Notification - A new bot....that intends to help fix Map Maker - Plus Page inconsistencies

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Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 17, 2012, 12:08:10 AM7/17/12
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Hi all -

Earlier today, I posted a couple of announcements to give you all a heads up on some changes that you should see in the product. I am starting two threads in the discussion forum to enable discussions on these.

The first of these is regarding a major effort we have been working on to synchronize different data sets in our systems with the ultimate goal of data flowing between then faster, more frequently and reliably.


Please discuss any thoughts, questions, observations here.

Thanks
Jayanth, Product Manager on behalf of the Map Maker team

Andrew Sawyer

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Jul 17, 2012, 12:30:33 AM7/17/12
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Thanks for the heads-up but how will we know which Anonymous user is the bot in question? Can we have the URL for the profile so we can keep an eye on it? Otherwise this thread is going to turn into a deluge of "I think this is the bot..." and multiple URLs of suspect bots will be posted. Currently, the lack of a name/ID# and icon make it difficult to distinguish bots from editors, until they rack up thousands of edits. Hopefully this new bot will be distinguishable in some way so we can provide our local knowledge critiques of its merging.

P.S. I apparently double-posted to the wrong announcement discussion thread. My appologies for the email notification confusion. #Fail on my part

On Tuesday, July 17, 2012 12:08:10 AM UTC-4, Jayanth Mysore wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> </div>
> Earlier today, I posted a couple of announcements to give you all a heads up on some changes that you should see in the product. I am starting two threads in the discussion forum to enable discussions on these.</div>
>
> </div>
> The first of these is regarding a major effort we have been working on to synchronize different data sets in our systems with the ultimate goal of data flowing between then faster, more frequently and reliably.</div>
>
> </div>
> The announcement relating to this discussion is <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/mapyourworldcommunity/discuss?place=topic/mapmaker-announcements/BZntPihG_To" title="Notification - A new bot....that intends to help fix Map Maker - Plus Page inconsistencies" style="color:rgb(34,0,204);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.222222328186035px;line-height:13.333333969116211px" target="_blank">Notification - A new bot....that intends to help fix Map Maker - Plus Page inconsistencies</a></div>
>
> </div>
> Please discuss any thoughts, questions, observations here.</div>
>
> </div>
> Thanks</div>
> Jayanth, Product Manager on behalf of the Map Maker team</div>

Mircea (mbdroid)

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Jul 17, 2012, 5:10:27 AM7/17/12
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Hi Jayanth,

You can find on this issue's page some links to an example I've shared during the last Hangout. I reported the inconsistencies and now the new bot reverted my changes, to a bad name and a less detailed address. 

From the announcement I understand that from now on the data should be (more) consistent, right? I will correct the data once again after you confirm or contradict my understanding. 

Thanks, 
Mircea

Mircea (mbdroid)

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Jul 17, 2012, 5:16:27 AM7/17/12
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I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the issue: Issue 2936

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 17, 2012, 5:21:39 AM7/17/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Mircea (mbdroid)
First, really sorry for the reversal. 

You are correct - when you now make the change, it should stick more reliably and be consistent across Map Maker and Plus Pages. 

As the next major change, we will be reducing the time scales for this synchronization significantly. I will let you all know when that goes live as well.  All the bot has done for now is to bring all features to the same state to prepare for this big change. 

I looked up a few other such scenarios in our internal tools and have noticed that user changes to this bot's edit (luckily only a few so far) have stuck. 

Thanks for your understanding. 

- Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



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Thanks for using Google Map Maker! =)
 
 
 

Mircea Brăţan

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Jul 17, 2012, 5:37:54 AM7/17/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Jayanth Mysore
Thank you for the quick response.

Indeed, the changes successfully propagated to Places, Search and Maps immediately. 

This is a major step forward, congratulations to the team for the update.

