A class of media contributed on Maps by many Local Guides is 360 Spheres and they have been mentioned many times over the past 3+ years in discussions on the Top100 leaderboard posts and very recently by @nigelfreeney in his comment on the August Star Photos Leaderboards post. 360 Spheres were also recently mentioned in discussions with @LudwigGermany and @AT_Rome. At the suggestion of these Local Guides, this post is about 360 Spheres and in particular, it aims to showcase the best of these, those having the most views which for convenience we call Star 360 Spheres. The post completes the triad and compliments the posts on star photos and star videos.
Join in, Share and Learn
If you have contributed 360 Spheres on Maps, then you can join in and share and learn. It’s simple to do. Just hit this link and register or if you want to know more then see this How-to post by @AZ_2021. By sharing our contributions and achievements we can learn a lot about how to improve and achieve even better outcomes in terms of the impact that our Maps contributions have on our communities. We have been doing this successfully with photos for the past few years and more recently we started doing this with video. Now we can do the same with 360 Spheres.
How to Read the Star 360 Spheres leaderboards (September 2023)
Briefly, this is what you need to know about the leaderboards in this post. For more details see the leaderboard documentation:
The leaderboards in this post present details about the star 360 spheres of participating Local Guides from all over the world. If you have contributed 360 spheres on Maps then you will also have a star, it’s your 360 sphere that has the most views.
As well as an overall leaderboard, in time you will see leaderboards for different Local Guide levels which provide you with direct comparisons of your star 360 spheres’ performance with those of your peers. Finally, there’s a leaderboard ranking the top 100 star spheres by average star views per day which gives an indication on how good your star 360 sphere is. To be included in this leaderboard, you must have updated your star spheres’ views in the period since the date of the last average star 360 spheres per day leaderboard as posted here on Connect last month.
The average star views per day is calculated by dividing the star views by the life of the star 360 sphere expressed in days. The life of the star 360 sphere is equal to the number of days between when you first uploaded your star 360 sphere on Maps and the date that you last updated its star views and thus, will be different for each participating Local Guide. Therefore, for accuracy of the information it is important that you enter the correct dates. When it comes to the date that you last updated the star views, point #2 above is very important.
As well as the star views and the date uploaded onto Maps, each listing on the leaderboards shows the Maps Category, and a description (e.g. Storefront, Building or Park) of the respective Local Guide’s star 360s.
If the Maps Category of a star 360 sphere is shown as a link and if the name of the relevant Place of Interest was provided by the respective Local Guide, then hovering over that link will show you the name of the place and selecting that link will take you to a screenshot with details of that place as stored on the Local Guides, 2023 Star 360 sphere post, a “photo album” if you will, of star 360 spheres.
If the Maps Category of a star 360s is shown on a colored background then that star has been selected as one of the best that meets the formatting requirements as specified in the Local Guides, 2023 Star 360 Spheres album post. Select that star’s category and see why it has been rated as one of the best and read more about that star on the “360s album” post.
Selecting any of the Connect Usernames will take you to that Local Guide’s Connect Profile.
Preceding some of the leaderboards, you may see a number of featured star 360s. If so, these are a selection from those that best meet the requirements as detailed in the Star 360s album post.
Where shown, around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this is the first time that the Local Guide has participated on the Top 100 Local Guides leaderboards.
Where shown, ( ) around leaderboard sequence numbers indicate that this Local Guide levelled up/down onto this leaderboard.
An asterisk (*) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Connect Moderator.
Double asterisks (**) shown after a Connect Username indicates that that Local Guide is a Googler.
A ? or the words “Not set” in a cell indicates that the respective value cannot be determined or hasn’t been provided by or for the respective Local Guide.
Local Guides included on the leaderboards must check their entries for any errors. If you should find any errors or omissions, please add the details in a comment on this post. Regarding omissions, please note point 13 above.
Encouraged by @Kumaarsantosh in his comment earlier today, this post is a modest beginning on leaderboards of star 360 spheres. My hope is that it will grow and become a useful place of sharing and learning how we can improve on the quality and impact of this class of contributions on Maps.
I had actually hoped to post this much earlier in the month however, with the release of the first video leaderboards on September 15 and the need to integrate them as well as the new 360 spheres leaderboards with both the Country and Movers & Shakers leaderboards, time just did not allow for this. Believe me producing the individual leaderboards is one thing but then to integrate these with both the Country and Movers & Shakers leaderboards is just another level of complexity, but we’ll give it a go.
So tomorrow I will start that integration and if all goes well then I will post updated Country leaderboards for September. Of course until we have a second month of data, we won’t see the star video and star 360 spheres in the Movers & Shakers leaderboards, but having said that, the October leaderboards are only a few days away now so I’ll work on the integration and you all update your data and be ready for this.
No competition from me here, but I’ll probably look each month when I’m checking the other boards.
Not sure if this is an error @AdamGT , but I see your name on the Top 100 Star 360s Average Views/Day Leaderboard (September 2023) while I see @AT_Rome is on the Overall Top 100 Star 360s Leaderboard (September 2023). Each of you two is on one board and missing from the other. This doesn’t seem correct to me.
You’re probably right in noticing an anomaly in the “Top 100 Star 360s Average Views/Day Leaderboard” regarding the absence of my name, @tony_b , but you have to consider that this is the first month the data has been entered, and in the first insertion probably not all the necessary information was present (I still updated the information at the end of the month, as usual). @AdamGT will certainly check, and in any case I must admit that he still does an excellent job!
Thanks for checking @tony_b . I certainly shouldn’t be on the 360s boards other than when I was initially testing, but will need to check about @AT_Rome . Thanks again for checking which of course is always needed.
Thank you @Kumaarsantosh and @AT_Rome for your appreciation. I would have thought that you should be in both the inaugural 360s leaderboards Alex so I will certainly check this later today.
A bit of detective work here has uncovered the reason why Alex you were omitted from the inaugural September Star 360s Average Views/Day Leaderboard. On September 5, Alex you entered May 7, 2017 for both the screenshot/star views date and the star date! As pointed out in note #3 of the readme:
"The average star views per day is calculated by dividing the star views by the life of the star 360 sphere expressed in days. The life of the star 360 sphere is equal to the number of days between when you first uploaded your star 360 sphere on Maps and the date that you last updated its star views…"
Therefore, given that you entered the same date for both the star date and star views date, this resulted in you star 360s having an indeterminable average views per day.
Given that this is the inaugural 360s leaderboards, I’ve now corrected the data error and reposted an updated Average Views/Day leaderboard.
ps: I thought I’d best check, and yes you’ve got it right this month Alex
Yes @AT_Rome I agree @AdamGT does an excellent job. He’s aware that I do a lot of checking, and my comment wasn’t a criticism of flaws, but just a routine highlighting of issues as I pick up on them. Glad to see it’s all resolved now.
@AdamGT , you are better than Sherlock Holmes!
Thank you for the precise reconstruction of the facts: this is actually a rather busy period for me, and unfortunately I have not paid the necessary attention to recording the information.
The mistake I made in double recording the date of acquisition of the 360s star photo at the beginning of September (which occurred despite always trying to double-check the information entered), is a warning for me to commit myself to paying even more attention in the future.
Thanks again to the precious @AdamGT , and thanks also to the excellent @tony_b !
Greetings to all LG
I’m pleased that @tony_b picked the error up and that now your 360s history @AT_Rome will be correct from day one. This way all your T100 tables and charts, when they are eventually added, will be correct.
