I want o switch my unofficial Local Guides communities to Official Local Guide Communities

[Tito]

How to do this?

[IlankovanT]

@Tito please check this link and the map. we can not upgrade any unofficial community to official community.

[Tito]

I checked your link, so if I uncheck unofficial communities, there are no communities at all. It this kind of mistake? Please clarify

[Amiran · Accepted solution]

Unofficial means one community is not manage by Google and appearing on the map above means that unofficial community is supported by Google and Google represent some tools for moderator not directly manage it. 

The only official community for Local Guides is Local Guides Connect, here.

[Tito]

I think few years ago were official and unofficial local guides communities. Am I wrong?

[LucioV]

Zeljko the situation is frozen at these years. The OFFICIAL communities are still the same, the count didn't grow, they added UNOFFICIAL but recognized communites to the list 😉

[iyudhi]

The term 'official' and 'unofficial' can be a bit confusing. 

At first, the communities that were considered 'official' were the ones owned by Google. These communities were hands down from the communities of selected cities all around the world when the program was still called City Expert. When Local Guides Connect was started, Google handed down the official communities ownership of those cities to the Local Guides member (mostly to the moderators), so technically at the moment there are no more 'official' communities.

But in a way, you can assume a community to be 'official' when the owner has been approved to receive moderation from Google. The way to do it is to fulfill certain requirements, submit a form, and got selected by Google. There can only be one supported community per area. For more details regarding community moderation please take a look at the following link

Community Moderator 101

[iyudhi]

@Torcida You are correct. In the end, it doesn't really matter right? A community with more members doesn't mean it's more active compared to a community with less members. It's about whether a community is active or not. Especially, right now none of the communities are owned by Google anymore.

[Cosmo]

@iyudhi I noticed that some of the "official" local guides communities do not have moderator. This do not look nice at all.

[iyudhi]

Hi @Cosmo - as of now, Connect is the only supported and official Local Guides community. Google is no longer lending support to (what used to be) the moderators that have their community supported.

For more details please take a look at the following article:

https://www.localguidesconnect.com/t5/Help-Desk/Connect-the-community-forum-for-Local-Guides/m-p/886...