After the multiple recent spam attacks hitting Google Maps, courtesy of Map Maker, a tool that allows users to edit and add to Google Maps, Map Maker will no longer be accepting any user edits.

This is unfortunate, as it is certainly a case of a few rogue users ruining it for everyone else.  The latest, and most publicized due to its nature, was a user who decided to add an image of the Android bot peeing on an Apple logo, in similar style to the often repeated Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.   At the time, Google stating it would be improving their spam detection, to help prevent these occurrences.

Google Maps edits through Map Maker was largely self-policing, requiring others to flag spam issues.  But with the Android bot addition, it was done by a high level user who had friends who also confirmed it was a valid entry, which is how it managed to go live.

The user in question was nitricboy, and he has badges for 1000 edits and 700 reviews.  But for an unknown reason, Google did not suspend his profile after the recent Android bot and another Skype logo spam edit he made.

Clearly, nitricboy has continued, as you can see he is still attempting to submit spam entries, including logos for both Facebook and Twitter.

He also added a “Lake” in the shape of a message with a thumbs down.

All of these recent spam edits have been removed.

But with all map edits needing to undergo a manual review now, the backlog of edits to be approved has been growing longer and longer, so they have decided to suspend edits starting on Tuesday, May 12th, until they have a new moderation system in place to catch spam.  They do clearly state it is only a temporary closure and it will be available again in the future, although there is no clear timeline right now.

Here is the full announcement:

Hello Mappers,

As some of you know already, we have been experiencing escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months. The most recent incident was particularly troubling and unfortunate – a strong user in our community chose to go and create a large scale prank on the Map. As a consequence, we suspended auto-approval and user moderation across the globe, till we figured out ways to add more intelligent mechanisms to prevent such incidents.

All of our edits are currently going through a manual review process.

We have been analyzing the problem and have made several changes. However, it is becoming clear that fixing some of this is actually going to take longer than a few days. As you can imagine, turning automated and user moderation off has the direct implication of very large backlogs of edits requiring manual review. This in turn means your edits will take a long time to get published.

Given the current state of the system, we have come to the conclusion that it is not fair to any of our users to let them continue to spend time editing. Every edit you make is essentially going to a backlog that is growing very fast. We believe that it is more fair to only say that if we do not have the capacity to review edits at roughly the rate they come in, we have to take a pause.

We have hence decided to temporarily disable editing across all countries starting Tuesday, May 12, 2015, till we have our moderation system back in action. This will be a temporary situation and one that we hope to come out of as soon as possible.

While this is a very difficult, short term decision, we think this will help us get to a better state faster. More importantly, we believe it is simply the right thing to do to all of you, our valued users who continue to edit with the hope that your changes might go live as fast as you’ve been used to.

Thanks,
Pavithra Kanakarajan on behalf of Google Map Maker team