My Local Guides Account account has been stuck in a loop of suspension and reinstatements for the past three months. Once I notice the account is suspended I use online Appeal Form to appeal it. Roughly a day later I receive an email that my account is reinstated and “there is no further action needed on your end” only to have it re-suspended a few days later. I have studied the polices, but haven’t found any obvious violations.
Through a process of deleting contributions in the months leading up to the first suspension I have surmised that the source of the suspensions seems to be a series of edits I have repeatedly submitted regarding incorrect spelling and punctuation at four sites. Two are misspellings: Crag Burchett - Jesse Henson Memorial Park and Sanbar Discovery Center (sic). Two are spacing errors: Dinosaur Ridge West(Jurassic) Trailhead and RogerSchultz Community Park (sic). I have listed them as they are spelled and punctuated on Google Maps; hopefully the correct forms to which I have been attempting to edit them are obvious. It is unclear to me why these edits keep getting rejected since they are factual and rather obvious, but it seems likely they are also why my account keeps getting suspended. They are still listed as “Pending”, and the are repeated which is why I assume they are what is triggering the filter. Regardless, I’m happy to delete them if there is a function for doing so, but unfortunately there is not: when I select the three little dots to the side of the edit the only function available is “Suggest Another Edit” Below are screenshots demonstrating the spelling issue for the places as well as links to the photos used in the screenshots. Where possible, I tried to use other people’s photos.
Hi @wolfenfang, that sounds really frustrating. Getting stuck in an automated suspension loop just for fixing factual spelling errors is definitely a system glitch. Since the standard appeal form is not breaking the loop for you, this needs a manual look. Let me tag @TsekoV to look into this severe account issue. Your screenshots and proof are perfect, so hopefully they can push those pending edits through and fix your account for good! Hang in there.
@wolfenfang
I don’t think your issue is related to pending edit, but most probably of the “lack of knowledge” about some policy of Google Maps.
I wanted to write a detailed post about the violations that I can see on your contribution. Here below an excerpt
The text is clear: “Local Guides who duplicate photos across locations … will be removed from the program”
And in your recent contributions I can see a lot of photos that fall in these situations: Redundancy, and duplicate across Locations.
Redundancy
There is one small difference in the two photos here below. From Google Maps view in this way you are not adding any additional information with the second photo. It can be considered just a trick to get 5 more points
In addition the photos mentioned above are used also in different POIs. This is a big NO, and the sanction for this is the suspension.
Another example of duplicate across locations
So I am not surprised if you are experiencing a re-suspension Loop. Google is keeping the history of our contributions, so every time someone report one of the duplicate photos Google take the action to suspend you.
There are so many cases of duplicate across location in your account that I am afraid the suspension may become permanent, soon or later.
This is probably also the reason why 2272 of your media are not publicly visible
I’ll take that under advisement and go through again and delete some of the photos you suggested as I had in the months leading to the first suspension. However, I rarely edit my photos before posting - I usually just go with the suggestion prompts Google Maps sends me after the photos are taken. Similar photos are simply me trying to get a slightly different angle or lighting. That said, I am not very discriminating in what photos I upload: I mostly just unselect photos of specific people if they are in there, so I’ll try to do a bit more “unselecting" in the future. Additionally, I had figured, wrongly it seems, that a place within a place (like those specific noteworthy tombs and mausoleums within a cemetery) had an accountancy for photos that incorporated the fact that those “sub-places” (for lack of a better term) were part of the greater place. I had ultimately ruled Photos out as a source of the suspension however as, (1) I went through and deleted much of my photos in the months leading up to the suspension, (2) my upload behavior has not changed drastically in the 8-9 years I’ve been contributing
I’m not sure the difference in the tallies you cite is fully relevant. They certainly could represent duplication, but you’ll also note that my Reviews are 519 on that list, but listed as 453 on actual reviews. Based on some preliminary searches, this discrepancy is a result of my having done this for so long (since at least 2018) that roughly 13% of the places I reviewed have inevitably been closed or otherwise removed. I think that may be at least partially what is going on with the photo/video tally. That and the fact that the tally is slow to incorporate changes - I have more than “one” caption for instance. Regardless, thank you for the time to post a detailed reply, and I will do another inventory/cleanup, as you suggest.
Edit a photo, especially if you use the editing tool available in Google Maps App, is not a problem. But it can become a problem if you upload both (pre and post editing) photos, because this is considered a duplicate. I have just seen one of those in your contributions, but I wanted to warn you because it can lead to an unwanted risk.
Not really. A review of a removed place will appear on your account in the app with the coordinates 0.000 , 0.000, while a review that has been blocked will be visible in your account, unless the review is related to a place located inside the EU. In the last case, on the top you will see a warning sign and the text “your review isn’t posted”. I have checked your reviews and, as far as I can see, no one is related to removed places.
Of course photos attached to a review will disappear from the public view together with the review itself. The only way to check it is by using a different account to check your public profile. A review can be made hidden automatically, if the filter finds that the text or on of the photos attached is “potentially” against the policies.
There is a form to appeal to have the hidden reviews reinstated. If you appeal, an operator will manually check your contributions, and will republish everything that is not against the policies. However, during the verification, they will obviously see also the issues highlighted by me, so it’s strongly advised to remove all the duplicates and redundant media before submitting the appeal
Some of the ones I had in mind did have the 0 coordinates you mentioned, however your explanation about reviews did remind me of something. Do some establishments not allow reviews? A few years ago I wrote a review of a school I attended, but only I could see the review and the photos I uploaded of it never appeared at all - I assumed afterward that it might be a security mechanism on the schools part.
