Most of my contributions and reviews have been lost! Can you check my account please? Thanks.
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I can confirm from your public profile that you have added 26 reviews and only 22 of them are public.
Did I comment on your reviews earlier?
Best of luck
Morten
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Why are they not all public? Yes, I have already complained several times!
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I can not give you a straight answer, but from reviewing your public reviews your tone of voice/sentiment sounds a bit hostile now and then. That might explain parts of the problem. We can be critical - no problem. But try always to be polite and helpful and remember business owners are humans as well. Try to sound more objective and always prove you have been there by mentioning some detail about the services/product you bought.
Example: Absolut Kundenfeindlich!!! Is not a review, just your opinion.
Remember I’m only trying to help.
All the best
Morten
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I appreciate your quick reply, as always. I’m not sure how you inferred that my belief was that “former google contributor = volunteer”, after all, I did use the word “quit” which is typically the word used to indicate leaving a job, but I don’t think that’s the heart of the matter. In your reply to @PatrikChatelain you said:
“Absolut Kundenfeindlich!!! Is not a review, just your opinion.”
I’m pretty sure most everyone expects that all reviews are just those: opinions. If one of the rules of Google reviews was, “Please, no opinions, only facts” then Google reviews would not be remotely as influential as they are. Looking at the rules that given the content of what is allowed to be posted, there are lists of disallowed content, which can be summed up into 3 main categories:
-
obscene, profane, or offensive language or gestures (keep the language clean and no porn)
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illegal or depicts illegal activity (nothing against the law)
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dangerous or derogatory content (nothing that can get a person hurt or intentionally personally insulting/libelous/abusive to one or more persons in the business
There’s no provision that requires a specific tone of voice. In fact, these words appear in the google review policy for businesses, where guidance is given to when business owners should flag reviews for removal:
“Keep in mind reviews might be harsh or even unnecessarily cruel without being abusive or obscene.”
While it would certainly be nice if everyone could give criticism constructively, as long as a reviewer isn’t abusive or obscene, one can be as harsh or cruel as one desires, and it’s not against the Google review rules. It violates the Golden Rule, but the Internet is kind of a cesspool for breaking the Golden Rule, is it not? In a perfect world, those of us who have good judgment would review businesses with it, not with our emotions. But that doesn’t mean we’re required to.
And you can bet I’ll be using the expression, “Absolut Kundenfeindlich!!!” more often, especially when next my mail-in pharmacy asks me to take a survey.
-Scott
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Hi Scott, @rizzo , sorry for responding so late.
Googler employees are working for Google for a predefined period of time. This is a standard procedure, and I was sincerely surprised that they stayed so long (in the past they were in Connect for one year). This is a standard procedure. For historical record, and for understanding that a reply was given by a Googler, when they leave the community the profile is grayed, and the status become Former Google Contributors.
For me, being a Connect moderator, it is always sad when they change their job, but this is something known and part of the standard procedure. The Google Moderators are the interface between the Community and the team, so what they do in this specific case (missing reviews) is to raise the issue to the Google maps team.
Why legitimate reviews are disappearing? This is a good question, but I can only guess an answer, as I have no insight. The first thing that we have to understand is that in the world there are more than 150 million Local Guides, so it is physically impossible to have a human check of all the reviews written every day. For this reason the check is made by an AI (or an algorithm), as you can read in in Flag and fix inappropriate content: “Google uses automated spam detection measures to remove reviews that are probably spam. Although legitimate reviews are sometimes inappropriately removed, these spam prevention measures help improve people’s experiences on Google by ensuring that the reviews they see are authentic, relevant, and useful.”
The AI is evolving day by day, learning also from the reviews flagged by humans, and the ones released by humans. Even if not perfect, the AI is blocking a lot of inappropriate contents, so I guess that Google is reluctant, in therm of cost Vs benefits, to switch off the AI. I know, this is frustrating, when the review is yours (or mine, as it happened to mee too).
I don’t see this as a reason to give up, not in my case at least, even if I think that no one will be able to say “when” the issue will end.
This is not happening because you are a Local Guide, and I personally like the way you use to write your reviews. I can say that my review was a five star about the extermination camp in Aushwitz, so not even related to a business.
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Thanks.
I did a new positive review for: Ruine Dorneck
and will not be published again!
Who can help me? Its a never never ending story. No one cares about my problem and I have been waiting for so long!
