This week I did a lot of reviews, and as usual there were many, many Dutch Recreational Bike Trail markers. As a lot of them are now being removed, I decided to reject them (I assume the community will still accept them, so probably not that many agreements),
But as my bonus location is in the USA, I stumbled upon an area where there are a lot of bike trail markers. In my view, following the logic for The Netherlands, I should reject these kind of markers, as they are also not for named trails.
Did I make the right call?
Edit: I agree with @resflo there is no need for a route to have a name, there can be official routes
We have Cycle Trails that are meant more for leisure which should be accepted. These are usually named (search “Trans Pennine Trail” or “Tissington Trail”)
We also get loads of Cycle Paths that are more to get cycles off the main roads and are more infrastructure which I Reject.
The problem is that some of the Bike Paths will link parts of a Trail. I usually reject if its the standard sign that does not mention the trail name.
What’s worse is when someone nominates a “No Cycling” sign as a cycle trail. I have even seen where you can see the top of another sign under it so a check on Street View shows the 2nd Sign states “No Cycling”
You made the wrong call, in my opinion, for a few reasons:
You shouldn’t base acceptability/rejectability from one country to another, if that was the case another person may start accepting mailboxes because they see mailboxes accepted in their UK bonus location
Niantic (now Scopely Explore) and the Netherlands have a messy, complicated and obscure past relationship regarding bike trail markers. It should not be generalized across the whole world.
“Not named” is not a valid stand alone rejection reason. It may weaken the submissions’ acceptability, but an official bike route may not necessarily also be named. Regardless of the naming or not, it still could be eligible under the exercise criteria.
As a far away bonus location reviewer, we should endevor to do further research since local nuance can be lost on us. We owe it to that community. Skipping is also be an acceptable and valid action, we shouldn’t try to force decisions.
Everything should be considered on a case by case basis.
We are free to vote in any bonus location as we please, but we should avoid imprinting our local biases on that bonus location’s locale.
I never received a direct response from Scopely, but I actually believed most bike route markers should be allowed. In The Netherlands we have the same kind of generic sings that @SlimboyFat71 mentioned, and we also have just directional bike markers to get to the surrounding cities. And we also have signs, just for leisure purpose, all of those are considered ineligble. Only official routes are considered eligible.
They have not replied to me, but did in several other cases, they have made it clear it should be an official route. In my view, this is more or less the same, so I should treat it the same.
I have seen several threads on the Netherlands Bike Trails / Signs and being honest it has confused me.
I do not review in the Netherlands (not yet anyway) so I can’t answer what should / should not be accepted which is why I stated in my post what I do with the UK reviews.
My point being is that just because it says you can cycle there does not always make it a Cycle Trail so local knowledge should be used.
I will totally agree with this. My current bonus location is in the USA and I do find reviews that I would know whether to Accept / Reject if it was the UK but not sure for the US so I do use a lot of Skips.
We love our bikes, so we have the following signs:
official signs to mark a bike path (same as the blue sign)
red directional signs: the sign to direct you to the cities mentioned on the signs (so just to get from A to B
green signs: the signs for the recreational network. There is a extensive network of nodes in the country, allowing you to create your own touristic route through the country
The first two, I fully agree that these are infrastructure signs, the green signs do promote exercise, but according to Scopely they are not official routes as intended by the criteria.
As I said, I have read the Netherlands Cycle threads and it does seem confusing which is why I would not try to answer whether you should Accept or Reject.
Would be nice if Scopely (Niantic) would make a statement “These should be Rejected because…” but we all know that they can (and probably should) come across as vague.
I have had instances where I just haven’t understood the logic but sometimes you have to just walk away. Not worth being annoyed over a game
which left me confused still. This explanation helped a bit more
but I am still glad I don’t have to review these.
(Please note that in my original reply on how I would review this specific trailmarker, I pointed back to the clarification, not what has been done elsewhere. Thought I should mention that based on the direction some of the conversation has taken.)
I’m not annoyed anymore, I was for a while, so I actually reject these in The Netherlands as well (I used to skip them for a while).
But I do think we should not discrimenate, we all have the same eligibility criteria.
I’ve spend probably about a year or so in total in the USA, have seen almost every state during more than 10 vacations, so I do think I understand the local context. So I have seen real trail markers (usually in the National Parks), but also the normal directional signs. In my mind these were just directional signs for people on a bike (not for a recreational route).
Still, I wasn’t 100% sure, hence this topic (and yes, true I could have skipped this nomination, but probably, like in NL the community will approve anyway).
You can see the bikelane (painted in red), marked by the blue sign that is only for bikes, green signs for the recreational direction, the red sign to get to the next city, and the numbered green sign to get to the next node (all for bikes)
In this case, the actual wayspot is the walking marker, just to the left of the bikemarkers
My understanding of the issue about bike trail markers in the Netherlands:
Bike trail markers are eligible when they are for a trail.
Signs that simply say this is a cycle line (or the equivalent) are not eligible.
Directional markers are not eligible.
What looks like a trail marker but is actually a directional marker pointing the way to a numbered node are the ones with a number in a circle and an arrow. As these numbers are for nodes, not routes, these are directional markers and not eligible.
The same rules apply everywhere : directional markers are not eligible, such as the example you gave that @cyndiepooh commented on.
