Betrayal By Google

[marcusmarcusrc]

So, I'm in DC for AAAS placement interviews. I'm looking forward to a long, intense week of talking to EPA, NSF, and DOE officials. But, to get to my subject heading: after a 2.5 hour flight delay due to lacking a stewardess (that's longer than the flight itself) I take the Metro into DC and head to my hotel.

Only to end up in a somewhat sketchy neighborhood. Eventually I figure out that I'm about 9 blocks away from where I want to be, and correct myself. Then I went back to Google Maps to see why I went wrong. And, lo and behold, when I typed in "1015 L St NW, Washington, DC" I didn't get my real hotel location, but rather the sketchy neighborhood. And then, I notice that Google has this handy "Edit: NEW!" button, and below that, in small, greyed out type "last edited by eh... on Dec 27". I go and look at the edit, and basically Mr. Eh moved the Google Maps arrow from the correct location to this new incorrect location 0.7 miles away. Worse than that, if I look for nearby hotels, it claims that my hotel is indeed right there (which I had done to double check the location the first time). (If I just look for my hotel in the DC area, I get both the correct and incorrect location).

So, while I wasn't paying attention, it seems like "Google Maps" has become "Google Wiki-Maps". Have a grudge against someone's company? Change its google maps location!

While I appreciate that wikis can be useful, I think it is rather important to note clearly any information that is user-generated so that one cannot move an address willy-nilly across town to see which clueless tourist follows it there.

Comments

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

You can't move it more than a certain distance without it taking manual approval on their end.
That said, I don't know what they do to vet the edit.
And yeah, some evidence of the change would be nice.

The edits I've made have all be for the light side of the force.