Niantic, Inc. has released Operation Portal Recon in a closed beta for its mobile augmented-realty game Ingress as reported by TechCrunch.

Operation Portal Recon is a hub through which players will be able to vote on whether or not specific new portals ought to be included in the game. Participants in the program will be able to vote on multiple factors that comprise the makeup of an Ingress portal such as its name, its picture, or whether or not the portal is a duplicate.

Currently, Operation Portal Recon is only available in Tokyo and San Francisco as a closed beta. Players must be Level 16 - the absolute highest level reachable in the game - in order to participate. Players will be restricted to giving feedback in the area where they play Ingress the most as well as one other area of their choice provided that it's within the boundaries of the Closed Beta. An algorithm running in the background will weight the opinions of players participating in the Operation Portal Recon closed beta based on how well they are judged to be at ranking portals.

The creation of this feature can be interpreted to be a direct response to the massive backlog of portal submissions that Niantic had been wading through. Ingress stopped accepting new portal submissions in September of 2015. Operation Portal Recon will focus on working its way through the submissions backlog first and foremost.

TechCrunch spoke with Niantic, Inc. CEO John Hanke he indicated that he would like to deploy the feature in Brazil "Sooner rather than later". Additionally, he had the following to say about what's coming for Ingress in the future: