Getting edits approved: Lessons learned

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi All,

I just wanted to share a few developments relevant for Local Guides focussing on suggesting many edits on Google Maps.

1. QUICKER APPROVALS

In recent weeks, I have noticed that when making a bunch of edits (20-30 or so) they all get approved more quickly now. And the normal delays in getting edits approved are almost gone. So are emails related to edits made days, weeks, or even months ago. I believe this is a good sign. Maybe the AI has taken over eliminating delays in having humans check on our edits. Just a few weeks ago, my e-mail folder with approved edits always had some unread emails. Now there are only unread emails within minutes of making a bunch of edit.

Have you noticed this too?

2. THE FILTER BLOCKS BATCH EDITS

Years back one of my strategies for finding issues to fix was to search for all stores in a chain of stores. This is relevant when the chain is adding location or category stuffing in the name field. And then I would correct all of them in one session. Using the clipboard I could make 3-5 such edits in one minute. Those days are now long gone. The filter will block all such similar edits after the first 3 or 4 instances. Everything thereafter goes pending for good. Effectively wasting my time. So it was necessary to abandon this strategy.

Have you noticed this too?

3. FIND PLACES TO EDIT ON THE MAP

In my experience browsing the map visually for things to edit is now the way to go. My approval rate is very high for such edits compared to finding things to edit via the explore tab, search, and notifications from what those I follow have been up to.

Have you noticed this too?

4. GAMIFY MAKING EDITS

Finally, I would like to share this observation. If you create folders in Gmail to filter approved and pending edits (being checked) and make sure they are all marked unread, they will be counted automatically for you as shown here:

I explained how to make such filters here.

By comparing the number of Approved Edits to Being checked we might use this ratio as an indicator of how successful we are at making edits. My folders need some cleaning and I need to adapt them to using 2 languages. And I’m unsure if any pending edits will get approved later.

Could we maybe discuss this?

All the best

Morten

[shaileno]

Nice blog post sir @MortenCopenhagen these blog help me future edit on map

Thanks.

[Akaharby]

I still get rejected a lot even though I made a lots of edits in my small hometown with proofs

[KattyGeltmeyer]

@MortenCopenhagen Mortencopenhaegen: I also found out that editing several locations one after another triggers a blocking of approvals of edits. I e.g. search for public bins with the wrong categories, and when I start editing them one after another, the edits are accepted at the first moment, but after several of such similar edits, the acceptance of these edits is slowing down and stops at last. It seems you can’t do several same edits of a type of location one after another without triggering a halt of the acceptance of these edits. So, mass-editing seems not to be allowed. @Janvanhaver or @Ermest did you also observe this behaviour?

@DeniGu or colleague: could you please explain this? It’s not my intention to trigger this stop of acceptances, but as it’s not possible to filter search results on category, I always get the whole list of editable places, including the ones I already edited. So, I do a mass-edit at a certain moment for keeping track of what I do, and trigger this stop of acceptance.

It’s also a pitty you can’t sort the edits section of you contributions by status, so that you can see the pending ones, the “not accepted” ones etc. in one list. It’s also a pitty an earlier pending edit isn’t changed into an accepted edit, so that your contributions section of edits is a mix of edits that are still pending etc. and so it’s becoming a mess. It’s handy you can see what you edited at which moment, but if an edit firstly was refused, and after a second attempt is accepted, the “not accepted” attempt becomes irrelevant. What if this could be solved in a more elegant way so that the info is available, but not resulting in a long list of accepts, “not accepted”, pendings, …?