And I am sure you are aware that 
on these do not reject a nomination.
I do not wish to debate you. I do want to prevent you from misleading folks seeking genuine advice.
Again, you are quoting eligibility criteria, not acceptance criteria:
Hey there @BryanM2210 Here’s a hearty welcome to the forum. Everyone here means well and wishes to help. I have two requests of you if you feel comfortable.
- Share your city/town/village (without doxxing yourself of course) so people here can have a look around to see if there are any eligible POI’s that we can suggest you go out and nominate.
- Share the pics of your rejected nominations (again if you are comfortable) we can help you tweak, rewrite or some other third thing.
Some of the examples you write about are not eligible in Wayfarer such as:
The McDonald sign - These are in the game, but through a sponsored program that live outside of Wayfarer. This is not broadcast well, so it’s not surprising you didn’t know about it.
The Montessori School - anything to with K-12 is not allowed because it’s really not a good idea to have people playing a game on the grounds of a school for obvious reasons.
The Fire House - While these at one point were eligible and added to a game no longer linked to Wayfarer. We’ve learned this block emergency services and could cayuse someone an injury or the fireman delay getting in or out of the firehouse.
Shopping Center Sign - These are some of my favorites! You have to craft your message carefully and fully explain why it’s a good nomination to be added to the database.
Finally, some of the POI’s you see in Pokemon Go, would not pass today with the current criteria and also they don’t meet the criteria for removal. So they sit on the map in a weird place that is confusing to new(er) players who see them and think, “Hey, I have one of those and I’m going to nominate mine”. So, every thing is so nuanced. Keep asking questions. Keep reading the forum.
Look for people with the “Ambassador tag” on their name. While they are not Staff, they are trusted people with a lot of knowledge.
Lastly, we don’t have a DM system here on the forum, but I’d love to help you. I’ve done it for people in the past and helped them get many things approved in their area. You can google my name “BlameJamal” and Wayfarer and ways to contact will come up. We are not allowed to post our handles here on the forum.
Hope this helps you and take me up on the offer.
While that is true for many shopping centers, I don’t believe it applies to the ones in this town since …
Empty shopping centers don’t sound like they are good places for anything … yet. Sometimes you just have to wait for the eligible stuff to appear.
100% agree. That’s why I’m volunteering to this OP. Doesn’t hurt to get a couple sets of eyes on the possible POI’s.
The conversation has wandered around a little bit…..that is sometimes what happens on forums, and it can feel a little overwhelming as we all try to help.
Take your time and if you can give us one of the places where you think there may be something that will work and don’t be concerned about some of the other details that are being voiced.
There’s no learning from rejections when they literally give you no reason for the rejection.
Again, please feel free to share your nominations. Rejection reasons are given, and we can certainly help you understand them.
I think you missed the point I was making. Nowhere did I say a sidewalk should be a stop. A sidewalk is a great place to exercise. Meaning objects along that sidewalk would be, imo, eligible. Example: neighborhood signs, guard houses, gates, shopping center signs, all of which are identifiable, tangible, and permanent.
I do a lot of my walking along residential streets. Mostly houses very little else.
But just because I pass an object or place that is not a house it doesn’t make it eligible to be a wayspot. It might be a point I notice but it does not make it a marker on a set / official route.
I can understand if you have concerns about doxxing yourself. But if we are to help then if you could provide more details about some of the shopping centres - what do they have, you say empty but are there no business at all has the space been landscaped in any way. Is there any access to the parks?Unless we can see the submissions that haven’t worked so we can establish that they won’t work, then you need to leave them behind and start looking at places that have more potential.
Location approval does seem somewhat random even based on the criteria given for nominations. McDonald’s around the world have poke stops. Fire stations in multiple cities have stops and gyms. I could go on and on about what does not meet the criteria but exists in multiple cities. When you live in a small rural town with 1500 people finding acceptable POIs becomes nearly impossible with the apparent random nature of the approval process. Driving to nearby towns or parks (20-30 miles) to get to stops/gyms is really not viable. Level 73 trying to remain engaged in the game but finding it difficult.
Welcome to the forum @djreed14917 
Absolutly understandable. I was also surprised that there’re existing rules when I first experienced with wayfarer. MC D can be a sponsorship or a play area. It’s much easier to make future submission within the guidelines. Do you want to open a new thread in Nomination Support and share your general location? So the community might be able to help finding eligible candidates.
Welcome to the forum!
I agree it can be very confusing when stuff is in game that doesn’t meet today’s criteria. Those McDonald’s with the logo Pokestops are sponsored, meaning McDonald’s paid to have them and they do not have to go through the voting process.
