I apologize in advance for my poor English, as I do not know this language and use Google-translate.
I see that you had a good rest, but now I ask you to work just as well.
I am an agent living in one of the seven countries that have fallen under the bombardment of our portal network with debris from Forsquare. I'm also an agent who organizes big operations. And as an agent who has to ask other agents to go to remote places for these operations.
My place of residence is Russia.
For us and for our future game, these points from the forecourt are a huge problem.
I do not know how things are in other countries, but in our country most of the facilities of very poor quality are added to the Forsquare. The vast majority of such outlets are tire shops, car service stations and dubious offices in industrial areas, as well as terrible cafes and places of accumulation of anti-social personalities on highways, or on the outskirts of cities, in industrial areas, garage cooperatives.
Given the remoteness of these places, the police will not be able to arrive there promptly.
As you know, in order to build a triangle, there must not be a single link between the points. We call this a crosscut.
Given that all these points are on highways, it is not difficult to take the portal and lay a link from it. That is, most of the crosslinks will be from these very locations.
Let's consider the case where such a link needs to be destroyed. It has to be done at the same time as the rest of the team. But everyone gets to their points at different times. Also, such operations in Ingress are usually performed at night.
That is, a person would have to drive to an obviously dangerous place, and also stand there and wait, spend time at night in the immediate vicinity in a place where antisocial groups of people congregate.
In addition, not all agents have their own cars. Very often the following happens - agents drive one car and on the way they drop off passengers from the car to different portals.
That is, a person will have to spend some time (very often even more than an hour) alone with obviously dangerous and aggressive individuals on the track or in the industrial zone without the ability to promptly call for help.
These places Nia artificially added to our map, and for us now it is a huge problem. There were more than 8000 such places in the Moscow region alone.
Dear NianticThia, what do you think about this?
We very much hope and are waiting for a quick solution to this problem on your part. All of these points need to be removed from our maps, and as quickly as possible.
In your message, I did not see a way to get rid of these spots from our game quickly and promptly.
I am a girl agent. And very often I take on dangerous and bad spots because I don't want to ask other people to do so.
By moving points from Forsquare to Ingress in Russia, you have doomed us to either go to places where dangerous people congregate, or drop the game.
Ой, привет Максимка, очень странно тебя тут видеть, особенно с учетом того, что твоя домашка все равно выглядит хуже, чем весь этот шлак из Форсквера https://intel.ingress.com/?pll=55.697266,37.808024
Ну и конечно же, раз уж пришел, отмечу удивительную вашу способность нести ссоры и оскорбления всюду, где вы появляетесь. В принципе, что еще можно ждать от человека, который использует мусорки в качестве опорников и искренни негодует, почему же это удалили: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/90517#Comment_90517
За этим быстро откланиваюсь, ибо у меня нет вообще никакого желания с тобой общаться, особенно здесь. И очень надеюсь, что это взаимно.
However the critical parts are what you don’t say.
“Please know that Wayspot nominations are to the Niantic Lightship (platform), and an accepted Wayspot to Lightship may not necessarily mean integration into Ingress’ Portal Network. “
Can you please explain further what rules might apply that means it won’t be integrated.
We all know the 20m rule, are there any additional rules.
PS it would help so much if all was stated before it started and weekly updates given.
I believe you are not understanding the newest issue wayfarer have. Lightship is only a problem as long as the poi do not sync properly ingame. Your unrefined database from Foursquare is the absolute horror. How about you turn that back and introduce it only when it is sanitized?
its still not answered why submitted poi from ingress dont appear for those unlucky if its not the 20m rule, then what is ? roll of dice ? it should say in scanner when u submit then so ppl will not be dissapointed after they got a brand new pokestop but no portal in ingress.
That’s a lot to digest. So in future will all acceptance/reject emails come from “Niantic Lightship” and use whatever name we have specified as the one to show on Niantic Social?
Additionally, Catan does a thing each season where it swaps around what Waypoints show up, which keeps the game board fresh. Pokémon GO also has seasons now and we have cycles and checkpoints for Cell Scores. Is it possible to “shake up” the board for other titles like Catan does? Would cease some perma fields and give Agents new portals to explore as they switch around which ones are pulled from Lightship.
Furthermore, how would one go about 'editing' portals we cannot see? Is there some 'master map' with all POI's regardless of the game they appear in?
If a POI exists but is not in the portal network, it can be addressed as duplicate. What if a detail like location is incorrect (and possibly a reason for it not showing up in Ingress), how can we fix it?
