OK, I understand the idea behind it–show exemplary work that we can all look up to. Trouble is the last one in my feed had a spelling mistake, and this one has submitter’s shadow in the picture. Imagine I was smart enough to make this into the meme with the anime guy looking at a butterfly: Is this what a wayfinder should be aspiring to? To be more constructive, which IS what I aspire to despite various emotions, is there a way for someone who works on keeping the website going to be given time to make sure these featured wayspots are actually really good?
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BTW here is the full pic… At least it shows the whole obelisk, but I think we can agree what the picture is actually all about! Editing this to say that maybe the submitter was being careful, noticing that if they DID take six steps to the right so their shadow wasn’t in the picture, maybe a person or live animal would have been in the background. Nahh… that’s not it, is it?
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Hello,
Both are acceptable Wayspots to me, and yes, they could be better, but they were accepted by the community. Only community accepted Wayspots get featured these days, so the reviewers approved them, and they were most likely randomly chosen by the system to be featured.
Someone’s shadow in a photo doesn’t make it an ineligible photo as you can’t identify a person by their shadow. Now, if you could see the person’s face, that would be an issue. I also think the submitter wanted to get both the monument and plaque in the same photo, and while it could have been taken better, it’s not a photo that I would reject. I most likely would have chosen IDK for Accuracy, then clicked Photos, as it could be better, but it’s not rejectable to me.
As for typos and grammar, these are not grounds for rejection. If there are typos and/or grammar issues in the title/description, I will usually choose IDK and check which one has the issue, if minor like the boardwalk description, which has “thr” instead of “the.” If the official name of the trail is Lakeside Trail, I would have also wanted to see that capitalized, but again, all minor and nothing that I’d reject.
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Neighborhood sign is Featured Showcase - another thread on a similar topic that you may enjoy reading!
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A little different of a case here.
BTW, this is one of the Featured Wayspots in my area this week. Yes, I checked IDK on Accuracy for the title, but I didn’t see it as ineligible when I reviewed it. I would maybe have named it Dwight City Park Playground.
Absolutely, that looks like a perfectly fine and adequate Wayspot. But would I rush out to see it in real life if I saw it on my local showcase? Nope, probably not. I love seeing showcased Wayspots that compel me to visit that site or research additional details, and that isn’t the case for a playground like that (although I realize it may be “great” for others)!
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And this one does not encourage folks to go out and submit stuff they shouldn’t.
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Excellent Point. Currently the way these things work, in theory, would be that both the playground above and Unnamed “Coal” Wayspot go into community voting. Both are approved by their local community, with around the same thumbs-up/thumbs-down total values. Both are then eligible for inclusion on the Showcase, while a stunning 30-foot-high mural created by a large community effort is immediately snapped up by Machine Learning and never achieves a place of honor. I’d much rather see those murals!
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. I’d not reject regarding the grammar at all; I didn’t ask for advice as to what to accept or reject when reviewing; my point was that these aren’t just wayspots that are accepted, they are held up as examples that should be “Featured.” Is whatever software or person decides this telling us that this is exemplary, or do they just not care one way or another? As for the shadow, I always reject that as submitter identifiable. You are correct that I can’t tell who the person is, but as far as I’m concerned it’s the person making sure that the picture is about THEM rather than about US, the community. And even taking your stance, that a shadow is OK, it’s still not an example that you would “Feature,” is it?
I completely agree, but that’s a low bar for “Featured Wayspots” IMO.
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Ha! I was hoping to get surprised when I posted about Featured Wayspots! I assumed that the point of these was to give us examples of what was a good submission, to improve reviewing and nominating skills, rather than something that we might want to actually visit!
LOL, but NOT at you, please be assured! Neighborhood signs are just a subject that I dread discussing, because in context of this passtime I’m WRONG! But since you brought it up I’ma just say that one day Niantic’s gonna want all these named neighborhoods on their map. Maybe they’ll get skilled programmers to extract the info from various city mapping projects, rather than have us do it, but I bet it’s eventually going to happen!
The problem right now is that most of the great Wayspots are being accepted by ML, and us reviewers are left to weed out everything else. So, there’s not as much for the system to choose from, since it doesn’t feature ML approved Wayspots.
Would be nice if this was changed, but knowing Niantic, it’s most likely very low on their to-do list.
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This is useful to me because you’re stating that “the system” is selecting the featured wayspots. I certainly thought that was a possibility. I would like it to be people checking it, because then the featured spot would be an example of something that we should really be striving to replicate rather than something that got accepted but might be kinda meh.
There’s most likely an algorithm being used, no doubt. In areas with few submissions and no recent approvals, you’re shown generic Wayspots from the help section. I’ve seen Cupid’s Span in San Francisco featured quite a bit when I’m back in my rural hometown.
So unfortunately, humans don’t pick featured Wayspots. It would be a lot of work for the Niantic team to choose featured Wayspots for every area around the world, and if they decided to choose a few from around the world, some areas may see POIs that they think are ineligible.
I think the best fix would be to allow ML approved Wayspots to be picked to be featured, along with community approved. I don’t know if this would be hard to change though, but it certainly could be done.
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I use them as a list of thing to maybe mark as invalid.
One week I had two showcased items removed before they rotated out. I was quite proud of that.
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