My account has been wrongfully temp banned after trying to move a portal to its correct location.
TLDR and necessary screenshots below the post.
After receiving an OPR warning, I am actually pretty careful and selective with what I edit. A portal close to where I work has been edited out of its correct location to about 80 meters (~250 feet) away for no reason in early June. I've been trying to get it back to its original location since.
I don't do edits often, and the email I received from Niantic came an hour after it got rejected from OPR, which also explicitly states I was banned due to a bad location edit. So I know for sure it is caused by this edit.
The portal in question is called Halkbank Kupası. It is 3 trophies located in the main entrance of a bank called Halkbank's headquarters. The portal was accessible from the street too so I don't really understand why anybody felt the need to mess with it in the first place but that's a different story.
The building is adjacent to a mall that has a very large decorative pool. The portal currently sits next to this pool, surrounded by the pool and a couple random restaurants for almost 3 MONTHS. Since I work pretty close to there and players know I was the one to do the edit, my suspicion is that it got mass rejected by the opposing faction, whose members also flagged the edit request as OPR abuse, or worse, contacted a Vanguard and got me falsely banned...
It is quite obvious where the portal is supposed to be, that this was not a bad location edit and the termination should be reverted. Thanks in advance. Screenshots and TLDR below:
TLDR; Received an OPR warning, careful with edits now. Portal gets moved from its original location, I attempt to edit it back, get mass reported through OPR or VG by agents who know me and subsequently banhammered for 15 days.
Screenshots (actually contains an ss from way before it was edited from its original loc):
imgur.com/a/BbKWegr (more detailed with descriptions)
ibb.co/album/jioVka (less detailed)
Comments
I know the portal mentioned above which is in wrong place now and it is also hard to reach. Portal should go back it is original position and nia should undo that ban.
Way to go, Niantic! Should start handing out bans for portal submissions being denied, next.
This looks like a serious problem. @NianticBrian @NianticCasey @RedSoloCup waiting for your input 😊
To me, a portal is should be reachable. Meaning you should be able to US on top of the centre of the portal. The original locations doesn't show it it is clearly possible. Correct me if I am wrong.
Portal looks like in the wrong position now. NIA should take of this problem immediately.
There is no guarantee that you should be able to get to the center of any portal. As long as it isn't dangerous it is fine.
Once again, for the cheap seats. Vanguards have no influence on bans or ban appeals. We cannot "get somebody banned". Please just stop blaming VG for things we cannot do.
@Azhreia Understood. My apologies, I'm comparatively new at this and just quite frustrated. Sorry for throwing the blame on you guys.
I understand you VGs have no influence over this, but this was still mishandled somehow by somebody. If this was an edit that went through and somebody rightfully appealed it to its correct location, I would totally understand the ban. But moving -and not even that, attempting to move would be more fitting- a portal to its original location really shouldn't have repercussions like this
@GitsemGidemem apology accepted, and I agree.
@nieuwendam Not in every case. There are many large POI's such as huge fountains that you can't get right on top of. Many narrow streets with POI's on them also make portals very hard to walk on top of as well.
Ideally, what you're saying should be the norm. But this is just an old portal located inside of a building. I didn't discover it, and it was there when I started the game. It is not in a dangerous or highly contested place, nobody throws any links or fields from it. It is just this random portal that was for no rhyme or reason moved from its location 3 months ago, into a mall.
You have to actually go inside the mall to capture the portal now, you could do it from the sidewalk next to the building previously.
@Azhreia Thanks. Even though this is quite discouraging, the ban will be lifted sooner or later (hopefully sooner) and I'll get right back to playing. But if it doesn't soon then I'm missing Sojourner. That's what hurts the most :(
Ah Sojourner at least is one you can restart at any time, though yes, it's quite frustrating. I lost it twice before (136 and 258 days respectively), and deliberately lapsed it when I finally hit onyx. #forever360
"or worse, contacted a Vanguard and got me falsely banned..."
Not actually a thing that can happen. Don't believe the hype.
[EDIT: I see I responded well after @GitsemGidemem and @Azhreia already addressed the point. Carry on!]
I feel your pain with looking your progress on that one. i lost it a couple of times and almost lost it when i was close to the end. it was easily my most hated onyx.
lol 100% of submitters will be banned then
thats_the_joke.gif
@RedSoloCup care to weigh in on the issue? The account is still banned and I'm still being punished for trying to do the right thing, as in moving a portal to its correct location. I honestly don't know what more info I can provide. It's all there in the screenshots.
Of course there is an overriding reason to use Prime...
I've got 57 of these bad boys ready to go haha
Your email states that you were banned for repeated incorrect edits. Has this been an ongoing issue?
I hope i can edit portals with faild locations without get banned from Ingress or get warning I have not heard before agent/agents get banned for edit location. Niantic offically share about we can get warning for edit location.
OP hasn't shared what their last OPR warning was about, just that it existed. You shouldn't worry about getting banned for one misunderstanding at any rate. It seems like they're in the right on this one, though.
Well if you made 20, 30, 50 or more false edits, then is fair that this account gets a warning, then banned if the same keeps repeating...
Hey @ComChansey
I received the edit warning about 5 months back. An agent was editing a very nearby park's portals (about 6) into their house. It was a very heated topic between both factions in the region I'm playing.
I edited all the portals back to the park with some success. They appealed all the portals and managed to get a couple of them back to their house. That gave me my warning which, as far as I'm concerned, was not a valid warning either. Since then I was already very careful with what I edit. My assumption was that if you edit a portal, manage to move it and somebody somehow appeals it, that gives you a warning. So I was never editing anything that had a chance to get appealed. I've done a handful of edits since those 5 months, most of which got accepted.
The rest is in the links. This was a correct edit. The portal is still in a very unrelated location.
No a portal does not have to be us-able.
It's not even a problem if not everyone can access.
That is a part of the strategy
Hi all,
Thanks for looping me in here, I can't really make a public comment about the specifics of your OPR warning and/or status @GitsemGidemem, but I've asked the email team to revisit the situation and send you some additional information to better help you understand your situation.
Related to this specific Portal, it looks to be an indoor Portal. If you want to share proof that the Portal candidate was not moved incorrectly, you'd need to share photos of the candidate where it exists instead of just screenshots of the map.
Hope that helps!
if he trully got banned for abuse of the system in OPR, i am glad he got punished, i like happy endings, and i wish niantic will focus more too in this kind of stuff because indeed there is a lot of abuse in the OPR (in all aspects) since they let the monkeys be free without proper supervision
Using the scanner function to sent new pictures helps while appealing a invalid portal report or edits like this case?
I hope more people upvote you so you can post proper links.
This is some impressive investigation I must say.