An update from NianticThia on the Ingress forums
Greetings Agents,
Earlier this month, we shared that the Ingress team has been working to upgrade the Ingress Portal Network to the latest version of Niantic Lightship. During the upgrade work, there was a delay in Ingress Portal nominations, edits, and photo submissions showing up in our Scanners and the Intel Map. More info on that can be found in the initial post of this thread.
This week, we pushed an update that puts Ingress on the latest version of Niantic Lightship and Wayfarer. Your nominations, edits, and photo submissions that were delayed during that time are now being processed and Ingress accepted nominations should start to show in Scanners/Intel Map. 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. More on this below...
OK but where’s my accepted Portal?
First, a couple of definitions:
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.
Niantic Wayfarer is the program that allows players to nominate and review Wayspots to be added to Niantic Lightship.
Now then…
Ingress was updated and is now using the same Niantic Lightship version that all Niantic games are using to display Portals, PokéStops, Fortresses, etc. When you submit a nomination, you are participating in the Wayfarer program to submit something for consideration on the Lightship platform - regardless of the game you submit it from. Each game is able to create their own rules for how to use Lightship’s Wayspots to populate and shape their specific gameboard.
We are aware that this change causes some confusion on the status of your nominations in Ingress. Right now, the emails you receive about an accepted Portal come from Ingress, but the signal to send that email is actually from the Lightship platform and not Ingress. Meaning, the email is being triggered when a nomination is accepted to Lightship, not when it’s accepted into Ingress. We recognize that this is causing confusion to believe that a nomination should automatically appear in the Portal Network and are working with the Wayfarer team to address that. Please see the latest Wayfarer update post to learn more about how the notifications emails will be updated and we are also looking at how we might provide more clarity on when an accepted Wayfarer nomination is included in Ingress.
Now, what about all the Portals that showed in the last 24 hours?
Now that Ingress is now on the same version of the Lightship platform that all Niantic games are on, we have some new Portals that didn’t previously exist to us! Many of these Wayspots existed in Lightship already for other games, but because we weren’t on the newest version, you didn’t see them in game until we finished our upgrade. 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 and we, along with the Lightship team, are working on this now.
There is no “going back” to the old version - it is no longer being supported. 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.
Hopefully that clarifies some!
Sharing as some may not visit the forums, regarding the recent new Waypoints that have appeared.
Comments
I really do wonder why such important info was not officially posted here.
Yeah... Communication unfortunately is not improving here.
Also, other problems in these:
Why would it be ? Its an Ingress related issue so they shared it on the Ingress forums
How could it not be? The most basic anchor of the database workings has been changed and it is supposed to not be of importance to wayfarer? Intel up until now was the place to look for existing poi, to compare and to decide what to nominate or during nomination review to look up duplicates and similar. Pulling this rug out of the nominators and reviewers feet is something which should be also announced here. Niantic staff knows very well how important intel is for wayfaring. Just check all the edit and invalid appeals, you yourself know how many of those use intel as a basis for their arguments. The decision to add another layer before intel and not noting the wayfarer community about it is similar to having one eye teared out and not noticing it until you wonder where all the blood comes from. I have read certain posts from you and I know you like to take a contrarian stance just for the arguments sake, so if you plan to do it also here, better tell it upfront, unlike to what Niantic did.
What total ****, its got nothing to do with Wayfarer and the way people are to review or nominate submissions.
Intel was designed to track ingress links, and is used for Ingress op plans link data. It was never designed or meant to be used to "compare and decide what to nominate"
How the database works to you as a reviewer or submitter is of absolutely no importance.
You are an end user nothing more nothing less.
And its not a contrary stance.
They informed ingress players because it was a change to the ingress side of things, its not relevant to Wayfarer reviews or submissions.
You're ranting for ranting sake a making a storm in a tea cup.
An Ingress backend change means absolutely NOTHING to Wayfarer submitters and reviewers.
Great.
A contrarian is someone who disagrees. “I know you like to take a contrarian stance….”
”I do not!”
…followed up by a lot of contrarian bloviating.
You chose to ignore the reality on hands and pretend a system has kept the same relevance as intended from day 0 without any evolution. If this is your real face then you are the incarnate of Niantic's attitude to not care about the wayfarer community opinion. I am not surprised, I have seen your attitude of "rules for thee, not for me". I certainly won't try to correct your attitude anymore, but know that you are in the wrong. This change should have been also announced here. The forum is already full with threads about portals not appearing, but pokestops or portals and pokestops not appearing, even though not touching 20m of any other poi.
Users were told explicitly by Andrew Krug to use Intel to check for possible duplicates in an AMA. As far as I know, that guidance has never been superseded officially. Which makes the use of Intel for planning submissions our de facto guidance and any changes to that should in fact be communicated widely.