So what you’re saying is, we can no longer submit locations for the purpose of improving the game board of a specific game(s), but instead only a vague map that none of us actually get to see? If so, then this would be the absolute worst change made by niantic ever, even worse than the former distance nerf in pogo.
Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but I at least, don’t submit locations to improve some nebulous database. I submit them because I want new ingame locations in all of the games I’m playing that use the system.
At the bare minimum, if Ingress is no longer going to automatically import all accepted nominations from wayfarer / lightship, then we need to be told the exact rules that will determine which locations will make it, and which ones won’t. Ideally, we should be able to influence this directly when submitting. Furthermore, we need to have access to a complete map of all existing waypoints across all niantic games.
Please, stop constantly changing the rules about new portals / pokestops / wayspots. It’s infuriating, and a surefire way to get people such as myself to stop submitting & reviewing entirely. Just make the imports consistent across games.
I've suggested this in its proper place, I think, over on the Wayfarer side - but it would be lovely if the Lightship platform, instead of immediately sending out an email when a portal is accepted, instead did cross-game proximity-and-spacing-rule checks before notifying the submitter. Such an email could conceivably read "your Waypoint has been accepted by reviewers, and will appear in Ingress, Pokemon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Pikmin... (etc.). " It would then say that if you have questions about why your one game in particular does not show your new wayspot, please visit the Wayfarer community forums or your game's support channels to find out more about the spacing constraints for each Niantic game.
I insist, communication improves. Thanks for this update.
But I also agree with several comments here, the communication is good, but you need to cover a little more on the subject. The confusion remains. I would like to know what the source of truth will be so that I can have a better control over what I can nominate so that it appears especially in Ingress, without getting "Marked Duplicate" (even though the POI does not appear in any of the Niantic games)
There is only going forward and we are doing our best to get things cleaned up as quickly as possible. If you run across one of these new Portals with no picture, snag AP by submitting one! If you see a Portal that you feel does not meet Wayfarer standards, let us know by using the Scanner to report it.
It is a joke or insult?
You just ruined portal network in many areas, blindly adding numerous garbage waypoints - plain street addresses, places where criminals gatherings, gas and car wash stations, generic shops, etc, etc.- and now asking us to clean up this mess for you?
Do you suggest us to swim to the middle of the lake to send a report that there is nothing interesting here except water? Or make a photo of great portal "My grandma lives here"? Are you serious?
All garbage that was added in last 24 hours must be cleaned up automatically . All these Fourhsquare-originated waypoints must be deleted from Ingress. If your database do not track source of waypoints, just delete recent portals without pictures. If you do not track date when portal was added, just deleted all portals without pictures (I know that some such valid portals may exist, but everything that was ever visited got a new picture, at least in my area). Only then agents can clean up remaining invalid portal, if any.
This is a good option when there are few bad portals.
There are tens of thousands of terrible portals from Forskver - you can't manually remove them. Or you have to spend hundreds of hours to do it.
For example, Niantic would be able to get rid of at least most of them programmatically, remove most of the points by focusing on the names.
In Russia, I can say immediately that all the portals, the names of which have the words "автомойка", "мойка", "шиномонтаж", "сервис", "автосервис", "Строительный рынок", as well as the names of grocery stores and chain establishments (Дикси, Пятерочка, Сбербанк, Ашан, Атак, Мегафон, Теле2, МТС, Билайн, Деловые Линии и тд.), and most of the names of low-grade cafes - шашлычная, шаурма, Продукты - 100% do not meet the criteria.And that's exactly the kind of portals that make up the bulk of those added from the forskwer.
But, frankly, I very much doubt that Niantic will meet us halfway in this matter and help us solve this global problem, which Niantic itself has thrown us.
There's no way that the invalid portals can be manually cleaned up by the Wayfarer community. There are too many, with too few motivated Wayfarers on the ground in range of those targets to report in-app, and too many to report individually via a remote form. There really needs to be an automated solution. Barring that, hire a few more people to travel to these toxic waste dumps and delete/edit/add photos as needed. I'm willing to work on a contract basis for that kinda thing if the travel stipend is good enough. :)
We are aware that this change causes some confusion on the status of your nominations in Ingress.
…
We acknowledge that the number of new Portals on the gameboard is shockingly different from what you’re used to in some countries. We should have spent more time to test the impact and make gameboard adjustments accordingly….
So, why did Niantic release this change into the wild? Why did it have to happen now? What's the benefit to Agents that makes it worth it to them to suffer such shock and confusion? (That nominations, etc. are no longer delayed does not count because that was an issue caused by the upgrade process itself.)
This all has the feel of something that's being driven by developers who just want to ship code rather than a team that's focused on producing the best possible experience for the end-user. I'm baffled as to why Niantic doesn't structure its development and releases to tell more compelling stories:
Hi, guys!
We've upgraded Ingress to the newest version of Niantic Lightship. This opens up exciting new possibilities for the Ingress team to shape the Portal network to reflect Ingress's unique character as a game of exploration and traveling off the beaten path.
Niantic Lightship is the platform that stores all of Niantic’s Wayspot information and other geographic data about the real world, for all of our game development teams to use. Check out our online map <https://lightship.nianticlabs.com/map> to take a virtual tour of all the Wayspots currently in Lightship.
When you submit a nomination for a Wayspot, you are participating in the Wayfarer program to submit something for consideration on the Lightship platform. When a nomination has been accepted into Lightship, you'll receive a confirmation email with details about when it will appear in each of Niantic's games, or reasons why it won't be appearing. The exact criteria can be found on our support pages <https://lightship.nianticlabs.com/support>.
Now, we know that Agents expect their nominations to appear as portals in Ingress, and that it's potentially confusing when Niantic's games have different Wayspots. However, what we've seen is that a one-size-fits-all approach to all our games doesn't work. Turning every park playground into a PokéStop works for Pokémon GO, but turning those some playgrounds into Portals doesn't really fit in with all the unique and hyperlocal spots that originally made the Portal network so special. Over the next few months, we'll be tweaking the criteria for which Wayspots make their way from Lightship into Ingress. Let us know when we get it right, and when we get it wrong!
Or maybe some other story? For all the pain being inflicted, there must be something more compelling than "improv[ing] consistency with how Ingress Portal nominations and edits work going forward."
What I read here is a company statement, to promote a new product, disguised as a clarification statement, which resulted in more questions by the agents.
Agents still don't know what are the new conditions that turn an approved wayspot into a portal, therefore, as far as I'm concerned, agents gamble against Lightship every time they submit a new wayspot (because they want it to be a portal!). In the long run, this will lead to nothing but more hatred between agents and trainers.
At this point, commenting on the Foursquare import would be like firing on the Red Cross.
Could you just go ahead and foursquare poi b0mb the United States? I think I could pretty easily hammer out wings for both Explorer and Pioneer over the next month if so...I remember how many foursquare points there were last time I used the app...
Hi @NianticThia, thank you for the post, the definition and the explanation. Your continued engagement is great to see so thank you for continuing to be present and meme-ing!
I would like to highlight and raise concern around the expection of having players report the portals added during the Lightship (necessary as it might have been) transition.
@NianticBrian recently clarified in his post that Vanguards and XMAs are not a replacement or surrogate for Niantics own QA staff or processes. By extention therefore it is unacceptable to Niantic and the players on the whole to expect us to act in a QA function postfact to correct the sheer lack of care, attention, due process and respect shown in implementing the unreviewed Wayspot import from {insert local database}Foursquare.
Not only did Niantic choose to bypass the existing QA process (Wayfarer - yes it isn't perfect) in implementing this import but then failed to understand the impact this would have within the different products and appreciate the impact and optics of this for their users overall - especially those who have spent considerable time trying to ensure a high quality portal network via nominations and Wayfarer reviewing.
If due internal review had been performed alongside Wayfarer criteria (as I hope would have been the case) then it defies any logic that nominations without photos, descriptions or accurate location data would be accepted. Similarly, most of these candidates would be classed as extremely low quality simply by being part of certain categories that we have been asked to not positively review; generic business, natural feature, n a z i d e a t h camp, no safe pedestrian access).
It is also impossible and unreasonable to expect players to access many of the Wayspots owing to the above especially for those being in prisons, controlled military sites, the middle of the ocean or located on major road networks/junctions. It is, in fact, grossly negligent and putting your users at material risk by asking them to do so.
Additionally, as you mention in your post, "Each game is able to create their own rules for how to use Lightship’s Wayspots to populate and shape their specific gameboard." hence there is no reason why the poor quality bulk imports necessitate inclusion in Ingress as a consequence of the move to Lightship.