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@ErmesT Thank you and @MortenCopenhagen for your thoughtful replies. As I see it, however, and I could swear I remember seeing this from a previous post, is that once a user is targeted by the AI as someone who has left a review that by algorithm either legitimately or mistakenly violates the guidelines for posting reviews, it turns that user’s posting visibility off. At this point, it’s not about the review anymore, it’s about the reviewer, and no matter what the reviewer does, no matter how genteel, factual, constructive, and inoffensive the language used from that point forward, no posts by that reviewer will see the light of day until whatever Google Maps uses to identify a falsely flagged reviewer is undone. Now you can post again until you are inappropriately flagged again. My contention is that this last step was never taken on my reviewer account - the 5 reviews were approved and visible, but that flag on me as a reviewer was never undone, and that is why I am back here asking that my reviews be released again. As a test, I made a one word review on a local business that I planned to review next. I gave it 5 stars and all I said was, “Great!” That review is not visible. There are no minimum review guidelines, you can leave 5 stars and no words if you want to and that’s completely acceptable, so unless we can find some inappropriate connotation of the word, “great” or the exclamation point that follows it, the fact that this review fails to show I think supports my assertion that it’s the reviewer that’s getting turned off - not necessarily the visibility of the reviews - although once the reviewer is turned off, the reviews are not visible as a byproduct of the reviewer being disallowed. Does that make sense? So I think this is where the effort needs to be focused, making sure that yes, the reviews are released, but also whatever is disallowing the reviewer’s reviews from being seen on the reviewer end be fixed.
And thank you for your compliments on my reviews. I enjoy writing, and when I get writer’s block on my books that I am authoring or the papers I am writing for the doctorate I am pursuing, I write reviews and it helps. And I save the vulgar ones for Yelp. Although I limit the vulgarity to one f-word per review, like a PG-13 movie 
Cheers,
Scott
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From helping other Local Guides with hidden reviews, I can confirm your theory that there is a blocking mechanism of sorts. Once you exceed the threshold your future reviews are put under extra scrutiny and they are a lot less likely to go public. I have insufficient cases to draw any conclusions on whether or when this “curse” gets lifted. I’m sorry. But maybe your case can teach us more if you don’t mind to keep checking and reporting back to us.
As you may have also figured out Googlers are not going to comment on this, so we are kind of kept in the dark. This is how Google operates in my experience. I’m saying this to recommend you don’t get your hopes for Google fixing this issue up too high. They probably will not fix this. It is a balance between keeping spammers and fake reviews at bay and on the other side accepting the fact that a few local guides get upset. They see the big picture and have a business to run. With 150+ million Local Guides a few complainers mean “nothing”.
That is my 5 cents on this.
All the best
Morten
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Hi Morten
I am happy to help troubleshoot in any way I can. My wife and son have google accounts and are non-local-guides, so I can test as an ordinary google user and see what happens there. Because @ErmesT said previously that it had nothing to do with the local guide status - but here you say “on the other side accepting the fact that a few local guides get upset.” so is this being reported only by local guides? Maybe that is the common denominator. Because before I found this local guides connect, I was searching all over the web for the solution to reviews not appearing and the link that brought me here said, “If you’re a local guide and your reviews are not visible, visit the localguidesconnect website and inquire.” I wasn’t sure if that meant reviews were hidden because i am a local guide, or that the extra scrutiny that you reference is perhaps magnified by the fact that I am a local guide, or if that’s just the place I should go to fix it because I am a local guide. But maybe I can have my son and wife do reviews and see what happens with their accounts, if they get the “curse” and how that affects them as non-local guides, in concert with whatever testing I do on my account. So, if I am reading this right, you can’t lift the curse manually? You just have to push the reviews through and hope the AI learns to play nice?
-Scott
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The spam filter is applied to all Maps users. Local Guides are a subgroup of all Maps users. Sorry if I used the words losely. There are not difference on Maps. If you get kicked out of the LG program you can still use Google Maps, and make edits etc. Only difference is that you will not be earning points and levels. So testing with your kids and wifes accounts is not really relevant here.
What we are discussing here is the concept of trust score. Itr is not a ban, but a calculated ration for each type of contributions for each Maps user. You can have amazing approval rates on editing categories of places while non of your reviews will go public.
So the testing is more aling the lines: When does the spam filter begin to let your reviews go public.
One probable startegy is also to back off and give it some time.
And I think you are right, I don’t think there is a manual overwrite button for the AI spam filer.
All the best
Morten
PS What a shame this interesting discussing is burried in the 5000+ thread 
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I can’t honestly make any speculation, @rizzo , regarding the issue, other than what I said already. Trying to do that, based on the few data that we have, would be totally useless and probably would end in some wrong conclusions. And I don’t believe in courses, not in magic.
Times ago a Local Guide wanted to share with the community the secret to have an edit approved: adding the information in a well defined sequence, adding some other app before to submit the edit, and so on, in a kind of ritual process. A few days later I discovered that he had no edits approved, and he was only receiving the standard “thank you” email that is released automatically when you submit an edit.
I was one of the first one to discover an unclear issue with my reviews. 11 of them were not visible.
At first I’ve tried a rational approach trying to edit them. The result was that all the reviews edited on mobile were made not visible. When I edited the reviews again on desktop, some of them was back, while some others were not.
