Problems with the Road Editor. Is anyone else experiencing this?

ErmesT · November 23, 2023, 10:05pm

If you know me, you also know about my love for adding roads in Google Maps.

In addition, thanks to the campaign started by @SholaIB , on these days I am participating in the TRAC Campaign, with the aim of reducing as much as possible the amount of missing roads in Google Maps.

However, from the beginning of the campaign I am facing with a strange issue: the editor is frequently crashing when in editing mode. In fact the editor is not able to load the road layer, and the following message appear:

Oops, something went wrong! TRY AGAIN

I’ve tried with different desktop computers, and the issue appears in all of them, and it last for several hours.

The latest crash began yesterday, Thursday 22 November, at 11pm (GMT), and ended at 11am today. Then the system started working again until 7 pm, when it crashed again, and four hour later the issue is still present, as you can see from the screenshot here below

Is anyone else having the same experience?
@MarcoDavoli ?

SholaIB · November 24, 2023, 7:23am

Hello @ErmesT

Thank you for speaking up again about this. There has been a few local guides on our team facing the same issue.

Infact @MarcoDavoli has also written a post on this sometimes ago. We reckoned it’s after adding a few hundred roads or so.

I wish we can be heard on certain issues regarding drawing roads on the maps. Thank you for your participation on TRAC.

Happy guiding

Cheers

WilfriedB · November 24, 2023, 7:28am

@ErmesT I noticed a couple weeks ago, the browser needs a long time (30 minutes or longer, if I did not close the tab or browser earlier) to load the map.

It seems to me, this happens only in areas where I did edit or add several streets earlier, possibly depending on how many of those are still pending.

After a while, Firefox shows a message saying something similar to “This page slows down the browser … hold it?”. Chrome had a different behavior, but I don’t remember exactly how. I also tried Opera. All on Windows 10 22H2. I will try again later today.

Not sure, I ever saw exactly “Oops, something went wrong! TRY AGAIN”.

ErmesT · November 24, 2023, 8:00am

Thank you @SholaIB .

I hope so, the reason for writing a post is to be heard, but of course it is also to provide a consistent set of information to the team for them to be able to analyse the issue.

So it would be great if the persons that are experiencing this issue can provide some details.

In my case it doesn’t matter on which part of the world I try to makes an edit, @WilfriedB

On the next screenshot, that I took just now, I am over George Town - Tasmania , an area that I never edited.

It is 8:57 (GMT+1) and the issue is still present, after 14 hours

Lukas_B · November 24, 2023, 8:43am

Hi @ErmesT ,

We are all very familiar with this matter on the TRAC team and more specifically as Shola mentioned - Marco. He has this problem almost constantly now - almost every day aka every 24 hours. I always thought there is some kind of a buffer for pending roads that gets filled and overflows - throws that error, but who knows if its a global, local or individual thing. As mentioned on a previous similar post I also got this type of error but after about 400-550 roads - on desktop. One day I did over a 1000 roads exclusively on mobile and no error.

Hopefully as we bring more attention to this it will get fixed in the future.

ErmesT · November 24, 2023, 8:58am

Thank you so much for your feedback, @Lukas_1 .

This is very helpful!!

I’ve just made a test:

On the left this account - on the right my (not Local Guide) business (non profit) account

While my LG account show a spinning circle the one on the right, without an history of edits is working fine.

Looks like the issue increased with the addition of the pending edits (orange dotted lines). So what Maps is trying to upload is not the Map layer, it is the layer with our history of edits.

Looks like the result of this is that the more you are active the more you are slowed down.

This would explain also why on mobile (App), where the orange dotted lines are not implemented, we are not having this issue

MarcoDavoli · November 24, 2023, 2:02pm

Dear @ErmesT ,

and hello to all my TRAC friends,

I’d like to say “What a strange post !” As you know I have posted problems related to this issue twice.

This is what I can add after so many time and road added.

