2022
- Please subscribe to this thread if you wish to be informed about our latest guidelines.
- We invite you to give feedback on our community collaboration initiative by posting in this forum thread. To flag content of any of our unofficial documents, please follow the instructions after clicking on the flag symbol on the right bottom corner of the guideline.
Introduction:
This Best Practice Program is a community collaboration project by Local Guides to promote best practice and facilitate learning opportunities.
A group of desk-researchers has spent many hours harvesting the Local Guides Connect boards, looking for those valuable tips and guidelines.
Based on our finds, we are creating a series of Unofficial Best Practice Guidelines that we share with the #LocalGuides community. We hope that our guidelines can soon be replaced by links to official Google documentation. Meanwhile, we hope to help novice members of our LG community to become more savvy in their role as Local Guide.
Our guidelines are documented on individual Google Docs. It is of course possible that despite our care and diligence, we still do get something wrong. Please flag any doubts you have, in the allocated forum.
In some cases it may not be fully clear what the best practice is, particularly when there are multiple authoritative conflicting sources. In case we are aware of this, it is clearly stated in the guideline.
Terms of Use of the Guidelines
Fellow Local Guides are invited to share our resources by linking to the original Google document.
This is VERY IMPORTANT, because changes to each document may occur any time. For example, if we share guidelines how to do a certain Map Edit, all you need is a change in the functionality of Maps and the Guidelines is no longer correct/valid. By having one controlled source document, we (the creators of the Best Practice Guidelines) or official Connect Moderators only need to make the necessary changes to the single source document.
If you were to cut and paste our guidelines, we would end up with many versions spread around the forums and it would lose its value when people find ”expired” info, or worse, they read an outdated instruction and get things wrong. So please simply link to the Google Doc of the guideline!
If the Local Guides Team decides to create a LG-Pedia, we give permission to use the content of our documents.
Flag a Wrong Guideline
If you come across one of our Best Practice Guidelines and you think that the presented information is incorrect, PLEASE follow the “flag” instructions by clicking on the link at the bottom of the Google Document.
Disclaimer
As a voluntary, community driven initiative, we can take no responsibility for any consequences related to the use of our guidelines. We contribute by sharing our guidelines, but you use them on your own accord.
If you like to give general Feedback on our Best Practice Guidelines initiative, please do so in this forum thread.
If you are interested to join our team of volunteers, please feel free to send me a Private Message.
The first unofficial Best Practice Guideline we like to share is not about contributing to Google Maps, but in fact a guideline related to the Local Guides Connect community.
Our Connect Moderators are almost all doing it and so are some of our top contributors on our Connect Boards.
Please join us in welcoming new members to our Connect community. When you open a post that was clearly written by somebody new on Connect, don't close the post after reading, but respond to there first post in a welcoming manner.
Getting a quick friendly response to your first post, can make all the difference in activating a new member to the official Local Guides Program and Connect.
Our Community Welcome Guideline
