You mentioned that you restored the same day, is that the Lightship database managed by the Wayfarer team before it was deleted or the location database managed by the Ingress team?
Also, will the restored location be the exact same location as before?
Presumably that will be the first key to getting Portal back online.
For the past few years, and especially for the past 6 months or so, Ingress has been continually broken by the Wayfarer team.
In this case, of course, the large number of low quality portals being imported is preventing people from going to the Point of Interest, which is the attraction of Ingress.
If this situation continues, anomalies and mission days will be hindered by being filled with low quality portals.
Today I checked my souvenir key capsule and I have a few Camp Navarro 2017 Portal Luminescence keys. I didn't attend the second event so I don't know if I ever had keys for those portals. I didn't know about the situation until today so I don't know if they've been there the whole time or were removed and restored.
I helped work on one of the portals, Magnus Flora, it was a fun project and event so here's some photos from 2017 Camp Navarro!
Not all portals were removed, only five or so iirc. The Meditation Garden of Saint Jarvis (year 2 Spiritualist) was one of them, and I think the rest were year 2 portals as well.
This is my poor guess, but I would like to give you some advice to help you figure out where the problem lies.
In this restoration, I suspect that the problem is complicated because, unlike in the past, the wayspot database has been moved to the Lightship database, which is maintained by the Wayfarer team.
So I made the following assumptions
(1) Restored to the Lightship database.
For the location database managed by the Ingress team, there is a limitation that "portals will not go live within 20 meters of an existing portal" when a portal is live in Ingress.
For normal portal live, there is no case of synchronization at all. The first one approved as WAYSPOT has priority.
However, in this case, there were 15 portals in S2 cell Lv 17.
Perhaps in such a condition, if they are restored at the same time, the wayspots may cause conflicts with each other, and the "wayspot" may exist, but the "portal" may not be live.
So, if the wayspot exists in the Lightship database (on Wayfarer), please try to "separate the locations by at least 20 meters".
I'm difficult to confirm if the wayspot exists because we are too polar and there are no landmarks, and the current Wayfarer application does not allow searching by latitude and longitude.
(2) Recovered in the Ingress Team database.
In this case, the 20m limit does not seem to exist.
However, if it is not live as a portal, first try to see if you can live one portal at a time in front of Niantic's headquarters.
If you can live the portals, then you should be able to move your location to the South Pole after each portal is live, and you should be good to go.
Last but not least, it was shocking to see the most important and special user experience of Ingress destroyed by a Wayfarer team that is already ignorant and disrespectful of its history and game.
Furthermore, it would have been excusable if the Ingress agents had removed it without anyone advising them, but the fact that several agents explained that it was a portal used for a special Ingress event and the Wayfarer team administrators did not listen to them at all is just too sad.
It was a travesty to the feelings of the Ingress agents who attended the event, not to mention mine.
They are so ignorant of Niantic's history and have no respect for their company's roots and the unparalleled location database that agents and good Pokémon Trainers have built over the past 10 years.
From the point of view of the Ingress Agents, many would not want them to handle the location database.
Many agents would even like to see the synchronization stopped.
Thia-san, Ingress is a game that can only be played with high-quality portals.
We are very attracted to Ingress because we can go to Point of Interest locations and have special experiences in the real world through the game.
But this event and the decline in portal quality over the last few years is just too much.
And if this continues, the lack of special experiences will cause players to lose interest in Ingress.
Please discuss with your team again what is the most interesting thing they want to see in Ingress. What are the interesting things you want to see in Ingress? Then share it with the Wayfarer team.
We still want to create special experiences in the real world through the game, but the current garbage wayspot promoted by the Wayfarer team will not provide those special experiences.
The former Ingress community manager also commented about it in a Telegram group;
> Question: From what I remember about the Antarctic graveyard, it's supposed to be as far south as they could get in their system in order to be as inaccessible as possible. At least with Scanner Redacted, they were so far south that the scanner couldn't work down there (ie unspoofable).
> Andrew Krug: Nah. It's literally just where they were randomly placed.
> Andrew Krug: Lots of misconceptions and wrong info today. I restored all the keys when I also took the NL1331 portal offline. AMA.
> Andrew Krug: Oops times up. Thanks for your questions.
Great that you’re working to restore these. Would love an update when it’s all done to let us know how this will be prevented in future and how the teams (both Wayfarer & Ingress) will keep lines of communication open.
Keys are the only souvenir we get to keep from trips and adventures which are associated with good memories and fun times. Sad times for the platform. Perma fields, CAL protected portals for city farms, lost souvenir keys. (Sigh)
I mean, Niantic employees should install and play all of their applications to some degree, regardless of what department they work in.
