Pop Quiz: Did you know that every time you make a map edit in the Waze map editor your edit will appear LIVE in the app within 24 to 48 hours?
If you answered no, that’s okay. This is a relatively new development that we’re excited to share with you guys.
In January, we announced that new and existing map editors in the United States can fix up any map issues on the map editor and see their routes improve right away in the app. Now, this rings true for map editors worldwide!
A survey we ran in October revealed that more than 77% of new map editors sign up after encountering a map problem where they drive regularly.
Today, anyone can log on and correct any local map problems, and see how their contribution improves driving routes within days. This is a vast improvement over previous turnaround for update time, when map edits took months, and later weeks, to update.
Try your hand at map editing next time you see a road needs fixing, a parking lot needs marking or a gas station needs adding — and see your work benefit all the Wazers around you within days!
We’ve told you all about the latest version of our map editor, now we want to open your eyes to some useful map editing tools.
When looking for the best tools to enhance map editing, look no further than the resources developed by members of the Waze map editing community itself. The resourceful bunch have coded and patched a crop of add-ons that make map editing on the world map editor a far more seamless experience.
Just last month, US-based editor mike-bronner released a Safari extension, a web toolbar, for the Waze map editor. The toolbar optimizes map editing by allowing editors to add segments, make edits, zoom, logout and as well as make other modifications to the map.
It also incorporates a tool developed by UK editor timbones (“WME Color Highlights”), which allows users to adds colors to road segments to show their status, and to landmarks to show their type. Highlighting segments can be useful to map editors aiming to see locked and un-named roads. (Forum)
By increasing the ease of map editing, these add-ons, and others, are making editing a quicker and more enjoyable activity.
Other community plugins, extensions and tools include:
The simplified “original” tool for map-editing, this extension provides a table documenting the country, state, city and street names present in each screen you edit.
Street to River, a script designed to hep to easily create river and railroad landmarks in the WME. If you’re using Firefox, you’ll need the Greasemonkey add-on. (Forum)
The Livemap Navigationaddon, which allows for a a list of navigation instructions to be shown on the left-hand side while searching for directions via the Waze Livemap. This is particularly useful in helping editors debug routes, although it is useful to drivers as well. It also requires the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox users. (Forum)
Are there any other add-ons you use, or would like to see developed, while map editing?
UPDATE: The real-time gas price feature is also available for Wazers in France, Slovakia and Sweden.
Great news for Wazers across Europe and New Zealand!
Drivers in 8 more countries can now navigate to cheaper gas prices. The gas station feature, which enables drivers to navigate to cheap gas prices, is now available in Hungary, GermanyLithuania, Russia, Finland, New Zealand, Estonia and Cyprus.
With this feature, drivers in these countries will now be able to update each other on the latest gas prices at various stations on or along their route. When the whole community gets involved, drivers should be able to quickly locate the most inexpensive gas stations and save a bit of money to offset the rising cost of fuel.
We know that high gas prices affect many of you each day — and hopefully the addition of this feature should help.
The launch of this feature has been entirely dependent on crowdsourced information by the map editing community. Currently, more than 130,000 gas stations have been added to the Waze map by map editors, making the release of the feature available in more and more countries worldwide.
Remember — to keep prices updated while on the road, all you need to do is hit “report” and then “gas prices” each time you enter a gas station to verify that prices are accurate. Do your part and help the community beat the high costs of gas.
It’s a new dawn for the Waze map editing community! For our veteran map editors, yesterday marked the retirement of the original Waze map editor, affectionately known as the “Cartouche.” In its place is a newly unveiled version of Waze’s World Map Editor (WME), with tons of new exciting updates bound to please our map editors and attract new editors alike.
Even while in beta mode, the Waze Map Editor has proven more a popular tool for attracting new map editors and solving map problems. In the United States, for example:
The map editing community has resolved an astonishing 35,000 of the 37,000 map problems detected by our system during the last 30 days. (Learn how our system automatically detects map problems here.)
As we disclosed last month, the number of edits and new editors is rising as well:
The United States saw a 36% rise in map edits performed on the new world map editor from September to October.
The rate of new editors signing up rose by 28% in the United States month-over-month.
We hope our official new version will keep up this trend.
Changes in the newly unveiled WME include, but are not limited, to:
Play Mode. Encourage your friends to try out map editing if they haven’t because we’ve made it easier than ever to jump in! With the new “play mode” function, editors can try out fun editing tasks such as adding a road, gas station, landmark and more, without saving their changes.
A new design featuring a full-screen layout. Optimized for all screen sizes, now you can edit without any distractions.
A sleeker, more minimally-designed left side column. With a decreased font size and a cleaner look, making each individual edit becomes a far more seamless experience.
The ability to edit alternate street names and house number editing. Functions such as these, and several others, were previously only available on the “Cartouche.”
Faster, smoother editing across web browsers, already noted by users on our forum.
Before we say our tearful goodbye to the original map editor, let’s thank our community of stellar beta testers who made this awesome version release of the new and improved map editor a reality! Thanks guys!
Drivers in two new countries can now enjoy the money-saving benefits of crowdsourcing today, with the release of our gas price feature in the Netherlands and Belgium.
We were able to launch the feature in these countries once the majority of its gas stations were mapped out by the map editing community. The countries’ launched with 1,100 gas stations in Belgium and 2,000 gas stations in the Netherlands, respectively.
It’s no secret that drivers worldwide are struggling with the rising cost of gas. With this launch, drivers in these countries will now be able to see real-time gas prices on or along their route.
We hope to launch real-time gas prices features next in Sweden, France, Germany, Slovakia, Finland, Lithuania, Hungary, New Zealand, Cyprus and Russia.
