Every single spot lately has been denied for the same reason, “lacks uniqueness or historical and cultural meaning”. Next note states “the signboard seems to have no significance”… WHAT? What am I doing wrong/what is going over my head here?
This spot is unique in that this particular sign is intended to be the permanent sign for this wetland and nature park. I have contacted the City. They have no plans to replace this sign. This is the name place sign for this park. I am told by others (on Wayfarer Reddit) that the wording on the sign makes people think it is temporary, but it is permanent. I didn’t realize that the website for the park was not updated. The site states the project would be finsihed in 2022, but they didn’t even start construction or put this sign up until late 2023/early 2024. The park has been open to the public since 2025, and the parking lot was unblocked and opened for public access as well. This has been a public park for 10-12 months now… I don’t know how to handle getting this Valid and real park accepted as a POI.
It’s a park. It has trails and views and is a space to explore. It has a parking lot and benches and trails. This is a newer park; some Google maps still show this as a field so I included a link to the project development site which has images and describes the importance of the park & wetland restoration project. This sign is the entrance sign/name place sign for the new park and describes all entities who have helped bring this project and new park to light. I don’t know how someone reviewed this and saw nothing of significance, nothing promoting exploration, and also marked it as unsafe… what??
This is actually a HUGE deal with a lot of significance as this neighborhood actively floods and this wetland restoration project will help control the water table and mitigate flooding while also providing a new Park for the community. This neighborhood currently doesn’t have any other parks/areas for exercise… There’s also water level measuring devices in this wetland that they are actively asking the public to take photos of and record. They want people to know this park is open and want to encourage the community to explore it and help with the water level data too. There’s no reason this would be insignificant at all!!!
Please help me. I just want to add this park and continue going around and adding the bridge and other POIs so others can come find this new park. I also just want to be more successful at adding POIs in general. I keep getting every other one denied and they are generally all the same so I don’t know why some of my POIs get approved and others are denied. It seems random and nonsensical.
Welcome to the forums 
You will get better advice here than on reddit. I have to pick up on this misunderstanding, which is caused partly by the awful narratives that Niantic use.
A failure for not “permanent and distinct” often means the reviewers thought the submission was not eligible, not distinct as a POI, and it will then have nothing to do with it not being permanent. Permance and Distinctiveness are two (almost) completely separate concepts that should not be joined together, but they are.
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The reason I was given for being rejected was “lacks uniqueness or historical and cultural meaning”… and then everyone on Reddit said that the sign wasn’t permanent. I don’t quite understand what your comment means… are you saying that reviewers thought it was not Distinct and then its mashed together with the permanent/distinct voting being one question?
Yes.
Official advice if you don’t think something is eligible, but cannot reject it for Safety, Accuracy etc, is to reject it for not “permanent and distinct”, because thumbing down on Social/Exercise/Exploration is not sufficient to reject it.
So this is a combination of two errors by Niantic.: joining two separate concepts and not giving reviewers a sensible way to reject ineligible wayspots.
All this comes down to is that when you get a “not permanent and distinct” rejection, you can normally interpret this as “reviewers didn’t think this met the key criteria”.
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That doesn’t necessarily help me understand why this was rejected nor how to get this valid POI approved.
I agree. I was just trying to clarify a misunderstanding. I can’t pick through your entire post at the moment but there are definitely people on this forum who can.
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Ok thanks. That’s kind of the only reason I posted here. Why was this rejected and how do I resubmit this successfully since it IS a park and should qualify as a valid POI.
Good day and welcome to the forum!
IMO it seems there is confusion of whether the point of interest is the sign or the park visually represented by the sign.
Further highlighting that you are submitting the Martin’s Run Wetland Complex, itself as a park/outdoor space, may alleviate the scenario. Describing the leisure activities for visitors can be crucial for the description.
Adding links to show that these leisure activities is also good. The current link does show the restoration efforts made and what looks to be a trail. IMO while these are good for the environment, you should hone in on the human intractability of the space. The chronolog program you mentioned seems like a leisure activity that can prove this point.
