Picnic areas are “eating” up all my appeals.
Hello community, and most of all, Scopely employees!
I find that when I nominate a picnic area, I make sure to describe how the criterias are met, and I do my best to take nice pictures. Of the 5 I have nominated, 1 made it through the initial process, while the rest was rejected by the automatic process.
I try to nominate again, but every time it gets rejected again. I have appealed one so far, and it was then accepted. I am planning to appeal the rest too. I do however find it a bit frustrating with all the re-do.
Would it be possible for the settings in the “automatic process” to be addressed sometime?
According to the clarification on this site, picnic areas are often eligible.
I’ve added two examples of rejected spots. This is the bottom part of the nomination, where we can provide further info.
Posting your main photo, rather than just one of the supporting photos, is much more helpful if you want community advice, as it might be possible to see something about the main photo that can be improved.
Picnic benches are not automatic wayspots (nothing is), are good submissions, but can still be legitimately rejected.
There does however appear to be an issue with the ML filter being too aggressive with picnic benches.
I understand that they’re not automatic - nothing really is. But it is my understanding that they often meet the criterias?
I find it very difficult to take good pictures of these benches, especially when they are located in nature areas, which a majority of my nominations are.
This is the main photo of one of these examples.
Obviously the background is all green on green, due to it being taken at the end of summer.
This specific one is in a large nature reserve, near a marked trail, looking out over a large part of the area. I am confident that this is eligible, and a good example for this specific thread.
Be aware that you can resubmit a rejected nomination. I usually recommend trying a few times before actually giving up and appealing. I have way more nominations to use than appeals. You can still appeal later if you are not successful. I usually change the main photo if I resubmit.
I am surprised the automated process rejected this one. Possibly try backing up a couple of steps to include the entire table, and crop the photo to square to eliminate some of the sky. One quess is that the low contrast between the table and the grass made it difficult to detect the focal point of the nomination, and it only “saw” a random landscape. But that is just a guess.
Cropping square and ensuring the entire picnic bench is in the photo is probably the best approach.
Minimising the sky might help improve the contrast between the picnic bench and the grass.
A fixed non-moveable permanent picnic bench is usually eligible 
This is a similar submission I have made recently where ML didn’t reject the photo. Perhaps a photo like this could work.
Thanks for the suggestions regarding angle and cropping of the photos. I will definitely keep that in mind.
I nominated two new picnic benches today, and I’m anticipating a rejection there as well. But I’ll wait and see.
This is the only one that made it through the automated process, of the ones I’ve nominated so far:
