Local Guides in The Mirror - How useful are our contributions?

[ErmesT]

At the beginning I was a Google Maps users

I was using Google Maps on desktop to plan my trips, and I was printing the Maps on paper, to save my data.

Then I started to search also for restaurants and hotels, reading the reviews and checking the photos of room and dishes, using them to take a decision about where to go.

Then, I became a Local Guide, adding my contributions, becoming an actor on Google Maps

To be a Local Guides mean that I receive points, badges, likes, maybe perks, and, if you are contributing in a great way, you may be have the opportunity to meet Google, and the top Local Guides of the world at Connect Live

BTW, I have also seen a lot of “gamification”. Becoming addicted of point and badges, sometimes we forgot why we are Local Guides.

Contributing for getting points is for some of us more important than Contributing to improve the information in Google Maps.

That’s the main reason for the great initiative started by @JanVanHaver : Local Guides Clean The Map. Local Guides clean Google Maps of contributions added by other Local Guides.

While I fully support JanVanHaverer’s great initiative, on the meantime I would like to suggest to everyone a simple recipe to understand if we are contributing in an helpful way

What we need to do is to look at Google Maps as a user, and to see if what we added is helpful for the user that we are.

There are a lot of post in Connect, and great explanations on the Local Guides program Help Page, about how to contribute.

BTW, it can be interesting to know, from a Map user Point Of View, if some contribution is helping us.

Reviews:

• Is a single word review helping you? I see many Local Guides contributing with a long series of “Good” or “Excellent” even if many times on the same place you see others contributing with more detailed reviews. What do you read on a series of “good”? Personally I read “11 points” - “11 points” - “11 points” - “11 points”…

Photos:

• Is a sequence of similar photos helping you? I see that many Local Guides are adopting what I call the five degrees sequence. A few days ago, I tried to replicate the experience only to write this post, taking a series of 5° photos in front of a mall. I was feeling bad, BTW this is the result:

Fun Fact: Google Photos merged the four photos together, offering to me a great panoramic photo

BTW, as the cars in front of the Mall were disturbing the view, I decided to upload a completely different photo, This one. What about you? What is your feeling of Map User when you see a sequence of near duplicate photo on Google Maps?

• Is a sequence of photos taken while driving helping you? I see that several users are doing this too, so I tried to replicate also this experience, and I want to tell you: “Don’t do that, It is extremely dangerous !!” I was totally scared, so I only tried a few shots to add here as an example of an extremely bad behavior, and I promised to myself to not do that anymore. What I am showing you in the photo here below can be interpreted in several different way. My only interpretation of the next sequence of photos is: 45 points. Totally useless, if you want to know my opinion.

Thinking like a Google Maps user, what is your feeling when you find this kind of sequence of photos? Are these photos useful for a Map User, to better understand how a place is?

By request, I am adding another series of photos: Selfies and personal party photo

• Is a sequence of selfies taken with friends helping you? Even if I personally LOVE everyone of the next photos, do you think that, as a Google maps user, you will find interesting these photos, inside a business listing?

My suggestion is: Before to contribute, we should “think as a maps User”, looking to our Local guides contribution through the eye of the user that is inside us. Then, if our tough is “Yes, this is what I would like to see”, only in this case, press “submit”

What is your suggestion? What would you like to recommend to a Local Guide who wants to improve the way to contribute? Connect Live 2020 is coming, and “High-quality, well-rounded, and consistent contributions on Google Maps over the past 12 months” is one of the requirement. Do you want to share some tip?

Note of the author: the photos in this post used as examples of Google Maps Contributions are not posted on Google Maps, but a simple representation of how a contribution can be.

SUGGESTIONS FROM THE COMMUNITY:

• Please check HERE the useful tips by @ShafiulB
• “Do it as long it is fun” is the suggestion of @Ant_Bad_Yogi . I fully agree. If for getting points we forget the fun of being a Local Guide, we totally missed the scope of the program
• Be yourself, is the tip from @anuspice . and “Have a healthy competition with yourself”. I fully agree with her

[katydarhel]

I absolutely agree @ErmesT , that the main life credo of local guides should be usefulness, love of the place and desire to improve maps, and not a selfish desire to earn points. How to eliminate unnecessary photos is a big question. I think, first of all, it is necessary to encourage effective local guides. And also I think that it is worthwhile to assemble a group of moderators or to develop an automatic system that would block low-quality photos and duplicates.

