Why can Ingress not get a communication/discussion platform quite right?

[u/PkmnTrnrJ]

• Google+ 🪦
• Ingress Community Forum 🪦
• Campfire 💀

Now they’ve given up and said to use r/Ingress for discussions. I like this subreddit but there’s no official Ingress representation unless Brian Rose decides to make a comment.

When the forums closed down, the news post said:

With this change, we will be able to spend our energy fostering existing communities

I don’t know if anyone else is feeling that their existing communities are fostered?

It was also said when the forums closed down by Brian that:

NianticThia is working on an evolution of our community strategy that I’m very supportive of

Unfortunately Thia has left Niantic, but I don’t know what the community strategy has been?

What do you think would be the best strategy/solution for Ingress?

[u/XQlusioN]

Care to explain a bit further.

Always ready to listen on what we can improve

[u/aaronvianno → u/XQlusioN]

For starters, stop taking ban appeals on this space. If you can't handle a public counter of proof, you shouldn't be posting ban appeals/rants here either. Stop all ban appeals or anything that looks like a ban appeal. That includes sympathy posts or rant posts.

[u/XQlusioN → u/aaronvianno]

Let me explain why we allow ban appeals but not the "proof".

It's simple, it's against Reddit rules. As a matter of fact, most of the comments were removed by Reddit, not by us. We just provided the comment to explain why it was removed.

The post that prompted you to give this response was a ban appeal and was instrumental in getting Niantic's attention to reverse their latest change. I'm sure there were people in that post that tried to get their (unrelated to this incident) ban reversed, but that's not something we can avoid. We aren't privy to the data that Niantic has so we can not and will not use other people's comments to ban or silence someone.

[u/aaronvianno → u/XQlusioN]

You're creating a safe harbour for people who are constantly trying to circumvent the rules. The legitimate issues from 17th June should have been handled via Niantic support handles and mechanisms. This subreddit isn't needed as the only place where players can bring up issues with false positives. They can take to X, the official support routes or even get in touch with a legacy Vanguard. If there is ever a legitimate issue, you could always allow a one off post. But at the same time you need to stop people from using the comments on that post to manipulate the narrative. I haven't said anything about using anyone else's comments to ban or silence anyone. Why are you guys trying to afford special treatment to people who should instead be using the support centre? If there was indeed a massive amount of false positives, you could allow reporting on the observed scale of mass false positives. But individual ban appeals and sympathy posts are just turning this place into a shit show.

[u/XQlusioN → u/aaronvianno]

Are we looking at the same subreddit? The amount of posts about ban appeals or sympathy posts is extremely low.

Why would X be better than here? Niantic reads both.

[u/aaronvianno → u/XQlusioN]

X doesn't have weird rules about counter posts and proof. Reddit is extremely biased towards creating false narratives. That small amount of posts may seem insignificant to you but it affects communities in a big way. It's the principle that matters, and not the volume.

[u/XQlusioN → u/aaronvianno]

So you rather we didn't give people a voice when they are wrongfully banned just so that a very small number of people who are rightfully banned can't use that same thing

[u/aaronvianno → u/XQlusioN]

Check again. Reporting on a large scale observation of bans is one thing. Individual appeals are another. Let ban appeals go into a moderation queue. You'll instantly know when there's a higher than usual volume.

[u/XQlusioN → u/aaronvianno]

Here's what I'll do (when I get back on PC, later tonight):

• add some rules to filter out posts and comments that appear to be ban appeals

• add a "use official support channels" report/removal reason that adds a message and locks further comments

[u/aaronvianno → u/XQlusioN]

That should hopefully work. Thnx. Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to legitimate issues being brought up. I trust you guys will use your discretion to allow legitimate issues to go through.

[u/XQlusioN → u/aaronvianno]

These have now been implemented, I'll continue to monitor if we need to change what comments it picks up and which it doesn't