Can't access amnesty from Beijing as well, along with a lot of other sites. Shell consistently ignore protests from human rights/environmental groups and have been since they started.

oh Philipp you are in china now, what for ?

I fear this campaign will go trollish, and not get the positive effect it was aiming at...

This is sort of annoying. Can't they find a better way to protest besides messing up local data and user reviews?

Mysterius: their reviews are probably as valid and meaningful as anyone else's reviews of a petrol station. When reviewing a retail outlet, I think it is legitimate to discuss the source of the product.

If you like, you could restore the balance by submitting a review saying "Excellent petrol, and I have no moral qualms about its production".

Roger Browne: Perhaps Google Maps users will appreciate the notice. I myself could find the notice useful, if I was in the habit of using mapping applications to find gasoline.

I would not, however, appreciate a torrent of reviews for a local gas station focused on the moral issues surrounding one source of oil for the station's ultimate manager. The problem is that the campaign encourages a flood of these general, one-star ratings that doesn't reflect other, more immediate concerns (quality of staff, services provided, etc.).

And more importantly, if/when the Shell issue is addressed, these reviews will presumably remain, creating noise and impacting user content beyond the length of the campaign itself. I don't have confidence that Amnesty International will spend a fraction of their efforts on cleaning up the mess their own protests may leave.
I imagine things may correct themselves eventually, but I don't know what the timeframe would be.

But as for your suggestion, I have no inclination to submit reviews for petrol stations I've never visited and will likely never visit.
The idea of fighting one kind of information corruption with another does not appeal to me.

Anyways, it seems acceptable to be a public nuisance when done for some higher cause. The impact of Shell's resource extraction on people and environments is certainly a worthy cause for concern. That doesn't make their chosen manner of protest less of a nuisance to clean up after.

This is news of August:
http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/2009/08/amnesty-campaign-google-map.html

> oh Philipp you are in china now, what for ?

Living here for a bit, we'll see how things go :)

Mysterius: Relevance is a perception, it differs from person to person.

The whole concept of user reviews is to empower the crowd. As long as each review is being done by a person (not a bot), and not by paid staffer's, then it's authentic.

If more people are motivated to give a review related to production ethics than sandwich quality, then that's fine by me.

Using Google to enact political agendas is just wrong.

What's the difference, Andrew, between paid staffer and someone from AI/motivated by their actions? That they are not paid? Still, the content of the input has the same – null – value. If it's a review that has no relation with the actual place – it's spam and should be deleted.