Of course that includes Wayfarer Review, Lightship VPS, and Campfire.
That way we can see the good and the bad of each other's applications more clearly.
Then we can more cross-functionally say to each other, "We should improve this area.
Of course, I'm not telling them to play so much that it interferes with their work.
But I think playing like Google's 20% rule is good for understanding the problems.
And if they would join for example GORUCK or OCF, where they don't just show up for anomaly or mission day, but belong to our community, fight as part of a team and enjoy the missions, what the players want, and what they think is important to them. They will understand.
It is the same with Pokémon GO and Pikmin.
From there, I can tell you that the current Wayfarer team manager is an A3 agent with only 59 OPR arguments.
There have been previous managers who barely played Ingress and had no agreements, but had some understanding of the nature of the game, so that's not the whole story.
However, this situation has exposed a lack of understanding of the nature of POI, so they should make an effort to get 100 aggregates a day in reviews as their job, and then actually play Ingress, Pokémon GO, Pikmin, and NBA to make sense of interesting places. I think they should.
Both sides need to be on the suitable moral and compliance vector with the players and Niantic.
Silly question, but my background requires me to ask it.
Why did no one from the Ingress side verify that the portals had been restored when it was initially "fixed"? And then report back that it was verified that the portals are back, and that either keys are in your inventory or a way for the keys to be recovered (likely a passcode after this much time has passed). Also, seems like it's still not "fixed" yet either. Do we have any sort of ETA or a contact of who "owns" this issue/problem and will report back to us on when the issue is actually resolved and when/how keys will be given back to agents?
Disappointingly, the story you have painted has turned out to be correct.
They seem to have been the first to throw their hopes into the Antarctic Ocean so that the portals that produced a special experience will never be restored.
I am deeply disappointed in the Wayfarer team.
The Ingress team needs to write the Navarro portal into the database they have.
Does "reinstated" mean that the portals have been restored to the Lightship database?
If so, isn't it possible to force-sync them back into Ingress?
It seems that portals like these deeply embedded in the Ingress lore would be fantastic for future events (anomalies for example) showcasing the potential of the AR technology. They need to be reinstated in Ingress, not just in Lightship or whereever they are at the moment.
I am curious, why do we have this 20m limit on the placement of Ingress portals? For years in the game Ingress, you could literally have portals on top of portals and the game was JUST FINE with it. In fact, co-located portals are great for those xfaction star bursts. I'd love to see a reason why they have this limit now.
You know @NianticBrian it might be a nice thing to see those special TS Navarro portals make an appearance at the next Anomalies coming up, hint, hint . . .
It did go away for a little while again but this was asked in a Campfire AMA in March.
@AisforAndis asks, “Why restrict new Portals with the 20m proximity rule?”
NB: I’m trying to remember back to The Before Times when we originally implemented the 20m rule for new Portal submissions, and IIRC I think it may have been related to UX/UI of the mobile client and our disambiguation menu. If you’re in an area with extremely high Portal density, it makes it difficult to play in addition to creating performance issues. For example, here’s an area in LA near where I live that’s infamous for this: https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=34.060706,-118.44575&z=18&pll=34.060196,-118.445404
Integrating with Niantic Wayfarer was meant to help somewhat, in that now these new Portal submissions won't be lost even if Ingress doesn't ingest them. They could still be used by other Niantic games, or if we were to revisit our Portal ingestion rules, then we can pull from Wayfarer's database of accepted Wayspots.
It's been a month now... I would really love to see these portals restored properly. Is there any update? Wayfarer admins have closed their forums post on it claiming its been Dealt with
Comments
Hi, Thia.
You mentioned that you restored the same day, is that the Lightship database managed by the Wayfarer team before it was deleted or the location database managed by the Ingress team?
Also, will the restored location be the exact same location as before?
Presumably that will be the first key to getting Portal back online.
I strongly agree.
For the past few years, and especially for the past 6 months or so, Ingress has been continually broken by the Wayfarer team.
In this case, of course, the large number of low quality portals being imported is preventing people from going to the Point of Interest, which is the attraction of Ingress.
If this situation continues, anomalies and mission days will be hindered by being filled with low quality portals.
Today I checked my souvenir key capsule and I have a few Camp Navarro 2017 Portal Luminescence keys. I didn't attend the second event so I don't know if I ever had keys for those portals. I didn't know about the situation until today so I don't know if they've been there the whole time or were removed and restored.
I helped work on one of the portals, Magnus Flora, it was a fun project and event so here's some photos from 2017 Camp Navarro!
Not all portals were removed, only five or so iirc. The Meditation Garden of Saint Jarvis (year 2 Spiritualist) was one of them, and I think the rest were year 2 portals as well.
