Ingress AMA Archive
November 20th 2017
Q1: Will the Seer medal now count for all portals submitted at all time?
A1: The seer medal will count for submissions prior to 9/3/2015.
Q2: I still have portal submissions out there from 2014. Will they ever be processed?
A2: We hope to analyze all outstanding submissions in OPR.
Q3: Right now i was able to review a portal far far away than 3x3 cells form my "base location". There are some changes about revision area?
A3: In order to ensure that all areas can be processed we are periodically allowing analyses from further away than normal. Further details will be forthcoming.
Q4: Will you ever reset the OPR test for those who didn't make it initially? Still unable to attempt it again.
A4: At this time there is no plan to allow a third chance to take the test. However, in the future this may become possible.
Q5: I once took a look under the hood of OPR and noticed a hidden rating for the photo. Will we be able to rate that at some point?
A5: No, the photo quality can be taken into account in your first impression when answering “Should this be a portal?”. An otherwise acceptable photo that is just low quality will be able to be replaced with a better photo in the future.
Q6: Why in high density areas does it takes so long for portals in remote are live within days of submissions?
A6: Candidates are sometimes reviewed further by NIA OPS. We are working to ensure that these candidates will be processed soon.
Q7: Would a mandatory OPR test be something you could explore for those stuck at bad rating? What are the percentage thresholds for ratings or is it more complicated? If so, any additional comments?
A7: This sounds like something worth considering. There are many reasons you may have a poor rating in OPR. The best way to recover is to continue to analyze candidates and follow the criteria and guidelines to the best of your ability.
Q8: Sometimes I take some time to investigate a portal. I ask local agents about the place, and they answer maybe 30 mins later. When I go back to OPR, time expired and the portal, for which I now have an accurate judgement, is gone forever.
A8: You should analyze candidates based on your own local knowledge or supporting data that you can find online. Asking other agents for input could be considered colluding and is discouraged.
Q9: why when you move in OPR from Poor to Good -- agreements do not count towards OPR badge for a week or more?
A9: Agreements will not count towards the badge while you are in poor standing. Keep analyzing to the best of your ability and follow the criteria to recover.
Q10: Does OPR require a certain balance of reviews from both factions before reaching a verdict?
A10: Yes, it requires analysis by both factions before a decision is made.
Q11: My question is are there any chance that in the near future that the number of portal submissions each person can do every 14 day will increase?
A11: We are monitoring the system and currently evaluating how to ensure that there are more candidates to analyze.
Q12: Is there any chance of OPR feedback comments actually reaching the Submitting Agent? So they know which violations of the New Portal criteria led to their disapproval?
A12: This is definitely something we are considering for the future.
Q13: Will it be possible to remotely submit portals in the future, like how it used to be: either by sharing the photo with Ingress from the camera roll or by using an existing image when submitting. It then uses the GPS coordinates embedded in the image so no adjustments are needed.
A13: At this time we do not have plans to allow a feature like this.
Q14: Can you make OPR pull portals to review from further afield?
A14: We are periodically allowing candidates to be analyzed from further away than normal. Further details will be forthcoming.
Q15: I'm submitting perfectly good portals with ok-ish pictures but every single one gets denied. Do you have any plans to make sure that not a group of people decide 'nope, this area won't get any new portals'? thanks!
A15: Yes, we have plans to address this type of issue.
Q16: About OPR, wouldn't be fair to give 2 points for validated portal if the validator set the category of the portal (church, statue, etc.) ?
A16: Seems like an idea worth considering.
Q17: How close is 'too close' for the typical Niantic OPR reject algorithm?
A17: Today, to provide the best game experience possible, the distance varies from approximately 20 to 30 meters. We encourage you to continue submitting all unique portals as upcoming functionality will allow you to help select the best portals in a given area.
Q18: Could location changes by other OPR reviewers made visible for the current reviewer. Maybe by a dot or a heatmap. This would maybe reduce the amount of portals rejected due too wrong location.
A18: If there’s a way to do this that would be fair, we will definitely consider it.
Q19: Can the OPR team rearrange the ratings so that the questions/ratings are in some sort of order?
A19: Unfortunately, this is subjective and everyone would have to agree on a single order.
Q20: Why was the decision to use local reviewers made, and do the team feel that local reviewers continue to provide better knowledge, or does the factional bias interfere too much?
A20: Since NIA OPS does not have the local knowledge it is something that only OPR agents can provide. We think that’s pretty valuable.
Q21: What about remote places, like corvo island? no one but me are doing OPR here.
A21: We are now periodically allowing candidates to be analyzed from further away than normal. This should help locations like yours.
Q22: Can you guys open up submissions even further for cells with low portal density?
A22: This is something we will likely consider for a future feature.
