What's Going On?

General Discussion
1

Hi all,

Hope you’ve all been well :slightly_smiling_face:

It’s been a while since I’ve participated much and I’m wondering if I’ve missed anything significant, particularly related to the Scopely acquisition :woman_shrugging:t2:

I’ve browsed through a few forum areas, including the news section, and I can’t identify any major changes that I wasn’t already aware of from other sources, aside from a few things things like the specifics of the drop in Wayfarer participation level and change of Ambassadors.

Last time I was submitting regularly (around the time PowerSpots and the criteria complaints around these popped up), Emily was in heavy use and making most photo submissions / edits fairly painless, but many new wayspot submissions frustrating (especially in bushland areas).

In the last week I’ve submitted quite a few updated photos for existing Wayspots, a few edits / reports, and a handful of new submissions. From this limited recent experience, I have to wonder if Emily is even a thing at all anymore, as all edits and all but one new wayspot submission that was picked up by Niantic / Scopely (has the ownership change affected how we refer to staff?), have gone through community voting, with all of the former approved and all of the latter rejected.

While this has been faster than community voting once was, the results have me wondering if syndicated approvals for edits and rejections of new nominations are commonly happening for the easier agreements / upgrades?

I’ve seen a lot more junk around locally in the last year, especially on K-12 grounds and SF-PRP. However, submitting acceptable fitness venues and a long-standing local Laser Tag venue (the fact this wasn’t in the database has been annoying me for the last 9 months that I’ve walked past it for work, which is what prompted me to submit again) have all resulted in the exact same completely irrelevant rejection reason (a place to exercise or gather socially doesn’t require historical meaning and I would argue that some of the submissions do actually have local cultural significance) :exploding_head:

Have I missed something?

Does this mirror the experience of others recently, or is it likely a “local” issue with either a widespread lack of criteria understanding among newer Wayfarers or intentional abuse?

Screenshot_20260221-195009.Firefox
Screenshot_20260221-195009.Firefox1080×1865 244 KB

Screenshot_20260221-210838.Firefox
Screenshot_20260221-210838.Firefox1080×1530 188 KB

1 Like
2

I don’t know how to address this. The automated process that had been auto accepting photo adds most of the time seems to have been off until just the past day or so. The automated process does not seem to be able to accept nominations now, but reviews are going through the system so quickly that I have a strong suspicion that it can weight a nomination to need less votes to be accepted or rejected. That is just a feeling on my part, and not anything that has been confirmed.

I can’t speak for all knowledgeable reviewers, but since I no longer need upgrades, and since the current review flow will not let me reject something for simply not meeting criteria - which came to a head over neighborhood signs - I don’t review anymore. I can’t do the mental convolutions that allow me to reject a huge sign as “not distinct” as that rejection reason is defined in the tool tip. And the last three Pokestops to go live at our big local park were just benches, which I would have rejected if I had seen them in review. So, yes, I believe that there is a “widespread lack of criteria understanding” among the Wayfarers who are actually reviewing currently. The posts we see every day here from people actually trying to make good nominations who have little to no understanding of criteria until we can point them to it reinforce that view that there is a huge education problem.

3 Likes
3

As long as their tags here start with Niantic, that is how I refer to them.

2 Likes
4

Thanks for the response @cyndiepooh.

It’s unfortunate that having successful appeals doesn’t result in the agreements being removed from those who voted to reject (I suspect newer nominators don’t know how easy they have it on the current timeframes and some may be medal-farming), let alone having our appeals “refunded” to us. It seems counterproductive for those misusing the system (intentionally, or not) to be rewarded and for the rest of us to have to rely on appeals to get, what should be easily acceptable, nominations approved :woman_shrugging:t2:

With so many QOL updates in the past year, I’m surprised that more upfront and clearer onboarding/education wasn’t among them; especially after they reduced the participation level so dramatically :exploding_head:

I had hoped it would be a much smoother process, since I was last using Wayfarer regularly, but have found the odd community rejections even more mind-boggling than Emily’s previous rigidity (at least the reasons for most of those rejections made some sort of logical sense) :melting_face:

I also struggle with that particular rejection reason, because it doesn’t help submitters understand what we think is wrong with the nomination, when it’s obviously intended to be permanent and we can easily distinguish it from other things in the area; but it’s simply a generic thing that meets no criteria.

I assume I haven’t missed guidance saying that neighbourhood signs are acceptable for some arbitrary secondary reason? I consider them to be generic realty advertisements that meet no criteria, so I give a generic business rejection reason :woman_shrugging:t2:

1 Like
5

I agree with your perception of them. Niantic has stayed silent as far as making a clarification on them. Although I have begged for one.

1 Like
6

Well, I’m relieved they haven’t given some flimsy “public and safely acceptable” kind of reason to accept them, as most nominators are stating in their submissions (most of ours are actually in SF-PRP yards and are being accepted anyway and not removed when reported :woman_facepalming:t2:).

TBF, I do understand them not placing a blanket ban on them, because they have previously provided context for this, and I have myself voted to approve a couple over the years. However, very interesting signs that meet the explore criteria as a genuine landmark or work of art really are the exception, not the rule :woman_shrugging:t2:

7

Niantic will never give “it’s publicly and safely acceptable” as a reason for something to be accepted, because that’s a category error. Some reviewers might make this mistake, accidentally or for “want more pokestopz”.

