Russell

a) Data pulled in from a Yellow Pages type site with actual shop names and locations

or

b) Aloritms that say stuff like ‘There is already a business with that name in this location, did you mean…?’ Like what Yelp and Digg do.

Combine the two and your away to go. Obviously you’ll get a few typos here and there but not enough to ruin the service. Google Maps follows a similar route

@Russell For sure, all you’ll need is a ‘report this location as inaccurate’ type of thing but I guess for self-management it would need saturation to cover all the possible areas of the world.

I can’t see how it could be done, the beauty of correcting Wikipedia is that I can do it sat on the PC, not on the off chance I happen to have a AR application open looking for a pub and see its on the wrong street. Could you imagine the amount of AR phones and people with the same app to carry out something like that? Realistic?

Murat, I still think that any sites like this are better if there is the possibility to edit, even if it’s by the community itself. I agree it’s far too early to talk about standards. What I’m talking about is Best Practices, which is a very different and far more straightforward thing.

Scott: it’s not exactly what I meant, but you have summed it up with the UGC running wild idea. How long should annotations survive? Forever? Will people in 2050 really be interested in a restaurant review for the place belonging to the original chef’s grandson?

Lots of things to think about that no one appears to be thinking.

Russell

Your points can also be applied to sites like Tripadvisor, why do so many people trust it? Hotel owners can just as easily forge reviews…and they still do. The reason why it now works is because of saturation. You can only forge reviews so much but when more and more people use a service those dodgy business owners are going to be exposed and do their business harm.

When Tripadvisor was in it’s early days I noticed a load of hotels writing their own reviews, you could always tell them apart – mainly because the writer had only contributed 1 review ever on the site, but reading through the negative reviews it becomes apparent, along with candid images you can tell frauds from a mile.

Associations and Committees is a lovely thought but whenever a new technology emerges it’s a race for everyone to get their ‘solution’ out there so they can cash in. This means a fragmented market with different standards all over the shop.

Take 2D codes for example, everyone wants a piece of the pie, this leaves you with Beetaggs, QR Codes, Shotcodes..

I thought that industry was going to get some standards and a association but I’m sure that they still haven’t managed it?