Thank you tons for your attention and this update, Thia! 💚💙💖💙💚
A total of 15 portals that existed near these coordinates do not appear to have been restored.
These portals cannot be found by searching for their titles in the Mission Authoring Tool.
The portal you are referring to is in a different location, so it must be a different portal.
However, the portals you are referring to are also portals that need to be protected.
After this situation is resolved, the Ingress Team and the Wayfarer Team will need to consult with each other to protect them.
-82.862365,134.972248
@GraceOfJarvis @tp235 Thanks for the clarification!
Hi, @NianticThia
This is my poor guess, but I would like to give you some advice to help you figure out where the problem lies.
In this restoration, I suspect that the problem is complicated because, unlike in the past, the wayspot database has been moved to the Lightship database, which is maintained by the Wayfarer team.
So I made the following assumptions
(1) Restored to the Lightship database.
For the location database managed by the Ingress team, there is a limitation that "portals will not go live within 20 meters of an existing portal" when a portal is live in Ingress.
For normal portal live, there is no case of synchronization at all. The first one approved as WAYSPOT has priority.
However, in this case, there were 15 portals in S2 cell Lv 17.
Perhaps in such a condition, if they are restored at the same time, the wayspots may cause conflicts with each other, and the "wayspot" may exist, but the "portal" may not be live.
So, if the wayspot exists in the Lightship database (on Wayfarer), please try to "separate the locations by at least 20 meters".
I'm difficult to confirm if the wayspot exists because we are too polar and there are no landmarks, and the current Wayfarer application does not allow searching by latitude and longitude.
(2) Recovered in the Ingress Team database.
In this case, the 20m limit does not seem to exist.
However, if it is not live as a portal, first try to see if you can live one portal at a time in front of Niantic's headquarters.
If you can live the portals, then you should be able to move your location to the South Pole after each portal is live, and you should be good to go.
Last but not least, it was shocking to see the most important and special user experience of Ingress destroyed by a Wayfarer team that is already ignorant and disrespectful of its history and game.
Furthermore, it would have been excusable if the Ingress agents had removed it without anyone advising them, but the fact that several agents explained that it was a portal used for a special Ingress event and the Wayfarer team administrators did not listen to them at all is just too sad.
It was a travesty to the feelings of the Ingress agents who attended the event, not to mention mine.
They are so ignorant of Niantic's history and have no respect for their company's roots and the unparalleled location database that agents and good Pokémon Trainers have built over the past 10 years.
From the point of view of the Ingress Agents, many would not want them to handle the location database.
Many agents would even like to see the synchronization stopped.
Thia-san, Ingress is a game that can only be played with high-quality portals.
We are very attracted to Ingress because we can go to Point of Interest locations and have special experiences in the real world through the game.
But this event and the decline in portal quality over the last few years is just too much.
And if this continues, the lack of special experiences will cause players to lose interest in Ingress.
Please discuss with your team again what is the most interesting thing they want to see in Ingress. What are the interesting things you want to see in Ingress? Then share it with the Wayfarer team.
We still want to create special experiences in the real world through the game, but the current garbage wayspot promoted by the Wayfarer team will not provide those special experiences.
The former Ingress community manager also commented about it in a Telegram group;
> Question: From what I remember about the Antarctic graveyard, it's supposed to be as far south as they could get in their system in order to be as inaccessible as possible. At least with Scanner Redacted, they were so far south that the scanner couldn't work down there (ie unspoofable).
> Andrew Krug: Nah. It's literally just where they were randomly placed.
> Andrew Krug: Lots of misconceptions and wrong info today. I restored all the keys when I also took the NL1331 portal offline. AMA.
> Andrew Krug: Oops times up. Thanks for your questions.
Great that you’re working to restore these. Would love an update when it’s all done to let us know how this will be prevented in future and how the teams (both Wayfarer & Ingress) will keep lines of communication open.
Every Niantic employee no matter what product he or she works on should be required to play ingress
Keys are the only souvenir we get to keep from trips and adventures which are associated with good memories and fun times. Sad times for the platform. Perma fields, CAL protected portals for city farms, lost souvenir keys. (Sigh)
I agree with your point.
I mean, Niantic employees should install and play all of their applications to some degree, regardless of what department they work in.
Of course that includes Wayfarer Review, Lightship VPS, and Campfire.
That way we can see the good and the bad of each other's applications more clearly.
Then we can more cross-functionally say to each other, "We should improve this area.
Of course, I'm not telling them to play so much that it interferes with their work.
But I think playing like Google's 20% rule is good for understanding the problems.
And if they would join for example GORUCK or OCF, where they don't just show up for anomaly or mission day, but belong to our community, fight as part of a team and enjoy the missions, what the players want, and what they think is important to them. They will understand.
