Well, to be honest 'yeah, it is broken, we know it, f-off' is the crap I was used to hearing from Apple. It is also why I have nothing to do with them after suing them (and winning) for negligence when their code crippled two devices and they refused to fix them...but I digress.
Are we supposed to assume Google is turning into the monument to arrogance that is Apple?
If people are too lazy >or< heuristic analysis is too broken not to know that 1615 SW 74th st isn't next to 1613 SW 74th st and while the latter is IN A BUILDING, the former shouldn't be shown as in an empty field, well, that speaks volumes. And when I try to fix it, to reject my request to change is to essentially call me a liar. I guarantee you have no information verifying that location is in the middle of an empty field. How do I know this? I'm the person who added the business - in the correct location - then Maps arbitrarily moved the marker to an empty field. And now when I try to change the marker to the correct location I specified when I created the maps entry, you say I don't know what I'm talking about. It is 'Conn's HomePlus', not a large infestation of Johnson grass that's feeding the local grasshoppers in an empty field.
Hell, I work for the USG. We are the model for crappy inefficiency but I bet people in the USG could get walked to the door for maintaining something >that< broken for so long.
Sorry if I seemed overly irritated but I have to deal with 8 hours a day of people claiming that fixing broken things isn't their job or is beneath their pay grade and it seems like this is exactly the same thing I typically hear.
@Jonesnco, Robert J. Hanlon famously said, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
No one is calling you a liar. We just happen to find ourselves in a situation where the software is incapable of distinguishing between productive LGs and destructive spammers. No one did this on purpose; these things happen with any complex system. And if we can get through the systematic stonewalling we see here, and get someone to admit there is a problem, chances are it will be fixed.
Not saying anyone is calling me a liar, just that some algorithm seems to determine as much and rejects the edit irrespective of other facts which would indicate my edit is likely correct (or at least more correct than the current information in Maps). I can see the information in Maps is clearly wrong but it seems any evidence that supports my edit and indicates the current information in Maps is incorrect is disregarded. I know my information is correct BUT I have no clear way to provide that conclusion or supporting evidence to the Maps systems at Google - but all this has been discussed in this thread already.
I'm starting to feel like Winston Wolf in Pulp Fiction: "I'm here to help. If my help isn't appreciated, best of luck Gentlemen." I suspect I'm not the only one.
> So don't worry if some of your edits are being denied, this happens to all the best mappers (including me)
> and as an active Local Guide you will be more sensitive to our changes but for now there's no bug, just the
> algorithm working on the backstage.
This doesn't really address the issue in this thread. It isn't that 'some of your edits' are being denied. In the case of some responses, almost ALL edits are being denied. Yes, I can make a server more secure by NOT connecting it to any network. Making Maps more correct by rejecting most if not all edits doesn't make it more accurate.
If the edit function exists in Maps and Google has documented all over the place about editing the Maps using this feature, it is expected to work within reason. When it doesn't work a large percentage of the time (for some users nearly 100% failure rate), something >is< broken. This would be analogous to Gmail suddenly letting through spam or Chrome failing to render HTML5. The difference in those examples is Google would take user input and correct the issue. In some cases, those user inputs might fall into the programs Google has set up for catching and reporting bugs. Is Maps somehow immune to such user input? This entire series of messages are attempts by users to report what clearly is a Google product not working per user expectations or the documentation Google has published on how to use it.
The point I've been trying to make it if, hypothetically, somehow One World Trade Center's marker gets moved to the center of Jamaica Bay and I try to move it to the correct location on Fulton St and the edit is rejected, something in that process is broken. I'd suspect the incorrect location had been done intentionally - but can't prove that and it is somewhat irrelevant to this discussion - and I am, more relevantly, trying to correct it. Since my marker move has final resting place is on roughly 285 Fulton St in New York City and the address of the location is 285 Fulton St in New York City, the marker location in Jamaica Bay (near NO street) should obviously be seen as suspect. Google can choose to kick that to 'Verify Information' in Maps or whatever other process(es) they want to use to verify but to arbitrarily reject the change makes no sense. What seems to be happening is Google chooses to trust the wrong information and rejects changes irrespective of other factual information (like the listed street address, etc) and either no vetting takes place or the vetting is based on incorrect information. Since the request doesn't go to 'Pending' for a week, month or whatever but it rejected IMMEDIATELY and the incorrect information is trusted and kept, this process seems broken.
Another issue in cases in which I have added a missing business, I put the marker in the correct location, Google seems to misplace/move the marker to some distance away (maybe in the middle of a highway half a block away), I try to correct the location doing a marker move and Google IMMEDIATELY rejects the information. Clearly the only information Google has is what I put in Google Maps. Yet, the information I input 5 minutes ago was valid while the information I am inputting now is so suspect it is worthy of immediate rejection. I can even go back in a week and try to correct it with immediate rejections. I've had other LGs try to correct it with immediate rejection. It is almost like the data is simply locked and no one can edit.
