Is it possible to become a Level 10 during this pandemic without adding any reviews or photos on Google Maps?
Almost from the day that I returned from a fabulous overseas trip in March 2020, I have been mostly in lockdown because of the COVID pandemic. This has meant incredibly restricted movement. For quite a long time this was restricted to only essential shopping and max 2 hours of exercise within a 2 km radius of home; I now just about know every house, tree, crack in the footpath, and dog (some friendly and some mongrels) within a 2 km radius of home lol. Just to keep practicing my photography skills, I took many photos and could easily write a post about the crackpots cracks in the pavements or every mongrel dog in the St Kilda area of Melbourne! From 2 km it was extended to 5 km, and recently 10 km (yes more cracks and more dogs) and we’re now in lockdown number 5 which was not so long ago extended but hopefully will end very soon; fingers crossed.
It goes without saying that I have not been able to travel much at all since March 2020 and given the cycle of lockdowns we’ve had, given that we’ve been mostly staring at walls and looking out of windows, and watching heaps of TV news about COVID, I really haven’t been able to contribute much in terms of reviews and photos. Yes I have a backlog of tons of photos of the places that I did visit during my past travels, as I usually have, and I have added some of these over the past 18+ months, and while I diverted much of my time to writing some posts and helping others here on Connect, I decided to do a bit of house-cleaning. No, not domestic house cleaning which I’m not at all good at, but cleaning my past contributions on Maps.
I first started looking at my early contributions, those made at a time when I was just a beginner and not having much knowledge or understanding on what it really was all about being a Local Guide, a time when like most new Local Guides my focus was on points and levelling up. I found that most of this time was spent on deleting early photos, those when looking back were an embarrassment and which I was ashamed of, taken without much thought or knowledge about what type of photos of a great café or fantastic meal or beautiful location were best to take. Yes each one earned me 5 points and many had lots of views, but I was ashamed of these and so I started deleting them.
Well without realizing it, before I knew it I dropped some 20,000 points, that’s a Level 8 worth of points!. Sheesh I thought, if I keep this up I’m going to start levelling down the Local Guide levels and this was at a time when I was just about to cross over 200,000 points and become a double-Level 10 which to me was like climbing Mt Everest a second time!!! However, regardless of this potential glory, I was determined and so I just deleted and deleted and deleted!!! I would have deleted many more photos but I was stopped in my tracks because I was unable to scroll down past about 8,300 photos on my Maps photos contribution tab. Frustrated, I reported this issue on a post on February 17, 2021 but as I had no choice, I stopped deleting photos. As you will see from this screenshot added to that February post, at this point in mid-February I had 197,256 points!
So what now!!! Well bored and locked down at home, rather than staring at the walls, I started watching videos and I stumbled across an excellent podcast of December 2020 and also started reading some posts about cleaning Map by @JanVanHaver , like Local Guides Clean The Map (#LGCTM), and the articles referenced in that post as well as the earlier December 2020 [RECAP] Local Guides Clean The Map session at Community Live 2020. OK I thought I would give this a go and focused more and more on cleaning the Map!
As a comment on another excellent and very timely post, Has your way of contributing to Maps with photos changed in the last year?, by @ErmesT , I mentioned that yes my way has changed as I was deleting photos and started cleaning the Map.
"My way of contributing to Maps with photos has changed significantly in the last year @ermest mainly because I haven’t been able to travel. Being locked down for most of the year led me to review many of my photos deleting some and updating others and, like you, I spent quite a lot of time “cleaning the map”, editing and updating places. I also spent quite a lot more time right here on Connect, and also created one or two leaderboards
"
It was interesting that in @ErmesT 's reply he mentioned my deleting of photos when he wrote:
"This is interesting, @AdamGT , and congratulations for the big number of edits, for keeping the information updated and to clean Google Maps. Do you mean that you contribute in Google Maps with photos mostly when travelling?
I like when you said you deleted some photo, I think you should write about that. Most Local Guides would be surprised at the idea of ​​deleting a photo, if not horrified at the thought of doing so. I think this is an action that only a great Local Guide can do"
Well it was this comment by Ermes that motivated me to write this Local Story. I continued on cleaning the Map and achieved my goal of crossing over 20,000 edits just before 19 July 2021 and in my reply to Ermes I Wrote:
"Yes being locked down for most of the last year I spent quite some time cleaning the Map. I really hadn’t realized how much cleaning I had done but after reading your post I thought to go through and do some counting on my cleaning and I was as surprised as much as you are and I have to add, when I say 1458 published Edits since March 2020, there are many more still under review…
I was being modest when I said that during the last year I had deleted some photos because in fact I deleted many and I did this when I was about to pass the 200,000 Local Guides points threshold. This is something that @JanVanHaver not long ago noted and commented on, I think it was in relation to his 5 “Level 10s” revealing their best tips on how to get to level 10! LetsGuide Podcast…
Well Ermes I totally agree with you that “most Local Guides would be surprised at the idea of ​​deleting a photo, if not horrified at the thought of doing so”. So why would I delete photos and especially when I was about to reach the 200,000 points threshold? In fact I have been thinking of writing about this after @katydarhel had made a comment a few weeks ago that prompted my mind on this."
and this is that post
Conclusion:
You will see that since returning from overseas in March 2020 and being mostly in lockdown and unable to travel for most of the time since, I posted 20,000 Edits which at 5 points per edit is equivalent to jumping from Level 1 to Level 10!! So this has answered the question opening this post, yes it is possible to become a Level 10 during this pandemic without adding any reviews or photos on Google Maps!
However, if you’re thinking that I wrote this post to brag about this achievement then sorry you are wrong. If this was my aim then it would have been much shorter and not a story and I would have posted it in the Achievements board and not here in Local Stories. You see, while important for Maps and the more fun and exciting part of being a Local Guide is adding lots of photos and reviews, and both earn you great points that will help you level up the Local Guide levels, you can also achieve this by making other important contributions, like cleaning the map! I do hope that my post motivates you in some way!
Before closing, I need to say that having spent some time cleaning the Map, and I can say that I now know something about it, I pay tribute and congratulate the many Local Guides that have done this and much more than myself. It takes time, diligent research and lots of dedication, so hats off to you all.
I must now go and do some serious house cleaning (the dishes have piled up something serious) before the boss here kicks me out 
Keep guiding and keep cleaning
Happy 5th Anniversary
#LGCTM