It is the same with Pokémon GO and Pikmin.
From there, I can tell you that the current Wayfarer team manager is an A3 agent with only 59 OPR arguments.
There have been previous managers who barely played Ingress and had no agreements, but had some understanding of the nature of the game, so that's not the whole story.
However, this situation has exposed a lack of understanding of the nature of POI, so they should make an effort to get 100 aggregates a day in reviews as their job, and then actually play Ingress, Pokémon GO, Pikmin, and NBA to make sense of interesting places. I think they should.
Both sides need to be on the suitable moral and compliance vector with the players and Niantic.
Lol it's not like players didn't warn it was going to be a train wreck. But ignored as per usual.
No need to listen to the Ingress Agents on the Wayfarer Forum 🤷
@NianticThia & @NianticBrian
How has the progress been since then?
Whether good or bad, it is reassuring to announce the status on a regular basis.
Silly question, but my background requires me to ask it.
Why did no one from the Ingress side verify that the portals had been restored when it was initially "fixed"? And then report back that it was verified that the portals are back, and that either keys are in your inventory or a way for the keys to be recovered (likely a passcode after this much time has passed). Also, seems like it's still not "fixed" yet either. Do we have any sort of ETA or a contact of who "owns" this issue/problem and will report back to us on when the issue is actually resolved and when/how keys will be given back to agents?
@NianticThia @NianticBrian
Tintino did everything the Wayfarer team could do! I don't know the rest!
He closed the discussion with this throwaway remark.
How will the Ingress team handle this?
Please tell us.
And I don't want Ingress to be destroyed by the Wayfarer team anymore.
So, can you please de-sync the Ingress with Wayfarer?
Also, please move all XMprofiler and other special portals to the database that the Ingress team has.
That way, no matter how much garbage is added to Wayfarer, Ingress will remain irrelevant.
And the portal that created the special experience will not be destroyed.
This is not a special measure.
Because both Pikmin and NBA are out of sync with Wayfarer.
Ingress just needs to do the same.
We do not want garbage. We just want good portals.
Disappointingly, the story you have painted has turned out to be correct.
They seem to have been the first to throw their hopes into the Antarctic Ocean so that the portals that produced a special experience will never be restored.
I am deeply disappointed in the Wayfarer team.
The Ingress team needs to write the Navarro portal into the database they have.
Does "reinstated" mean that the portals have been restored to the Lightship database?
If so, isn't it possible to force-sync them back into Ingress?
It seems that portals like these deeply embedded in the Ingress lore would be fantastic for future events (anomalies for example) showcasing the potential of the AR technology. They need to be reinstated in Ingress, not just in Lightship or whereever they are at the moment.
And even after all of this hot mess, the troll is still not banned.
Wow.
Yeah thats so BS. The guys account should be nuked.
Typical Niantic treatment of a situation near and dear to many. lol
I am curious, why do we have this 20m limit on the placement of Ingress portals? For years in the game Ingress, you could literally have portals on top of portals and the game was JUST FINE with it. In fact, co-located portals are great for those xfaction star bursts. I'd love to see a reason why they have this limit now.
You know @NianticBrian it might be a nice thing to see those special TS Navarro portals make an appearance at the next Anomalies coming up, hint, hint . . .
It did go away for a little while again but this was asked in a Campfire AMA in March.
@AisforAndis asks, “Why restrict new Portals with the 20m proximity rule?”
NB: I’m trying to remember back to The Before Times when we originally implemented the 20m rule for new Portal submissions, and IIRC I think it may have been related to UX/UI of the mobile client and our disambiguation menu. If you’re in an area with extremely high Portal density, it makes it difficult to play in addition to creating performance issues. For example, here’s an area in LA near where I live that’s infamous for this: https://intel.ingress.com/intel?ll=34.060706,-118.44575&z=18&pll=34.060196,-118.445404
Integrating with Niantic Wayfarer was meant to help somewhat, in that now these new Portal submissions won't be lost even if Ingress doesn't ingest them. They could still be used by other Niantic games, or if we were to revisit our Portal ingestion rules, then we can pull from Wayfarer's database of accepted Wayspots.
So the answer seems to be, to prevent lag?
@NianticThia @NianticBrian
What is the current progress?
The Wayfarer team recently abandoned the restoration of the Ingress portal and unilaterally closed the discussion.
Therefore, you are our only hope in this matter.
Is there any further update on this? As mentioned, it’s closed on Wayfarer forums, so there’s no additional progress there.
I guess they’ve been added back as Wayspots but due to the 20m ruling they aren’t all appearing.
It's been a month now... I would really love to see these portals restored properly. Is there any update? Wayfarer admins have closed their forums post on it claiming its been Dealt with