Submissions in Limbo problem.
As of today I currently have 96 submissions in "Limbo".
The dates for the oldest 10 are
677 days Church
675 days Church
675 days Sports Club
552 days Mural in Dubai
552 days Pub
493 days Toposcope
329 days Church
323 days Pub
265 days Church
264 days Mosque
For reference, my "newest" in "Limbo" are 8 days old.
Numbers 1,2,3,6,7,8,9,10 have all been submitted again subsequently and have been approved whilst the original submissions remain in Limbo.
Numbers 1,2 and 4 have been "promoted" in OPR and yet remain in Limbo.
Of the other 86 in Limbo there are 14 Churches/Mosques and 8 pubs along with 2 post offices. These are usually guaranteed submissions. They are in the Limbo zone.
I have had 445 approved submissions so I know how to do good submissions. I'd estimate of my 661 submissions barely 10 would be "chancers" and not one was poor. I have too many good submissions I want to do to waste them on rubbish!
On Saturday I was driving past a park in which 62 days ago I submitted 14 portals (the park had NOTHING and nothing close by either so was a prime location for some submissions). I noticed a grey portal which initially seemed to have the same name as my submission. I thought it was odd I didn't have the confirmation email and thought it may have just gone live a short time ago and I was awaiting the email (as has happened before),
As I got there to capture it I saw it was slightly differently named and was from a player on the other faction. I contacted the player to find out how long they were in the process for. They told me they submitted on the 21st September 2019 so it was approved in 14 days or less (the time I saw it). Mine was 55 days old and climbing and not approved. The picture was almost identical (an information board) and extremely similar title with no description on theirs. There is no good reason I can see as to why one was approved quickly and one remaining in Limbo. I always make photospheres for submissions that can't be clearly seen from satellite or streetview.
Either there is some kind of faction bias (I won't go into my thoughts on that here) or submissions are not going out to reviewers properly from this area for some other reason.
I have manually plotted the Latitude/Longitudes from my emails and from the centre of one town which I submit from regularly and I have calculated the distance of approvals/limbo over the last 100 days.
For my approved portals the average distance = 13.1737 kms and the median = 12.4156 kms
For portals in limbo we have average distance = 3.2994 Kms and the median = 2.26253 Kms
When you see these numbers, it is really clear that portal submissions that are distant from my main submission area go into long term limbo whereas submissions that are considerably further away are approved quickly.
I contacted support who replied extremely quickly (They can't have properly checked the very detailed information heavy message I sent) and was given a generic "It's opr that reviews" "they haven't met the threshold" "ask local opr to help". Basically a non-response.
There is clearly something at work here. Without the granular data that Niantic have I cannot say what that is. Please investigate Niantic or contact me privately for more details.
Comments
Try contacting Niantic Support again, press the issue.
I had 2 portals stuck like that and I had to message support, and they un-stuck them for me and they got approved or dupe'd.
Hi.
I contacted "support" again after your comment.
They didn't respond to the question I put to then but returned another generic reply.
--
"Thanks for reaching out to Ingress Support.
We would like to inform that the upgrades will take some time to sync in the new Wayfarer Tool. Do not be worried as your upgrades are still intact and it will show up soon. Also, its status will soon change to upgraded.
The nomination you are referring to is yet to be reviewed by the Wayfarer reviewers in your locality. After your nomination receives enough votes from the reviewers, you will receive a decision email.
With the introduction of Wayfarer, we hope to reduce the reviewing time for each submission compared to OPR to bring quality in-game locations. For more information, please visit: (xxxxx) <-- link denied, discussion 5377
Please be patient and thank you for your understanding!"
--
Basically the same non-reply as before of "it doesn't have enough votes" despite the question being how submissions of THE SAME THING submitted months afterwards get through or a decision whilst the original submissions remain in Limbo. Clearly older submissions are NOT being sent out to people.
I tried once more after this frustrating "response" and was given another reply not dealing with my substantive questions.
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"We are saddened to hear you feel this way. While we completely get your concern regarding the Submissions you have made back in 2017, we can confirm that they haven't received enough votes to reach a decision. The time frame required for a Submission to reach a decision depends on OPR reviewers in your community. Also, each submission may take a different time to get reviewed. Unfortunately, we wouldn't be able to fast track the reviewing nor make any changes to the submission manually from our end.
We advise you to contact the local reviewers and seek help in reviewing your pending submissions. Also, you may try adding Upgrades to your pending submissions to fast track the review process.
We appreciate your understanding and co-operation with this. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions."
--
Again, still not answering the question I have asked three times.
I asked.
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Instead of "there haven't been enough votes" please investigate and explain why a submission made 2018-11-19 14:50:23 is currently 330 days, 20 hours, 59 minutes in limbo and THE SAME submission, title, picture and description was approved in 9 days, 11 hours, 27 minutes when submitted on the 2019-08-05 13:06:01. A photosphere was created on 19th Nov 2018 so the pub can be CLEARLY seen.
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Either submissions are not being handed out to reviewers or reviewers are voting inconsistently and in opposition to the majority decision. And only Niantic can determine which it is and how to resolve it (handing it to POGO isn't the answer)
Portals are reviewed newest first to oldest not the other way.
I had a similar submission and got a similar canned response, but I wound up getting an email saying the submission was denied a day after I contacted them (valid portal type but may actually be on the mythical "do not submit list"). I was able to include a screenshot of the email that confirmed the submission and the map that was on the nomination's page in wayfarer. I hope you get a response soon.
@Redpsycho22 do you have any proof of that?
I had 12 portals in limbo for 3 months, spread over two towns about 80km from my home, in that time I went on a road trip and submitted 28 portals in 28 different towns, up 1400km away. All those 28 plus another ten local submissions have been mostly approved (a few rejected) and just today 8 of the 12 Limbo portals got approved. It's a strange system, there doesn't seem to be any pattern as to which portals are reviewed and when. 96 submissions in limbo though, that's gotta suck, I've never had anywhere near that many in limbo.