Approving/rejecting religious objects: what warrants a "not permanent or distinct" rejection?

Review Support
1

Good day. I’ve gotten a few of these types of nominations in my queue and want to make sure I’m making the right call on rejecting them. One example pasted below:

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I rejected this (and similar ones) using thumbs down on “Permanent and Distinct.” In my view, it’s just a generic religious object, and the title/description aren’t doing it any favors. It’s located in a hospital campus, and there’s nothing special about it visually or historically. I’m fairly certain I made the right call on that (and other similar crosses) but could use a sanity check.

However, I do have another example of objects I’ve rejected that I’m kind of iffy about. Should I have rejected them? Could they be eligible? I don’t have any examples off-hand but here’s one I found locally on the Wayfarer map:

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This is a legacy POI in-game, but would this be eligible if submitted in current days? It’s kind of just a regular statue of Jesus. The only thing that makes it really unique is the paved pavilion it sits on.

I have come across a few religious status (mainly of Jesus or Mary) that I’ve rejected because I don’t believe them to be distinct. I think it gets iffy because statues tend to be pretty slam-dunk nominations, but contextually, a Jesus or Mary statue in a church doesn’t feel distinct enough to warrant approval, unless there is something extra to set it apart from other similar religious icons. Am I off-base on that?

On the other hand, here’s one I found in-game that does contain a regular old statue of Mary, but it is situated in a courtyard with permanent seating and a nice stone facade. This is an example of one that I would have accepted because of the social/cultural value it provides to the church courtyard it’s located in. I view the submission to encompass the entire shrine area as a whole, even if the statue itself is just a normal statue of Mary.

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That’s kind of where I stand with religious objects. I’m mostly looking to pick brains on how other reviewers handle approving/rejecting religious objects, specifically in terms of uniqueness. How much does context play into the uniqueness of a religious object? (i.e. a regular cross inside a church vs a regular cross on the side of a hospital wall vs a regular cross permanently installed in the middle of the desert [hypothetically]).

Appreciate all input!

2

These are the gray areas of Wayfarer. I tend to think that the stand alone statues and crosses are significant, at least to the people of that faith community. I would have trouble evaluating a cross on the side of a church building, and if the building is already a Wayspot, I would most likely mark it as duplicate. TBH, I would probably have skipped your first example in review. I will pull up that address and take a look.

(And yes, I did see that you said this is a hospital, was just discussing other scenarios. The courtyard is a Wayspot already, but this doesn’t feel like an exact duplicate of that. But it doesn’t seem like it is significant to me. I believe I would have either skipped this or marked it as not distinct if I had it in review.)

3

Honestly, it just depends. Here, that wouldn’t be a normal thing to see on hospital grounds, so I might be tempted to allow it (if I could get past the title!)

I somewhat agree. If it were huge, or shiny, or ancient, or by a named artist (not necessarily anyone famous, but at least with their own wiki page?), then I’d probably say yes.

  • Otherwise non-notable cross in a church: Probably just part of the general church grounds
  • In a hospital: Dependant on cultural norms.
  • In a graveyard: Almost certainly not.

But it’s always a case-by-case thing.

4

I think small shrines and religious statues usually make for good nominations. Stand-alone crosses too. They might seem generic but they’re important to the community.

5

Thanks all for the input.

I am realizing that I may have some biases as I, myself, am Catholic so I did grow up around all this iconography and ironically I see things like normal ordinary crosses with more of a generic lens than most might. This was a good check of that bias and I’ll probably adjust my review lens moving forward!