Cross pollination of seeded Portals

Gendgi-PGOGendgi-PGO Posts: 3,534 Ambassador

In the early days of Ingress, Niantic utilized multiple sources to help populate the gaming map to bring in more Wayspots Portals. Among others, popular "seeds" included historic markers from hmdb.org, public libraries, and post offices. This was a great help, especially in rural areas that might not have had nearby access to other Portals.

These still exist in Ingress and in the Wayfarer map. Unfortunately, without a photo, many of these do not show up in Pokémon GO or other Niantic games.

Why is this a problem? (Rural) PoGO only players may be missing out. Additionally, they cannot make contributions (location edits or add photos) to these Wayspots, and it often results in erroneous duplicate nominations that sometimes actually lead to a rejection rather than duplication.

What do we do to help? As a PoGO and Ingress player, when I'm traveling (and, well, of course locally) I carefully search Intel or nearby Keys to find "fuzzy" images that mean they have none. Investigate it further, go to it, take a picture, and sit back patiently for my 500AP for the photo contribution.

What can Niantic do to help? A few months ago, they added hundreds or more seeded PokéStops pulled from Foursquare in efforts to help underrepresented counties. Within a few days, NianticCasey posted an update that they were cross-adding these PokéStops into Ingress by adding a placeholder image. I believe it's time to do that for these early Portals. It would greatly help rural areas, make it easier on folks like me, and help build a better cross functioning map.

Thanks for the read.

Comments

  • GearGlider-INGGearGlider-ING Posts: 1,335 ✭✭✭✭✭

    What do we do to help? As a PoGO and Ingress player, when I'm traveling (and, well, of course locally) I carefully search Intel or nearby Keys to find "fuzzy" images that mean they have none. Investigate it further, go to it, take a picture, and sit back patiently for my 500AP for the photo contribution.


    I wonder if the Ingress mission creator tool would be useful for this. I can't rememeber a time I found a no-picutre portal on it, but it would help scroll through all the photos of portals in your area quite quickly.

  • AScarletSabre-PGOAScarletSabre-PGO Posts: 754 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Sounds good. I know of a few Wayspots in my area with no photograph. Some of them are extremely rural, and thus it is hard to get a good mobile signal there. Therefore, it might not be possible to get new photographs added unless there is remote submission.

  • PeteC303-INGPeteC303-ING Posts: 799 ✭✭✭✭

    There are hundreds of portals in Dover UK with missing pictures. I’ve added a few recently and they appeared in Pokémon. I actually had one removed because it was utter rubbish and what appeared to be a “scenic viewpoint” of a quarry fire that occurred in 2008. Some of the portals are actually duplicates of various parts of Dover Castle and it would take me months to get them removed. I’ve already had 32 invalid reports denied. Yes 32! But Yea I’m always adding new pictures to portals as it seems local Ingress players near me enjoyed taking pictures with potatoes 🥔 and entirely awful pictures.

  • 0X00FF00-ING0X00FF00-ING Posts: 769 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Note that, like "sponsored" locations, players don't have the 100% ability to edit all the information on "hmdb.org" locations. In particular if you discover that one is in the incorrect location, you have to convince the people at hmdb.org to adjust the location in THEIR database. Unless something has changed in Wayfarer/Lightship very recently.

    Also @NianticDanbocat I personally feel it is unfair that photos for these wayspots can ONLY be added through Ingress. I know factually that other non-hmdb.org "portals" had missing pictures (due perhaps to incompatible file formats?), yet still showed up in Pokemon Go with a weird "(?)" default photo.

    Once y'all have resolved the FourSquare debacle, perhaps somebody could look into finding a way to get those hmdb.org locations imported into the other non-Ingress games too?

  • Gendgi-PGOGendgi-PGO Posts: 3,534 Ambassador

    ¿Por que no los dos?

    While the Fourfarer problem is definitely one on the forefront of people's minds, the fact that they did cross-populate them from PoGO into Ingress brings to light that they never did that with all seeded Portals.

    I agree with @PeteC303-PGO's comments, too. I've spent plenty of time making edits to title, text, or even reporting invalid upon request for local PoGOers.

    Maybe full map access will be granted with part of the overhaul efforts coming Soon™, I still think that cross populating is necessary to bridge the gaps across platforms.

  • AScarletSabre-PGOAScarletSabre-PGO Posts: 754 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yeah, I sometimes see Ingress portals on the Intel Map that are in totally the wrong place, fort things which no longer exist or with typos and it is sad that I cannot do anything to fix them as they don't appear in Pokémon GO. One of the portals in the wrong location would actually become a Pokéstop if it was moved to where the plaque actually is. It's a dense area so I can forgive such mistake as GPS drift is often a problem.

  • Shilfiell-INGShilfiell-ING Posts: 1,559 Ambassador

    Just throwing this out there - maybe those seeded Portals could not be ported over into Lightship if they haven't been modified or improved.....and thus disappear from the game maps altogether? They've served their purpose. There is no more Guardian medal, and since they have never appeared in Pokemon Go, no near-gold gyms would be lost. Valid POI's not ported over could be resubmitted and subject to review. The Wayspot Database has already suffered a severe enough blow with the Foursquare dump, and I hate to see it degraded further.

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