Wiki Maps

Posted on March 24, 2008

After the order of Wikipedia, Google maps has introduced the wiki concept to its users.

You can now add businesses, landmarks, and points of interest to Google maps. When you first go to maps.google.com, you can select ‘Add a place to the map’.

Add a place

Or you can locate an existing business,etc. and edit the information given about it as well as moving the place marker to give a more accurate indication of the entrance.

Edit place

So now you can move the marker for your house from the middle of the street and place it where the actual entrance should be. Of course, you can also delete the entries for everyone else’s house.

Dealing with arbitrary or malicious changes will function much like wikipedia, a somewhat self-policing entity that depends on its legions of users to keep things honest. When you make changes they are stored along with the original info so, in case of a place marker for instance, the previous location is saved so it can be moved back easily if the edit is later determined to be incorrect. There are underlying mechanisms in place to help ensure accurate data, but a large part will ultimately come down to the users.

This seems to me a good move to increase the overall accuracy and it encourages participation by locals anxious to put their spot on the map. I’m sure there will be tons of landmarks of local interest that will be added. These points are places and things often not know about nationally, so they should open up some wonderful ideas for tours and vacations.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of this flesh out over time.