As I wrote in my previous post, a few days ago there was an important change in the Road Editor for Desktop: Submitted by Someone Else.
For further details, I refer you to the aforementioned post, but to summarize, currently pending edits made by others are also displayed in the editor.
Pros: this allows us not to waste our time, avoiding overlapping our edits with those already made.
Cons: When there are many pending edits made by others, loading the page can take a few minutes
I spent some time experimenting with it and eventually discovered some other changes related to the display of pending edits:
- The orange dotted lines can now be clicked with the mouse. When we click on it all the lines connected to the edit become blue. This allows us to understand the size of the edit, and by observing it we can draw conclusions which I will talk about later.
- When a pending edit is selected (blue dotted lines) in the left part of the editor we can see all the editing actions done in that specific addition/modification of a road.
- When a pending edit made by someone else is selected, we can clearly see if it interferes with existing roads or other edits
Well, if you’ve read this far, especially if you’re a passionate Roader, now’s the time to sit down and pay attention.
Reporting a pending edit made by someone else
- When a pending edit made by someone else is selected, you can report it. Yes, you read that right: you can report it.
- What happens when you report it? “The edit will be hidden from everyone on Maps” is what the message says. In fact the selected pending edit disappears, and the editor become fast again
- Is this action reversible? Apparently not.
Well, these are the facts, and I think you can now understand the meaning of the title. The following are my considerations (no insight from Google).
Now we know: Until a few days ago we were unaware of the edits made by someone else. We obviously knew that there was a possibility that more than one person would make edits in the same roads, and maybe sometimes we even saw that our pending edits were suddenly overlapped with [approved] edits made by others. Now that we know this, we must carefully consider some things that could lead to errors.
- Let’s avoid tracing roads that intersect with pending ones. The result would be two roads that intersect without being connected. For more details you can read: Editing Roads Tips and Tricks - 1 - Bridges, Underpasses and Overpasses. The situation here is exactly the same, although one of the streets was not designed by us
- Let’s avoid trying to attach new paths to the pending ones made by someone else. They would not hook up, as mentioned in the previous point.
- Let’s be very careful if we want to report an edit as inappropriate. This is not written anywhere (I hope Google will do it soon) so at the moment I stick to the general Maps rules, which say that a user can be penalized if his contributions, including edits, are not appropriate. Therefore do not report an edit made by someone else just to make it disappear and therefore be able to add our roads in place of someone else’s. Also, don’t report an edit made by someone else just to make the editor load faster.
How I behave:
Precisely to avoid sanctions, I study the edits made by someone else and divide them into four categories:
- Correct and acceptable
- Valid but probably not acceptable
- Valid but certainly not acceptable
- Wrong or fraudulent
After evaluating them I decide how to act
Correct and acceptable
I consider correct and acceptable an edit that is simple, consistent with the roads I see with the satellite and which is not overlapped with existing roads. In this case I don’t do anything. Sometimes I don’t even realize that it is an edit made by others. Since I make a lot of them, I often think it’s made by me.
Valid but probably not acceptable
This is an edit consistent with the roads we see from the satellite, but very complex, like the one in the first image of this post. It is a type of edit like the ones I did at the beginning of the Road Editor, when a human operator evaluated them, but which are no longer approved since the preliminary evaluation was transferred to an AI. The author of those edits probably never read my post 3000+, and counting. My tips for adding roads in Google Maps. Even if in my opinion that edit will never be approved I have no reason to report it because it is technically correct
Valid but certainly not acceptable
This is an edit like the one in the previous point, technically correct. However, in this case other edits, which overlap with these, were then accepted. This makes that edit unacceptable, because it would generate overlapping duplicate roads. Below you see an example. In the right box, approved roads are highlighted overlaying the pending ones. In the left box, a small edit of mine is highlighted, added when this new improvement had not yet been activated. I reported that edit as it will never be accepted. After I reported it, it disappeared.
Wrong or fraudulent.
This is easy, these are completely senseless edits. It happened to me two or three times: long straight lines crossing the map, passing over roads, houses, villages. Senseless lines perhaps made by some gamer, which have no sense of existing and slow down the loading of the page. I report them back without hesitation. You see an example in the third image of the post, and another here below.
Thanks for reading
I hope this news is as exciting for you as it is for me, and I hope you’ll share your experience, or even just your concerns, in the responses below.
Happy Mapping
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