A few months ago, Google was having some problems with vandalism on its Maps getting through the Map Maker auto-approval process
“We have been experiencing escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months,” Pavithra Kanakarajan, Google product manager, had said at the time.
It led to the search giant turning off the custom map editing feature, or Map Maker, back in May, but it has now announced that Google will reopen it in August.
A call for help
In a post on Google’s product forum page, Kanakarajan explained that as they open up Map Maker again, their new method of capturing vandals will be the use of volunteer moderators.
“The reason for this change is that every time we observed someone attempting to vandalize the map, many of you acted quickly to remove the offending feature and demonstrated real ownership for maps within your region,” she said.
“We have come to the conclusion that of all the defenses available to keeping our maps clean, the interest of a community of well-intentioned users, is among the most reliable and fast.”
With the new system, edits will take longer to be approved, as regional Leads will be in charge of approving the majority of edits in their region, while Google’s own moderators will jump in occasionally.
Google is hoping this will help will their vandalism issue, but only time will tell.
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