Reviews and opinions placed inside the Q&A section

[druellan]

Hi. I'm starting to see more and more people writing reviews or opinions on the Q&A section instead of doing it on the Reviews. Pretty sure most of the time they are honest mistakes, but I'm wondering if it is OK to me to flag such things as "Off-topic", specially because other people see those and start to chain their own opinions as answers.

[PaulPavlinovich]

It is a common issue.

I think I've seen an idea for this in Idea Exchange... hunt it down and vote for it @druellan 

I usually respond to their question when its a review or statement with instructions on how to leave a review. 

I'm boggled by the level of lazy/stupid with some people who use Maps - I recently answered a question about "are there hotels near station X" - well all they had to do was look on the Map to see plenty of them.

[KatyaL]

Hi @druellan,

Thanks for sharing your experience in the community. I'd suggest you submit a feedback through the below steps: 

- Open Google Maps and make sure you’re signed in.

- On the top left, click the Menu 

- Click Send feedback. (If you're using Maps in Lite mode, you’ll see Send general feedback.

- Select Your opinions about Maps.

I hope this will help you.

[druellan]

@PaulPavlinovichupvote or downvote might be a good idea, but I'm more towards the idea of just flag them. A statement or a review on the Q&A section seems pretty much off-topic to me, and we have an "off-topic" category to select as a reason for flag content. I'm just trying to validate I'm not being too drastic with this 😄

[druellan]

@KatyaLthanks for the answer, but my intention was to start a small discussion about this, perhaps in the end we can have some kind of feedback to provide to the team, but in the meantime it is just me asking silly questions 😄

Thanks again!

[KatyaL]

Hi @druellan,

Thanks for your reply! I'm glad you are interested in such discussions 🙂

If you ever have questions or just want to learn more about the Local Guides program, you can visit the Help Desk and search the community to find what others have already shared.

[PaulPavlinovich]

That is an acceptable approach @druellan you're right that flagging off topic is exactly for that. I try to educate Maps users when possible. I have no idea if it does any good.

[druellan]

@PaulPavlinovich   Well, if you reply on the Q&A section you are contributing to the offtopic. That might be OK if the OP reads your message and deletes the post (plus, you contributed to educate an user and improve the system) but otherwise you need to keep track of your replies to make sure the post get actually removed. I don't recommend anyone to invest so much time into this, even when I think it is a very nice gesture from your part 😄

[PaulPavlinovich]

Hi @druellan my preference is to educate not silence someone who uses the system in unintended ways. It is most likely that they're trying to do the right thing, they just don't understand what to do. It's similar to helping people on Connect.