Starting today I noticed that the emails relating to our edits have changed.
The change is substantial, and does not only concern the graphics, but also the texts of the emails.
Personally I like some things, others I don’t, but I’d like to hear what you think.
I haven’t managed to collect all the screenshots yet, but starting from the ones I have I think we can start to make some evaluations.
In the screenshot above we see the first part of the email we receive when we send an edit.
Layout:
The new email is more compact, the useless graphics at the top have disappeared. For me this is
Old: Your suggestion is being reviewed. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. We’ll let you know once the changes are published
New: Edits are checked for accuracy by our moderation system before being published. Timelines can vary. You can track the status of your edit anytime in Edits.
Reference to the type of edit:
Old: The type, date and status of the edit were mentioned. E.g. “Road is missing - Edited on Jun 30, 2024 · In review”
New: Only the date and status of the edit are mentioned. E.g. “Edited Jul 1, 2024 · Pending”
Status of the edit:
Old:In Review
New:Pending
Links in the email:
Old: See your contributions
New: View edit
As you can see we went from “your contributions” (plural) to View edit (singular). For a moment I thought that the link might finally lead to the specific edit, but no! To my great disappointment we continue to go to our contributions page, exactly as before.
Old: Published: Your correction to the Google road network
New: Your road edit was accepted
Email header:
Old: Your update has been published
New: We’ve accepted your edit
Email text:
Old: Thank you for improving Google Maps! Your insights make it a better, more useful map for everyone.
New: Edits may take 24 hours before appearing on Google. You can track the status of your edit anytime in Edits.
Reference to the type of edit:
Old: The type, date and status of the edit were mentioned. E.g. “Road is missing - Edited on Jun 30, 2024 · Published”
New: Only the date and status of the edit are mentioned. E.g. “Edited Jul 1, 2024 · Accepted”
Status of the edit:
Old:Published
New:Accepted
Links in the email:
Old: See your contributions
New: View edit
As I said above we went from “your contributions” (plural) to View edit (singular). Bot the link is sending to our edit list in Maps, not to that specific edit.
PLACE EDITS: Structure and text are almost identical to the ones showed above.
The bad news IMHO:
Also in place edits the link to the contribution is changed, so that now when you click on View edit you are moved our edit list in Maps, while before we were addressed to that specific listing.
EDIT: The location of the edited road is no longer mentioned (as mentioned by @WilfriedB - Thanks)
The world “thank you” seems to be almost disappeared for the message. I know, it is a small detail, but we are all volunteers, so …
I agree with you just different wording, but no essential improvements and “View edit” is even misleading, unless they will use a different link eventually. Correct, no “thank you” at, but again, just words.
Watching my mails, I can see the change happened between June 20 and June 21, but at the time I didn’t even consciously notice it.
One more bade news:
In the past, the subject contained a name of the road to be edited, e.g. "Vielen Dank für deine Meldung zu einem Problem in der Nähe von Via Felice Maritano, 13 ", now, it only says “Deine Bearbeitung einer Straße wird überprüft” … where?
I already saw this changes a couple of weeks ago posted in the TRAC group but, as you Ermes, I started receiving this new layout only this morning.
I do hope that this can bring some changing but, for what I saw, is is just a “text restyling”.
This for both “We’re checking your edit” and “We’ve accepted your edit”.
Actually I have received this only for the edit I’m doing in english. For the other languages (I do edits in 5 different languages) are stil in the old style.
Happy to see that the team is always working on GMAPS and I’m still confident that in a close future they will also bring some modification that can be useful to us roaders.
Much to my dismay, this update came to Arizona last night, @ErmesT . I know it’s a very small demographic, but there are some data-focused LGs that used the information in the emails to sort, track, and measure. Now, with this generic text, the emails are essentially useless, in my opinion.
I don’t know if I’m being emailed about a road addition, removal, or adjustment. I have specific filters set up in my email account to separate these messages. Moreover, I’ve been testing a great tracking program that uses the specific text within the emails to parse out different data measurements. This tool is now dead since the emails do not provide any info. ( @Rednewt74 )
The link is also of no use, as you’ve mentioned. What’s more, since the map no longer pops up a Pin when you hover over Edits in your list, it becomes nearly impossible to quickly and easily identify changes from the Edit list. Clicking on an edit and losing your place in the list is a chore. I use the ‘Find’ feature of my browser to search for ‘Not Accepted’ to review rejections, but it’s also nice to quickly see what areas were being accepted by using the Pin that would appear when hovering.
I can’t say I’ve ever even looked at the emails @ErmesT looking at the changes you show it seems to be more of an emphasis on language changes to reduce queries from end users.
The text in the email is always in English. The only difference is in the date, that is written in four different languages, as you can see in the details here below
I’m quite sure this was the scope of the change @PaulPavlinovich , but this is an email sent thousands of times every day, to thousands of users.
It is not a message between you and me.
For sure someone spent time to elaborate the new text, then to receive the approval from the Marketing and the Legal department, before to officially release the new text.
For this reason I believe that, even if I like the new structure, there are things that IMHO are totally not acceptable.
I said “things” but the correct word is “mistakes”.
Thank you, @ErmesT . I hope that Google understands the impact of this change on our user experience. I also hope @MarcoDavoli , @Lukas_1 , or @PrasadVR might jump into the comments of your Pin post to show that it’s impacting other heavy-hitting Roaders.
@ErmesT and @JustJake I noticed the change during the last 2 days as my filter no longer works. These messages land in my inbox rather than automatically going to the Roads Drawn or Roads Approved folders.
Regarding the hover action, I could never consistently get the pop-up when I put my mouse over items in the Edit list. I just click through them all in order to get back to the locations.
