Anyone else had their Local Guide status stripped and connect privileges stripped without warning nor apology? I was visiting my home country earlier this year when I realised this happened. I don’t even remember breaking any community rules or anything like that. I barely used the local guides function, and only contributed when I felt like it. I had only started to contribute more, when I realised that Maps support for my country was little to nonexistent(separate post about this incoming). I was writing a review when I realised that the local guide badge was no longer next to my name. When I came to Connect to complain, I was banned from here as well. And of course there’s no support outside of that, except Twitter, and the Twitter support people at first engaged me then ghosted me for many weeks. My Local Guide badge then suddenly reappeared. Then I noticed that even though i’m back to being a Local Guide, i’m still banned from Connect. When Local Guides finally did reach out to me, after 2 months, the email was basically, “we have reinstated your local guide connect privileges, please follow the community guidelines to avoid being banned again, sorry.”
Like, we’re not getting paid to be Local Guides, but what does Google really think they’re on, treating people like this? Has anyone else had this experience and can provide some guidance? I still have no idea why I was banned, as they have yet to inform me. I even reached back out and responded to the email they sent with more questions, as they stated in their email that I should reach out if I had any, and guess what? WEEKS LATER, AND STILL NO RESPONSE! LOL. No surprise there, right?
Your notion that you never made any guideline violations might not be correct. To know this you would need a very detailed knowledge and understanding of all the guidelines provided (in many different documents) from Google. I have yet to meet a suspended LG who were aware of all the guidelines. That’s why I explain in detail some of the most frequent guideline violations in my tutorial.
Also, I have come to the conclusion that Google decided not to be very helpful and informative on this because there are millions of well organized spammers who constantly try to trick the system. And helping them is off the table for very good reasons.
Feel free to understand more about suspensions by reading my tutorial or even better: Welcome back to Connect. Please enjoy and move on.
I know FOR A FACT that I did not violate any guideline violations, but go off.
I find your reply here very condescending and dismissive. This is not the welcoming flex you think it is. Please feel free to report my profile and ban me again because i’ve decided to call you out on your unhelpful response.
Or even better, since you had nothing nice to say here, YOU MOVE ON.
Connect is a Community, where Local Guides help each other on the basis of:
Their personal experience
The information they receive
When detailed and verifiable information is not provided, the answers are obviously generic, like the one @MortenCopenhagen gave you.
I find your statement that you have not committed ANY violation of the rules very risky and courageous. A statement that demonstrates at the very least a very poor knowledge of the rules.
Just look at your visible photo contributions, to find a lot of violations, in terms of duplicate or redundant images / videos. Redundancy is considered a violation as the images, even if not “exactly” duplicated, do not add any further information about the place, and are only considered a trick to earn more points.
Here below are some examples, but there are many more violation in your contributions
There’s a current issue with Maps where it is uploading duplicate photos, even without your consent. I use a beta version of the app, so this is very likely that it will “break” at certain points. Local Guides needs to take these things into consideration, that not everyone is some spammer that is trying to break any rules or skirt the system. Your tone also reads like you are insinuating the same, and that i’m not someone who just either has a wonky version of the app or simply inadvertently broke a rule.
I guarantee you that if you listed every single violation that YOU THINK i’ve committed, that i’d have a very vaild and simple excuse for it, and it wasn’t intentional. I’ve provided all the information there is to provide, and if you needed more, you could have just simply asked without jumping to conclusions.
As you say, Connect is a COMMUNITY. Yours, and the other moderator’s replies so far, do NOT reflect that.
The app uploading photos without your consent is a story that has no foundation, @babyfroz .
In the last four years there have been two reported cases of an anomaly (fixed a long time ago) that caused the same image to be uploaded multiple times. The image was loaded dozens and dozens of times, and kept repeating until a very specific operation was performed. I know this because I have personally followed both cases, directing users to the solution of the problem.
What the App does is to “suggest” the loading of the images, but we are always the ones who confirm the operation.
Also, in a couple of the cases I’ve shown you above we’re not talking about exact duplicates.
The image on the left shows two “nearly identical” photos, with a variation of nearly one degree between the two images. It is not a photo uploaded twice by the App: they are two different images.
The two photos on the left are more interesting: the image is exactly the same, but one of them is the “original” one while the second one has been edited to add saturation and contrast. However technically it is NOT a photo uploaded twice by the App: they are two different images.
Tiffany, when you say that you know for sure that you haven’t broken any rules, you are making a very strong statement. A claim that your contributions contradict. The fact that you may have mistakenly uploaded an image twice, or two similar images, is not in dispute. These things can happen, but they are still rule violations, and therefore need to be fixed.
If we don’t start from this assumption, we’re going nowhere.
Nobody will inform you that you have been suspended, and nobody will give you the reasons, because this would be a way to open the door to spammers. I’m not justifying Google, I’m just telling you how things are.
But as you know, being readmitted is possible, and it is a very common experience.
At that point it’s up to us to understand what we did wrong, and this is the purpose of my answer: to make you understand that there are errors.
I tell you this because in general I like your contributions, you take beautiful photos and write interesting reviews.
Otherwise I wouldn’t waste my (and your) time in this conversation. I would just report the profile because there are still violations, and bye.
I believe that being “nice” is of very little use when a user reports problems. So I prefer to be honest and direct.
Nothing personal
On a side note: When you refer to the beta version of the App I assume you are referring to the Public Beta that most users, including me, use.
If instead you are claiming to be a “beta tester” (which I don’t think you are) I remind you that you have signed an NDA to be a beta tester, and that no information should be disclosed publicly. Beta testers have other contact channels to report anomalies