Part of my role as a Vanguard is to advocate for the community on the whole, something I try to do (can't say I don't fail sometimes - only human soz 🙏) and I feel very strongly about. Please review the inclusion of these bulk import Wayspots in Ingress. They run contray to the original meaning of discovery and exploration that I'm sure @ace intended when Ingress was created.
Thank you from a very tired Vanguard - please do what is right by the Ingress community.
Edit due to minor typographical errors. Typing is hard.
In my country this is still quite good. We have dwellings of corrupt women, night shelters, drunken dachas, places where illegal immigrants live, places where alcohol is drunk, places where criminals hang out.
I take it we're being asked to take pictures of all this? :)
It will be a fun adventure, yes :))
Dear Niantic staff, I invite you to visit our country and take a walk through the new portals from forskver, carefully added by you for us. I will even make a special banner especially for you, it will be fun, come and visit. You like to travel with Ingress, don't you? :)
Niantic. If even one agent in Russia gets in trouble while visiting one of these places, it's your responsibility.
just got a pokestop approved but its not a portal. why cant it be on ingress. ingress is a different gameplay. everything u do in ingress has to do with a portal. Portals are the base of ingress and i see no reason why it shouldnt appear in ingress. in pogo u do not need to be necessary at a pokestop to play
1) Can you just confirm that when you get the "wayspot accepted email", that this wayspot will appear in Ingress (sooner or later)?
Everything else would be a massive change. Also it would lead to ingress players incorrectly nominating Wayspots that already exist. And the intel map wouldnt be as useful as it was.
@NianticThia is Niantic trying to **** the game we love?
Niantic is still aware that ingress only way to play is using portals, right?
So there is a real interest for agents to submit POI. But now u say there is a good chance that those POI will not appear in ingress. What happened with the 20m rule?
It's okay, if the portals don't appear since they are close to an other portal, i totally get that. But how are we supposed to know which POI exist or not, if there is not single point of truth for reference?
I stopped with wayfarer, bc i saw so many fake portals submitted or at the wrong location and getting penalized for reporting them or trying to move them to the correct spot.
During the last event. I was going to stack field just to see that one portal was moved. My guess thx to one of the other games by Niantic, since now it's out of a park and closer to a home and there is no one playing ingress there.
It may be the worst possible explanation ever, sorry to state that.
In Turkey, Foursquare local data is very corrupted and there are tonnes of fake locations, even for real life. Moreover, there are tonnes of duplicates of real locals and some of them are kilometers away from their real places.
You may have no idea but Foursquare superusers are protesting Foursquare administration and local data is even more corrupted. There is no real chance to clean this data, it is a total mess.
You talk about a new version of portal network but those have no affect in areas with enough portals. Why did it affect everywhere? Most dense areas of Istanbul now have the least density and remote areas of Istanbul are filled with thousands of portals, sorry, fake portals.
I have reviewed more than 30k submissions on Wayfarer and I will not waste a second of mine to clear this mess. You want us to report but no, I am not that idle like the person who just used corrupted Foursquare data.
Just parse out new portals and use the total data for automation of new submissions. It can be helpful.
@NianticThia Please also stop saying that they should be reported, we know that reports are mostly overlooked. We couldn't even manage to remove military area portals which were abusively accepted on Wayfarer even though they shouldn't have been accepted.
Also, adding a photo would legitimise fake portals for abusers, I wouldn't waste a second for that too. I already gave Niantic my days as a reviewer.
I can't even get a demolished building removed, (nor can Enl who also reported it).
The quality of portal network has steadily declined over time, we can't seem to fix it either through reporting.
Sorry but lol and I'm over doing free work for Niantic writing up posts with pictures and adding arrows and letters etc only for Niantic to ignore them.
Comments
Good afternoon, dear NianticThia !
I apologize in advance for my poor English, as I do not know this language and use Google-translate.
I see that you had a good rest, but now I ask you to work just as well.
I am an agent living in one of the seven countries that have fallen under the bombardment of our portal network with debris from Forsquare. I'm also an agent who organizes big operations. And as an agent who has to ask other agents to go to remote places for these operations.
My place of residence is Russia.
For us and for our future game, these points from the forecourt are a huge problem.
Let me give you a small example:
This is a remote area where the police can't get to quickly if anything happens.
This is what the place looks like on google maps:
I do not know how things are in other countries, but in our country most of the facilities of very poor quality are added to the Forsquare. The vast majority of such outlets are tire shops, car service stations and dubious offices in industrial areas, as well as terrible cafes and places of accumulation of anti-social personalities on highways, or on the outskirts of cities, in industrial areas, garage cooperatives.
