An article on Read/WriteWeb says that Google Maps are now editable by anyone with a google login (which surely must be everyone by now). The idea is that you can change the address, location, and link for any of the designated places on the map. This is a very cool step forward in crowdsourcing. It will be interesting to see how well they control vandalism.
One of the interesting questions is what methods Google is using for watching for vandalism.Many crowdsourcing sites seem to be using a "security through obscurity" approach. I wonder if it will prove over time that open approaches that publish effective security methods work as well? The ESP Game seems like one good example: the rules are published, but by working to ensure the players are strangers, most attempts to hack the system are not effective. (The slashdot attack is a good counter-example.)
What do you think? Excited? Worried?
John
extremely worried
I'm very worried. I really don't see a lot of benefit from allowing this (in my experience google maps has been very accurate and has most of the information I would want), while I see a ton of potential problems with allowing user editing. No matter what their security is, it's going to fail and some listings are going to get messed up.
The thing that would seem useful for user contribution is street view, since there are so many cities and it's presumably very expensive for google to do it themselves.