I wish we could see the cells while submitting a wayspot. Because of the map system some of my waypots don’t appear or becomes power spot.
If seeing the cells would cause you to misplace your submissions, that is exactly why you will never see cells on the map.
Welcome to the forums 
Niantic have not and will not acknowledge the use of cells, so they will never add them to the maps.
What has been established is community observation, but all the rules around cells are not known with certainty.
Since there are a lot of submission slots now, just submit eligible wayspots (and don’t worry about what they will become)
Understandable, but you also gotta see it from a player perspective. Most people don’t care about that lightship stuff, but want to improve their community. I’m guessing that most players do submissions with the intent to actually get something to appear on the gameboard. If they’d knew that it wouldn’t appear anyways, they probably wouldn’t even bother submitting. But that is just my Personen point of view.
People submit for a variety of reasons. I just submit things if they are interesting and only care about the location occasionally. My best surprise was submitting two things on the opposite side of the road, knowing the second one wouldn’t appear, then being surprised as it was just over a cell boundary that I hadn’t paid attention to (and wouldn’t, because it was an old artefact around a foot high at a specific location).
With the arrival of powerspots, which a lot of players use, all you need is something a short distance from pokestops/gyms and it’s worth submitting.
There are definitely players who abuse the cells and drop wayspots into empty cells where they don’t exist. Niantic do not want to encourage that.
What about the cases where a submission’s actual physical object in the real world overlaps across two cells, one taken, one empty?
I still feel that it would be better to have cells visible because of cases like this where it can benefit gameplay without being dishonest or incorrect.
There are methods to see the cells if you want to use them legitimately.
Why would Niantic display them when they have never acknowledged them publicly.
Cells do play a large factor in Pokémon Go which is their biggest game, I understood the argument that they didn’t matter back when the database was used for multiple games, but for the majority it is all about Pokémon Go. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to see them while submitting, it would be a quality of life feature like many other things.
It’s true that there is potential for abuse, but I don’t think it’s good to prevent QOL features for all users just because of some bad apples.
I have a question on this, if there is a stop in the cell already will Niantic state that that cell is occupied in the verdict of the contribution? or just say denied? There is a park I’m making contributions on and I am not sure if the pavilions overlap in the cell areas but i’m uploading them anyways.
You have replied to me but answered questions that I haven’t asked or replied to comments I haven’t made…
All I have stated is that Niantic have never publicly acknowledged the cells so they are not going to display them.
They have allowed members to mention them as long as we don’t link to outside tools so they are aware that people are using them.
I use the tools, I have shown screen grabs where the tools have been used so I am not against them being implemented by Niantic it is just the chance of them doing so is next to zero…
I just saw this thread and thought I should ask because I am curious and new, I notice they auto deny some contributions due to “criteria” but don’t say what exactly so I thought I would drop the question in this thread
It will not be mentioned as the cells will not stop a nomination being accepted, it just won’t be used in game.
If asked in the forums the usual comment might mention “proximity rules” or that there are several reasons with distance to others just being one.
Oh ok thank you
This is a common reply when the ML (Machine Learning, AI, Bot, eMiLy) does not see anything that looks like it meets criteria…
Sometimes Correctly: “It’s a picture of a bin / bus stop” etc.
Sometimes not: “Looks like an house” but you know that it’s actually a museum etc. This is why a photo that includes a sign will help.
Good Luck.
While unused wayspot might not become pokestop/gym (unless the pokestop/gym got removed later), it might become powerspot in rotation (community observed that it need to be at least 22m from nearest wayspot)