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Connect Moderator

Best Practice: Improve your reputation

[As an experienced Local Guide, I now sometimes come across inconsistencies or notice that errors have been made that I used to make myself when I started out. So I am publishing a few 'best practice' posts, in the hope it can help others.]

By submitting suggestions for edits, you build up a reputation in terms of certain types of edits and/or certain regions or countries. This is very important for the way the algorithms evaluating the suggested edits are taking your reputation into account: if your 'trust level' is high for specific factors, your suggestions will more easily be approved.

Let me illustrate this with some specific examples. When I came across a chain of discount supermarkets that is operational is several countries, and noticed that quite a few of them had an incorrect category (either 'grocery store' or 'supermarket' in general) I obviously had the unstoppable urge to correct this (look around a bit on this forum to find out how addictive being a local guide can be). The category edits I suggested in my own country, where I had already made loads of edits, were approved within seconds. But similar edits in a neighboring country, where I had already some, but not really a lot of approved edits, got status 'Pending'. After a while most of those 'Pendings' were approved, and since then much more of the edits I make in that country are also approved instantly.
 

Post office in my home town still named 'De Post' (Street View picture 2009)Post office in my home town still named 'De Post' (Street View picture 2009)Post office in my home town renamed to 'bpost' (Steet View picture 2017)Post office in my home town renamed to 'bpost' (Steet View picture 2017)

Another example is linked to the post offices in Belgium. A number of years ago they were renamed from 'De Post' (in the Dutch speaking part of the country) or 'La Poste' (in the French speaking part) to 'bpost' - all lower case. On Google Maps a lot of them had their name incorrectly spelled: some had 'Bpost', other 'BPost' and a few still the old name. While correcting those, the ones where I suggested to change 'Bpost' into 'bpost' were approved without a problem, but the ones with 'BPost' or the old name (so: where the suggested edit was more then simply changing the initial character from upper to lower case) went 'pending'. After a while those 'Pendings' became 'Approved' (as it happens: while I was typing these last few lines, one of them popped up as 'Approved'), and when I suggested some new 'bpost' name edits earlier this week, all of them were approved instantly, no matter what it was.

Other posts in this series:
Best Practice: Entering Opening hours
Best Practice: ALL CAPS / all lowercase
Best Practice: Correcting pin location
Best Practice: Choosing a more specific category
Best Practice: Submit changes one by one
Best Practice: Find the right zoom level
Best Practice: Reporting duplicates
Best Practice: Adding places without house number
Best Practice: Correcting errors you accidentally made
Best Practice: Filtering 'Check the facts'
Best Practice: Find the right category
Best Practice: Create on mobile / Complete on desktop

Best Practice: The best order for suggesting edits

Best Practice: Get rid of legal names

Best Practice: Attempts to add bus stop or train station

 

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don't claim any level of official endorsement

Check out LetsGuide Podcast | #LGCTM | Please always @Mention me so I see your reply
14 comments
Former Google Contributor

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Hey @JanVanHaver,

 

Thanks for taking the time to write these series and compile this list of best-practices. It very useful indeed.

Please consider reading this post before sending me a Private Message - Private Messages and Google Moderators
Connect Moderator

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Thank you @GeorgesHR for the kind words.

Check out LetsGuide Podcast | #LGCTM | Please always @Mention me so I see your reply
Level 9

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

thanks for sharing. 

Level 8

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Excellent post @JanVanHaver!

 

Also, a very clever idea to record your knowledge and super generous to share them as resources with the community.

 

I can see why you enjoy being a guide, you really do like helping people and making sure things are right!

 

Thanks again 🙂

Connect Moderator

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Thank you @Steena for the appreciation, and keep looking out for new posts... I have a few more scheduled 😀

Check out LetsGuide Podcast | #LGCTM | Please always @Mention me so I see your reply
Level 8

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

That's great to hear @JanVanHaver, I look forward to reading them and learning more!

 

 

 

(I'd love to give you a kudos for your reply but I only seem to be able to do so for original posts. Kudos to replies don't seem to "stick" for me. Any chance you know how to solve that?)

Connect Moderator

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

No, @Steena, unfortunately I have not heard of that before. Have you tried if this is the case both on your mobile device and on desktop?

Check out LetsGuide Podcast | #LGCTM | Please always @Mention me so I see your reply
Level 8

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Ah, that's a good idea @JanVanHaver. I'll check it out on my laptop later as I've only been using my phone.

 

Thanks 🙂

Level 8

Re: Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Yeah!! JanVanHaver, That was useful. Thanks for the words.

 

Mohammed Jafar Pasha