I worked very hard with very limited pokestops with the sole purpose of getting to lvl 35 so I could nominate pokestops in my small community, where there are only 2 currently. I made, oh I don’t know, 7 or 8 BEAUTIFUL, PUBLIC, SAFE, NATURE RELATED, EXERCISE RELATED, EASILY ACCESSIBLE nominations and every single one hastily and quite rudely denied, denied, denied. I say rudely because apparently the final say is some soulless automated AI that doesn’t understand the real world? If I have to read the word “Unfortunately” one more time, my brain might explode. I’ve exhausted all my appeals. Quite frankly, I feel like I’ve exhausted all my interest in Pokemon Go too which sucks cuz I absolutely love Pokemon and was genuinely having fun, or at least as much fun as a rural player with 2 pokestops, 3 miles apart, can have. But to be honest compared to the real games, pokemon go ***** ****. I mean seriously. I guess you can’t expect to much from ******** who make money by ripping off other game titles, offering a cheap, unavailable to rural living humans, garbage version the pales in comparison to the real thing. You could at least try to pretend like you’re not using all of as as free data collectors by throwing us a bone once in a while. Denied, denied, denied. Does a beautiful, public pond with wildlife sounds like something that goes against the guidelines? What about a Smokey Bear sign, literally next to a hiking/off-road trail? I thought Niantic games were GPS games, trying to get people out in nature and moving? So why is it my rural community gets 2 pokestops while the city (45 minutes away) gets pokestop after pokestop after pokestop? NIANTIC HATES RURAL HUMAN BEINGS. Thanks for nothing, I’m gonna charge my old DS and play some real pokemon.
Welcome to the forum. Hope venting made you feel better.
There are rules around what can be a Wayspot, and some of them are for legal reasons. Yes, it can be difficult to find a point of interest that fits the guidelines in rural areas, but that is also true in residential areas. You can find the criteria here: https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/21-wayfarer/section/166-wayspot-criteria/
The community has put together some suggestions for rural submitters: Tips for Rural Nominators
If you read the criteria and still don’t understand why something you submitted was rejected, you can post screenshots here, and we can try to advise.
I loved my DS.
Hey @MikePibb,
Welcome to the Wayfarer Community Forum. I understand your frustration. Please allow me to address the issues you raised.
I have gone back and reviewed your recent submissions to see what happened. While I see your intent to highlight your local area, most of these nominations do not align with our current eligibility guidelines.
I strongly recommend that you carefully review the Wayfarer Criteria to get a better understanding of what makes a submission successful. Additionally, please take a look at the community-made guide Tips for Rural Nominators for ideas on how to find eligible points of interest in a smaller town.
If you would like constructive feedback on how to improve your future nominations, please feel free to share screenshots of your titles, descriptions, and photos in our Nomination Support section. The community here is more than happy to help you format them for the best chance of acceptance.
Best,
Just out of interest, what did you submit? Ive never seen a niantic staff directly adress someone for their submissions being rejected so just wan tto k ow what it was you submitted and maybe of wr cna giv you a hand
Aaron has done this pretty frequently. He does try to help.
Fair enough, I dont see it often but im infrequent on here nowadays lol. Most I see is looking at appeals
The pond sounds great but it needs an identifiable location marker. This is a location based game so people need to know when they’ve arrived at the correct specific spot. A scenic bench or name sign for the pond would work.
Smokey the bear is cool but if it is the usual fire danger sign then it would be mass produced traffic signs aimed at cars. Not a pedestrian hiking and exercise thing. Nominate the trail it was next to not smokey.
We can offer advice on the others if you want. Some may be good ideas that just need a little tweaking to get accepted. If your rejections happened in the first day or so after submission then it was likley rejected by the machine learning program that filters out photo issues and basic ineligible things. A closer photo or some picture tips might help.
Are you willing to provide us with some co-ordinates so that we can explore your area and make some suggestions as to what you could nominate?
Hello @MikePibb
I can see why you feel so frustrated, I would be. Having experienced a number of denial emails it does make you want to scream. Especially when it is the auto system that is doing the rejecting.
This community does like to help other members, if you will let us.
What have you got to lose 
Some of things you mention might be reasonable candidates but just need an experienced eye to approach it in a different way.
It might be that we find something you hadn’t spotted.
I will move this to Nomination Support as that is the best place to try to assist.
Start with one or two nominations and if it’s ok your area.
Hey there, I personally recently looked into how I can streamline looking at map data for potential spots to explore and check out on OpenStreetMap. I don’t know how familiar you are with your local area or how good mapping is, but consider checking out these queries for OpenStreetMap, if the tips for rural nominators don’t get you further.
Note for Niantic staff, this is all just advice on how to look at map data and doesn’t refer to any tools that interact with the Wayfarer platform. I hope this is fine with the forum rules.