Mircea

gzub

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Jul 17, 2012, 8:04:25 AM7/17/12
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Jayanth, 

I second Andrews comment, can we make sure the Bot has a good name so that we can understand why the edits are occurring? Am I also correct in assuming that some edits may not be according to map maker standards but are necessary to sync the two (well perhaps more than two) databases so we can move forward with less issues in the future?

Geoff

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 17, 2012, 8:08:45 AM7/17/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of gzub

Hi Geoff

This bot will get a name. I will post shortly.

Yes to your second question- you might find some deviation from map maker standards.

Thanks again for your patience
Jayanth

Thanks
Jayanth
Sent from my Android.

--

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 17, 2012, 8:40:52 AM7/17/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of gzub
Hi all -

Thanks for your patience. The bot has been named :)

It's called  "Mapmaker Syncer"

Thanks,
Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



Willy Hrachovina

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Jul 17, 2012, 11:51:21 AM7/17/12
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Jayanth,

I posted in the thread on the RER forum, but there were some errors I noticed that made the data worse:

The following are two features that the bot hit, and moved quite a bit away from their actual location.

Also, the bot changed the category of this shopping center to Tax Preparation Service:

There is a lot more than this, but this is just a sampling of what I have found. I don't want to post links to everything, but I can provide more examples if necessary.

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 17, 2012, 12:34:13 PM7/17/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Willy Hrachovina
Thanks a lot, Willy. I will forward this over to my eng team.  It will help us suitably refine the continuous synchronization process that we will launch as the next step.

You can safely edit the listings where you think you do see errors - of course, only if you are inclined. These should get reflected in the listings. If you do have concerns, start with just 1 or 2 and then proceed.

Thank you for your patience and assistance.

- Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



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Michael Delving

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Jul 18, 2012, 3:58:50 AM7/18/12
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I wondered what was going on. This bot appears to be moving some markers around within boundaries. But it apparently is programmed to override GMM and set the marker to non-GMM sources(?)

Four days ago, I changed the location of the GMM marker here at the Buchanan County Health Center. The marker previously was located in the small back parking lot. There was also a Google Plus marker located at the front of the building, along the highway, which I couldn't do anything about. I moved the GMM marker so it sat on the main building. Then I added the boundaries of the property. Mapmaker Syncbot appears to have moved the GMM marker to the highway location, and now the boundary addition apparently can't be approved. I've received a message to that effect tonight.

I also noticed the bot centering some markers in boundaries; sometimes the "center" looks totally off. Here's an example of "centering" gone wrong.

rjhintz

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Jul 18, 2012, 9:39:07 AM7/18/12
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Hi Jayanth,
  MapMaker Syncer is causing some concern with mappers outside North America who typically don't read the general forums and whose first language isn't English.  See, for example, the discussions in the Facebook Mapping in Pakistan group.

Is there some writeup of the workflow for the interaction of MapMaker and other Google products, especially if a change is made in MapMaker and not someplace else?  I believe many, perhaps most, business changes outside North America are typically made in MapMaker only.  Having them reverted by MapMaker Syncer is dissuading people from trusting the process.  

Frankly I have no idea how properly to map a business anywhere anymore.  I do it in Mapmaker and hope for the best.
--
Rich

Jabran Rafique

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Jul 18, 2012, 10:35:27 AM7/18/12
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Hi Jayanth

Adding to Richard's comments here:

It may be great to have a small toggled window in GMM which only lists the latest 4-5 announcements with link to complete announcement. It would be helpful for users who are subscribed to Announcement forum or miss it for some other reasons. Thanks.

Regards,
Jabran

Nitin Chauhan

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Jul 19, 2012, 2:47:30 AM7/19/12
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I was wondering who is this user Mapmaker Syncer after I happen to notice that s/he changed name of feature here http://goo.gl/HgkNL. I have corrected name again but now real 'Christian Cemetery' right besides it shown as Muslim Kabrastan'. This two features are mixed up in some way.

More scary if names changed by program. Hope if its program it keeps separate log of what is being changed.

