Hi all. I’m fairly new to Local Guides.
For me, it’s all about volunteering. Many times in my life I’ve tried to help animals, people with disabilities, and other groups, but I’ve found myself doing just that. Helping people find the right information, not to be fooled by the wrong dot on the map so that people don’t lose precious time on their way to that establishment or worse yet not to get bad service. For me, it’s more than pictures and reviews. Charity expresses itself to me in this type of activity of mine.
So I travel a lot and I am often in different places, I work in IT and by my mind I like to optimize and make products better, I like photography very much and I do it almost professionally. I reached level 8 in a few months! I was in dozens of locations and establishments a day. Working very hard at it. For me, charity and volunteering is regular, systematic work! I got results, but ran into some weird bureaucracy, rules, and even blocking my reviews.
! Now to the point:
The man and his values come first. My freedoms and desire to make the world a better place comes first. I have different moods and different attitudes to the different sites I visit. I’m free to do whatever I want, you know? Google has a mission to fight robots, automation, spam, and so on. But what does that have to do with me? I got to level 8 for humanitarian reasons, to make the world a better place. Something that Google also enticed me to do and gave me an opportunity in the system. But I’m not your employee, much less have to prove that I’m not a robot or a machine.
Just think about it, I have to adhere to a dozen rules in today’s world that are TECHNICAL in nature because of the problems until the system can handle itself. Where is my freedom and will? Don’t limit us. You say how much to write in terms of reviews…what ? Seriously? I can write “awesome” and that’s it. I can write 1000 characters if I was enthusiastic and delighted. Man is not a robot and most importantly do not turn our activities into a framework.
Naturally the rule of general humane understanding is welcomed. Against violence, personal data, pornographic content and so on. I’m happy to abide by them. But not to be served by the rules for robots.
To summarize, I am an enthusiastic, FREE, but working very hard for the good of the people, who realizes his reviews are blocked, and is faced with a dozen links and recommendations from various pages on how and what to do. This is absurd. Again, these rules are for robots and it’s Google’s own problem how to deal with it, but to block everyone, and then I still have trouble finding the link with the form, I have to be a member of the community, have a rating here to what? To prove that I’m not a robot and to get for weeks to be allowed to post reviews that you want - Google Maps?!
We are human and our community has values, we help you and you should appreciate us. Develop security with our help, but not by our negative emotions over blockages. Otherwise our enthusiasm will crumble.
PS there are plenty of rules, but no training center. I may have made a mistake on some day, I even remember it. I went into stores , cafes and just talked to customers and owners , also hotels , I got feedback , took pictures and left a short review , there were many that day , about 30-50. Yes I spent 7-9 hours on it, walk 15-20 km every day buy my legs. But as a self-taught person. I wasn’t taught how to do it better and more correctly. Make a video playlist for beginners. These are not rules and punishments for real people’s mistakes. It’s teaching and helping each other first. Feel the difference?