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Comment by _wp3r | Hacker News Reader

If you have ever used mapmaker, and attempted to update/modify POI and roads, then you will be aware of the strange and unvalidated process of accepting and denying changes to Gmaps.

There are more than a couple bad actors that are Approved Google map moderators. I am not sure if their collective actions for denying and modifying changes are a net good or net positive. It has always seemed strange that someone from Washington state can deny a detailed and documented road/POI change in Florida.

I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.

Sorry if this is a tad off topic.

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Out of curiosity, have you tried OpenStreetMap? You get the same enjoyment of editing without the "random/poisonous moderation process", plus the data you contribute is open, rather than private property.

Do you know what OpenStreetMap has done to avoid the toxic editing community? Wikipedia also has a problem with a toxic community; are they doing something different?

Not so much what OpenStreetMap has done, but simply due to the nature of the project one big difference is, that OSM maps what is on the ground. So there isn't going to be a discussion if that river is relevant or not, if there is a river you map it. Other things like opening hours here are usually also easy to verify, IF you do so. So it will be more if it belongs into the database or not, but even if it doesn't there is often no big harm if tags aren't misused.

And then there are Quality assurance tools: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance

Right now most of them are more geared toward detecting accidental errors, but it is pretty safe to say that once OSM becomes more popular there will also be tools optimized to detect vandalism.

I also feel like it's a lot easier to get in touch with the community, at least here in Germany: http://www.openstreetmap.de/community.html I actually still haven't found a simple German Wikipedia Forum where I could just discuss a page, which is something that really helps new users.

Someone started creating fake business listings on fake side-streets with the names of major intersections throughout my city about a year ago. So if you searched for directions to something like "Main and 1st" you'd get redirected to someone's backyard several miles away.

Reporting it when it first started happening led to nothing but rejections and it's only in the last month or so that some of the listings are finally being purged.

If they can't be bothered to take reports seriously when they're verifiable through authoritative sources (or heck, streetview) then it seems like a hopeless case for small businesses.

>I really enjoy editing/contributing to Gmaps, but the seemingly random/poisonous moderation process in that ecosystem is a huge turn off.

Sounds exactly what has happened to Wikipedia and Reddit--a small number of power users finding ways to exploit platforms for personal gain.

Less of a problem than described in this article, and now fixed, but rather incongruous nonetheless: a couple of years ago (as far as I could make out) Google maps editing was available in some territories and not in others.

Consequently the various colleges and attractions of Oxford, UK were labelled in Japanese (and some of them in the wrong place) even when viewed from Google UK and/or in the UK, because Japanese tourists and tourist companies could edit the maps and users in the UK couldn't edit them back.

I tried to do this for my apartment complex. I kept getting fed up when people would approve my road additions, but not subtractions - and how difficult it was to change structure shapes and roads.

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