FYI on new Portals submissions
FYI on new Portals submissions
They are very backed up and doing the best we can to get through it and apologize that it is slower than we would like- we are doing our best to speed it up. I would post to the new Portal Appeals community any #PortalGem they think is so cool it should jump the line. Also please tell not to resubmit it will just slow us down and do not resubmit Portals that have been taken down. (OK to share)
Thanks
#Ingress #NL1331 #RIPHankJohnson
They are very backed up and doing the best we can to get through it and apologize that it is slower than we would like- we are doing our best to speed it up. I would post to the new Portal Appeals community any #PortalGem they think is so cool it should jump the line. Also please tell not to resubmit it will just slow us down and do not resubmit Portals that have been taken down. (OK to share)
Thanks
#Ingress #NL1331 #RIPHankJohnson
We appreciate their hard work!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update Joe.. I hope everyone will be respectful of the portals appeal community.
ReplyDeleteSome insight into the whole submission process would be helpful, I guess.
ReplyDeleteWhen someone submits 40 portals at a time, and then has maybe one accepted every 2 weeks, 3 months later, it does make me wonder how they decide on the order.
I'm painfully close to platinum seer, with 150+ still in the pipeline from last year...
Thanks for the update. I was wondering why I had not heard form stuff from early December.
ReplyDeleteThe NIA team needs to group these reports by portal name or geographic area, otherwise they are wasting a lot of their time and efforts. We have a large team so it's common for multiple people to submit the same portal corrections and invalid reports. Then, each player receives portal update emails about the same portal, but they are sometimes weeks apart. I hope NIA is getting better organized to rectify the problem.
ReplyDeleteThe world is a large place and the number of interesting and unique thing and places within it is staggering. There was bound to be a major backup at some point.
ReplyDeleteI think the badge might have been really bad idea as there are plenty of people submitting complete rubbish and clogging up the process just to get a badge. It's unfortunate that this blocks a lot of genuine interesting things from being added.
ReplyDeleteSeems as though the portal approval process could be crowd sourced to expert reviewers. First review by people not from the area (based on GPS history), Second review, by local identified experts from both teams. Approved if it passes both reviews.
ReplyDeleteJoe think you all could set up so the people out here in the field can approve portals? perhaps one person per city? make them get verified or something first or a second agent approve behind them.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when you introduce badges isn't it? Nobody there could figure that one out then.
ReplyDeleteCool thanks for the news, if they need help with it all I would be happy to lend a hand.
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley:
ReplyDeleteWhat about cases where a successful portal submission is attributed to another player who submitted a more recent request (usually not knowing that another player had submitted a request prior)? Resubmitting the portal candidate has been the only known means to combat the problem.
Your input on this matter would be much appreciated 😊.
NIA Ops Ingress
James Conklin YES! That has baffled me. There was a portal that I submitted several duplicate reports about over a period of a month or more. A friend did the same. I was getting response emails from Niantic for weeks after the portal had already been removed. This indicates a HUGE waste of effort on the portal review team if they aren't even grouping reports by portal ID before reviewing a given portal.
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley one of the local L.A. guys had a great idea about portal sub's. Maybe you guys can step up portal sub's like a "hot or not" site. Random players look or random sub's and if it gets enough positive votes, it goes live. The voter don't see who submitted it, just the pic, description, and a link for street view to see if its really there.
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley If more staff are needed to assess portal submissions I'm open to employment offers ;-) European so would bring experience of non US architectural styles
ReplyDeleteI not complaining.. I've had 4 portals go live since yesterday..
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley im cheaper than Dave Challender if that puts me up the list....
ReplyDeleteThe real problem with the process is deletes, we've had hundreds of tactical portal edits in this area, completely legitimate park portals disappearing, monument portals disappearing, etc... and they're not duplicates. At this point there are so many gone it's impossible to even appeal them, I know many have been resubmitted.
ReplyDeleteIf a portal is put up for deletion either the original submitter should be contacted for a rebuttal or the last people to hold the portal on each team should be contacted for a rebuttal.
It was accepted, it shouldn't be subject to a deletion because an enemy agent can't control that area and they want to play the rules instead of playing the game.