During this TRAC Campaign I get this error message at least every two days and last from 12/24 hours - Can image the frustration
I always had this issue specially during the TRAC campaign. Seems that we all together are creating a too high volume of request to google serves that they can not manage at the same time.
Many of us, in the TRAC forum, are effected from this
I do wrote also to the tech support but, twice, no answer from their side. This in early april and late september (?)
During the period of no TRAC campaign I keep editing / adding roads (I really do love and increase experience) I had only 1 time this error.

In addition I wold like to add that (I keep trace) from the 6th of October I have this umbers:

google mail saying “Thanks for adding roads… processing” for a total of 6342 mails… !!!
goggle approval roads for a total of 2636 roads…
So in TOTAL I missed 3706 roads.

Sorry but I have also to add that the “My contribution table” is not updated accordingly to what I receive. Just as a reference: I got approval mail for circa 4500 edits (POI) and less than half has been added to my count.

In addition to this figures we have to consider other few thousand (!!!) that went into the “Older than 3 months” and so are rejected even if many of them were ok.

When I go back to some region (I keep trace of where I have to manage other roads) I can find the new “Orange dotted lines” starting from the beginning.

In conclusion, I’ll keep editing, posting and doing what I can, BUT definitely, Google resources are not on “google maps hunters” and that is really frustrating also because if you add 1000 roads (you know well the time we all are investing) a huge quantity are not considered and went into the “older than 3 months”. Yes, I re-edit them but… times again.

Could be great if you, as a CM, could involved a GM. Maybe …

Thanks for all

Take care

Ciao

@Lukas_1 @SholaIB

ErmesT · November 24, 2023, 2:29pm

Thank you so much @MarcoDavoli for the feedback.

Yes I know that you posted twice (April and June) about the issue, but I wanted to raise it again, in the hard way, because I think that all of us were watching on the wrong direction.

Me too, at first I thought about cache, Connectivity, browsers, so I wanted to try with a FO connection, a new browser (just to make sure that the cache was totally clean) and a different computer, without any chance.

A comment on this post, thanks @Lukas_1 , addressed me on a totally different direction: the issue is related to some specific and very active account.

I started two seasons in parallel with chrome, as you can see in a reply above, for editing exactly the same location, and the issue was present only in this account.

Looks like the editor is trying to load all our pending edits in one shot, even if related to different areas, and if the number of pending edits is too big the browser is not able to add them, or something like that.

In fact in this moment I’m not able to add any road.

On the other side I’m having a quite good number of old edits approved.

As this will reduce the stack of pending edits, maybe in a few hours I will be able to contribute again and to add a few hundreds more roads.

The good thing is that in the last week the number of “not accepted” edits is lowered down a lot.

I hope that this conversation, if we are able to provide enough data, can help the team to fix the issue.

In my opinion a filter to limit the data loaded to the ones on a ray of, let say, 10 km, can help to eliminate the issue.

What do you think?

JustJake · November 24, 2023, 3:35pm

@ErmesT I’m not adding anything new that hasn’t been pointed out already, just joining the list of those impacted. I’ve encountered this situation once over the past week, and it lasted between 8-12 hours.

I think you have an interesting hypothesis regarding the Orange Line layer being the culprit. Seeing how switching to mobile gets around the issue, this suggests that we haven’t been flagged as a threat/spammer. You’d think that a known issue would get a more specific notice than ‘Oops…’ So, maybe this wonderful addition of the Orange Lines has become a hinderance and needs a little more work.

MarcoDavoli · November 24, 2023, 3:53pm

Dear @ErmesT ,

you are really welcome! Hope that our post and a detailed feedback / reply can help us and others to better understand eventual problems.

Cache, connectivity, etc…

I do remember during the first TRAC event (when I started from scratch… 0 roads - what a shame!) when I had this “Ooops” error I asked why and both @SholaIB and (not sure) @Lukas_1 pointed to problems of connectivity, cache but I was not convinced. Basing my feeling of 30 years of working on computers with a good knowledge of networking and bla bla bla.

I’m quite sure it is not and a cross test has simply demonstrate it.

My test, same of yours:

I have two different accounts and three computers (Windows and MacOs) running chrome or firefox or edge. While che errors occur it is NOT possibile to go ahead with my account. Even if you change the browser or OS or computer type or even connection type: Wi-Fi (I have a Giga connection) or Mobile (5G)

At the same time if I switch to the other account everything is perfectly working.

