November AMA Questions and Answers

RedSoloCupRedSoloCup ✭✭✭✭✭
edited December 2019 in Ask Me Anything (AMAs)


Thank you for your patience as I compiled the AMA questions. The questions and answers for October can be found here:

>>November INGRESS AMA Questions and Answers

Due to the holidays, I will be skipping the December AMA. We will resume again in 2020 with January.

Post edited by NianticOfficial on


  • Enjoy your holidays!

  • TheFarixTheFarix ✭✭✭✭✭

    @RedSoloCup Did you intend to leave the comments open?

  • Good question. If they had a subforum to post the answers in....that was locked down to the Niantic user group....oh well...

  • There is tremendous interest in this event. Niantic needs to jump at this and make it an annual event!

  • KliffingtonKliffington ✭✭✭✭✭

    Just saw this. This is the opposite of what @NianticCasey said to us. My head hurts

    Q: Kliffington - The guidelines still state that military base portals should be rejected if obstructing emergency services. Users are still submitting things in neighborhoods/museums/gathering places on base because there is nothing in the guides saying not to. We know from your August AMA that they should be rejected regardless of other criteria. If that stance has not changed can this be edited into the guidelines with a note that existing base wayspots are ok?

    A: Some of these submissions could be from before the launch of Wayfarer. Please follow the guidelines in the Wayfarer site to review these nominations.

  • What is the distinction between a commercial business like a mall and a commercial business like a McDonalds?

  • GearGliderGearGlider ✭✭✭✭✭

    I wonder if the comments will stay open for forever, or if they’ll be cut off eventually.

  • MorganzaMorganza ✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    Are single letters, or composed art that is primarily a single letter, allowed in mission icons? This rule was left out of the latest revision of the mission creation guidelines (only logos are banned), and is never cited in mission rejection form letters, but in case after case the mission creator communities are seeing missions with art that is, or looks like, a single letter, being rejected and then approved after the art and no other element is changed.

    For the specific example I'm thinking of, the author used the "Mission Project" Trick or Treat Halloween artwork, but the mission whose art was most of a stylized letter "R" with few other elements was rejected repeatedly, until the author resubmitted it with no change other than replacing the art with a pair of cat eyes. If that was the reason for the rejection, as dozens of people saw with the same artwork in cities around the world, it's really difficult to read that into a rejection notice that says merely :


    ... Your Mission may have one or more of the following issues:

    A lack of a clear and informative description and/or title

    Mission Image, description, and/or title are unrelated to the Waypoints chosen


    A similar issue happened with the "farewell to Redacted" banner, where a mission that contained the letter "D" and a closing square bracket (two characters, though only one letter), was rejected for multiple mission authors until they added more elements to the artwork.

    The process of figuring out by trial and error what the correlation is, if any, between the reason a mission was rejected, the published guidelines, and the multiple broad categories cited in rejection letters is frustrating to authors and contributes to a cycle of resubmissions that wastes a lot of Niantic review staff cycles. Is there something we can do to improve the process?

  • Could do it under a sub-forum, and set up voting! I'm sure this software has some sort of a poll or voting option or plugin. Could likely get some Vanguards to help with adding in the submissions as valid options for the vote/poll as I'd guess they are pretty trusted with that handy NDA and such.

  • "Q: @DrAllsopp - When will sorting keys by name be actually fixed so that keys are sorted by name and not "mostly" sorted with random keys in the middle?

    A: Brian believes this is fixed. But wants to highlight that there are specific portals that have unexpected portal titles (for example, space before title, emoji in title, etc.) and these inconsistencies will sometimes make the sorting look funny. If that's not what's happening, let us know and we can take a look."

    @RedSoloCup I have encountered this issue several times since 2x AP started 15 Nov. Regardless of what @NianticBrian believes, this issue absolutely has not been fixed (v 2.35.2), and is not the result of sorting weirdness, unless the weirdness involves not using the first character of a portal title to sort. I submitted another ticket to this effect just now.

  • Why is it so hard to get the business playgrounds right? In Australia, Macca's playgrounds are publicly accessible, there's no rule requiring people to spend money to use them. Every Bunnings Hardware warehouse here has a playground and a cafe (there's 2 examples below), as do most of our family restaurant franchises, like theme park playgrounds are allowed but not these??? Are you really trying to say that indoor playgrounds that are free to use are OK, but playgrounds that require payment to access are unacceptable?? It does not compute.,150.50189&z=17&pll=-23.377576,150.50189,150.518991&z=17&pll=-23.334935,150.518991,150.519506&z=17&pll=-23.329901,150.519506,150.50189&z=17&pll=-23.377576,150.50189,151.951673&z=17&pll=-24.984604,151.951673

  • RedSoloCupRedSoloCup ✭✭✭✭✭

    Someone reached out to me stating the same. They are going to record the issue so I can provide it to the team. It wouldn't hurt if you are able to do the same and willing to as well. You know now to reach me via TG :)

  • Never understood why this is even a continuing topic.

    Playground in a park - place for people to take the kids to. Except when it's super hot, burned tots. Or super cold, frozen nuggets. Enjoy the bird and squirrel droppings.

    Playground in a business - place for people to take the kids to. Except you MIGHT have to buy a soda or a burger, wait where's the con? Watch the sidewalks boil or enjoy the six feet of snow in a climate and environmentally controlled area.

    Used to boycott a specific business for YEARS because its commercials led me to realize I had some misophonia issues. CROOOONCH cronch cronch. Sluuurrp. CRONCH cronch cronch. Don't worry, you're bugging me way more then I'm going to bug you. Now, unfortunately, we're customers on occasion specifically because their play area puts most of the parks here to shame by far. It's comparatively enormous, and severely lacking in Niantic game content.

  • hoffenheimhoffenheim ✭✭
    edited November 2019

    Doesn't seem like all of the questions were answered the last few months of questions, is it possible to get them answered before January? @RedSoloCup

    Post edited by hoffenheim on
  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    It might also be worth running a cleanup of the waypoint database to remove any leading/trailing spaces from the titles. And to remove leading/trailing spaces from waypoint nominations on submission (if it isn't there already). Looping in @NianticBrian

  • starwortstarwort ✭✭✭✭
    edited November 2019

    I was going to say the same (I also posted in the App Feedback category a few days after 2.35 came out). However, I was waiting for 2.36 to arrive. I'm sceptical, given that the release notes for 2.36 are tiny and don't mention this issue, but you never know...

    Edit: I can now confirm that this is not fixed in 2.36.

    Post edited by starwort on
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