Hello my dear fellows,
for those of you who don’t know me, look HERE, where you can find basic info about myself .
I would like to offer you my personal recap about year 2021 but before I start, let me write a few words about me.
My name is Thomas from Czechia (Central Europe) and I’m currently stuck on level 9 in this program, but level 10 is close :s.
Let’s move to the recap part
I focus on the high valuable contributions since beginning. I usually edit places and enrich them with new, update and correct information, last year was no exception.
In 2021, I was focusing on “Voluntary Firefighter Unit” (Usually small building with fire truck(s) and voluntary firefighters) which is in each town or even in small villages. In my country, many of these places had incorrect categories on Goolge maps and I decided to revise them and set right category - “Fire station” .
The next set of places which I revised were “parish” (small administrative district, usually near by its church ). These inconspicuous places had wrong category in many cities and villages in my country. Most of them were marked as a church, which is of course incorrect. So I decided to step in and changed their category to correct one.
As you probably know, each edit give us a few points. But points are not everything and in my case, I did a few things even without beign honored by points like:
Improving vehicle’s crowding (public transportation ) by answering questions.
Reported houndreds of invalid, spam or bad quality photos in Google map. Which was BTW a really big pain, look at my idea how to improve it.
Last but not least, I started putting emojies into my reviews to highlight facts in them. For example, when I write review about some museum and I mention parking lots then I put emoji to highlight this fact at the first sight. Same for restrooms with .
So that was my year 2021 what about yours?
Extra bonus - Me, wishing happy birthday to LG in my native language.
I’m looking forward to welcoming you to the Level 10 club soon. (This is just to tease: there is no such club and being level 10 is no different from the other levels except you have gained more experience).
You mentioned "parish" as a category you have been cleaning up. I love the idea to clean the map category by category. Currently, my favorite is “Package locker” which is relatively new and there are tons of edits to make since the location is often incorrectly added to the name and not in the “Located in” field. The catefori is all over the place. And non of there are claimed, so all my edits get approved right away.
Here Parish is also an administrative unit related to local churches, but they are not places you can go visit, so I doubt they should even be on Google Maps. And if they should be on Google Maps they should be areas and not places of interest (pins). And then this would be beyond what we as Local Guides can edit.
What are your thoughts about maybe removing Parishes from Google Maps? I’m not saying you are wrong, but I think it is worth a short discussion.
Wishing you Godspeed on your journey to the next level, i myself have been stuck in level 8 for a while now haha.
Wish i had done more contributions last year but nonetheless, on my contribution i usually focus on cleaning the maps in my locality from duplicate locations and unifying them into a single space to avoid confusion and make all reviews fall in one place.
Thanks for holding me spot for me in level 10 club .
I’ve been thinking about your question about cleaning up “parish” from Google maps and it depends probably on specific state/country. In my case, in Czechia, this places usually have their own websites and even office hours for public.
And also because category “parish” exists then I supposed it is okay to keep this POIs on Google maps .
We also having issues with “Package lockers”, same as in your case. I will try probably review this category also in upcoming months.
I believe me being sceptical about the Parish category is that all public churches in Denmark have a Parish and each Parish has no office, or staff, or opening hours that are any different from ditto for the church.
But as always there are cultural differences that should be considered thoughtfully.
Good luck with the Package lockers in your region.
my dear fellows,
.
(Central Europe) and I’m currently stuck on level 9 in this program, but level 10 is close :s.
or even in small villages. In my country, many of these places had incorrect categories on Goolge maps 
and I decided to revise them and set right category - “Fire station” 
.
). These inconspicuous places had wrong category in many cities and villages in my country. Most of them were marked as a church, which is of course incorrect. So I decided to step in and changed their category to correct one.
) by answering questions.
in Google map. Which was BTW a really big pain, look at my idea how to improve it.
emoji to highlight this fact at the first sight. Same for restrooms with 
.
what about yours?
for public.