Many Pokemon Go players dream of living near a PokeStop, making it easy to restock on Poke Balls and gifts and tick off daily PokeStop spin streaks. Some go so far as to take it into consideration when looking for their next apartment or home, but for others, their hopes rest on the ability to submit new PokeStop locations via the Wayfinder program in Pokemon Go. However, recently players have noticed an uptick in mysterious rejections of their submissions for new stops. Spots that normally would be an automatic yes have been getting turned down, often without clear reason – and a recent announcement finally reveals why.
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Once players reach Level 37, they will be able to join Niantic Wayfarer, the community where Pokemon Go fans can submit points for the Niantic real-world map. In others words, where they can nominate their favorite local spot to become a PokeStop where they can reload on supplies or place lures to attract Pokemon. This process is fairly involved, requiring players to take a high-quality photo of their requested location, a title, and description that proves why said location is a point of interest. That means it can be pretty frustrating when what a fan thought was a shoe-in PokeStop nomination gets turned down without a clear reason.
In general, Wayfarer rules require that the submitted PokeStop be some kind of public, easily accessible space. It should be either a point of educational interest like a historic plaque or library, an outdoor space with room to exercise like a hiking trail or park, or a social spot such as a coffee shop or water fountain. Typically, the most common reason a PokeStop would be rejected is for not meeting these criteria – like if someone tries to submit graffiti on their apartment wall for easy access. Other reasons might include being on private property, in an unsafe location, or being “adult-oriented.” When their responses are rejected, players typically get one of these guidelines as the reason for why their PokeStop was turned down.
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In the past year or so, however, players have noticed these rejections didn’t always make a ton of sense. Areas such as public parks or libraries have been getting shot down, despite apparently meeting all of the Wayfarer guidelines. A recent announcement from the Wayfarer team at Niantic has shed some possible light on why this has been happening.
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Apparently, the team at Niantic Wayfarer has been using a Machine Learning AI system called eMiLy to review PokeStop submissions automatically, before they reached human reviewers. However, the auto-accept and auto-reject functions weren’t working as intended, resulting in some truly wonky approvals and rejections of submitted PokeStops. They briefly disabled both automatic features to work on the issue, but have since re-enabled auto rejection. In theory, that means the issue impacting stops being incorrectly auto-rejected has been resolved.
Players who recently had their PokeStop nominations rejected for unclear reasons may want to try resubmitting the stop, as it’s likely the rejection could have been a result of this eMiLy algorithm malfunction. Just note that reviewing submissions may take a little longer, since anything that isn’t auto-rejected will be reviewed by the community until auto-accepts are reinstated.