Given the remoteness of these places, the police will not be able to arrive there promptly.
As you know, in order to build a triangle, there must not be a single link between the points. We call this a crosscut.
Given that all these points are on highways, it is not difficult to take the portal and lay a link from it. That is, most of the crosslinks will be from these very locations.
Let's consider the case where such a link needs to be destroyed. It has to be done at the same time as the rest of the team. But everyone gets to their points at different times. Also, such operations in Ingress are usually performed at night.
That is, a person would have to drive to an obviously dangerous place, and also stand there and wait, spend time at night in the immediate vicinity in a place where antisocial groups of people congregate.
In addition, not all agents have their own cars. Very often the following happens - agents drive one car and on the way they drop off passengers from the car to different portals.
That is, a person will have to spend some time (very often even more than an hour) alone with obviously dangerous and aggressive individuals on the track or in the industrial zone without the ability to promptly call for help.
These places Nia artificially added to our map, and for us now it is a huge problem. There were more than 8000 such places in the Moscow region alone.
Dear NianticThia, what do you think about this?
We very much hope and are waiting for a quick solution to this problem on your part. All of these points need to be removed from our maps, and as quickly as possible.
In your message, I did not see a way to get rid of these spots from our game quickly and promptly.
I am a girl agent. And very often I take on dangerous and bad spots because I don't want to ask other people to do so.
By moving points from Forsquare to Ingress in Russia, you have doomed us to either go to places where dangerous people congregate, or drop the game.
AHAHAHAHAH
But why u want to restore portal in "dangerous" spot!?
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/18579/incorrect-deletion-the-portal-besedka-otdyh-khimki
mmm, enl duplicity, Nastya you as always :)
Ой, привет Максимка, очень странно тебя тут видеть, особенно с учетом того, что твоя домашка все равно выглядит хуже, чем весь этот шлак из Форсквера https://intel.ingress.com/?pll=55.697266,37.808024
Ну и конечно же, раз уж пришел, отмечу удивительную вашу способность нести ссоры и оскорбления всюду, где вы появляетесь. В принципе, что еще можно ждать от человека, который использует мусорки в качестве опорников и искренни негодует, почему же это удалили: https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/comment/90517#Comment_90517
За этим быстро откланиваюсь, ибо у меня нет вообще никакого желания с тобой общаться, особенно здесь. И очень надеюсь, что это взаимно.
In my opinion the post did not put a direct and straight message like,
-Rules keep the same, all portals wich meet the old 20mts rule, will appear at ingress map.
Something changed? Or just was a delay and portals will continue appearing just as previously, with the 20mts rule?
Not clarifying wich are the rules is unfair to the Ingress community who was feeding the portal network all this years.
We all want to know how to send portals by ingress and that the portal appears into the ingress map.
Is something simple to clarify, are things back to normal or there are new secret rules wich community will end up discovering, as usual?
But in the meantime, a lot of disconformity and comments against niantic making things unclear continue incoming.
Why is so difficult to make a clear and straight statement about how the system work?
People just want to submit portals, play and have fun with the game we love. 😊
Hi,
and thanks for your comments.
However the critical parts are what you don’t say.
“Please know that Wayspot nominations are to the Niantic Lightship (platform), and an accepted Wayspot to Lightship may not necessarily mean integration into Ingress’ Portal Network. “
Can you please explain further what rules might apply that means it won’t be integrated.
We all know the 20m rule, are there any additional rules.
PS it would help so much if all was stated before it started and weekly updates given.
I believe you are not understanding the newest issue wayfarer have. Lightship is only a problem as long as the poi do not sync properly ingame. Your unrefined database from Foursquare is the absolute horror. How about you turn that back and introduce it only when it is sanitized?
its still not answered why submitted poi from ingress dont appear for those unlucky if its not the 20m rule, then what is ? roll of dice ? it should say in scanner when u submit then so ppl will not be dissapointed after they got a brand new pokestop but no portal in ingress.
That’s a lot to digest. So in future will all acceptance/reject emails come from “Niantic Lightship” and use whatever name we have specified as the one to show on Niantic Social?
Additionally, Catan does a thing each season where it swaps around what Waypoints show up, which keeps the game board fresh. Pokémon GO also has seasons now and we have cycles and checkpoints for Cell Scores. Is it possible to “shake up” the board for other titles like Catan does? Would cease some perma fields and give Agents new portals to explore as they switch around which ones are pulled from Lightship.