Not to mention that without Intel, there is currently literally no way for us to check whether a PoI is already in Lightship. This is a problem even if we do consider ourselves "an end user nothing more nothing less".
I think this is indeed wayfarer-related, at least from the Submitter side: Ingress submitters are still receiving acceptance emails, but those emails are in a different format and coming from a new source. We’re no longer notified of proximity clashes as we were when those emails were coming directly from the app, and the migration means that our expected portals often didn’t appear. Submitted functionality has changed.
Lighthouse is the database where all of this is held.
it is not clear exactly whether wayfarer is in charge of Lighthouse or just another contributor. If it is in charge then discussion about that data and it use belongs here.
We are investing our time and effort in creating that content, so even if it’s regarded as contributor it’s only common courtesy to keep us well informed as to what is happening to our efforts.
Since we can only get a key to access Wayfarer via specific game use then obviously there is a link to those games for the wayfarers.
Wayfarer can only function because of good will so anything that is related that might damage that good will is really important, and right now a lot of that is draining away.
What I’m not surprised with is that communication is so dire - years of exposure to Niantic have lead me to expect this as a normal status.
But it is all so easy to get right.
Treat us as intelligent humans - not mushrooms.
Tell us in advance what, why, when. With details not glossing over.
If we start to report issues, acknowledge quickly.
if you know why the issue is happening, explain.
If you don’t know, say so and take it seriously.
if the timeframe is more than a few days, give updates on progress - check in that your community is ok.
and last but not least apologise.
There are still confused people with no idea if their approved portal will go live or when it might happen. Saying sorry won’t solve it but it will help.
The same applies to the distress over the foursquare rubbish.
Its really that simple.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino
If I am reading this correctly, instead of fixing the problem where people who only play Pokemon Go do not know they are submitting a duplicate, they have now made it so that people who play Ingress may not know if they are submitting a duplicate. Those are the two games I play, so only referencing those. Wayfarer needs to show the Lighthouse database on the submission map. And the Lighthouse database needs to be viewable for players who nominate in any game.
To update this with a comment about it from NianticThia;
*Stitch saying “Hi” GIF not included as I’d have to wait for approval*
First, I am seeing all of your feedback.
I'm going to make an attempt to answer/clarify what I can! I know it will not answer everything but this is what I know (I think) so far - I'm 99% certain I've got some of these things wrong but I'm going with it and will clarify/correct/edit as I learn differently.
Now - most importantly, you MOST DEFINITELY DO NOT need to do anything to clean up. We are working on this with the Lightship team. I in no way meant to make a joke out of it or insult anyone with my AP comment - I was trying to look on the bright side that we have a lot of new Portals! I have no idea how many of them are not up to our standards as Ingress Agents, but my hope is that MANY of them do qualify (I may be wrong)... and if we can get AP off of submitting photos for them, I want to encourage Agents to do so if they can.
Do NOT in any way shape or form try to report a Portal via your Scanner if you cannot reach it or it would be unsafe to do so. I have not yet looked on the Wayfarer Forums to see if they have a way of reporting any of these Wayspots there but that is a possible route to take. Or wait for us (Niantic) to get to it.
Next - AFAIK, the rules for what is and is not accepted into Ingress have not changed. I will try to get clarity on that but that is what I'm operating on. These Wayspots did not necessarily show up as Portals because they qualified. I want to be clear on that because I see your feedback on the quality. We (Ingress team) were unable to vet them before they went live so we are working on it in the reverse which yeah - kinda sucks for us as Agents but we (Niantic) are working on it with priorities being given to Portals in the middle of the ocean and in sensitive areas at the moment.
I have seen the feedback on things that were submitted showing as Pokéstops still not showing up as Portals. All I got is "I don't know" but I'm still tracking it and trying to find out.
I don't know how you'll take it (or the ING team for that matter 😂) but there is one very big POSITIVE coming out of this for me, personally, and I'm kinda glad this happened. I now have a very clear example of how passionate we are as Ingress players about the quality of Niantic's Wayspots. It's not my anecdotal feedback. This is during my time at the company that I can clearly point to and say "See?"
I think, I hope, I don't know. That's a lot of text just to communicate these negative facts.
I'd rather see someone saying that they don't know something than typing a scripted response that simply says we're all wrong about things but they cannot discuss details - or just outright silence. Thia is quite new on the job and it seems that we piqued her interest in these issues, which are not strictly Ingress-related. If this means more interdisciplinary meetings on the Niantic virtual meeting platform, I'm all for it. Wayfarer cannot exist in a bubble.
Just as an update NianticGiffard said the team are working on this on another thread.
If Niantic are happy DUMPING the Foursquare database into Lightship, then obviously the portal submission guidelines are a complete waste of time and everything and I mean everything, should just get 5 stars. This is just nuts.
