Portal nomination and approval
Hello,
Over the past 7 years portal acceptance criteria has dropped tremendously. It used to be that average business locations were not "historic or culturally important " and therefore were normally rejected. A swing set in a park would not be approved. Areas that are not normally accessible to everyone (certain businesses and military bases) were also rejected.
Now, portals just like these are everywhere. It has cheapened the game. I've tried to remove some of these, but that process has been hindered by softening the rules and processes, and by eliminating the older standards from the nomination site.
The game needs to move back from pandemic standards and trust seasoned agents again. Hopefully this gets read by the appropriate individuals to make this happen.
Have a great day!
Comments
Waypoint criteria, submissions, and review process are not handled by Ingress staff.
You will want to bring this up on the Wayfarer forums.
Niantic dropped the quality of wayspots when OPR was ripped out of Ingress to become it's own product, Wayfarer, the got Pogo players to nominate and review alongside Ingress agents.
The star system is gone from the review process, which further drops wayspot quality.
Some criteria has been cleared up a bit, like unique cafés, bars which are places people often get together and socialise.
Feel free to complain or give feedback on the wayfarer forum
Niantic care about quality, but care more about quantity
It seems anything can become a portal anymore. Almost every requirement they ask is ignored. Rocks, telephone poles, gas stations, temporary construction signs, all get accepted. Ingress staff have nothing to do with it either. Kinda sad how bad it's gotten.
@Bstrngr8 You're sort of right, but there's both a solid rationale and some issues around that.
Niantic needs their games to be playable in all sorts of locations. For years there were complaints that Niantic games were unplayable in smaller towns, suburbs, and rural areas because there weren't enough wayspots. Niantic revamped the Wayfarer rules to make games more playable around the world, and that means that some things that wouldn't have been eligible before are now. I see both sides of it but I come down on the side of inclusivity... and I say that as someone who lives in an area that's dense enough that she has three couch portals.
The issues are players not respecting the Wayfarer rules in multiple ways. The first is deliberate abuse. One example is a large botnet that was active in the Netherlands that would approve everything. Once these things get into the games it's often difficult to convince Niantic to remove them.
There are also tons of fakes, and it's pretty easy to submit fakes that are convincing enough to be accepted. Sometimes it's stuff where the location can't be confirmed, and photos from other wayspots get reused. If the "Squirrels and Robins Nature Sign" is submitted in a park under some tree cover there's a pretty good chance it will get accepted. I've reviewed a ridiculous number of Photoshop fakes, many of which were caught by my well-trained eye but some have been done so well that they got past me for a while. I've spent a lot of time researching and documenting fakes and have gotten hundreds of them removed... but that's just a drop in the bucket.
Another problem is Bad-Wayspot Contagion. People often based their assessment of what's acceptable on what they see in their game(s) rather than reading and understanding the eligibility criteria. This leads to people submitting a bunch of stuff that isn't really eligible and other people approving it because they've seen similar stuff in their games. I've seen places where "fountains" are everywhere, but those fountains are actually aerators in the middle of ponds and thus don't have safe pedestrian access.
guess niantic prefers quantity over quality. The more poi in their games the better or something
It used to be that average business locations were not "historic or culturally important " and therefore were normally rejected.
https://intel.ingress.com/intel?pll=51.642973,-1.1651
"Dorchester Fireplaces And Interiors". Nothing cool or unique about it at all. I wouldn't take my family there to see the sights. It's a generic business.
...and it was already a portal when I first visited that village in 2014.