Hi to all - need help making sure I am consistent with reviews - I have done about 1500 so far and I am only getting agreements on about 50% of them.
I see a lot of memorial benches, tree plaques, etc. for people that are not described as military vets, comminity leaders, etc. - just someone who was loved. Should these be approved?
Also I see a lot of wayspots in places that are accessible to the public - on a military base not in a public area, pools in a resort or hotel behind where non-guests are allowed, etc. Should these be approved?
Last one - individual holes on a frisbee golf course or regular golf course - I thought I read in the guides that these are not safe but I see them often. Yes or no?
Thanks. Hope to boost my agreement percentage and be as fair and consistent as possible.
The onus is on the submitter to convince you that their submission is valid and meets criteria. This means including supporting documentation to prove that the plaque/bench is for a notable person and isn’t just there because someone paid for it. If they haven’t proven that, it is on them and it would be a good idea to reject for not being distinct, as there are literally millions of benches around the world and a good percentage probably have plaques on them. You can also try searching the name yourself to find your own proof if you just like be thorough, but its meant to be your job to judge evidence, not find it.
Single-family Private Residential Property (often abbreviated to SFPRP)
Farmland
A location focusing on under-18s (school, daycare, youth groups, scouts, i.e. anywhere a child would be separated from their legal guardians)
Or strictly over-18s (bars, g*n ranges, other adult stores)
It could be considered eligible. In other words, places with any sort of barrier to entry can be eligible.
No, individual golf/disc golf holes should not be submitted/approved separately. When reviewing you should only be judging the submission against the 3 criteria, not what has been accepted in the past, especially as sometimes Niantic/Scopely have generated Wayspots to fill out the game board that would otherwise not fit criteria.
Also just to add, if you don’t feel confident with a judgement of a review you can and probably should hit skip instead of guessing.
Don’t worry about what other reviewers may or may not be agreeing with, worry about the criteria. If you think something meets the criteria, accept it. If you don’t think it does, reject it.
If you aren’t sure, ask as you’ve done here, but certainly don’t worry about matching other reviewers!
To actually answer your questions:
For me, a bench plaque (or other plaque) is worth exploring if the person described would be of interest to other members of the community who did not know them. So Joe Bloggs might have been a great granddad, but if you aren’t his family, he doesn’t mean anything to you, and that probably represents the vast majority of this kind of thing. Someone else could be eligible though, whether they were a military general, a noted author, or even the person who spent 50 years working in the same park and said hello to everyone as they passed through. There’s not a specific list of ‘acceptable’ roles. It could also be the case that the plaque itself is funny or artistic and merits exploration that way instead. Ultimately, it’s going to usually be a judgement call and it’s up to the submitter to ‘sell’ the proposition.
If it is safely accessible to some people then it is valid. If you have to be a member, have a specific job or require a ticket, that should have no bearing on the eligibility, though many reviewers incorrectly think otherwise. The only thing that sometimes muddies this is if somewhere is specifically only accessible to adults (e.g. bars in some countries, hand-held shootyshooty machine* shops or… less salubrious establishments), then it is not allowed.
Absolutely not. Same as regular golf. One for the starting point / rules board / clubhouse / whatever and that’s it. Everywhere else on the course has discs or balls flying towards them. Again, reviewers love to accept these incorrectly. Best thing you can do is report any that you see IRL / on the map for removal so we might slowly get the message across.
*The lengths we go to to get around the word filters
Keep reviewing by criteria instead of just what you see on the game board, and ask like this when you aren’t sure. A lot of reviewers are reviewing incorrectly these days, and that has to be part of the problem that is causing this issue:
I know I am spending as much time reporting or correcting wayspots that should not have been accepted, at least not where they are on the game board, as I am reviewing. In the long run, you will get more agreements by reviewing per criteria than by trying to figure out what the community will accept or not.
Some further guidance with your questions when you click the information circle on the review form:
These locations are appropriate:
Any location that is accessible publicly to pedestrians, both indoors and outdoors, is appropriate, including the following locations:
Restricted - locations that restrict access to a subset of people (Gated community or members-only locations, military bases)
Ticketed - locations that require a ticket to access like theme parks, museums that require a ticket to enter
Businesses - indoor locations and businesses with items for purchase
Personally I have seen all sorts of memorials and commemorations and I think that if they’re important enough to be approved by the community in a public location then they are appropriate as pokestops.
The individual golf course / disc golf course holes though are particularly annoying.
as well as the quote that was linked before…
I’ve reported some golf course holes and specifically stated the fact that the entrance to the course is a pokestop and the individual holes should not be approved as such only to have my report denied.
Best of luck! If you think it’s a good pokestop then go ahead and vote for it! Remember the search tool works quite well and often times you can find a little more information with the right keywords.
Interesting that you brought up looking at the tool tip and accepting memorials in the same comment. Because the full tool tip for Appropriate gives “memorials” as an example of a sensitive location that should be rejected.
I do not disagree with you, and also accept many memorials if I don’t personally consider them sensitive. (Not the ones for Fido or Pop-Pop, though, to be clear.) Just pointing out how a reviewer has to use their best judgment with the guidelines they are given.
Oh and fwiw, I have been having more success with reports for individual disc golf holes when I use the reporting abuse form: Reporting Abuse in Wayfarer — Wayfarer Help Center
There are usually a lot of them when I find them. This form makes it easier to report the whole group at once.
This has become my mental valve while reviewing. “Oh, you wanted to waste my time reviewing your coal submission? Yeah, I see that LFL and aerator in your neighborhood now. Would be a shame if someone reported it. ”
Including ‘memorials’ under 'inadmissible sensitive location is a big oversimplification.
Ultimately, there’s a world of difference between “Memorial for Joe Bloggs, soldier who died being super brave during WWI” and “Memorial for the ten year old twins who were hit by a car in 2024”, with the former clearly not sensitive and the latter extremely so. The line is somewhere between those two, and it always has to be dealt with on a case by case basis.
The memorials one is a bit more of a gray area. It does say that in the tooltip but there are other articles adding a little more clarification on what would be considered “sensitive” vs. appropriate.
It is a gray area that appears to be black and white in the tool tip. Just pointing out that you have to read everything you can and use your best judgment. Not saying to reject all memorials if you read my comment.
”