In 2020 I was amazed to be made one of the Guiding Stars of the Local Guides community, this has encouraged me to do more in regards to keeping Maps up to date, killing spam and trying to clean up the creative and sometimes spurious efforts of small numbers of Local Guides that add new places instead of updating the real one.
This week we travelled to the regional towns of Rawson, Erica and Walhalla. The clean up effort started during trip planning, when I discovered an enterprising Local Guide had made their own town, which has since been deleted to clean Maps.
On arrival I discovered more interesting things and put in a number of edits alongside my usual photographic and review contributions. Some of them were applied and some where not, for the ones that were not, this isn’t the end of the story because I’ve submitted them for consideration on the Maps Help Community where hopefully the stubborn ones can be corrected :).
I updated several businesses that were marked open or closed incorrectly based on signage and other evidence.
I also added some businesses that were not on Maps and now are.
An example new business is Spuds where the local farmer retails some of the farm produce through a roadside “pick your own farm produce” stand https://goo.gl/maps/HsWPstk2JJa438Rx8 people like this really deserve our help because farmers are invariably struggling - more so currently because the seasonal back packers are not available to work.
The potatoes were quite amazing, lovely tasty skin and soft and creamy inside - almost like they were mashed. We roasted them for lunch. We’ve bought heaps more to bring home.
I found a convenience store (that wasn’t very convenient as it turns out) that wasn’t on Maps at all, this little regional business needs Maps exposure to bring in some sales and help them turn around the failing business. I think they need to turn around their own business skills and opportunities as well - it wasn’t an amazing experience but that is all the more reason to help them.
There is more to the story of this one, because two other separate businesses that actually are on Maps (the post office and the local heating gas dealer) are located inside this Mini Mart so once this new entry becomes searchable in a few days I will update the others to show they are inside which will help those customers find them. I’m sure the locals know where both of them are, its a small town, but it will help others coming to town. There is a huge holiday influx into this area both during winter ski and summer hike, paddle and 4wd/4x4 seasons.
Additionally I took a look at the attributes of places we visited and adjusted things like payment methods, ordering methods, accessibility, LGBTQI friendliness and other attributes applicable to the place.
So next time you’re travelling and you find wrong information in Maps, be a star and fix it and you never know what 2021 might bring you.
Paul
