Ughhhh, look, im not against some of my appeals being rejected, im usually just giving them a go, but seriously? Normal statues, when are statues normal?
The impression I get from the appeal rejections is that they make a snap judgement, pick a rejection reason fairly randomly from a list and type in a short description to fill in the blank. They definitely don’t type the entire rejection sentence. Recent “normal” and “generic” rejections posted here have been “normal swimming pool”, “generic milestone” and “normal statue”, all of which are objects which are defacto eligible even if they are normal.
It isn’t rejected for being a “normal statue”, but because something about the submission meant the appeal reviewer rejected it. Maybe the photos, maybe the location, maybe the narrative.
Technically, I think it’s a Niantic staff member, with Niantic being owned by Scopely. (This is confusing for Ingress players, who continue to refer to Niantic Spatial as “Niantic”.)