The Points, Photo Views and Star Photos leaderboards regularly posted here on Connect, each look at a specific but different aspect of our Maps contributions. Based on various metrics, including the number of points and the number of photo views, the participants on these leaderboards are listed without giving any consideration to their respective country location. In this way, Local Guides in say a smaller country such as Cameroon, Nepal, Rwanda, or one where there are significantly less Local Guiding opportunities, would have less chance of gaining enough points or photo views than those in larger countries such as the United States, Canada, France or UK. It therefore follows that Local Guides in these smaller countries have less chance of getting onto the Points, Photo Views and Star Photos leaderboards. And this is where the leaderboards in this Country by Country post are different.
The leaderboards in this post look at the Local Guide points and photo views but do take into account the country location of the participating Local Guides and in this way, these country by country leaderboards give Local Guides from even the smallest countries recognition and an opportunity to be listed, and you will see many are. Let’s show our support for these awesome Local Guides and if you wish to participate then hit this link. If you missed last month’s Country by Country leaderboards then hit this link.
Edited (7 September, 2022)
As described above, this post specifically focuses on country by country Local Guide Maps contributions and each of the leaderboards in the post feature the different flags of each of the countries from which the participating Local Guides are located. To symbolize this, I decided that this month I would open the post with an image with a country flag and after some thought, I decided to feature the Bulgarian flag. Now let me explain why.
Some years ago I visited Romania and after this, my plan was to visit Bulgaria, and in particular the ancient city of Plovdiv, located in southern Bulgaria. It’s not far from the capital Sofia and in 2019 was named the European Capital of Culture. It is also a place of historical significance as it was where, in 1885, Bulgarian unification was declared. I thought that this was the perfect time to visit Bulgaria as itwas about to celebrate its Unification Day, on 6th September and the anniversary is celebrated with ceremonies, festivals, parades, exhibitions, and performances across the country and many places including museums (like the cultural Ethnographic Museum and the historic Archaeological museum in Plovdiv) would offer free entry 
Perfect I thought! However, unfortunately,because I had spent much more time than I had planned to in Romania, I didn’t make it to Bulgaria.
So this month, when I wanted to feature a flag as a cover image for this Country focused post, I chose the Bulgarian flag because it coincided the country’s Unification Day coincided with my date of posting of the set of country by country leaderboards. When I first posted this post, Ididn’t want to mention the reason why I chose the Bulgarian flag as I wanted to see if anyone would pick up on why I chose it. Well I’m so excited to say that @mockata2 , a Local Guide from Bulgaria spotted the post (see his comment here) and hit on the reason why I did choose the Bulgarian flag as my cover image.
Yes this is very much a Local story that will be of interest to many of us.
Wishing all our Bulgarian Local Guides the happiest Unification Day.
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I knew I was not catching up when you passed me a few months back, so I’m just happy to be keeping up and holding tight at 