Furthermore, how would one go about 'editing' portals we cannot see? Is there some 'master map' with all POI's regardless of the game they appear in?
If a POI exists but is not in the portal network, it can be addressed as duplicate. What if a detail like location is incorrect (and possibly a reason for it not showing up in Ingress), how can we fix it?
So what you’re saying is, we can no longer submit locations for the purpose of improving the game board of a specific game(s), but instead only a vague map that none of us actually get to see? If so, then this would be the absolute worst change made by niantic ever, even worse than the former distance nerf in pogo.
Obviously I can’t speak for everyone, but I at least, don’t submit locations to improve some nebulous database. I submit them because I want new ingame locations in all of the games I’m playing that use the system.
At the bare minimum, if Ingress is no longer going to automatically import all accepted nominations from wayfarer / lightship, then we need to be told the exact rules that will determine which locations will make it, and which ones won’t. Ideally, we should be able to influence this directly when submitting. Furthermore, we need to have access to a complete map of all existing waypoints across all niantic games.
Please, stop constantly changing the rules about new portals / pokestops / wayspots. It’s infuriating, and a surefire way to get people such as myself to stop submitting & reviewing entirely. Just make the imports consistent across games.
I've suggested this in its proper place, I think, over on the Wayfarer side - but it would be lovely if the Lightship platform, instead of immediately sending out an email when a portal is accepted, instead did cross-game proximity-and-spacing-rule checks before notifying the submitter. Such an email could conceivably read "your Waypoint has been accepted by reviewers, and will appear in Ingress, Pokemon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, Pikmin... (etc.). " It would then say that if you have questions about why your one game in particular does not show your new wayspot, please visit the Wayfarer community forums or your game's support channels to find out more about the spacing constraints for each Niantic game.
@NianticThia Is the https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLScMmz3lD30kz7vc3XkxaHyJFggxhfmsuPd2XGaCidOV-yUtzQ/viewform form relevant and still in use for deleting waypoints that are unsafe or do not correspond to the rules?
I insist, communication improves. Thanks for this update.
But I also agree with several comments here, the communication is good, but you need to cover a little more on the subject. The confusion remains. I would like to know what the source of truth will be so that I can have a better control over what I can nominate so that it appears especially in Ingress, without getting "Marked Duplicate" (even though the POI does not appear in any of the Niantic games)
This could also be a good option to go
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/categories/removal-appeals
There is only going forward and we are doing our best to get things cleaned up as quickly as possible. If you run across one of these new Portals with no picture, snag AP by submitting one! If you see a Portal that you feel does not meet Wayfarer standards, let us know by using the Scanner to report it.
It is a joke or insult?
You just ruined portal network in many areas, blindly adding numerous garbage waypoints - plain street addresses, places where criminals gatherings, gas and car wash stations, generic shops, etc, etc.- and now asking us to clean up this mess for you?
Do you suggest us to swim to the middle of the lake to send a report that there is nothing interesting here except water? Or make a photo of great portal "My grandma lives here"? Are you serious?
All garbage that was added in last 24 hours must be cleaned up automatically . All these Fourhsquare-originated waypoints must be deleted from Ingress. If your database do not track source of waypoints, just delete recent portals without pictures. If you do not track date when portal was added, just deleted all portals without pictures (I know that some such valid portals may exist, but everything that was ever visited got a new picture, at least in my area). Only then agents can clean up remaining invalid portal, if any.
This is a good option when there are few bad portals.
There are tens of thousands of terrible portals from Forskver - you can't manually remove them. Or you have to spend hundreds of hours to do it.
For example, Niantic would be able to get rid of at least most of them programmatically, remove most of the points by focusing on the names.
In Russia, I can say immediately that all the portals, the names of which have the words "автомойка", "мойка", "шиномонтаж", "сервис", "автосервис", "Строительный рынок", as well as the names of grocery stores and chain establishments (Дикси, Пятерочка, Сбербанк, Ашан, Атак, Мегафон, Теле2, МТС, Билайн, Деловые Линии и тд.), and most of the names of low-grade cafes - шашлычная, шаурма, Продукты - 100% do not meet the criteria.And that's exactly the kind of portals that make up the bulk of those added from the forskwer.
But, frankly, I very much doubt that Niantic will meet us halfway in this matter and help us solve this global problem, which Niantic itself has thrown us.