So I submitted my report privately to the team (this is one of the benefits of being a Connect Moderator), trying to help them to investigate the issue. After a few days all my reviews were released, and actually this issue is no longer present on my side. Is this happenings because I am a connect moderator? For sure not, because I know about other moderators that are effected by the same issue like you are. So, there is not a kind of “trusted” profile.
“The Google Moderator are not giving more details”. Obviously they are not. As I said already, they are community experts, working on the field of communication, not programmers. They report every issue to the technical team, who do the check and release the legitimate reviews. In addition, no one will tell us the recipe for bypassing the filter, because it would be a way to open the door to the spammers, and we have already enough unfiltered spam.
An AI is an interesting subjects, because it is like an advanced spam filter, and it’s self learning through our action.
One part of the filter is quite simple (ON-OFF switch) and is filtering the most obvious issue (a link to a website, a phone number, some specific keywords), but the most evolute part is interpreting sentences. That part is learning continuosly, from different sources. Of course, by releasing a review, the team influence what the AI is learning, but it is not a simple operation.
I am helping by teaching the AI in different programs, so I know the complexities of this.
You actually have two hidden reviews, @rizzo , and the most recent visible review was added, or edited, 17 hours ago.
Please keep reporting the issue, this will help to fix it
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“What a shame this interesting discussing is buried in the 5000+ thread”
@MortenCopenhagen I could not agree more.
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@ErmesT well, I… I have no idea what to say, unless the one from 17 hours ago was approved manually, then I … don’t know. Instead of AI we should call it RI (Random Intelligence) or AR (Artificial Randomness). I feel like any minute Sheldon Cooper is going to show up on my screen and say “Bazinga!”
I guess I’ll craft a form request every time a review doesn’t show up within a couple of days, and that way it won’t seem like such a big waste of time. Thank you and @MortenCopenhagen for your help and for the great discussions.
-Scott
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É frustrante ter tanto amor por um programa e não ter suporte para resolver problemas como este.
Estou alcançando o nível 09 somente agora pois, diante de questões como esta, contribuir torna-se cada vez mais desanimador.
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@MortenCopenhagen @InaS @AngieYC
Thanks.
I did a new positive review for: Ruine Dorneck
and will not be published again!
Who can help me? Its a never never ending story. No one cares about my problem and I have been waiting for so long!
2 Likes
@MortenCopenhagen @InaS @AngieYC
Most of my contributions and reviews have been lost! Can you check my account please? Thanks.
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Euh Ina… can u stop copy pasting messages? But helping in this never ending matter. U have been awqy for more then a week…
We are not numbers, we are humans.
I asked i think 2 or 3 months ago for my first pictures! I need my pictures of my Pizza back…
Why do localguide@google not answer on cases? This are official mails!?
Can i get banned because i want my pictures back? They are no duplicates, not look alikes. They are pizza’s they are all unique!
This situation is so frustrating, never ending problem. Again 15 new reviews offline…
1 sec after my account has been checked 1ste new review turn private.
This is not normal
I want a honnest answer.
Will this review bug ever be solved? (After +2years)
Will this photo bug ever be solved?
I just want a yes or a no on this.
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Sorry, aber ich habe nun die Nase voll weitere Rezensionen für Google zu schreiben. Der Google-Algorithmus, der vorgeblich Spam und ähnliches automatisiert herausfiltern soll, erreicht meiner Meinung nach genau das Gegenteil.
Eine überaus positive Bewertung mit voller Punktzahl und kurzem Text wurde sofort veröffentlich – diese hätte von der Aufmachung her auch positiver Spam sein können. Die folgende Bewertung mit 4 Sternen, aber mit einer abschließenden kritischen Anmerkung wurde sofort ausgeblendet, obwohl keine Richtlinien dabei verletzt wurden.
Wie auch die vorherige negative Rezession, für die ich seit Monaten schon mehrfach bei verschiedenen Moderatoren um Freigabe gebeten hatte, aber nichts tut sich. Mittlerweile ist es mir egal.
Es wird ein vollkommen verzerrtes Bild der rezensierten Orte/Firmen/Unternehmen etc. durch diesen “ausgeklügelten” Algorithmus erzeugt und es ist offensichtlich, dass dadurch die noch vorhanden Rezensionen an Wert verlieren und die Google-Rezensionen insgesamt unglaubwürdig werden, wenn dem interessierten Leser großflächig erst einmal bewusst wird was da alles ausgeblendet wird. Mir ist schon klar, dass das gigantische Ausmaße hat und einzelne Moderatoren diesen Anfragen und Beschwerden nicht mehr nachkommen können.
Auch die Übersetzungsfunktion bei der Beitragserstellung hier ist einfach grauenhaft, selbst einfachste Worte werden teilw. nicht erkannt und mit unsinnigen Bezeichnungen oder Worten ersetzt.
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