How to fix incorrect mergings?

[PaulKang]

Has anyone else witnessed a listing being automatically merged with another just because the names are similar but the categories-website-hours are different?

There is (was) a long-established listing for a city park (W.C. Johnson Park) near where I live. Someone created a separate listing for the water park (splash pad) within the park called W.C. Johnson Water Spray Park.

Recently, I noticed that the water park was merged into the city park listing and has all of the previous reviews and photos. 

I went ahead and recreated the city park map listing this past week.

Is there a way to request a de-merger of the two listings instead of me having to create a new park listing?

The ”former” city park: 

https://goo.gl/maps/JQ1NYNqj3yM2

The replacement city park:

https://goo.gl/maps/i5mbrvS5QdQ2

Any suggestions?

[Flash]

Hello,

This does not sound as if it was a mistake.

A spray park within a larger park named X Park might be referred to as the X Spay Park, but in the end that is a description rather than a name.  A rule of the map are that items on the map must have proper names, not descriptions.

Another rule is that there should only be one maker per feature; that the elements of a feature do not get separate markers unless they meet the rules of a department and have a unique name.  This one would be borderline, as the fact that it has it's own hours separate from the park itself and that admission requirements are different than the park do lean it towards it being a separate department, but whomever triggered the merge likely does not know about the separate hours and admission requirements, as that is unusual for such an element, and anyone looking at it in the future wouldn't know that either.  But regardless, the name is an issue.

To explain more about the name, consider how crowded and unhelpful the map would become if included on the map were the W.C. Johnson Football Field, the W.C. Johnson Baseball Diamond, the W.C. Johnson Softball Diamond, the W.C. Johnson Women's Washrooms, the W.C. Johnson Men's Washrooms, the W.C. Johnson Concession Stand, the W.C. Johnson Parking Lot and the W.C. Johnson Walking Path that leads the W.C. Johnson Picnic Area.  And then imagine this mapping of elements continues for every feature on the map.  It might seem ridiculous, but each of those elements are mappable if they have a unique name, so that if someone was seeking the XYZ Baseball Diamond they would be able to use the map to find out it's in W.C. Johnson Park.  However, for everything else they are not mapped as separate elements as it's logical to expect to find them within the park.  Instead the categories are added as secondary categories to the park itself.  Viewing, adding and editing the secondary categories of a feature is something that we had access to, but do not currently have within Maps; however precisely auditing the categories was important at one point but had already become a lot less important before we lost access as Google now combines in all it knows about a feature from all it's other resources.

[PaulKang]

I totally get your point @Flash and agree with you on the map clutter.

However, why would the newer, less-established map listing take over the prominent one?

Thanks for reviewing my post!

Paul

[Flash · Accepted solution]

One has not taken over the other, but rather they have been merged.  You can now consider them one listing.

In reality there might be dozens of listings for this place, each created by a separate data feed, but then each merged with the other duplicates.  The goal is to get them all merged into one, and then the data feeds all feed into the one.

The solution is to correct the name so it just has the name of the master park.  All the data feeds, photos, reviews and everything else related then are part of the one feature.