What happened to quality of candidates Niantic?
As a further update;
Hi everyone - a small (?) update...
Part of the trickiness of this for me is that I'm trying to explain something that I don't fully understand myself. If I don't understand, it's harder to write something for you as an update; I'm still trying to learn it so I can share but it's taking sometime
Here's what I've got:
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What has changed?
- In the past, Wayfarer conducted the proximity check on Ingress’s behalf at the platform level but was sending accept and reject emails with Ingress branding, prior to Ingress even adding that Portal to the Ingress server. This is causing confusion because the branding did not reflect where the decision was actually being made (the platform). On Lightship, the proximity check relevant to Ingress only, will not be done by the platform but by Ingress, after syncing with Wayfarer.
- The emails you receive to acknowledge receipt of your submitted nomination or edit, or emails for when your submission has a decision will soon be sent by Wayfarer and not Ingress (again, this is sent before the Ingress proximity check). The Wayfarer and Ingress teams will let you know when this change is happening.
- We know many of you feel that we are removing the only way for you to track your rewards and we know that the change is causing confusion on what is and isn’t accepted as a Portal in Ingress, but the existing emails were not an accurate method anyway as they were being misunderstood as being accepted into Ingress. The Wayfarer team is looking into filling that gap by adding features to track your impact across all Niantic games.
- Changes to the gameboard will be synced once a day, similar to how this happens on other Niantic titles.
What hasn't changed?
- The criteria for Portals being added to the Ingress gameboard has not changed.
- The process to submit a nomination, edit, photo, or invalid Portal report from the Ingress Scanner has not changed.
- An acceptance/approval in Wayfarer does not necessarily mean the Wayspot will be added to Ingress. There is a second check for proximity to live Portals before an accepted Wayspot shows as a Portal in Ingress. Currently, if a Wayspot is within 20m of an existing/live Ingress Portal, it will not show up in Ingress (note this criteria could change in the future though there are no plans for it).
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I do not have an update from the teams on the status of accepted by Wayfarer but not yet in Ingress. I know that there is a bug filed.
I hope this helps a little and I'll try to get another update as soon as I can.
Currently, if a Wayspot is within 20m of an existing/live Ingress Portal, it will not show up in Ingress (note this criteria could change in the future though there are no plans for it).
Besides some comments in an ama by Andrew, this an official confirmation of the 20m rule for ingress
Thanks for cross posting @PkmnTrainerJ-ING
This does confirm the 20m rule - I look forward to other rules in other games being openly talked about.
It is interesting they are saying one a day for sync, when some are still seeing quick adds.
I did a test yesterday trying the click the like of the photo in PoGo at 11.20 U.K. time I checked at various points up to close to midnight with no sign, but this morning the point has appeared in Ingress 😃🥳
So for those you can visit, there is a way to combat the bug.
@NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino
Thia provided an update that confirmed the bug was filed but nothing new to add.
The issue appears to be in Lightship database. Is this a wayfarer issue?
Where does responsibility lie for resolving the issue?
The lack of detail about what is happening just causes frustration and we have now had the bug for 2 months with no apology. It is not a great situation.
The community has provided information and tried to spot patterns to help resolve.
Like a few others ( thanks @LukeAllStars-ING ) I have tried out a theory to try and resolve the effect of the bug and it works. A like of the photo in the pokestop triggers a refresh and the appearance in Ingress - you need to get the timing right - before PoGo sync time ready for Ingress sync time approx 5/6 hours later. (Details in the bug report thread).
Why can’t the team that has been working on this presumably with much better access to the details, come up with this sort of info as a temporary fix? It’s one I can easily apply to some of my affected stops as they are nearby, far from a solution but it would help some people.
Newest update
I asked this morning about the status of the bug and am told it's still being investigated.
I've also previously shared the work around you all found -- that upvoting the picture in PoGO seems to force it to sync but that not all rewards are being received (you get the key but no AP or +1 Portals discovered rewards). I'm told if you're getting the key, you should be getting all rewards so if this is something you'd like to help me collect some data on, please let me know and I will DM you.
But no mention of the dilemma encountered when no object spawns in Pokemon Go due to cell population, and the non-existent duplicates causing those waypoints to be rendered invisible in all games.
The Team is only tasked to respond to Wayfarer issues. Other groups are supposed to look into their respective games. We haven’t been told whom to address with Lightship problems, perhaps because there is nobody public-facing in that department.
"The Team" in this thread is Thia on the Ingress forums. The Wayfarer team has stated that this is a game-based issue but it's not really: it's the Internal Review process messing up Wayfarer functionality and the overall data in Lightship. The workaround devised by volunteer submitters/reviewers is not applicable in all cases and should not be a reason for decreasing the priority of the search for a fix.