I would like to add a test I did:

during the “Oooops Error”, no way to edit/add road, but you can keep editing POI or doing other activities and the system will send you mail of approval. So the system is not “locked” in general is only locked in the “Edits/Add” road session.
If, in that moment, you move to a mobile or table you are able to keep editing. An this is wired! Why on the mobile/table the session is available but not on a desktop?
Tried to do a max of 10 edits/add at a time always in different country. Every 10 edits/add I was submitting than changed country and started again.
I try also two different sessions: 1 - Editing only really short roads (like connecting main roads to priva roads stopping at the entrance gate - preserve privacy) 2 - editing only really really long roads. Never less than 2-3 Km. In both cases after a couple of hours I got the error.

I do not think that a Km/Ml limit could be of any help. This due to what I wrote before: why during a desktop session if the error occur I can keep editing ONLY on a table or mobile?

At this point I really do not know what to think. Just keep go ahead and wait. I’m sure you will have opportunity to discuss this with relevant persons

So, please, update my previous list / feedback with this important last info about working on mobile or table is allowed but not on a desktop session.

Thanks for your precious time

Soon replay to the other topic you sent

Ciao

Marco

MarcoDavoli · November 24, 2023, 5:25pm

Ciao @JustJake ,

orange dotted lines could be a good point. I do also thought about it but we got that error also before the introduction of this new feature.

Even at that time, during the “Ooops” event I was able to keep working on the mobile / tablet.

We know that this feature actually is not available on mobile/tablet and, as you suggest, could be a starting point.

Anyway since the introduction of this features my “Ooops” are more or less daily…

Take care

Marco

PS. The “Ooops” stopped this morning round 9 A.M. and come back right now 18:20. Just for your information.

@ErmesT

PrasadVR · November 24, 2023, 5:36pm

@MarcoDavoli Thank you for sharing your experience. It would be greatly appreciated if you could include a link in your message for this /why during a desktop session if the error occur I can keep editing ONLY on a table or mobile?/

ErmesT · November 24, 2023, 6:44pm

@MarcoDavoli , @JustJake

We are all moving on the same direction, an for me the issue is in Loading a Layer. In the center of the screen you see the spinning circle and the text “Loading”.

As you can see in the screenshot that gives the title of the post a few orange dots are visible, so probably they are just a coincidence, or an additional amount of data added to the Road Layer, the one that we will have to edit.

If I remember correctly in a specific moment during the past months a road approved was immediately visible/editable on the road editor, even if the same road was not visible on the standard navigation layer. It was a good improvement, because it gave us the possibility to immediately append the side roads, or to complete the edit of an area, without waiting the classic two/three days for the road to be available, like it was at the beginning.

My feeling is that the “oops” message started on the same period.

Being an IT person you know better than me that everything has a limit. A limit can be Physical (the maximum amount of memory that is possible to allocate for a certain function) or defined by an engineer. The fact that the issue is impacting only a small group of extremely active LGs makes me thinking that probably no one in Google was expecting a so large amount of daily contributions by some individuals, and probably we reached the actual limit of the system.

Is it worth for Google to work on this? It depends of the total amount of daily contributions generated by the Local Guides compared with high the amount of contributions produced by a limited number of LGs.

That’s why I believe that it is important to make this small group bigger, to move the compass in the direction of the active ones.

I spent most of my time of inactivity exploring the planet, saving in a list the areas where to add roads. There is a lot of work to do, so I hope Google will consider the activity of this small group important enough to justify an investment for fixing the issue

Designer_Biswajit · November 24, 2023, 6:47pm

Hello @ErmesT

Thanks for your great post

I am also facing this problem from the beginning. I can do 70-80 road drawings every 24 hours. After that this message comes. And then no opportunity to draw the road until a certain time the next day.

Note: I have drawn around 6000+ roads so far. And 75%+ of my drawing road has been a publicist.