Try this Point of interest scanner query through Overpass Turbo for OpenStreetMap. You can navigate to your local area and then start the query. After a bit of waiting, it will show you potential points of interest, which you can check out in person.
Only use this for exploration though! This should only help you to find locations to check for eligible wayspots. It’s important that you review the Wayfarer Criteria before that, as Aaron suggested though.
Also you might be interested in this bench scanner query, it shows benches and might help you to find Picnic Areas.
oh and also, I agree with the others - if you shared some nominations or coordinates, we will probably be able to help you out aswell
I feel you and I agree. In the summer, I rarely play because I need to take a car to get anywhere where there are pokestops. Around me few pokemon spawn, and I can’t spin anything. After months/years of trying, I finally got 2 pokestops approved, after they had been denied numerous times. I find that any and all nominations are all instantly denied and the only way to get something looked at is by appeal. Then, it’s hit or miss. I just keep trying until it gets accepted. I’m still working on our community area with a cement table and BBQ (both permanent and fixed) in an area with a shared garden and pool. It’s always denied for being on private property, no matter how many times I say that it is in no way a single family residence. (It’s shared among 2 buildings with 4 houses each). From everyhwere I look, it should be fair game, especially with the permanent cement table and BBQ, but it’s always denied.
Meanwhile, in town, everything seems to be fair game. I can’t get nearby hand painted signs by a local artist approved, and yet in town I see tons of painted street signs and other painted tiles all over.
It’s frustrating that PokéStops seem to depend on such arbitrary criteria. You can’t get a memorial plaque approved if the person wasn’t “famous” enough, yet I see graffiti accepted while hand-painted tile signs by a local artist are rejected. I have nothing against murals or street art, but I don’t understand why they’re considered more worthy than community gathering places or local memorials.
I’m not saying Niantic intends to reward graffiti, but when graffiti is accepted while memorial plaques, hand-painted tile signs, and community gathering places are rejected, that’s the message the current system seems to send.
I wish there were a fairer way to distribute PokéStops instead of relying only on Wayfarer. With the current system, rural communities get left behind.
Welcome to the forum! Sorry you are finding Wayfarer so frustrating. We have linked some good resources previously in this topic, and you are welcome to make a new topic in Nomination Support to discuss any that you don’t feel should have been rejected.
This does seem like something we might be able to help with.
I would not agree that graffiti is more acceptable than a memorial. We would need to see the memorial. If the graffiti is vandalism, it should be rejected. If the memorial is not for someone significant to the community, it should be rejected.
They actually are testing out simply placing Wayspots
Thanks for the reply. I actually think the experiment with Niantic-generated Wayspots sounds like a good idea, and I hope it helps. My problem with that is that the examples given were things like street corners and bus stops. Those don’t really exist where I live. I’m up on the mountain outside town. There are no bus stops nearby, and there aren’t street corners every few hundred meters like there are in a town. So I’m worried the experiment will still benefit towns more than truly rural areas.
The bigger issue is the spacing. It’s not just that there aren’t enough PokéStops within walking distance. They’re often one or two kilometers apart. At that point, you’re not realistically going to walk from one to the next while playing. Most people end up driving between them, even though the game is supposed to encourage walking and exploring. (And, yes, many people are walking around my area a lot as it is quite beautiful, and there are hiking trails nearby.)
As for the examples, I haven’t submitted any memorial plaques myself because I’d read they usually aren’t accepted unless the person is considered “fanous” enough. My comments are based on what I see around me: graffiti accepted, hand-painted tile signs by a local artist rejected, and community gathering places repeatedly rejected. Maybe there are reasons for each individual decision, but taken together the criteria feel inconsistent from a rural player’s perspective.
I’d be happy to post one of my rejected nominations in a separate thread. My bigger concern is that even if I eventually get another one or two accepted after multiple appeals, rural players are still left with huge gaps between Wayspots.
What a lot of people don’t get is Niantic / Scopley don’t control what exists in local areas, regardless of whether it’s rural, urban or metropolitan. The rules are the same across the board. If people are struggling to find things to submit, they can post some co-ordinates here and we can try and help find some stuff that may be eligible for you.
I feel your pain and often feel the same. Sometimes I find it best to just resubmit the same stops and then they get approved after several tries. Then I went to TX where the ugliest and most generic store signs like TJ Maxx and Kohls are approved but my local Italian restaurant that has a 4’ tomato 3D as their sign is rejected 3x before it was approved. Hang in there.
These should not be approved. Are you certain that you are not looking at imported wayspots that can only be used as power spots?
They are all over the Houston area. I go there quarterly with my friend for her medical treatments. I am 100% sure they are stops and gyms.
Do they have picture? If they dont have picture , then they are imported. Imported wayspot doesnt follow normal wayfarer criteria.