Way, way, way back in the day, a database was used to seed game locations for Ingress, well before there ever was a Pokemon Go game. Some of these currently ineligible spots remain that have not been reported for removal yet. Now Ingress no longer has anything to do with Wayfarer.
Wayfarer is much more fun and successful when you submit going by current criteria rather than just what you see in game.
Thanks, I do have several other submissions pending. It’s difficult to find acceptable nominations in a very small town. I’ll keep looking and submitting if there are others.
DJR
I cannot for the life of me understand why people are so hard pressed about a Pokestop. Does it affect your game play? No. It just enhances those of us who don’t live in some big city with all of the “eligible” stops. Why does someone nominating a neighborhood sign bother you people so much. It’s safe. Its visible. Easy to find. Not illegal to be at. Not offensive. I don’t understand why we have people on here making it their full time job to deny other people’s nominations. It doesn’t affect you. If it does, please tell me. Please. I am genuinely curious to know why you cronic denyers are so hard pressed about something that doesn’t affect you. At all. Thanks.
Hi @xleahxrabbitx
Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Neighborhood signs often have additional problems like being on SFPRP (single family private residential property) or having unsafe pedestrian access (in the middle of the road). If reviewers would accept these they risc to get in trouble too once the wayspot will be reported. So it is always the safer path to vote in accordance to the guidelines.
Niantic didnt say every neighbourhood sign to be ineligible. It come down to each nomination case by case. Some neighbourhood sign might be more historical or artistic than other. Most people will reject plain one. But personally i would approve a better one.
If I might offer an example, there’s a neighborhood in my area that was built on a property that was a farm up until ~12 years ago. The barn still stands at the end of the neighborhood, which is called “Moehling Farm”.
When I nominated the neighborhood sign, I made a point to discuss the history of the neighborhood, Mr. Moehling’s family and the barn (which was ineligible to be nominated itself because it is on private property).
This nomination passed community review without much trouble, and I’m pretty sure it’s because the significance of the neighborhood and its history was something I was able to support. When I’m reviewing, someone who nominates a sign and just says ‘this is the sign at X neighborhood, we need more pokestops’ isn’t something I feel compelled to accept, personally. I think most reviewers feel the same way–without a reason that the sign is worth visiting to explore in itself (artistic merit) or that it anchors a neighborhood that is worth exploring for some reason, it’s not going to be an enthusiastic yes.
Here’s another neighborhood sign, one I saw in my own reviews, that I accepted:
I think the sign and the details about who the neighborhood was named after are Really Hecking Cool. This was something I accepted easily. But most nominations for neighborhood signs are not this.
Hello and I am glad you have come to the forum!
Yeah…there is a rating called “Agreement” and if we don’t follow Wayfarer Guideline, our rating will drop due to getting a lot of disagreement between people who review correctly.
Not really, we spend our spare time doing review and accept eligible and acceptable wayspot 
The rules about what are acceptable apply universally[1] so if you allow lower-quality wayspots in one area then need to be acceptable in every area. For example, we either allow chain restaurants in or we don’t - a line has to be drawn somewhere. But also, players can use low-quality wayspots to unfairly gain an advantage over other players by creating resources that would be denied to other players [2]. Reviewers need to stick to the guidelines of what is acceptable, there is some wiggle room but not much.
[1] although Wayfarer have hinted that they might be relaxed for rural areas in the future. There’s an experiment going on in France as well, PoGo does supplement wayspots with data from other sources. I do not believe there are any wayspots off Planet Earth when I say “universally”.
[2] perhaps more of an issue in Ingress which is no longer part of Wayfarer but has a parallel system.
[3] isn’t it fun reading through the footnotes?
Sorry, this narrative has come up a few times and I’m not sure it’s right.
Part of the “3.1 Criteria Refresh” where we moved from categorical eligibility to “socialize, exercise, explore” was precisely to say that everything everywhere was not universally handled the same. At the time, benches and a Starbucks were used in the literal post about how either might be acceptable in a rural setting or particular case where it is recognized as special to the local community.
Wayfarer Criteria isn’t necessarily relaxed in different settings, but the generic and mundane can become more interesting and locally significant in ways that can raise them into eligibility.
Unfortunately, that isn’t to say many of the examples where this sentiment is posted should have been acceptable, but I think it’s important to let those in remote settings understand that they aren’t being held to the same standard as more populous or affluent areas. Also, of course, a lot of these “rural” posts do end up being urban or suburban settings.