Flash

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Jul 19, 2012, 4:12:17 AM7/19/12
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Nitin, it is just importing what is already on Places and thus already displaying on Maps.  There is no point keeping track of what it was in Map Maker before the changes, because that was not what was displaying in Maps and thus the new information is more valuable as it will let us see mistakes and issues, thus correcting them.  Caution must be taken with combined features, however, that you properly untangle them.

Nitin Chauhan

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Jul 19, 2012, 5:52:28 AM7/19/12
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Glad to hear its program to fix problems.
I do not know what was the problem in this particular case http://goo.gl/HgkNL,  but it added name of feature nearby (christian cemetery) which is wrong. please check if this program is not acting smarter than required :)
Also, Its strange that on GMM at zoom level 50m names of cemeteries here look alright but at 100m its wrong. so there is some problem here in data or in presentation which I guess this program found but failed to correct properly.

Drift74

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Jul 23, 2012, 4:06:26 AM7/23/12
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Hi. 

I live in Cape Town and I see this bot has changed a lot of items from good data to bad. I have tried to undo the the edits but on a lot of them I get a locality error. So the good data that has gone bad must stay. How do I fix this. I have sent feed back with no luck. Here is one of those errors http://goo.gl/R933F 

Saikrishna Arcot

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Jul 23, 2012, 7:15:31 AM7/23/12
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Technically, the bad data was already there in some database, and now that the databases are synchronized (or are being synchronized), you have a chance to get rid of the bad data and have the changes you make in Map Maker elsewhere.

Drift74

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Jul 23, 2012, 8:25:26 AM7/23/12
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Thank you for that but what about this error " The feature's address could not be validated. Please correct "Locality" and resubmitDismiss " I have it on half the edits and can't correct it. Is there away around it??

Flash

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Jul 23, 2012, 11:29:46 AM7/23/12
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That should really be broken off into it's own thread, but when you edit it, what are you doing with the locality field in the address field?

Drift74

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Jul 23, 2012, 11:46:19 AM7/23/12
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It was fine before the bot got hold of it. I just try to undo the the edit the bot did then I get stuck. Some of the things are in the same road and I can't move it. I get the locality error. Try and undo this this edit or just move it http://goo.gl/R933F Now this is the error with most of them. Do you want to break this off into a new thread??

Flash

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Jul 23, 2012, 12:22:33 PM7/23/12
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Check that the locality is right.  If it is, then when you get that error you are also given "Continue with the entered address".  Check the box and save again.  If the locality is wrong, do a new edit instead of an undo and delete the locality.

Drift74

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Jul 23, 2012, 12:33:13 PM7/23/12
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I can do what ever I want. Tick the box, change the locality, make a new edit. It either times out or just goes back to the original error. 

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 23, 2012, 12:37:06 PM7/23/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of rjhintz
Hi Richard - Sorry for the delay. I was out of the office the last few days. I will read the discussions in the Facebook page for the Pakistan group and explore what I can share. 

- Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



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Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 23, 2012, 12:41:37 PM7/23/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Jabran Rafique
Hi Jabran - This is a good suggestion and we will try to squeeze it in when we get a few cycles. I think Richard makes an additional point about shedding more clarity on what happens to data submitted via Map Maker, which seems reasonable to clarify as well. I'll have to explore and figure out a way to make that happen as well.

Thanks for your patience.

- jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



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Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 23, 2012, 12:49:09 PM7/23/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Flash
Hi Drift 74 - Apologies for the delay. I was not at work the last few days.
I will try to debug what is happening here. That error you point out bumps up my Blood Pressure as well. 

Jabran, Richard, Flash, Saikrishna - I just want to thank you all so much for helping our fellow users so much. I feel like we have a great community. Your interest genuinely motivates our extended Map Maker team at Google and me to push ourselves to be more responsive and deliver a better product to you all.


- Jayanth

Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 9:52 PM, General Map Maker on behalf of Flash <google-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Check that the locality is right.  If it is, then when you get that error you are also given "Continue with the entered address".  Check the box and save again.  If the locality is wrong, do a new edit instead of an undo and delete the locality.