There's no way that the invalid portals can be manually cleaned up by the Wayfarer community. There are too many, with too few motivated Wayfarers on the ground in range of those targets to report in-app, and too many to report individually via a remote form. There really needs to be an automated solution. Barring that, hire a few more people to travel to these toxic waste dumps and delete/edit/add photos as needed. I'm willing to work on a contract basis for that kinda thing if the travel stipend is good enough. :)
We are aware that this change causes some confusion on the status of your nominations in Ingress.
…
We acknowledge that the number of new Portals on the gameboard is shockingly different from what you’re used to in some countries. We should have spent more time to test the impact and make gameboard adjustments accordingly….
So, why did Niantic release this change into the wild? Why did it have to happen now? What's the benefit to Agents that makes it worth it to them to suffer such shock and confusion? (That nominations, etc. are no longer delayed does not count because that was an issue caused by the upgrade process itself.)
This all has the feel of something that's being driven by developers who just want to ship code rather than a team that's focused on producing the best possible experience for the end-user. I'm baffled as to why Niantic doesn't structure its development and releases to tell more compelling stories:
Hi, guys!
We've upgraded Ingress to the newest version of Niantic Lightship. This opens up exciting new possibilities for the Ingress team to shape the Portal network to reflect Ingress's unique character as a game of exploration and traveling off the beaten path.
Niantic Lightship is the platform that stores all of Niantic’s Wayspot information and other geographic data about the real world, for all of our game development teams to use. Check out our online map <https://lightship.nianticlabs.com/map> to take a virtual tour of all the Wayspots currently in Lightship.
When you submit a nomination for a Wayspot, you are participating in the Wayfarer program to submit something for consideration on the Lightship platform. When a nomination has been accepted into Lightship, you'll receive a confirmation email with details about when it will appear in each of Niantic's games, or reasons why it won't be appearing. The exact criteria can be found on our support pages <https://lightship.nianticlabs.com/support>.
Now, we know that Agents expect their nominations to appear as portals in Ingress, and that it's potentially confusing when Niantic's games have different Wayspots. However, what we've seen is that a one-size-fits-all approach to all our games doesn't work. Turning every park playground into a PokéStop works for Pokémon GO, but turning those some playgrounds into Portals doesn't really fit in with all the unique and hyperlocal spots that originally made the Portal network so special. Over the next few months, we'll be tweaking the criteria for which Wayspots make their way from Lightship into Ingress. Let us know when we get it right, and when we get it wrong!
Or maybe some other story? For all the pain being inflicted, there must be something more compelling than "improv[ing] consistency with how Ingress Portal nominations and edits work going forward."
What I read here is a company statement, to promote a new product, disguised as a clarification statement, which resulted in more questions by the agents.
Agents still don't know what are the new conditions that turn an approved wayspot into a portal, therefore, as far as I'm concerned, agents gamble against Lightship every time they submit a new wayspot (because they want it to be a portal!). In the long run, this will lead to nothing but more hatred between agents and trainers.
At this point, commenting on the Foursquare import would be like firing on the Red Cross.
Could you just go ahead and foursquare poi b0mb the United States? I think I could pretty easily hammer out wings for both Explorer and Pioneer over the next month if so...I remember how many foursquare points there were last time I used the app...
Hi @NianticThia, thank you for the post, the definition and the explanation. Your continued engagement is great to see so thank you for continuing to be present and meme-ing!
I would like to highlight and raise concern around the expection of having players report the portals added during the Lightship (necessary as it might have been) transition.
@NianticBrian recently clarified in his post that Vanguards and XMAs are not a replacement or surrogate for Niantics own QA staff or processes. By extention therefore it is unacceptable to Niantic and the players on the whole to expect us to act in a QA function postfact to correct the sheer lack of care, attention, due process and respect shown in implementing the unreviewed Wayspot import from {insert local database}
Foursquare.Not only did Niantic choose to bypass the existing QA process (Wayfarer - yes it isn't perfect) in implementing this import but then failed to understand the impact this would have within the different products and appreciate the impact and optics of this for their users overall - especially those who have spent considerable time trying to ensure a high quality portal network via nominations and Wayfarer reviewing.
If due internal review had been performed alongside Wayfarer criteria (as I hope would have been the case) then it defies any logic that nominations without photos, descriptions or accurate location data would be accepted. Similarly, most of these candidates would be classed as extremely low quality simply by being part of certain categories that we have been asked to not positively review; generic business, natural feature, n a z i d e a t h camp, no safe pedestrian access).
