Things To Nominate In Pokemon GO (and Ingress Prime)
When you reach level 38 in Pokemon GO, you unlock the ability to nominate Pokestops. Basically, you go through a form, where you take some pictures, add a title and description and explain what a thing is and why it should be a Pokestop. Your nomination is then sent to Niantic Wayfarer, where people can scrutinize and vote on your submission and either accept it or reject it.
However, this can be a struggle. Even if you go to the Wayfarer website, there are lots of boxes that need to be ticked. And, because people are, well, people, it’s quite possible that you’ll get rejected a lot. There is hope though. Some nominations are somewhat easy to get accepted, and do genuinely help fill out an area.
Churches
I’ve never had a problem with submitting churches and other religious buildings. Granted, I live in a rather religious country, so there are quite a few churches to be nominated. Pretty much every village has at least one. My new home has three churches nearby, which I can clearly see through the window. One was already a Pokestop but I got the other two nominated and accepted (somehow) within 2 weeks.
I’d recommend properly naming the churches though. Because we need to know which church is which. And separate names stop your nomination from being marked as a duplicate. That being said, I’ve had churches passed without
Playgrounds
Playgrounds are also a very popular option. Being bright and colourful, a playground will stand out from the middle of a park, and are a pleasant change of scenery. Parks are the places that Niantic wants us to explore, and playgrounds are a big part of that. This means they are great spots to put waypoints.
However, not all playgrounds are that easy. Anything involving children normally gets declined, especially schools. So it’s best to make sure that your playground isn’t too closely tied to a nearby school or club for kids. The playgrounds on their own are fine, they just can’t be in or too close to schools.
You’ve also got to take a picture when no one is playing in said playground. Which isn’t always doable.
Statues and busts
With anything arty, you may need to submit more than once. Mostly because people generally can’t see these things on maps, but you can see the surrounding area. But statues, sculptures and busts always have a nice bit of local history attached to them. If you include that history in your submission, it goes a long, long way. It’s also worth taking a wide shot when it comes with your secondary photo, so you can clearly see its position in regards to buildings and stuff. The mixture of visibility, history and uniqueness make statues and sculptures much easier to pass.
It’s still basically luck
At the end of the day, you are basically handing a nomination to a vast collective of complete strangers. And these strangers will act in different ways. Some are lenient, some are chained up by Wayfarer’s rules. Getting a group of random people to all individually accept a nomination is tricky, because we all have different biases and interpretations of Niantic’s rules. Sometimes, you just need to submit something twice. Reviewers are very picky, and it’s best to make doubly sure that you follow the rules the best you can.
There are other things that go into accepting nominations too. You can’t be too close to existing waypoints and they need to be accessible. Basically, if you can easily hug a nomination, then it’s got decent access. On top of all that, there’s the 20m mark. Waypoints need to be at least 20m apart, otherwise they don’t show up at all.
When you finally get something accepted though, that’s a great feeling to have…