Toby Murray, Yes, we have had invalid portals successfully removed by player A, then a month later player B receives an update success email on the portal that doesn't exist. It was deleted a month ago!
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail on the head Ralph Weaver! Spot on!!
ReplyDeleteYou all are going great!
ReplyDeleteIf you want to give me a job checking submissions in my cell,I'd take it, yeah.
ReplyDeleteI suspect a massive amount of portal submission load could be eliminated by reducing the badge requirements by a factor of 10 or more.
ReplyDeleteD Reed But...then the badge would be easier to get and it's value therefore diminished. Not to mention that the badge system is a great way of encouraging agents to submit more portals
ReplyDeleteBrian Smith Huh?
ReplyDeleteThe above tactical removal issue necessitates resubmissions. Expect them until that is resolved, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley and NIA Ops we are currently submitting a few portals which have been deleted but where absolute legit portals. those portals were deleted because of false "not existing" submissions. do you really think we should stop submitting them so the other faction can happily remove portals which are in range of a specific player to annoy them? really? on the other hand Niantic Project accepts portals in a small area so there are 40 portals in an 200 sq-mtr range.
ReplyDeletei don't think so, sir.
I would gladly give up playing Ingress to volunteer to edit submissions and portal appeals. This could be achieved on a localised state by state basis. It would need both a national and an international forum and liaise closely with forum moderators. It would also need people to be unbiased and have a keen sense of what good portal submissions are. They would have to be able to travel to portals in their state to check them and it would have to be on a voluntary basis.
ReplyDeleteThomas Arteaga the above post seems to indicate that their problem is not a lack of portal submissions :p
ReplyDeleteMore seriously, anyone with 5000 approved portals is probably submitting anything & everything they have a remote chance of getting away with and clogging up the map with awful portals and the submissions queue with worse portals that don't get though. Reward quality over quantity.
I would be more than willing to review and pass on my opinion as valid/invalid for any submission/deletion request in my area if it increased the speed of the process... even state... country... world. shrug. Honestly it just seems like the number of players keeps growing, submissions keep growing, but the number of people reviewing isn't being scaled adequately to meet that increase.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, reviewing portal submissions and ensuring they exist and are legitimate doesn't seem like a horrible job, get to see new and awesome art work around the world. I'm sure the countless graves and plaques get a bit annoying, but over all you'd see some amazing portals.
Phil KradBlog You should file a portal appeal
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley what Ralph Weaver is saying. A huge problems. but then again, what can you do about it. Mascots don't get a say in corporate decisions.
ReplyDeleteStefan Weißhampel Niantic has been historically responsive to community feedback.
ReplyDeleteThanks Joe Philley many in the community have been asking this very question you have answered
ReplyDeleteHas Niantic considered a volunteer review process such as used in geocaching? Just don't allow reviewers to control home areas and keep them anonymous, or have a person(s) from each side vote on it or something. No need to have paid persons doing this.
ReplyDeletetrunll Although if those portals do go live, it's trivial to have "trunll" removed from the description. x
ReplyDelete#VolunteerPortalMonkeys
ReplyDeleteYou could do a system quite well if it was done by randomised voting. Have an interface where a person gets shown the submission, street view, map in Satellite and/or Google Roads and gets to thumb up or thumb down the submission, or choose "Can't decide". Once an option reaches a threshold of responses it gets rejected, approved or passed to NIA Ops for more investigation . If people are consistently in the opposite of the result, their votes can be silently not counted until they trend back towards the majority (still take their vote, but don't count it towards the threshold).
Brent Hollett nothing personal but no one would want to be called that ;)
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley Haha, true, the name could probably be adjusted. Its the description that tends to get raised when people say "Why the hell does my portal get rejected when that horrible one gets approved.... bloody portal monkeys."
ReplyDelete#VolunteerPortalReviewers
Brent Hollett I know :( :)
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley No comment on my comment?
ReplyDelete😞
#PortalGems is a BAD idea... people WILL abuse it. I'm personally not touching it as I don't think any portal should move ahead in the line. What happens when player A posts a gem that player B submits before them... I imagine player A will get the credit even though they don't deserve it. It should always be first come first serve.