--

rjhintz

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Jul 23, 2012, 2:24:57 PM7/23/12
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Hi Jayanth,
 To summarize, how does one depict a business? What are the minimum number of steps, using what tools, where "tools" are functions such as Map Maker?

Also, how to change?  How to delete?  How to report a problem?
--
Rich
Message has been deleted

MEM

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Jul 23, 2012, 4:34:24 PM7/23/12
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Jayanth,

This bot is simply terrible.  It's undone a great deal of work I've done within the past six months.  Is there any way to turn it off, or prevent it from negatively affecting any Local Page I've edited?  I have yet to see the Syncer do any good... I am in hot water right now because of this and am very upset.

-M

Drift74

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Jul 23, 2012, 4:50:31 PM7/23/12
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Hi Jayanth

Thank you for that. There are a lot of these errors in this area. Do you want a list or will they come right after you debug the area??

Regards

Drift74

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 24, 2012, 12:15:01 AM7/24/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of MEM
Hi MEM -

First sorry for this damage. The mapmaker syncer, unlike other periodic bots, will not be running over and over again. It was a one-time sync - there may be a few subsequent rounds, but at a far reduced scale to account for some race conditions/other factors in keeping two large DBs in sync. So for one, you should not have to worry about having to "stop it". It must have stopped on its own for the most part.

Secondly, as I had explained, all it has done is to synchronize information in the Map Maker DB with what the Plus Page uses. The data that resides in the latter comes from a few sources - including business owners or agencies that a business owner may use and data feeds. We have used a set of rules to make what we thought are the "most logical" decisions to make based on the attribute, source of the edit, trust worthiness of the source  - now when you consider the size of the data sets involved, no matter how sophisticated these decision engines are, there are bound to be cases when the decision made indeed does not match reality....or at least, when you try to accomplish this within a reasonable time frame, at some point it begins to look like on the margin, additional effort is unlikely to produce correspondingly better results. 

It is at that point of the optimization cycle that we said the syncer works "well enough" and ran it. I am very sorry that your edits are part of the set that have been  negatively impacted. The syncer has impacted a very large volume of edits in Map Maker, and so far, thankfully the level of regression has been controlled. I will personally monitor this thread and let my team know as I hear issues that look like symptoms of a problem.

This is one among a group of what I might call big changes we are making to get the several large data sets that Map Maker exposes to operate within the correct framework  to make map editing become more sane (first step), efficient and enjoyable. Core elements of the framework - which data sources ACROSS Google Maps (not just Map Maker users) should we trust more than whom, how to keep data sets in sync, how to increase the odds of an edit (no matter where this edit comes from) getting applied on the correct feature etc. are all getting tuned.

I feel morally comfortable telling you that things will get better and thank you for your patience.

- Jayanth


Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 2:03 AM, General Map Maker on behalf of MEM <google-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Jayanth,

This bot is simply terrible.  It's undone a great deal of work I've done within the past six months.  Is there any way to turn it off, or prevent it from negatively affecting any Local Page I've edited?  I have yet to see the Syncer do any good... I am in hot water right now because of this and am very upset.

-M


On Monday, July 16, 2012 11:08:10 PM UTC-5, Jayanth Mysore wrote:
Hi all -

Earlier today, I posted a couple of announcements to give you all a heads up on some changes that you should see in the product. I am starting two threads in the discussion forum to enable discussions on these.

The first of these is regarding a major effort we have been working on to synchronize different data sets in our systems with the ultimate goal of data flowing between then faster, more frequently and reliably.


Please discuss any thoughts, questions, observations here.

Thanks
Jayanth, Product Manager on behalf of the Map Maker team

--

gzub

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Jul 24, 2012, 8:29:27 AM7/24/12
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Jayanth, 

Now that the large "sync" is done, any subsequent changes should be directly related to a user editing their places page correct?

If that is the case, can't we have the edits that Map Maker Sync does from here on require approval?  The volume should not be that high and it will allow GRs and RERs to make sure that any changes are according to map maker standards and valid...

