rating is to make sure that you thoroughly understand Wayfarer criteria. While most of us start using WF as a way to improve the particular game we play, that does not mean that WF is simply a place to add more interaction points to the games. The three basic tenets of criteria are that a point of interest (POI) needs to be a great place to:
Socialize
Exercise
Explore
Having said all that, there are a lot of reports of people’s ratings dropping unexpectedly after participating in the recent global challenge. We have raised this issue with the WF team in case there is a system issue that caused it. We are still waiting to hear from them about that.
Taking all of that into consideration, many people start to realize that things they thought would make good wayspots don’t actually meet the criteria.
Second, let’s talk about why some approved things don’t show up in your game. I assume you’re playing Pokemon GO. PGO uses a grid system called S2 cells. It’s a way of turning a 3D globe into a 2D flat system. Though the details of how this works have never been released by Niantic, the community have figured out the basics through trial and error.
When you get an acceptance email from Niantic, it tells you that the games have inclusion rules for what will show up. In Pokemon GO, a L17 cell drives the appearance of a stop or gym - only 1 of those per L17 cell. Then there are rules about how many gyms can appear within a L14 cell, but that is beyond this discussion. So if you get something accepted inside the boundary of an L17 cell where another pokething (generic name for stop or gym) exists, yours won’t show up in the game.
This frustrates many new users, but there’s nothing the WF team can do to change that. It’s a decision made by the PGO game team.
There are tools you can find and use to help see cell layout and where POI are. We don’t link to those here, so you will have to find other places that list them. Google is your friend for that.
One of the best things you can do is to make sure when you are nominating that you have the little toggle at the bottom left of the map turned on. It will show you the POI that exist on the Niantic master map (Lightship). If the thing you are trying to submit is already there, it will be rated as a duplicate even though it is not in your game.
So, that’s some frustrating news. The good news is that there are a lot of people on this forum who love helping rural communities like yours. If you feel comfortable giving us coordinates in Nomination Support, we will look at the map and try to find things that can be submitted in your area. We can also take a look at the things you have already submitted if you want to post them. There’s a bit of an art to how you write your submissions and how you take photos that we can help with. Maybe we can help you make tweaks that will get some of these rejected things accepted. Or we can just provide bespoke service to you to help you understand why they were rejected.
I think what’s hard for many of us to remember is that Wayfarer is supposed to be it’s own thing, separate from the games. As I said above, every one of us started with WF as a way to improve our own game. But as we get into it, some see WF as its own game and basically make this our primary game (even though it’s not really a game). The message from Niantic is that Wayfarer is “game agnostic.”
We are the factory pumping out widgets. Other companies look over our widgets and decide how to use them for their customers. Even if no company decides to use our widgets, we will still keep making them because they are good widgets.
On another note, the bottom left toggle on the map does nothing at all… Never did. I can’t even see the already existing stops. Also, the one stop that was effectively criated is closer to other 2 that already existes while the monument and dog park are on an aea that only has a lonely gym and nothing else in a 100+ m radius and the “duplicated” nominations are 20+ m away from it.
Ah, yes. A couple of issues related to the toggle.
First, it only shows POI within a small radius of where you are currently standing. So even though you can submit things that are 10km away in PGO, the toggle will not show the map POI at those distances.
Second, there is a current known bug where the map does not show POI if your phone is not set to English language. We have reported this to the PGO team, so hopefully there is a fix in the works.
But also, I would very much like to see the ones you’re talking about so we can help you understand it. I promise there is an answer to all of it. Please post in Nomination Support .
In Finland, we have many maitolaituri (eng. milk churn stand, fin.wikipedia) in rural areas which have been well maintained over the years.
(link to finnish wikipedia as I’m refrencing those tiny buildings that are not listed in eng.wikipedia)
Have they passed the eligibility criteria and what category they should be marked?
Thanks. Will do as soon as I have the time. It’s not like I’m trying to farm personal POI. I Iive and work on rural areas with many interesting spots I find roaming around and would like to highlight.