Not trying to ignore the main issue at hand here, but wondering about something.
Have you tried searching for the actual address of the place, without using the name of the business?
The reason I am asking is that I have been in situations where the pointer moved incorrectly. After doing this test, I concluded that after adding the missing place was added and the system found a trusted source for the address, the pointer moved to where the system´s data said the address is (incorrectly).
Personally, I am often struggling with addresses not being correct in my area. When I only use the pointer, the system deducts the address from the pointer position. But then if that address in the system does not reflect the real world and the business have the correct address on their authoritative website...then there is conflicting information.
With some places I could see that being the issue. I've seen it where Google has put non-selectable indicators on maps where a business may be from information it has probably scraped from another website however those indicators are non selectable 'ghost markers' and contain no information about the business. Basically they're just a smudge on the map. And attempts to create an actual entry in maps that can be selected and/or edited (and contain real information about the business) result in the submission being instantly rejected.
My particular issue is if I am adding a missing business that does not exist in Maps at all (neither a non editable ghost marker or any other indicator) it seems initially that Maps has absolutely no information about that business at all. When I add all of the information about the business including the actual physical address of the business, on rare occasion Google will somehow put the marker in a location other than where I selected on the map. Keep in mind I am also adding the physical address, phone number, hours, etc for that business. And on at least one occasion this marker move has ended up in a location that is not even on the street in question. There are a couple of entries I've made where I have attempted to move the marker to the correct location either immediately after adding a business or within months of adding the business and Google immediately rejects the marker move. If the business never existed in maps and I am adding the business to maps, it appears there's no other source of information about that business other than what I've added and the marker location that I've selected on the map. So your contention that the Google decision for the marker is based on incorrect information about the streets in the area is likely correct. My frustration is that since I am the only source of information at that moment for that business (and that marker), Google's decision is to reject my move is based on incorrect assumptions yet it seems there are some who will argue that this is how Maps is supposed to work. Personally I take exception to someone indicating that a mapping product should contain incorrect information based on flawed logic and have algorithms or heuristics to prevent correct information from being entered when it appears that has no information with which to make that decision other than what I have entered at that point in time. Since in both cases I am the sole source of information, it seems I go from being a reliable source to being an entirely unreliable source of information - sometimes within minutes.
Keep in mind this is a rare instance and I've only seen it happen maybe four or five times.
Today I found an example to test your theory. Google Maps has a Coinstar location listed as pretty much in the middle of a major street in my city. Fortunately it's not in the middle of the street because I would have hit it trying to drive down that street. It's actually located in a grocery store and the marker is approximately 125 m away from the correct location.
According to the Coinstar website the kiosk is located in the grocery store and lists the physical address of the grocery store. On Google Maps the grocery store marker is correct. Multiple attempts to move the Coinstar marker to the grocery store location result in an immediate rejection of the edit as changes which cannot be verified. Even the Google Maps entry for the Coinstar lists the same physical address as the grocery store yet Google Maps says it cannot verify the marker is supposed to go at the location of the physical address. I don't know how much more of a bug this can indicate in the process than what is clearly being seen. Simply, half the time Google Maps recognizes a listed, verified physical address is in the correct location and half the time Google Maps cannot recognize a listed, verified physical address is in the correct location. As a result we have markers all over the place - many of which are incorrect. And no way to actually fix the problem other than relying on users...but wait, the users can't edit the map entry because Maps reject the edits irrespective of the verified information.
@Jonesnco, the bank branch I was trying to move is showing on one side of the plaza, while the financial advisor who works in that branch is showing, correctly, on the other side, some 100m away. Of course, the bank location is included in their GMB database, while the advisor's location isn't. When I try to fix the bank location, I get instant "NOT APPLIED". When a friend with zero edits tried it, it shows as "PENDING". We'll see how that turns out.
The self-appointed "experts" here will soon tell us that I was denied because the location is covered by GMB. That's nonsense. I have corrected the location of other branches of the same bank before. If they're covered by GMB, their location will revert to the erroneous one within a few days, but my correction was never rejected until the recent bug feature improvement.
Just to check a few things, I see that Bing Maps has the marker for the Coinstar in exactly the same wrong position as Google Maps. However, Mapquest has it in the correct location (the building 120m SW of the intersection). Since it is very unlikely that MS verifies map locations using GMB entries, I have to assume Google and MS are using the same bad data to misplace the marker while Mapquest seems to have some source of good data. What that bad data is isn't something I can easily ascertain but in this case it seems to affect both. More strangely, Mapquest has the grocery in the middle of the street at the same location as MS and Google list the misplaced marker for the Coinstar while MS has the marker in for the grocery in the correct location as is Google Maps. Regardless it seems since all of them share the same physical street address, none of them clearly is using logic to associate the multiple entries in the same physical location and all of them put something in the street instead of the building.
2022