One other note is to differentiate this from a similarly named reserve that is not open to the public according to their website. While reserves are good for the environment, keep in mind that we look towards human intractability when accounting for the mentioned historical/cultural significance. A reserve that does not encourage visitors would not be eligible as player activity may disrupt the restoration efforts.
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I believe this is the rejection we see when community reviewers select “Generic business” or when in house reviewers select “Generic” to reject, based on examples posted with this reason.
A sign about a restoration project would be a generic utilitarian type information sign. Is there a sign that indicates that this is also to be used as a park?
On Street View, it just looks like a notice board that work is happening here, so this is what you will have to overcome to submit this as a sign for a park.
You can direct people to this newer street view that shows a bench and a footbridge.
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I honestly don’t even think the sign looks that temporary? I would definitely also submit the foot bridge, trails, and perhaps a scenic bench, but I do think the sign makes for a good anchor if you focus on it actually being an anchor.
This is a submission that was approved by a Niantic reviewer despite the sign being completely faded from the sun, since I explained that I am using it as an anchor for the trailhead. Because of that, the rest of my description focused on the thing I was actually nominating, i.e. the trail
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Just to reiterate, the sign itself is not eligible so you are using this as an anchor (proxy) for the actual Park.
As the sign is advertising a “Restoration Project” it is understandable that people have assumed that once the Restoration has been completed this sign will be removed, hence “Temporary”.
To move to the Positives…
- Is there any “Welcome To…” signs
- You state it has Trails, Any Trail Markers?
- Are the Benches positioned to encourage socialisation (group of picnic benches would be great).
Good Luck
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These two other things seem to be there, one links to this website: Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
Not sure if that yellow circle is a trail marker of sorts.
I prefer to original sign as an anchor but perhaps the one asking for update photos might seem more permanent?
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These signs are further in the park, on the other side of the bridge and not near the entrance. They are not trail markers either, they are informational signs/QR codes to the water level data collection project. The trails also Dead-end and do not circle around/connect. There are no plans to replace the sign I submitted as a POI, and it is intended to be the welcome/name place sign for this park.
So there aren’t any trail markers?
In any case, I don’t think your sign is a bad anchor at all. I would try taking new photos and resubmit, while focusing on the wetland area in the description and clarifying that the sign is simply an anchor for the area
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Why would the sign be ineligible? No one can tell me anything besides it “seems to be temporary” that doesn’t inherently disqualify it, and when it’s intended to be the permanent sign for this site/park, what do I do? I mention that I’m using this location/sign as the proxy/anchor for the park itself as a POI? What’s funny is it sounds like the advise is to be LESS clear and LESS specific to help get this approved lol. I apparently went above and beyond describing this park, its restoration from a farmland, and linking the website. All that did was get me nowhere. NExt time i’ll just say PARK and take a further away photo and hope for the best. This is literally so stupid.
See this is why stuff is unfair and hypocritical lol! How do you submit more than one supporting image? I’m only able to submit one when i make a submission… is it because you use the wayfarer site and not the pogo app?
Yes you are able to submit more than one image through the website! I think it’s very helpful especially for situations like this one, where you could also include a map of the area etc. as supporting evidence
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The other “Martin’s Run” that you linked WAS an old reservation that they turned into a HUGE community of McMansions. It is also entirely open to the public because it hold like 100 homes now LOL! Our city doesn’t update their websites much but that has been homes since 2010 or longer! That’s also like a whole zip code away! This city is huge.
The bridge is actually in BOTH of these photos. Just dark and gritty. But the bench just looks at grass so probably wouldn’t get approved as there really isn’t a “view”.
IMO: Using this sign is always going to be difficult with Reviewers.
It states this is a Project, Projects finish.
You state that you have contacted the city but as Reviewers we should not take what people have written as gospel without evidence.
Not trying to be Mr Negative, just trying to show why Reviewers have rejected.
