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Comment by ilamparithi | Hacker News Reader

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ilamparithi

Another gem here :)

https://www.google.pt/maps/place/Takht+Pari+Forest/@33.50087...

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This one seems to be just from an anonymous user: https://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=66&uid=204099722752622045...

Also, this edit was already marked as spam it seems.

Do you essentially have to be a Google employee to do this? I remember a few years ago when I annotated some custom maps, but no one ever saw my annotations publicly. Also my annotations were running routes and forest trails that weren't marked on maps at the time.

I submitted a fix to google maps, where they were forcing people to detour around a perfectly straight section of rural highway because it was marked as impassable.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email ONE YEAR LATER saying "your revision has been accepted!"

I submitted a fix to google maps where a bus stop in my neighborhood was missing. About 6 months later I got an email saying "for technical reasons we cannot fix this."

All the other apps that show bus stops have the stop.

I just don't use google maps for transportation stuff. City Mapper is my goto app for that.

I wish Apple would do the obvious thing and allow 3rd party apps to send public transport data directly to the official Maps app, via a new extension point. That way, if you have the right apps, everything would always be up to date, and maybe you'd even be able to see things like real-time bus and subway markers if your public transit apps supported tracking! Google has some amazing technology, but their web-based infrastructure simply would not allow them to create a decentralized system like this — whereas it's right in Apple's wheelhouse.

like this experiment? http://vta.amigocloud.com

Yes! That's beautiful.

thank you!

It used to be that due to licensing and data pipeline issues refreshing the maps from origin sources was a huge effort and all fixes had to be submitted "upstream" for inclusion, which took forever.

Since Google switched to their own maps data sources and improved their software, inclusion time for fixes improved dramatically.

i had the same experience with two different roads in chicago area where it would avoid a simple overpass on 55, instead advising to take exit, go around in a longer route and come back to 55. Only in the east / North bound direction.

Another one in Schamburg where it thought a left turn was not allowed at a big intersection.

both were corrected on my report, but after a year or so

Just to give a different experience: a spur was recently added to a walking path near my house, bridging a stream and connecting to a road that you couldn't get to that way before. I reported it to Google (not even with coordinates, just saying there was a spur connecting to this road) and they updated it within days.

Not trying to invalidate these other experiences at all, and my own may not be representative, but apparently they can move fast at least sometimes.

I complained for years that a bunch of Seattle POIs were transposed to Kirkland. If you were on the east side of Lake Washington and asked for a route to the Seattle Federal Building, it would take you to a residential neighborhood near downtown Kirkland.

I filed that as a bug and it sat for years without correction.

Hilarious

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