Also at this point would it be worth while changing the name to Google+ Local Sync so map maker users can understand the source of change from here out (assuming these are all from places -- if not I would suggest you have a separate bot for each source)

Geoff

Drift74

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Jul 24, 2012, 8:41:56 AM7/24/12
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Hi Geoff

I like that approval idea

Flash

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Jul 24, 2012, 11:16:52 AM7/24/12
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Requiring approvals makes no sense.  If you deny, then the databases remain out of sync.  That is not the goal.  If the sync happens and then you repair the POI, that repair then gets sent back to the Places database, and they are both in sync and both correct.  That is the goal.

Flash

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Jul 24, 2012, 11:26:11 AM7/24/12
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This will probably calm a few peoples fears; I didn't mention it probably just because I assumed everyone knew.  There is a backline team that normally follows around the biggest bot, the one I call the Places bot.  Just like the team that follow us around, about a week later the changes are looked at by a human and fixed up.  I've already noticed that they were assigned to follow this bot around; I've seen dozens of examples already of anonymous GRs editing POIs about 4-5 days after this bot.  Examples of their work would be that if Places had two names that got imported, overwriting what MM had, and only one was appropriate, they delete the other one.  That change then gets sent back to the Places database also and removes the name once and for all from both databases.

Drift74

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Jul 24, 2012, 4:13:50 PM7/24/12
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Hi Jayanth

Any luck with these locality errors. Must I make a list?? It's almost in every thing I try to edit now.


On Monday, 23 July 2012 18:49:09 UTC+2, Jayanth Mysore wrote:

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 25, 2012, 1:30:31 AM7/25/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Drift74
Hi Drift74 -

I did spend time with our engineers. Here's what we found. The issue that you are experiencing, it turns out is not directly because of the bot's actions. Let me explain...

The feature in question has some address components that are not visible in the Map Maker UI. In general, addresses can have a large number of components, which are needed for modelling reasons, but are rarely used in reality by people to fully specify an address. There are of course, exceptions to this rule.

The root cause of the issue here is that one of the sub-components of the address of the feature has incorrect data. When an edit to a feature that has the potential to change its address, we do an address validation check before committing it to the relevant data bases. A marker move, of course hence triggers this check. What is happening here is that the bad data (which we know NOW  to be bad), is causing the marker move to trigger a bad address warning/error (depending on the severity of the situation one of these happens).

Summary: We have some work to do here. We need to clean up the data set in select parts of ZA and in addition work out a change in our logic to potentially not trigger address validation checks when a user does not explicitly change the address. We will get to these in due course of time and update you.

Suggestion: 
- Please use the "Continue with the entered address" option that you see  at the top of the Left Hand Panel for now.

- As we fix the data issue and change our logic to be more conservative about triggering the warning message, you will find that this nuisance goes away.


Apologies again for the inconvenience. 

Thanks,
Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



Drift74

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Jul 25, 2012, 5:33:02 AM7/25/12
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Hi Jayanth

Thank you for that. I see the engineers are hard at work as it looks like all the edits I wanted to do I can now do. So they must have fixed the problem. 

Once again thank you for your help. If I come across the problem again I'll let you know.

Regards
Ivan

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 25, 2012, 6:03:48 AM7/25/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Drift74
Glad that you could complete the edits you intended to, Ivan.

Thanks,
Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



Drift74

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Jul 25, 2012, 12:02:35 PM7/25/12
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Hi Jayanth

I think I might have jumped the gun a bit. Only some of them are working and if you tick the box  "Continue with the entered address" it either times out or just goes back to the locality error. So I take it I have to wait for the engineers to do there thing.

Regards
Ivan

Jayanth Mysore

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Jul 25, 2012, 12:16:37 PM7/25/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Drift74
stay tuned...I will let you know when the underlying data gets cleaned up. 