It is also impossible and unreasonable to expect players to access many of the Wayspots owing to the above especially for those being in prisons, controlled military sites, the middle of the ocean or located on major road networks/junctions. It is, in fact, grossly negligent and putting your users at material risk by asking them to do so.
Additionally, as you mention in your post, "Each game is able to create their own rules for how to use Lightship’s Wayspots to populate and shape their specific gameboard." hence there is no reason why the poor quality bulk imports necessitate inclusion in Ingress as a consequence of the move to Lightship.
Part of my role as a Vanguard is to advocate for the community on the whole, something I try to do (can't say I don't fail sometimes - only human soz 🙏) and I feel very strongly about. Please review the inclusion of these bulk import Wayspots in Ingress. They run contray to the original meaning of discovery and exploration that I'm sure @ace intended when Ingress was created.
Thank you from a very tired Vanguard - please do what is right by the Ingress community.
Edit due to minor typographical errors. Typing is hard.
Grandma lives here :))
In my country this is still quite good. We have dwellings of corrupt women, night shelters, drunken dachas, places where illegal immigrants live, places where alcohol is drunk, places where criminals hang out.
I take it we're being asked to take pictures of all this? :)
It will be a fun adventure, yes :))
Dear Niantic staff, I invite you to visit our country and take a walk through the new portals from forskver, carefully added by you for us. I will even make a special banner especially for you, it will be fun, come and visit. You like to travel with Ingress, don't you? :)
Niantic. If even one agent in Russia gets in trouble while visiting one of these places, it's your responsibility.
just got a pokestop approved but its not a portal. why cant it be on ingress. ingress is a different gameplay. everything u do in ingress has to do with a portal. Portals are the base of ingress and i see no reason why it shouldnt appear in ingress. in pogo u do not need to be necessary at a pokestop to play
@NianticThia a little more clarification on, ingress portal network using lightship.
Does that mean that Ingress server side is now entirely using Lightship servers, as opposed to the (newish) google server?
These statements arent really clearing things up.
1) Can you just confirm that when you get the "wayspot accepted email", that this wayspot will appear in Ingress (sooner or later)?
Everything else would be a massive change. Also it would lead to ingress players incorrectly nominating Wayspots that already exist. And the intel map wouldnt be as useful as it was.
ppl will need a valid reason why a submitted poi will not appear in ingress but other niantic games.
@NianticThia is Niantic trying to **** the game we love?
Niantic is still aware that ingress only way to play is using portals, right?
So there is a real interest for agents to submit POI. But now u say there is a good chance that those POI will not appear in ingress. What happened with the 20m rule?
It's okay, if the portals don't appear since they are close to an other portal, i totally get that. But how are we supposed to know which POI exist or not, if there is not single point of truth for reference?
I stopped with wayfarer, bc i saw so many fake portals submitted or at the wrong location and getting penalized for reporting them or trying to move them to the correct spot.
During the last event. I was going to stack field just to see that one portal was moved. My guess thx to one of the other games by Niantic, since now it's out of a park and closer to a home and there is no one playing ingress there.
It may be the worst possible explanation ever, sorry to state that.
In Turkey, Foursquare local data is very corrupted and there are tonnes of fake locations, even for real life. Moreover, there are tonnes of duplicates of real locals and some of them are kilometers away from their real places.
You may have no idea but Foursquare superusers are protesting Foursquare administration and local data is even more corrupted. There is no real chance to clean this data, it is a total mess.
You talk about a new version of portal network but those have no affect in areas with enough portals. Why did it affect everywhere? Most dense areas of Istanbul now have the least density and remote areas of Istanbul are filled with thousands of portals, sorry, fake portals.
I have reviewed more than 30k submissions on Wayfarer and I will not waste a second of mine to clear this mess. You want us to report but no, I am not that idle like the person who just used corrupted Foursquare data.
Just parse out new portals and use the total data for automation of new submissions. It can be helpful.
@NianticThia Please also stop saying that they should be reported, we know that reports are mostly overlooked. We couldn't even manage to remove military area portals which were abusively accepted on Wayfarer even though they shouldn't have been accepted.
Also, adding a photo would legitimise fake portals for abusers, I wouldn't waste a second for that too. I already gave Niantic my days as a reviewer.
I can't even get a demolished building removed, (nor can Enl who also reported it).
The quality of portal network has steadily declined over time, we can't seem to fix it either through reporting.
Sorry but lol and I'm over doing free work for Niantic writing up posts with pictures and adding arrows and letters etc only for Niantic to ignore them.