Listing Profile Questions and Answers

[#1]

This section needs organising. For some profiles like City museums e.g Sagrada Familia people over the years may have posed multiple questions. However it's difficult to wade through all of these as they're in a random order.

If you receive a notification about someone who has asked a new question (because you have left a review before) but don't respond instantly its sometimes difficult later to find the latest question as for popular listing it can be lost amongst the multitude of questions.

So I've got some suggestions :

1. Question should be rearranged so they are in date order with recent first. 

2. Introduce question categories like Opening Hours, Other Operational issues, Contact Info etc

As an aside people who respond to questions should write more than a yes or no, a short sentence at the very least. That also opens up the issue of leaving one word reviews!  Surely they should be a least a sentence to gain 10 points? Many Guides get lots of points doing this adding little value with such brief comments. 

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @MarkAuchincloss 

Thanks for sharing your suggestions. Please be aware that combining more ideas into one post - like you just did - makes it impossible for us to support your proposal as we might not agree to all of them.  May I suggest that you edit your idea so it only contains ONE single idea. Feel free to add more ideas in separate posts. But also try searching before posting new ideas. This about short and worthless reviews had been addressed many times before. 

If possible, please also include some specifics on how you think the issue should be solved. 

You may like to read these tips on how best to use the Idea Exchange. 

Cheers

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hello again @MarkAuchincloss 

Are you aware that Local Guides can flag old questions as no longer relevant? 

I believe questions are sorted by date already, are they not?

Cheers

[MashaPS]

Hi @MarkAuchincloss,

Thanks for your contribution. 

Please be informed that I am going to set the status of your post to "Closed" since it consists of more than one idea.

Feel free to submit them again by including only one unique feature request in each idea post. If you have several different ideas, create an individual post on the Idea Exchange for each of them.

I just recommend you before you submit an idea to search the community. It’s possible that someone else has already submitted the same one, so you can show your support by voting for that idea. For example you can take a look at the Sorting option in Q&A section.

[MarkAuchincloss]

This section needs organising. For some profiles like City Museums e.g Sagrada Familia, people over the years may have posed multiple questions. However it's difficult to wade through all of these as they're in a random order, they're not in any date order.

And also if you receive a notification about someone who has asked a new question (because you have left a review before) but don't respond instantly it's sometimes difficult later to find the latest question as for a popular listing it can be lost amongst the multitude of questions.

So I've got some suggestions :

1. Questions should be rearranged so they are in date order with recent first. 

2. Introduce question categories like Opening Hours, Other Operational issues, Contact Info etc

@MortenCopenhagen  @MashaPS thanks for advice/suggestions etc as I'm new to this Forum.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @MarkAuchincloss,

Thanks for the tag.  Are you aware that Business owners now have access to a much better messaging system where they can interact privately with individual maps users/customers? I guess Google will promote this as a better solution compared to fixing the old setup where many if not most of the questions to local guides should have been addressed to the business owners instead.

You can read about the better service here.

So I'm afraid we will be wasting time and energy when persuing your proposal.  Sorry to be so frank. I think your proposal is well-argued and relevant if the old setup were the only one to be used in the future.

Best regards

Morten

[MarkAuchincloss]

Hi @MortenCopenhagen  thanks for the prompt response as usual. I understand what your saying but does that mean Google will be deleting Questions and Answers from Map profile? I agree about owners addressing the questions themselves but I'm afraid I've spoken to hundreds of owners including Council officers about tourist attractions and they tell me they simply don't have the time to monitor Google Maps profiles and answer questions etc. I spend alot of my time explaining the benefits of Google Maps to owners ! Hence we Google Guides have a valuable role helping to answer questions that otherwise would not receive a response. So if the feature stays it shouldn't be untouchable and many profiles are cluttered with previous, unorganised questions...

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @MarkAuchincloss

I have no official knowledge about Googles plans for the questions and answers on places. I'm just guessing, since Google never releases any info about their plans. But my best guess would be that they will be removed for the obvious reasons discussed above. 

But I surely could be wrong. So I can't really help you predicting or advising what you should do.

Your arguments are easy to understand and follow. 

Best of luck. 

[MarkAuchincloss]

@MortenCopenhagen cheers my only driving force is like you to help improve the Google Maps experience and raise its usefulness.

[MashaPS]

Hi @MarkAuchincloss,

Thanks for your contribution.

Since what you have posted is similar to your previous idea Listing Profile Questions and Answers, I am going to merge it there.

Please take some time to review the already suggested ideas on Idea exchange to prevent from posting the same. When a similar idea is posted a few times by Local Guides it will be merged to the first one. This way we keep all the votes for the same ideas in one place.

Feel free to take a look at this one here: Search and Category menu at Q&A

Thank you!