ReplyDeletethat said... the portal review process needs to be seriously reviewed...portals get approved seemingly at random. Pictures have little affect on a submission. A portal near to my home that I submitted... was approved for someone else when their picture is an unreadable blur of the sign at night as they were passing by doing 35mph. I take the time to stop and take a proper picture and get screwed out of the submission by someone who can't be bothered to do it right. Sure they got it in first... but why the hell should it be a portal if you can't recognize what they are actually making a portal of?
Quality should be key. If you can't read the sign to the portal no way should it be approved.
Anne Brooks I don't submit portals for the badge. There are simply too few portals in my area, and plenty of legitmate sites where they could be. Not all of us care about badges.
ReplyDeleteRalph Weaver That's extraordinary. I can't even get most portals I submit for moves through without an appeal. I can't figure out how the heck people get them deleted.
ReplyDeleteI do :D but I've traveled 150 miles away in most directions to achieve... 1/9th of the way to the black seer badge :'( I've never done a portalgem I know I had a few that would qualify already live, I don't really like it too much either :/
ReplyDeleteDerek Thorson Unfortunately, there is no line. It has been demonstrated by many agents' reports that portals are not approved in chronological order, or, indeed, any discernible order at all. Some kinds of submissions do get approved more readily, it appears (churches and parks with signs), but even those are not approved in chronological order of submission. If they do have a system, nobody has been able to figure it out...
ReplyDeleteBonni Hall mass reporting, same way you can get people warnings/bans even if they've done nothing wrong. Enough reports and things happen. Coordinated groups who do invalid submissions or reports against people who do things like hit their farm is pretty weak sauce... playing the rules, rather than the game. The ends do not justify the means.
ReplyDeleteBrent Hollett Google Maps, street view and similar satellite related sights are unreliable sources for checking a lot of portals as they can be up to five years out of date. The only reliable way to check weather a portal is valid is to go there and look at it.
ReplyDeleteRichard Stawell Unfortunately Niantic doesn't have the resources to do so, nor can local players be depended on to be unbiased, so its the best we've got without Google-Enabled AR drones flying around the world with attached cameras.
ReplyDeleteI'm happy to take a job with Ingress and assist. Let me know, I'm color blind.
ReplyDeleteThomas Arteaga yeah. With bog standard emails that have got nothing to do with a given situation.
ReplyDeleteRalph Weaver
ReplyDeleteSee, that's why I couldn't figure it out. It's petty bovine excrement by which, apparently, NIA Ops can be swayed.
A dream job, travel around the globe to check if some tiny statue is at place, or if the building is really a church or not... Sounds like a job for me :D
ReplyDeleteLet's invert the process since it doesn't work : validate all the portals in queue (if they are not too close of another, if you don't have Wi-Fi data on the area, etc. all criteria that can be automated).
ReplyDeleteThen, if a portal is crap, fake, offensive, dangerous, etc. the agents on site would report them (as it is already the case) and you would only have to validate rejection!
Your rejection queue would be smaller than your validation queue...
Maybe you should rework the process since it's obvious the system doesn't work as you can't handle it? I believe community can handle it the best.
ReplyDeleteAlso what about Seer badge? I'm pretty sure it's a part of the problem, Are you sure you can handle people spamming 5000 portals? Do you want to have a game with 5000 portals from each user? I can't even imagine portal density for that and I'm pretty sure there's simply not enough decent portal candidates, portal count has its limits unlike recharges, deploys, etc for other badges. Finally what about new user, what are they going to submit?
Way people fix portals faster free? Google must pay people to get faster portals live.
ReplyDeleteI am happy if it takes longer.... If.... They check the portals better.
ReplyDeleteVery slow and bad GPS move. I report 3 times. Ok on mail. But i see same faild GPS. I cant see long time get better GPS and portals.
ReplyDeletePlease, NIA Ops Joe Philley consider retiring the Seer badge. It motivates people to submit anything to get the achievement. Please look at the plussed comments here. We're eager to help you make this work better.
ReplyDeleteJason Warren its not the seer badge thats the problem, noone would submit rubbish portals if rubbish portals were not approved in the first place, before seer badge there were still people submitting rubbish portals to gain home/work portals. To cure the problem then the review process needs to do just that... actually 'review'
ReplyDeleteMichael Edmond people are trying to get their seer badge, so they submit everything, instead of just the few good gems. They go out and say, "what can I submit today to get my badge?" It is surely a part of the problem of the major backlog.
ReplyDeleteThey need an express lane for submissions. If you submit only 1 portal a week or less your submissions go to the front. The people clogging they system with massive amounts of submissions can wait in the slow lane.
ReplyDeleteJason Warren but if no rubbish portals got approved how long before people stopped subbing any rubbish? they sub it because rubbish gets approved.
ReplyDeleteStop taking down perfectly good portals.
ReplyDeleteCarrie Slivick I would agree that the world is a big place, but how does Niantic Project design a global game played by hundreds of thousands, and NOT optimize portal submission processing? That's the part I don't understand. You can't see how many portals are in the queue, your position in line, or even stats about the average portal approval time to get an idea of how long it will take. It all seems so very haphazard and not even close to Google standards.
ReplyDeleteTotally missing the 4 day turnaround you once had on portal submissions Joe Philley
ReplyDeleteApparently, Niantic Project would rather lose portal submissions (or take 3+ months to process them) instead of crowsourcing submissions similar to a "hot or not" portal, where each submission gets voted on by 3-10 random players. If they ensured at least half of the votes came from people that play primarily in other areas, it would catch most of the bad/fake submissions, and then if the portal still made it through the approval process but was eventually found to be bad in some way, they can penalize the player that submitted it.
ReplyDeleteBenefit: Portals would go live in less than a week.
Drawback: Niantic would need to show a little bit of trust in the community.
They should try it. If it fails, we go back to this horrible, broken system they're currently using. shrug
Ralph Weaver I totally agree with your comment. It is 100% fact and accurate from what I have seen in my area. The real question should be directed to the NIA Ops Niantic Project asking why are you removing legit portals?! If you (Niantic) go through the trouble to verify them from the start and it takes so long to do so, why allow them to be removed?
ReplyDeleteRalph Weaver really hit the mark with his comment. We are having the same problem here with multiple legitimate portals being removed. Our tactic has been to just submit more portals.
ReplyDeleteThe portal removal process really needs to be improved.
I would think that portals should be locked in place unless sutible evidence is supplied to remove them like #portaljems but... I still don't get why we have to work so hard to submit portals or remove them when someone is paid to press a button with poor results!
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have to be their job - the community is more than willing to do that work. Instead of making one of their employees a button-pusher, that employee should setup a portal approval page for players to vote on.
ReplyDeleteJoe Philley let your guys do some programming leg work and the crowds work on your portal submissions. Do it right and portal submissions could go live faster than descriptions and pictures! Most of us would be thrilled to have a part in the approval/denial process. You just need to post clear rules about what is ok and what isn't. Provide any automated information about what is known already about the area and let people have a look... could even have the first #### checked by current people responsible for portal subs and use that to add weighting to to people to get a mainline to compare against.
ReplyDeleteA portal hot or not website. Must meet a minimum from so many people before being approved or rejected.
ReplyDeleteJeremy Daugherty This has been exactly my thought as well. Who better to validate portal submissions than the players of both factions? This would eliminate virtually all of the fraudulent submissions, poor or inaccurate placement, et al. Put them up on a map similar to Intel and let registered, verified players vote on/rank them. The secondary benefit would be much better transparency. At least I'd be able to see that the portal I submitted was in process. Even better, I can avoid the time waste of submitting portals that have already been submitted Honestly, 3 months with ZERO communication is horrific, especially given how well-thought-out the rest of the game is. This comes across as an after-thought. Does NIA Ops know how disheartening and demoralizing it is to wait nearly 3 months for your portal to come online only to discover that two other people submitted it three weeks before you did? I still submit the occasional portal, but until I hear something more on the 20+ still in limbo, I'm not going out of my way.
ReplyDelete