Not being safely accessible for pedestrians is a reason for rejection. The reverse is not true.

The neighbourhood signs are generally boring. There can’t be a blanket ban on them, but it would be possible to come up with clarification as to what would make one eligible.

2 Likes
8

Any rejection for not “permanent and distinct” generally means the reviewer didn’t see it as anything worth accepting. Staff have said that this rejection should be used when you want to reject, but have no better option above, as thumbing down for Exercise, Social and Exploration does not mean you have rejected the wayspot.

9

Where did you find this? I have only made note of this recommendation in relation to “mass produced” items, and these signs are not mass produced.

I must also note that I received an email warning me that I had reviewed incorrectly, when I actually had not. This was posted about on the old forum. So I was having panic attacks over using a rejection reason that clearly did not apply to the object I was rejecting.

2 Likes
10

Welcome back!

One big thing you missed was similar to the max spot data import fiasco, we now have some test locations being imported in certain countries for street corners! Those are a treat as they’re pinned on people’s houses. Check out suburban USA for a sea of SFPRP that Niantic chose to turn into pokestops :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

You also missed a huge update giving us access to a wayfarer map :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: so now everyone can see the street corners (or other more eligible items) worldwide which has been super helpful and really interesting

1 Like
11

This is the write-up I made a while back about “not permanent and distinct”:

The rejection message I think you are getting doesn’t necessarily mean what you think. The rejection reason “not permanent and distinct” comes up in three situations:

- reviewers did not think the object is permanent
- reviewers did not think the object is distinct
- reviewers did not think the object meets any criteria (exercise, explore, social) and wanted to explicitly reject it, so reject for not “permanent and distinct” because that is the advice from Niantic

Although I didn’t include a link to the advice from Niantic (which was careless), I have no doubt that Niantic did provide that advice, otherwise I wouldn’t have written it like that.

Unfortunately, that was maybe 6 months ago, so finding the relevant post seems tricky :frowning:

1 Like
12

Sorry, after my experience, I can’t go with “trust me bro, they said it” - maybe staff will reply and reiterate it.

3 Likes
13

I know all that (I could have potentially missed some forum discussions over the last year, but I have a very good understanding of the criteria as of the last official clarifications that were carried over with the forum changeover), but Niantic has a history of confusing and contradictory clarifications and public disagreements between staff on criteria interpretation, so I can think of at least one specific way that this particular argument could be more effectively reworded to imply that they meet a criteria or two, such has been the case previously with a couple poorly worded “clarifications” (e.g. survey marks - and the scourge they’ve become in the database around Australia), but it is a big stretch and as I’ve previously said with these kind of things, I won’t be explicitly stating how and giving bad actors new ideas to better sell their junky submissions :grimacing:

There has actually been clarifications of the situations where they could be eligible, specifically referring to them being of artistic value, which is also when they stated that this is why they wouldn’t be making a blanket ruling on them being unacceptable :woman_shrugging:t2:

14

Oh, I agree. I wish I had stored a link, because otherwise all I have is my confidence, which is only of value to me :slight_smile:

15

Oh, yes, I had, but I did come across the map when logging into Wayfarer after submitting again, and I had skim-read about the street corners (and bus stops, too, right?) when checking out the forum before posting.

I kind of understand the intent, but surely there were much better ways to auto-populate wayspots in areas without many than to use street corners? :melting_face: Many rural areas don’t have many players and many don’t even realise they can submit wayspots, so there’s often eligible things that just haven’t been submitted, that aren’t hard to identify on maps (parks, sport fields, etc) :woman_shrugging:t2:

We can also nominate through the website now, right? I assume that’s still distance-restricted? Allowing people who have some familiarity of rural places but don’t live anywhere near them to nominate without image requirements could have produced much higher quality results than just picking random street corners (I could nominate better POIs in plenty of tiny towns several hours away from me in all directions) :sweat_smile:

1 Like
16

Very much agree.

Yes there is still a distance limit of 10km for web submit, so taking pictures and waiting till you have signal at home doesnt work unless its very local.

I love the idea of being able to suggest submissions for areas without taking pictures. I wonder if that would ever be considered with maybe an in game popup being served to local players who interact with one of these prompting them to take a picture - maybe for a reward in game? That would be extremely cool!

1 Like
17

They wanted to add more pokestops to low-density areas (relative to number of people, not to land area). Adding street corners is certainly an option, but fails in areas that don’t have sidewalks.

They should also have marked them upfront as “this is just an import, please don’t think this means you can submit street corners yourself”, given them a generic “this is a street corner” image and not allowed any edits.

And made them owned by Pokemon Go not by wayfarer, just like the sponsored wayspots.

:frowning:

1 Like
18

I personally recall them saying that, also, but many of us pointed out at the time that the issue is with the messaging to submitters, many of whom don’t use the forum to see those calcifications (I’m sure @elijustrying was one championing better clarity of this communication), and that some of us wouldn’t be using such poorly worded rejection reasons if they didn’t reflect the reason for using them, until the correct the messaging was included for submitter feedback :woman_shrugging:t2:

1 Like
19

Oh, right… So rural areas with only a couple hundred residents or less, where many people try to start playing augmented reality games and then realise it’s pretty pointless due to lack of stuff to interact with / availability of supplies and quit, are still not getting anything out of it? :smirking_face:

1 Like
20

There’s a discussion here about the imported street corners:

1 Like