[JanVanHaver]

It is indeed more frurstrating @ErmesT having to clean up stuff that was knowingly and purposely added by other local guides - as you mentioned: often just hunting for points. A good example I came across was a local guide whose contributions had been just fine, as far as I could see, but then all of a sudden had started posting 20 random pictures of the tracks in a railway station; I understood what was going on when I noticed he had just moved on to a higher level, so he must have been tempted to upload just ANY pics to reach the level (a case of ‘level fever’ I usually call this). [The notification ‘you only need x pics/reviews to reach the next level’ probably won’t have helped]

[ErmesT]

I agree with you @katydarhel , we should have an automated system for checking this, and I can ensure you that I have been already an ambassador for this proposal at the Local Guide Summit 2017.

BTW, my post is not for the Local Guides who wants to trick the system, and will be suspended for this reason. I am not sorry for them.

My post is for the Local Guides who believe to be helpful, an post 12 photos (this is real, I’ve seen it, and reported) of the same cup of coffee.

Probably many of us simply forgot that we are, first of all, Maps user.

That’s why I am inviting the Local Guides to become Users again, before posting.

I want to have an automated system, and I supported @OmerAli idea Algorithm to prevent Duplicate Photo/Video Uploads

[ErmesT]

I agree @JanVanHaver , nor the automated notification about adding photos.

Btw, I had some interesting feedback recently (I will not link the replies) like:

• I always take a series of photos, to choose the best one, but as choosing is difficult, I uploaded all of them.
• My photos are not duplicate. There is a small difference between all of them

Both replies are telling me that this is not a mistake. To avoid this mistake, I am inviting the Local Guides to “think like a user”, because I believe that giving a motivation can be better than suspended a local guide

[OlgaKlimchik]

@ErmesT I think at least minimal training is required before allowing a person to add information. Such idea was proposed by @Kwiksatik , for example.

It can’t solve all problems of course, while the system of points and levels exists people will try to get the following level easier, and no algorithms would really help.

But there are a lot of people who simply don’t read the rules, and great majority of Local guides at least in my country have never heard about this site, where they can learn something or ask questions. As for me I got known about localguidesconnect only the day before my application Connect Live 2019. If I decided not to apply, I would never knew about this site.

As a result, a lot of private photos, photos with smiling children, unhelpful reviews, and so on.

I saw the question-indignation of 3d level Local expert about incorrectly filled bank hours, she couldn’t even imagine, that it’s in her power to correct it.

Local guides which want to correct their level is a problem of course, but the illiterate crowd is much more dangerous, I think.

A lot of problems can be solved automatically. For example finding dublicates. It’s not a secret, that it’s very easy to load a dublicate for Maps by mistake, but not so easy to find it later and delete. It would be great if program could find and stop dublicates. And not only photos! There are a lot of dublicates of reviews. They are made by different people (?), and I don’t say about simple comments such as “good”, “great” and so on. It’s detailed comments stolen from the review below. Such problems can be solved automatically easily.

[ErmesT]

I agree with you about this @OlgaKlimchik , and the fact that a lot of people have no idea about how to contribute.

BTW, the contribution that I am mentioning in my post are, sadly, absolutely intentional

[KashifMisidia]

I m totally agree with you @ErmesT , I can see in my community, people are running behind points and photo views, and don’t think about useful contributions. I met several people virtually who requested to check Thier Contributions, and after seeing I was like . And then requested back to remove lots of selfies, duplicates and irrelevant photos. Some people still hesitate that our photo view count will be decrease, but it’s still better than suspension.

I m not a very good Contributors like I see many others, but My tip for Google maps Contributors is " don’t run for the points and photo views. Write your useful reviews as you feel that place (one word or even one line review is not fruitful for anyone), upload photos which can be useful for others (like entrance, ambience, facilities, food) , and edit any place or answer any question honestly."

If someone can do same like that, I hope their Contributions will be superb.

Shukriya Ermes for another wonderful and informative post.

[OlgaKlimchik]

@ErmesT Intentional addition of vast information is the problem of conscience of every member. We can say about the problem and this measure can stop partly the flow, not completely.

Now everybody can see your contributions, it disciplines, I think. But it disciplines only those who is interested in the opinion of other members. The great amount of guides are loners, they don’t bother about somebody’s opinion.

I think warnings and clarifications should be spread widely, at every step.

And automatic checks, as much as possible.

[ComradeShah]

Thank you @ErmesT for sharing with us such valuable thoughts.

All the cases that you have mentioned are valid, we are facing the same. Additionally, I will add one thing more, in most of the cases the local guides have uploaded multiple photos to a point of interest that fits in the category of " not a photo or video of the place. I use to check block by block POIs in my city, reported such kind of added pictures, I don’t know why they still appear.