- Jayanth
Jayanth P. Mysore | Product Manager | jay...@google.com | 



Rob

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Jul 25, 2012, 1:49:14 PM7/25/12
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I have had a pretty bad experience with this bot so far, previously thinking this bot a user spamming. The bot has changed many features, deleted category, added random categories, changed names/addresses, etc. Here are my findings, there are nearly 30:


Nitin Chauhan

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Jul 26, 2012, 9:53:21 AM7/26/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Jayanth Mysore
I hope Google puts resources in making single database for multiple
sources instead.
Message has been deleted

Michael Delving

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Jul 30, 2012, 3:19:50 PM7/30/12
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I'm not sure the best way to ensure consistency between GMM and Page Plus databases was to corrupt the GMM database with junk from Pages Plus. The bot was supposed to synch features, presumably so that duplicate features can be deleted, but how can you delete a feature that isn't selectable on Google Map Maker, like the second (incorrectly located) Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, located just southwest of here? You could delete the GMM-created feature, but then the Pages location would still be in the wrong place, and still can't be selected to modify it.

Flash

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Jul 30, 2012, 5:39:24 PM7/30/12
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That really has nothing to do with the Sync Bot.  The label of the church to which you are referring is found in Map Maker here http://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=90&cid=15120338561264524293 (let's call in POI A).  It was just hidden because it had been marked as a duplicate and has begun the merge process.

What I notice, though, is that it was created 2 years ago, and then just recently you moved the marker for the old location to this location (let's call it POI B).  If POI A was already visible and had not yet been marked as a duplicate, then you should not have moved B but rather should have marked it as closed.  If instead what had happened was that A had been created but B had been left open for the past 2 years, and it got marked as a duplicate before you moved A, then the problem there is that A should have been marked closed 2 years ago.

In any case, it is not the bot causing any issues here.

Michael Delving

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Jul 31, 2012, 12:44:39 AM7/31/12
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Thanks for the response, Flash. Speak slowly for me: I'm still a bit of a noob. :)  If POI A was hidden because it had been marked as a duplicate, how was I supposed to know that POI B wasn't the only POI for this location? If it's not a problem with the Synch Bot, as you say, then it's a problem with the logic behind the Synch Bot: low level users like me aren't even able to see everything on the map, so it's not possible to sort out what really needs to happen. Also, how are you able to see (and link to) features I can't even locate using "find near this point'? Is that one of the perks of being a Level 10? Or being an [R]? /noob

Yes, of course if I had seen that there was a feature with that name right there, I would have just moved the feature across the street. Anyone would. I certainly would not have dragged a feature from 13 blocks away. But obviously, that's not what I could see/select on my screen.

Yes, POI A should have been marked closed two years ago, but I wasn't editing GMM two years ago. I'm enjoying fixing things, but this bot just seems to complicate things.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Flash

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Jul 31, 2012, 1:02:41 AM7/31/12
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I'm not sure about your comments about the bot, as I said I've seen no evidence of it's involvement in this.

And yes, I suspected that the actual case was that the duplicate marking happened before you moved the old location.  One thing we don't have visibility to in the POI histories that I wish we did is the details of when and where the duplicate marking occured.

When things are marked as duplicates, their data is slowly merged together.  The slowness might be do to limitations, but it does allow for either items to be unmarked before the merge starts (currently only human marked ones can be unmakred) or for any bad data to be updated on the duplicate before the merge so that it doesn't bring that bad data into the POI that remains.  I like to think that the slowness is thus purposeful, if not they should make sure a grace period remains in the future.

As the merge progresses, the marked POI disappears from being visible in MM and can only be found if you know one of the URLs that point to it.  If you happened to bookmark one, you could find it again.

Another method is to construct a URL using the CID every Places entry has.  This merge is not complete, we could still see the old location in Maps, so I clicked on it, clicked on More Info to get to it's Places page, clicked on "Edit this business" to get to the community edit page for it, and then took the CID out of the resulting URL.