Q23: I have had two trail markers rejected due to being mistaken as duplicates. I plan to resubmit with better wording. However, the pictures I took have been added to the portals that were mistaken as the duplicate. Is there a way these pictures can be removed so as to prevent confusion?
A23: We will work on a solution to this problem.
Q24: How many reviewers on average does a portal take, and how does reviewer weightings affect it?
A24: Yes, this provides Niantic with extra data about the candidate that may be taken into account when a decision is made.
Q25: How many portals have been submitted since it reopened and how many of them are reviewed? Are we staying ahead?
A25: In some areas we are still processing the backlog in addition to new submissions. Yes, overall we are keeping up!
Q26: How come when I asked for my area in OPR to be reset because of an accidental place change I get an answer of "You have one free site change"?
A26: If you accidentally set your hometown OPR will allow you to change it one time without needing to contact support. Your bonus location can be changed after 1 year.
Q27: Will Seer ever return, or can I hide my #ForeverGold badge?
A27: At this point we have no plans on returning it in its current state.
Q28: hi, why my Recon number on ingress scanner is still 2118, then in ops site it's 2199? will you fix it?
A28: If your rating has ever dipped below good then some agreements may not be have been counted during that time.
Q29: In OPR If you actually mark some other field like accessibility, significance or uniqueness and then select 1 star in overall score, dropping it off the table, do the other stars
actually matter in the decision making or not at all?
A29: The first question, “Should this be a portal?”, is not an overall score. It is asking for your impression of the candidate prior to analyzing the details of the other questions.
Q30: Given that NIA Ops no longer accepts appeals for submitted portals that were rejected, can you see your way to setting up a cross-factional private body of trusted Agents, who can do the appeal process instead of Niantic?
A30: I think in an ideal world this may be a good idea. We would have to really think it through and give it some thought though before we implemented something like this.
Q31: A lot of the things being submitted for review are newer than the most recent streetview imagery. To aid reviewers, many of us have started submitting photospheres that show the submitted item within the local context. However, there is no guarantee that the photosphere will be what is shown by default in OPR and it takes several extra steps to view nearby photospheres. Can the OPR page be updated to encourage reviewers to take a look at alternate imagery?
A31: We am hoping we can improve the submission process in Ingress 2.0 to include supporting photos and hopefully spheres.
Q32: Hi, I have few submissions with more than 50 days in a queue. Do you have a solution to this problem?
A32: Candidates are sometimes reviewed further by NIA OPS. We are working to ensure that these candidates will be processed soon.
Q33: Could you please update the portal criteria on the support site. The one on the OPR site lists a more detailed set of guidelines.
A33: I will see if NIA OPS has any updates for the support site.
Q34: For the opr team, hi. Is it going to be possible to do removals as well?
A34: This is not currently planned, we are currently hard at work on support for analyzing edits in OPR.
Q35: Is it ok to have Ingress lore in a portal description considering the points of interest will be used in other games? For example: referring to the player as an agent or talking about XM in a context that it fits.
A35: It would be advised to keep the content related only to the candidate.
Q36: What is the status of the "black hole" submissions?
A36: We are working to ensure that these candidates will be processed soon.
Q37: Do you have plans to intervene where low quality candidates are brought online or where high quality ones are rejected due to faction bias?
A37: Once a candidate is rejected that decision we will not be overturned, we suggest you can submit again.
Q38: There have been agents using a tool call Fast Opr, a script developed by agents, to make more portal evaluation in less time, do you and the opr team are aware of this?
A38: Yes. We are aware.
Q39: Would it be possible to add a counter for the non agreed portals on the stat page?
A39: Seems like an interesting idea. We’ll have to figure out the feasibility of it.
Q40: Can the categories for classifying the photo contents/portal location add in "Helicopter"? I have run across some static aircraft display submissions and had to punt and use "monument". Thanks.
A40: Sure thing!
Q41: I went to Panama/Mexico, and did some opr down there.... I went from Great to Poor in the matter of a day while maintaining a 70% agreement ratio. I have close to 200 agreements since then...and my needle hasn't moved..and my stat isn't counting. My questions are: What gives?
A41: OPR performance takes many factors into account including abuse detection. The best way to ensure your rating stays high is to take time to carefully analyze each candidate.
Q42: How many OPR points does the OPR team have?
A42: Our main developer has just over 2000 agreements currently.
Q43: Can the OPR team please give their input on sporting fields/courts?
A43: We would need more information to be definitive with a ruling.
Q44: Will you make an OPR mobile app with native Android maps api and thus performance ? I blame my mobile browser which crashes after some review, because of memory leaks maybe.
A44: If there’s a memory leak we’ll try to find it but we don’t have plans for this as of now.
Q45: Is Niantic working on something for remote areas with players who have no portals, no submitters and no reviewers?
A45: No submitters is a bit of problem as far os OPR being able to help today but I’m sure we will have a solution in the future.’