Marking building outlines for features

[Ryan Rosser]

I want to complain about building outlines a little bit. It seems to be a feature that's really misleading when you're using Map Maker. Whenever you're adding a point you always get the option to add a building outline, right? Makes sense. It's really easy to do and adds some detail to the map. But building features are treated completely differently when it comes to Places (erm, sorry, Google+ Local) and most of their details never show through. Not to mention they don't show up on searches.

Let's take this feature I added when I started mapping things a really long time ago:

http://goo.gl/JeGVH

It's a little restaurant. Looking at the Map Maker entry it's perfectly fine. When you search for it in Maps, however, you cannot find this feature. The search ignores it. Instead you get the bot-added POI only that was added afterwards: http://goo.gl/maps/ObmI

If you play around enough you can get the building feature as an old Places page, but it contains barely any details: http://goo.gl/maps/5UwN

Most of this isn't news for people. It's common knowledge on the forum that the best way to map a business is to do an unmarked building + a POI or maybe a boundary for some features. But there is nothing to tell that to a new mapper. Because mapping a building with details is technically correct, as far as Map Maker is concerned, Google Reviewers and RERs will approve them, but it probably shouldn't be that way.

I would even go so far as to suggest that you shouldn't be able to create building outlines for some categories. You could really limit marking creating building outlines to Building, Apartment Building, Townhouse Complex, and maybe School and Hospital.

Or Map Maker could automatically do what we all do anyway - when, say, a Restaurant is created with a building outline it could just create the two features automatically: the POI for Local and the building for Maps.

I think doing something about this could help improve the quality of both Maps and Local.

[DdDave]

I agree with all of your points.

If we could at least get the ability to remove the boundary from a POI, when a new mapper does create a boundary we could go back in afterwards and remove it and add a generic building in it's place.

As you mention, it would at least help if Google could make the official policy change to not allow business details to be in the building polygon but only allow POIs.  No programming changes are required, and it could be implemented immediately.

As for allowing certain categories, I would tend to argue that all buildings should be generic.  Even schools are better mapped with a school parent boundary that includes the generic building, playgrounds, sports fields, etc... so the entire area renders in the correct tan colour.

[fhdogs]

I strongly agree with DdDave,

Buildings should always, and only be allowed as generic features. Then they wouldn't need to be a part of Places.

[Ryan Rosser]

I am inclined to agree with you. Either way it would be a much better system we have than now - where GR's just go ahead and approve them and then the business listing is useless.

[Willy Hrachovina]

I am glad that I am not the only one frustrated with this. I just had a new user go through and add a building polygon to a lot of POIs. I think I will refer them to this thread to explain why the accepted policy is to not mark specific business details with a building polygon, and that they should be generic in nature. I am glad you brought this up, Ryan, it will help me with some reviews I have to make.

[Flash]

I just added Issue 2820, please star and vote.