You then plug the CID onto the end of http://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=90&cid=

Drift74

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Jul 31, 2012, 2:48:06 AM7/31/12
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Hi Jayanth 

I've been struggling with this locality error, almost every thing I try to edit just gives me this problem ( I know you working on this). To make things worse the items that I can still move into there correct location. The Mapmaker Syncer bot just moves it back 3 days later and then I can't edit it again dew to this error http://goo.gl/ZLbrM . Things like this get me down. When are you going to turn this bot off?

rjhintz

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Aug 4, 2012, 11:20:29 AM8/4/12
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Syncer bot changed a Museum feature (actually a school) to a Mosque.  

Bots need some sort of reasonableness test, as does search.
--
Rich

Michael Delving

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Aug 6, 2012, 4:05:45 AM8/6/12
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Is there any reason this bot is still running? It's changing data back for the worse, after it's been corrected.

On July 14th, Mapmaker Syncer changed the name of Buffalo Creek Golf Course to Buffalo Creek County Park. This is not the same feature; they aren't even in the same county. I reported this issue here on July 23rd, Caboosey kindly changed it back to the correct name, and helped me fix the info. This was approved by reviewer jdh2024 on July 25th.

On July 30th, Mapmaker Syncher changed everything back to the incorrect version. I've just undone the Syncher again, but I'm wondering how many edits it's re-doing an how many times I'm going to have to undo its goofs. It appears to have done thousands of edits.

Mutant Platypus

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Aug 6, 2012, 11:52:28 PM8/6/12
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Um... I didn't read all the other posts, so I'm posting this issue:  The bot seems to be changing location markers to worse locations (i.e. a shopping center will have 15 places clustered in the same place on the same street corner).  Like it's just using address grids to position the place markers.  Here's a shopping center where it did that, and I had to fix the location markers: http://goo.gl/zCjKG

Mara Winslow

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Aug 7, 2012, 1:10:13 AM8/7/12
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I did read the other posts.  

The last time that I ran into a Syncer change here was Dated August 2nd...doesn't mean it's still not running. 

 I see that I can fix data  (in the edit) but, for example, in the edit of the South Caroliniana Library the deleted phone numbers still appear (that's the old edit that I re-edited) and VISTA LOCKSMITH, long ago deleted as spam still is printed in great big letters over an historic building, and state library and museum housed at a university. Will it ever go away?

I'm not going to list the others, it's too depressing...and this is just Columbia.  I'm also dealing with angry editors from all over the state over their ever-changing edits.



--

E Lizzle

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Aug 9, 2012, 8:45:33 AM8/9/12
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It's still running - here's an example of man vs machine on the golf course: http://goo.gl/QrQxc

-E

Willy Hrachovina

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Aug 9, 2012, 1:14:08 PM8/9/12
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That edit might be one that needs to be reported, as it seems that something in Places is being stubborn and needs intervention by the Places and/or Map Maker staff. I think they said use the Report a Problem from Maps to fix that, but it doesn't look like it can be fixed on the Map Maker end.

Jeff Dafoe

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Aug 9, 2012, 1:19:43 PM8/9/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Willy Hrachovina

I sent it over to my guide and asked him to have the Sync team look at it when they get a chance.

-E

Mara Winslow

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Aug 9, 2012, 9:40:11 PM8/9/12
to General Map Maker on behalf of Willy Hrachovina
Thanks Wiily,  I see that the name of the South Carolina State House Grounds was replaced by a Persian (Farsi?) name this afternoon by The Good 'Bot Syncer.  Since I can't read it I don't know if it's accurate...I'm pretty sure that it's not appropriate (http://goo.gl/i2u8w.  Also, there is no restaurant on the State House Grounds, but my edit is again 'pending' as it has been repeatedly for months.

E Lizzle

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Aug 10, 2012, 8:59:02 AM8/10/12
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My guide also said to use "Report a problem".  I did that but it seems weird.  The current incarnation of "Report a problem" leads you to a set of primitive editing tools, so the end result in my case is a pending edit in the MM backend.

-E
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