Adding a Place When It Already Exists in Simplified, Uneditable Form

[BrentBarnard]

Greetings!

My hobby is putting city parks in Google Maps.  I often find situations such as this:  I want to add hours/website/telephone number to a listing.  I have everything ready.  And I find it already exists in Google Maps in a way I can't edit.  For example, I find the following location in Google Maps: Secluded Willow Park, Pflugerville, Texas.  I want to add the official website for the park, which is here.  I know the hours and the telephone number, which are here.  However, I can't edit the listing as it currently exists.  Should I simply drop all the potential improvements I could make?  That seems like a shame since I've gone to the trouble of finding the official webpage for the park.  Or should I go ahead and add the park - creating a double listing?  

[Budisoft]

@BrentBarnard

This is the park: Secluded Willow Park

You can suggest an edit to add or correcting information.

Regards

Budi

[BrentBarnard]

It doesn't give me that option:

[Budisoft]

@BrentBarnard,

you open with the link in my comment?

 

Try this link Secluded Willow Park.

Let me knows if it works

[BrentBarnard]

Oh wow!  Thanks for helping me with this specific page.  However, I encounter this problem every two or three minutes, so each time I encounter it, should I simply drop all the potential improvements I could make?  Or should I go ahead and add the park each time - creating a double listing?  Or should I contact you each time I encounter the problem?  Unfortunately, that would be a lot of work for you because I would need to contact you every few minutes.

[Budisoft]

@BrentBarnard

I am happy to help others. No need to hesitate to ask for help.

Just mention me.
Next time I will guide you to solve the problem yourself.

(but If I know how)

Regards

Budi

[ErmesT]

Hi @BrentBarnard

Welcome in here.

I'm moving your post to Mapping your world board, where our Local Guides that love mapping question will give you the correct indication.

Ermes

[BrentBarnard]

Thank you!

[Osaka78forTRUMP]

Dear @Flash, hope all's well. We were wondering this too. It seems like not all parks are the same. Can you give us direction please. Kind regards from Osaka78

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@BrentB wrote:

Greetings!

My hobby is putting city parks in Google Maps.  I often find situations such as this:  I want to add hours/website/telephone number to a listing.  I have everything ready.  And I find it already exists in Google Maps in a way I can't edit.  For example, I find the following location in Google Maps: Secluded Willow Park, Pflugerville, Texas.  I want to add the official website for the park, which is here.  I know the hours and the telephone number, which are here.  However, I can't edit the listing as it currently exists.  Should I simply drop all the potential improvements I could make?  That seems like a shame since I've gone to the trouble of finding the official webpage for the park.  Or should I go ahead and add the park - creating a double listing?  

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[Flash · Accepted solution]

Hi @BrentBarnard,

Sorry for the delay in responding to your post, I needed to discuss the situation with Google as what we used to do is no longer possible.

It helps if you can understand what is occurring, but you're also free to skip to the solution below the background information.

Background

The map consists of points and lines.  Points used to be able to have optional polygons attached to denote things like city limits, park boundaries, campuses, etc.; but it was a feature that was often used inappropriately as people would create a polygon for a small store despite directions not to do so.  There was also the problem that a polygon might outline something that remains when a business closes, thus you didn't want the polygon to disappear when the business was removed from the map.

The solution was to make most features point only (remove the polygon option) and then make separate POIs that have polygons but little other information.  The two can then be associated.  So one could then create a point POI and associate it with a polygon that had no other information.

Most polygons had a generic "Polygon" category, but some categories were duplicated between polygons and points such as parks, hospitals, etc.  The reason for this was that those particular polygons get shading rather than being invisible, such as green for parks and red for hospitals.

It sounds complex when I write it out, but it was fairly simple to do.  If you were creating a park you were to add a point POI with the Park category that had all the information.  If you wanted to indicate the boundary you wout then create a polygon with the Park category and no other information, and then associate the two.  This was communicated to all mappers when the system was started, and a bot was run that divided all existing POIs with polygons into a point POI and a nameless associated polygon.

Unfortunately, people continued to create just polygons with names.  That is what you are seeing here, polygons instead of points.  If we had the old editing tools you would be able to fix the polygon and then create a point, but that's not possible.

The Solution

In Maps we can only edit certain features, and all of those are point features.  When you come across a named polygon that won't let you enter any of the other information and that feature is one that has the option to be represented as a point feature, please:

• Create a point POI and add all the existing information to it along with the new information you wish to add.
• This will almost always be detected as a possible duplicate and be flagged for manual review.  The reviewer should see what's occuring and fix this up for you (approve your feature and edit the polygon).
• In the rare case where you manage to create a point POI even though a duplicate already exists in the form of a polygon, please then flag your creation as a duplicate to get a reviewer involved to fix the polygon for you.

This should work most of the time, but please understand that your intentions will not always be understood and thus you might have to re-attempt these steps on some features.  Please also remember that involving human reviewers means a significant delay, if you wish to fix these it will require that you are a patient individual.  Should you try all this and it does not work, please return here and create a post with the details of when you made the edits and what occured, and should this method have failed I'll then be able to escalate it.

Thank you for your work towards a better map for all!