Moreover, I agree with @JanVanHaver , about level fever.

[ComradeShah]

@OlgaKlimchik you have elaborated a valuable point by saying that there should be a criteria or training for the local guides. In one of my posts I have spoke about the same problem.

In most of the cases the local guides having the access of adding so much valuable information, have no basic knowledge. But in this very phase, the algorithm needs data, and it isn’t look feasible to put restrictions on uploading the data. I think in the future some steps might be taken,but not now.

[davidhyno]

You’re right @ErmesT ! Unfortunately, what you highlighted is a sad reality: for many LocalGuides the points are more important than the contents. And they don’t realize that there are huge differences in reaching a goal with the two methods: the first, the one using only the points, will also take you to the next level, but it will never give you the safety and satisfaction that you get when the quality become your trademark! Sure, it’s a much slower and more demanding route, but the satisfactions pay off all the efforts! And I also share the work carried out by @JanVanHaver with my prerogative that I have set myself on Connect: to properly evaluate the various profiles of those who post on the Achievements page. I noticed that some LocalGuide post all the happiness for the goals achieved, and then discover that his Maps profile is literally chock full of the usual photos posted several times and for different activities, full of selfies to friends or relatives or even taken from other web pages (with obvious copyright problems). I took the trouble to write to this LocalGuides to better review all his contributions, explaining the reasons and consequences of his work. My hope is that in the coming weeks he will clean up his profile, so we will be happy in two!
And this is a commitment too: teaching and helping the other LocalGuides to focus on quality and not on quantity! We will not score points for this, but we know for sure that we are doing our best!

Bye,

David

[ErmesT]

I know @KashifMisidia , how painful it can be, trying to help other Local Guides, when you have to explain them that we do not contribute for points, but the points are just the indication of our contributions, and the value is on the contribution itself.

Quality versus quantity.

That’s exactly the reason of this post, to try to see the contribution we add through the eyes of the Map User that we are.

Trying for a minute to imagine what we could think of those photos and reviews, if they had not been added by us

[LuigiZ]

Hi @ErmesT ,

very interesting point, if you want to see the point of course .

Unfortunately it is sadly true what you say and we can find many examples, the negative point is indeed the gamification of the being Local Guides: points, points, points to be at the top level with the worse contributions ever.

I like your perspective of being a Maps user, being like that I wouldn’t like to find all bad contributions when searching for that and this can be a good starting point to check our contributions and aim to the top quality, not to the top points.

[Ruxellan]

Hey, @ErmesT thank you so much for your post, I always try to avoid sequence photos, but from now on I will very careful about it. I try to upload a clear and high-resolution photo.

[ErmesT]

Thanks @ComradeShah

Yes, photos in a wrong place is another issue that many local guides have.

Many local guides suggested an option to add the correct places to their reports. Hopefully, of Google wants to improve this aspect, it will help to have a better representation of the POIs

[Bilal_shaikh]

You are absolutely right @ErmesT . The core reason for being a local guide should be quality data preferred over quantity. Thanks for bringing that session to us.

[Muhammad_Usman]

Here is a lot to learn if some body really want to learn thanks a lot @ErmesT you are really doing a great job

[marcorp]

@ErmesT dear friend, we are in now in this time of the year if we will find out if there´s a wine fest coming soon or not, let´s see if the stars are aligned this time.

I totally loved your post. I enjoy quality rather than quantity. Don´t get me wrong, I would love to become Local Guide level 10 but the right way, and in my mind, the right way is through solid contributions. In my case, I have 789 reviews and 280/789 have more than 200 characters… why bother? because I believe in meaningful reviews, those that actually help. the same thing with photos… I try to improve all the time.

[ErmesT]

I understand exactly what you mean, @davidhyno

Other people are looking for an help. My suggestion can be to look at your profile, or the one of many local guide that decide to contribute for quality.

I tried, times ago, to rise a question: Irreverent birds - Do you upload them in Google maps? about the choice to NOT UPLOAD a photo in Google Maps.

I agree with @OlgaKlimchik about the fact that this is not necessarily intentional, so what I am trying to do is to develop a series of “educational” post, to invite the Local Guides to think about what they upload.

Thinking like a user can be a good instrument of Self Evaluation.

I check the contributions sometimes, especially when the people is asking about Perks, or when i find words like “I did an hard work” .

I am happy that you keep on your signature G O O G L E Local Guides makes we rich?. because the meaning of what you wrote is inspiring, and give the right perspective of what a Local Guide is