MarcoDavoli · November 24, 2023, 8:19pm

Ciao @ErmesT ,

I’ll involve some “heavy hunters” requesting them, and you, do a small experiment based on some assumptions we made.

We knew that “Ooops” become more (too) frequent after the introduction of the orange dotted lines
It was anyway present also before the orange dotted lines but was rare. In both cases we were able to keep doing edits on a mobile / tablet
Usually happen after 80-150 edits
After the introduction of orange dotted lines the system become really slow and, in some case, unusable. I’m referring to:
- If you edit in area where you are sure NO previous edits were done the system is really fast. I’m editing in Alaska for the first time. How fast is.
- If you edit in area full of orange lines the system is really slow / unusable. Misurata, Lybia, I’m really active there. I should have > 1000 pending orange dotted lines for that city only. Now is almost impossibile to keep editing due to the really slow refresh (I’m working from an extreme powerful mac)

EXPERIMENT

Ask to heavy “road hunters” to edit as much as we can in an area free from orange dotted line to see if and when the error occur. Then move to an high density area of orange dotted lines and do the same (even if it will be slow)

This could give us an idea if is due to a limit of the system that at the same time should “cache” our work as well as all the orange dotte lines. Maybe we can have more info about this issue to submit to some GM / Tech (you could take care of it)

POLL to be bigger

I do not know and never saw a POLL into LGC but could be interesting to ask to the community if they know this “Oooops” error

And, definitely, as I also wrote, we (I mean TRAC group) is not the priority. Even if a small group of us can create 1000 road in few days what can do 1 million people?? Maybe, as you said, the problem is of 1 person editing 100 roads and not 1Million people editing 1 road each.

At the end of the story I think that if Google has create LGC and they should also take care of us. I know that all is based on “gamification” (cfr JanVanHavre) or “be addicted” (if I’m not wrong your wrote this. But, sometimes, an answer is legitimate. Even if is “Sorry there is a buffer limit”, “cache limit” or whatever.

In any case nothing will stop us. We will just “slower” but, like water, we will arrive editing in all the countries

What do you think?

Ciao

Marco

@Lukas_1 @JustJake @Designer_Biswajit @Lukas_1

Lukas_B · November 24, 2023, 8:27pm

Hi @MarcoDavoli ,

I have basically done the experiment you’re talking about today…added over 350 roads today, about half in new small areas and the other in a big Moroccan city. No error, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten this error after about 80-150 roads. It was always over 400.

Then again I haven’t added a large number of roads in a few days, so I’d say that any kind of individual “buffer” definitely can’t be full for me.

ErmesT · November 24, 2023, 8:53pm

I’ve just added around 100 roads in Chile, @MarcoDavoli , and the system is still running, but I agree with @Lukas_1 , I never had an issue after only 100 roads. I will keep adding to see what happens.

If my theory is correct I will have to reach the limit of stacked data. Considering that the amount of approved+not accepted edits in the last two days is a bit more than 400, I’m expecting to be able to add at least the same number of roads.

Regarding the speed of the system, I’m just remembering what happened to me a couple of days ago.

A new neighborhood was completely without roads in Maps. I started my edits by attaching a new road to the existing main street.

After submitting the Edit I had a doubt, so I switched the view to default Map view instead of the Satellite view .

All the roads were on the map but the editor didn’t uploaded them.

Just thinking

JustJake · November 24, 2023, 10:13pm

I’ve given it my best shot today, @MarcoDavoli , and I can’t seem to break it. I don’t know that I have enough hours in the day to hit the kinds of numbers that the others are getting, but I found an area dense with prior edits and made about another hundred more, including road corrections, and it’s slow but not dead.

MarcoDavoli · November 25, 2023, 1:07pm

Ciao @JustJake

this morning the “Ooops” error disappear and I try to add as many roads as I can in a totally new area for me; north of Canada.

I took note of all I did an these are the results:

I add a total of 472 new roads
I received a total of 182 mail saying “Thanks for submitting…” We know that some added roads will be place in one only approval status. So some mail were referring to 5 or more roads. Other were for one one road.
While submitting one my last session (I did it every 50 roads) I was submitting my work for the 450th road added I got this message