Noticed an up tick in the number of individual playground equipment nominations in my reviewing.
And subsequently saw all the in game equipment nominations.
Of note was no universal playground nomination.
It has always existed as evidenced by our many conversations here. But I just feel i have had a subtle increase in these
Is it just a coincidence… Or?
No there is a definite uptick in what I am seeing in the U.K..
As you say each is named swing, slide etc. making the reviewer finding it difficult to say it’s a duplicate as you would if there was a generic play area wayspot.
So perhaps have to pick that it is not distinct and reject.
To the submitter the rejections seem daft how could a slide not be distinct from a swing.
Except that the submitter will almost always know exactly what they are doing and so they will probably thing the rejections are unlucky but not daft and might just try again.
The clarification is not directly on the criteria page and for most people they see the results and submit anyways. It’s a mixture of everything: not knowing, not caring, and abusing.
Reports also don’t really have a correcting function in my experience, as often I find some action taken, but the Wayspots not duplicated, so there are little to no consequences (as neither penalties nor education). Pretty sure most people that are in a Wayfarer space like you here and try to follow all the guidelines, there is a loss of agreements from correct decisions that didn’t result in the correct results
Be interesting if Niantic could do a clean up challenge where we could help ““clarify”” a few things 
Now that would sure raise contentions and MUCH debate
Yeah this is not only a UK trend, the clarifications are clear so as long as the different equipment is for the same audience they should be considered as a whole. Therefore, I still duplicate a swing with a slide if part of the same playground, that way the submitter at least gets feedback that it already exists. But yes it would be so much better if they could be linked directly to the clarifications.