Some thoughts I’ve had about place updates, and how to get through them efficiently.
If you’re the local AM, and you care about Places being accurate and useful, then by all means take the time to check and research their details to get them right. This is easy to do if you only have a few pop up every week.
However, in areas with large numbers of Place Updates, it is impractical to check up on every single one. I’m of the mind that if a place is submitted with incorrect details and then approved by an editor, someone else will eventually spot it and submit a correction. That’s how crowd sourcing works!
Look out for these different types of Place Updates (identifiable by the title of popup)
New Place - adding a new place to the map (Approve button changes to “Add to map”)
- These are worth paying attention to, as the user is attempting to add some real value.
- Quickly check that the location, name and street look vaguely reasonable. If not, reject!
- Often, a new place is immediately followed by a new picture. That picture should be of the front of the building. If it’s a picture down street or from far away, then the location is likely to be inaccurate.
- If you accepted the new place, but then decided the photo was from too far away, press undo to un-accept that addition, then reject them both.
- Check that the place isn’t already on the map (avoid duplicates)
New Picture - this is an existing place where someone has submitted a picture.
- If it’s half-decent, then accept it. If not, reject it without hesitation and move on.
- Ideally it should show the front of the building, and not just the sign or the street in front.
- If you’re feeling particularly meticulous, open up the details of the place and look through the other photos that have been submitted and delete all but 1 or 2 of the best ones.
New details for place - updating an existing place
- Fairly straight-forward, it’s pretty obvious when the user has submitted garbage.
- Watch out for users submitting completely different data, because they’ve selected the wrong place.
Flagged Place - an existing place has been flagged with a reason
- Most often a petrol station that has been closed, this one is more like a UR and does need a certain amount of validation. Check against StreetView to begin with, and then look elsewhere to determine what needs fixing.
Importance of a Place - you can judge the importance of a place by how many ‘members of the public’ are likely to visit it. Superstores, train stations and museums would generally attract a lot of people, and so should have reasonably accurate details where possible. Shops, pubs and restaurants too. The more obscure categories such as government offices or prison would be less important. Use your own judgement.
Residences - these are the least value to users in general, and deserve the minimum amount of time spent on them. If all the details are present, and the photo is good quality and taken from the front of the house, then it’s probably correct and can be accepted. Any update that is going to require any effort to fix probably is not worth it.
(I used to also add the house number to the street as well, but that takes up even more time)
Offices - these are slightly more valuable than residences, but not a lot. They should at least have a sensible looking name, and address. Be wary of attempts to submit advertisements.
Rivers - no one needs a picture of a river, and I’ve not seen anyone submit a decent one yet. Just sayin’.
If you feel the Place Update is mostly good but needs a few tweaks, then accept it and immediately press Save (not Next). You can then select the Place and fix whatever needs fixing. If the details for a new place were good, but the photo was rubbish, you could go delete the photo at this point.
Locking a place (2+) forces all future updates for it to be verified by an editor.
:ugeek:
