"Revisiting the S14/S17 rules for pokestop creation"

#PokemonGO: A while ago u/hearthnewbb posted an analysis of their local community areas and how the S14 rule was ultimately holding back gym creation in rural areas. This post can be found here and is worth a read.For those unaware there are several hidden rules when it comes to pokestop creation:First of all there can only be 1 pokestop per S17 cell. This differs from the rules in Ingress where they can have multiple portal per cell as long as they aren't within 20m of one another.Gyms are created when there are 2,6, or 20 Pokestops + gyms in a S14 cell.Edits don't apply any of the above rules and are largely the reason exceptions to the previous two rules apply.With Pokestop nomination coming to Europe the first rule has already become an issue for those of us doing OPR. Many portal and Pokestops have been submitted slightly off location to push it into another S17 cell or the portal already exists in Ingress but can't be seen in Pokemon Go.This is an issue and the only way it can be solved is for Niantic to simply abolish the S17 rule or at the very least move down to S18 cells. I think we've had this discussion enough at this point that Niantic know this needs to be done before all of Europe / America get Pokestop nominations.However a much bigger concern that I've been seeing lately is that people have been submitting false Photospheres with edited location data to push pokestops into a different S14 cell in order to obtain a new gym. As stated in the thread two months ago these rules largely impact smaller rural communities who have precious few points of interest generally compact in a single S14 cell but not enough to hit that 20 threshold. I've heard arguments that they can just edit these locations later and get even more gyms than they would if they played by the rules after all would you rather 2 gyms in a cell with 6 stops or 4 thanks to edits?I don't even blame the people submitting for doing this, after all Niantic have set up rules that promote this behaviour and gaming the system and thank to the Dark XM event its easier than ever to get portals accepted when they really shouldn't be.This has honestly become a problem that Niantic need to address quickly before it gets out of hand and the solutions are fairly obvious.They need to remove the 1 per S17 rule completely so that duplicate submissions aren't 50% of all pokemon go submissions I review.They need to reduce the gym creation criteria from 2/6/20 to something more manageable for rural areas such as 2/5/10 else they will have people gaming the systemThey need to have edits follow the same rules as normal submissions otherwise there is little point in submitting a real submission. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://bit.ly/2PKOOqo