Could map editing be a new go-to hobby for the mainstream? We certainly hope so.
In August alone, a record 15,000 new map editors joined the Waze map editing community, part of a consistent increase that marks a 43% month-over-month rise and a 94% increase from those joining in April.
Our map editing community is growing fast, and this increase is likely attributed to our new and improved map editor, a higher growth rate in drivers using Waze and increased efforts on our part to make map-editing a more user-friendly experience.
Many of the newly-joined map editors are logging in to fix simple map problems: whether it be a road problem in their neighborhood, the desire to add a gas station or mark a toll road, or any number of smaller editing tasks.
Gratification for editors may come in that these fixes can be seen quickly in the app itself, and each map edit has an immediate effect on map quality!
The number of individual edits being logged in the map editor has risen tremendously, with 52.5 million monthly edits being carried out in August 2012, compared to 38.7 million edits in July.
The increase comes at a time of record growth for us – with new drivers signing up at a rate of 2.5 million monthly downloads. It’s probably no coincidence that more map editors (and therefore more accurate maps) coincides with more drivers signing up.
So what’s driving people to map edit?
A recent survey of our US-based users found that the vast majority of editors (more than 77%) sign up after encountering a map problem where they drive regularly.
23% said they signed up to improve or update the maps in the areas they frequently drive.
18% signed up to earn more points and move up the map-editing ranks.
What do these new editors look like?
Our survey indicates the dominant age group for new editors is 40-50 (38%), followed by 30-40 (30%), and 50-60 (18%).
Approximately 81% of new editors are male, while nearly 18% are women.
It’s been a little over a month since we enabled the ability to add gas stations to the Waze Map Editor and the results have been amazing. The map editing community has outdone itself again, adding more than 50,000 gas stations worldwide.
Their quick and methodical work means that more and more drivers around the world will soon be able to save money on gas.
Drivers in Sweden can start getting excited, as nearly 70% of its gas stations have been mapped and we hope to activate the feature there in the very near future. Italy’s map editors have already mapped out more than 50% of their country’s stations, while more than 40% of France’s gas stations have been mapped.
The number of gas stations added by country
Germany currently has 26% of its stations mapped out, but may soon see a big bump in its numbers thanks to an external list delivered to Waze by users.
For those unfamiliar, in order for us to enable our real-time gas price feature in more countries, the map editing community needs to add up to 70% of a country’s total gas stations to the Waze map. After that, we can activate the feature in new countries and more drivers worldwide will get to save money on gas during their daily commute.
The country totals are impressive and at this rate, the feature will be enabled in these countries by October, or earlier!
Currently, the cheap fuel price locator is available in the United States, the United Kingdom and, most recently, Latvia.
Luckily for us, our users love reporting problems. Missing turns, new roads, incorrect junctions — our maps keep improving because our community of drivers report these map issues in the app as they see them.
But reporting the issue is only half the challenge. On the mapping side, our community of map editors are working steadily to resolve these user-reported problems with speed and accuracy.
In this edition of the Waze World Records, we’re taking a look at the 10 map editors that hold the records in solving the most user-reported map problems.
Read more about the top 3 editors in this category below.
The Record Holder
Our current undisputed record holder, Dave (aka mapcat) has solved more than 30,000 user-reported issues in our map editor. He also happens to be our record holder for all-time map edits. Learn more about Dave in our previous post here.
The Runner Up
Our number 2 in this category, Mark (aka HavanaDay), has been a Waze map editor since September 2010.
An accountant living in the Charlotte, North Carolina region, Mark is an area manager. He was drawn to editing from his of love problem solving. For Mark, solving user-reported problems (or ‘update requests’) is akin to giving “a virtual pat on the back” to the millions of users doing their part.
On Why He Started Editing:
“Always loved GPS technology. Garmin/Navteq got very frustrating when you drove mainly the same routes on a consistent basis and the same errors are there. With Waze I am able to change that aspect of it in a timely manner. I also love solving problems. I think a good editor is a problem solver.”
The Third Place Winner
Andreas West (aka a4xrbj1), comes in third – but only by a little over a hundred errors! The Kuala Lumpur native began editing in August, 2010. West, a Senior VP at a telecom provider, is a country manager that does his editing from home. He’s rallied the Malaysia community of mappers, opening a special Facebook page in order to expedite editing tasks such as unlocking roads.
On Why He Started Editing:
“Couldn’t find my street at all in Kuala Lumpur, not even my district. I didn’t really understand the concept of Waze back then, and like so many others, was wondering why the map wasn’t complete. Then I started reading more about it and figured out it was up to guys like me to build the map. It actually turned out to be relaxing for my stressful day-to-day job, since then I edit to calm down.”
Want to try your hand at map-editing? Get started after watching this clip:
The momentum is rising! More than 1,300 gas stations have been added to our maps in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of user-generated gas stations to nearly 10,000. The number of gas stations added has actually more-than-doubled since we released our stats last week.
Adding gas stations in our map editor has gotten even easier, with the availability of gas station brands in several countries added to the editor yesterday.
The more gas stations editors add, the faster the feature will be made available in each country. So keep adding gas stations, and if you have brand lists or other relevant data – send them on over!
Olympics-fever has swept over Waze HQ! And without a pass to this year’s games, we’ve decided to reveal our very own international mapping medalists.
As briefly mentioned last week, we’re going to be releasing the names of our all-star mappers in a series of blog posts that will acquaint you with our top mappers.
These dedicated map-editors hold the records in:
Solving system-generated map problems
Solving user-reported map problems
Adding house numbers
Adding roads
Can you guess who will top each category? Are there any other record-breaking categories you’d like to see?
Update: We’ll also be revealing the editors that have made the most all-time map edits as well!
