Good lord...a sea of orange.

[skapur1]

So what is the consensus in the US: Should we look at what Mapquest calls neighborhood and what Google Maps just brings up when you type a city name or should we go by the Zip code for the location? Most people know their location by their mailing address which would mean we should use Zip code.

I got a mini sea of orange here because of this:
https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=3&lat ... s=63619121
The current location seems to be correct by Zip code (Medford):
https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source ... 64187&z=13
But both Mapquest (http://mapq.st/10yWZZw ) (you have to click the neighborhood button) and Google:
( https://maps.google.com/maps?q=coram,ny ... 12&vpsrc=0 )agree that the location should be Coram.

So what should a Waze editor do?

[jasonh300]

Your best resource is an interactive GIS map that has City and Census Designated Places (CDP) layers. Government issued maps are always going to be the most accurate, and legal to use as a source. Google, Bing and Mapquest are copyrighted and not valid sources.

In some places, nobody uses those CDP names, and they really shouldn't be on the map, but they're still going to show the error bubbles if you remove them.

Forget Zip Code maps. The USPS has consolidated so many towns and small cities into the nearest large city, they'll be useless.

Most of these that I've seen were caused by people adding city names outside of the city limits, where the No City box should be checked.

[skapur1]

Your best resource is an interactive GIS map that has City and Census Designated Places (CDP) layers. Government issued maps are always going to be the most accurate, and legal to use as a source. Google, Bing and Mapquest are copyrighted and not valid sources.

In some places, nobody uses those CDP names, and they really shouldn't be on the map, but they're still going to show the error bubbles if you remove them.

Forget Zip Code maps. The USPS has consolidated so many towns and small cities into the nearest large city, they'll be useless.

Most of these that I've seen were caused by people adding city names outside of the city limits, where the No City box should be checked.

I understand what you are saying. I was using Mapquest and Google for reference only and not using them as a source (which is legal) to illustrate the issue.

While government issued maps may be the most "accurate", I am pretty sure that few people use them as an address for navigation routing. Most people look at their mailing address as their official address and that is where ZIP codes come in. On Long Island, NY there has been no zip code consolidation that I am aware of.

In the northeast USA, the legal concept of cities, towns and counties is VERY different from that of the rest of the country. In any case Hamlets (the "city" example I gave) as a legal entity do not exist and so different governmental agencies carve them up for their own convenience and have their own GIS boundaries for hamlets.

On Long Island, NY their are MANY governmental organizations sometimes completely independent of each other: the town tax departments, town highway departments, the fire districts, the school districts, the power authority, the water authority the election commissions ALL have completely different GIS systems with their own hamlet boundaries that is different from the ZIP codes boundaries and CDP boundaries and rarely do they every match.

Therefore my suggestion is to use zip code maps as that is an address a normal mortal human can hope to keep track of (or they wont get mail).

[jasonh300]

What people are using for navigation is not relevant to the city layer in the WME editor. Lookups come from Bing, which returns latitude and longitude. Waze then routes you to those coordinates.

The reason for the city layer is to have accurate polygons to the city limits or edges of the CDPs.

[skapur1]

What people are using for navigation is not relevant to the city layer in the WME editor. Lookups come from Bing, which returns latitude and longitude. Waze then routes you to those coordinates.

The reason for the city layer is to have accurate polygons to the city limits or edges of the CDPs.

Would it not be simpler not have "city" at all in Waze for the United States but just import it from the US Census GIS (which is publicly downloadable)?

If "accurate polygons" is the only reason to update city information and they are not used for anything practical in Waze, why have them and why should any one bother updating city information or putting correct information in it all? ever? And why does Waze care?

[shawndoc]

From what I've been seeing, Google Maps city boundaries are the most accurate (When I've compared to official city published borders). What sucks is if you zoom in too far they go away, making it difficult to see exactly where they leave off.

Mapquest's neighborhoods overlap, so aren't that useful when you are working where two towns meet.

[jasonh300]

Would it not be simpler not have "city" at all in Waze for the United States but just import it from the US Census GIS (which is publicly downloadable)?

If "accurate polygons" is the only reason to update city information and they are not used for anything practical in Waze, why have them and why should any one bother updating city information or putting correct information in it all? ever? And why does Waze care?

Yes, it would be much simpler. Unfortunately, that's not how the system works.

[jondrush]

In my area the zip maps were ignored at the base map import. Municipal boundaries as recognized by the state and a few, larger CDPs were all that was imported, so that is the practice we have continued here.

[PhantomSoul]

I think we may have to settle for different rules in different states and/or countries. In New Jersey, the base map seems to kind of have municipal boundaries, but a lot of them seem to be "Areas" surrounding nearby by better-known towns (e.g., Old Bridge Area, Woodbridge Area, etc.). This, IMHO, is worse than any other alternative methods I've seen discussed about this in these forums.

Municipal boundaries would be ideal, since they are recognized by the state, but a strict municipal boundary rule in New Jersey would create naming conflicts in Waze, as we have several Washington Townships, Springfield Townships, and Union Townships (just for starters) in different counties across the state. This creates a problem in Waze because it tries to draw a single polygon around all of them (and now even puts down automated UR (AR?) pins) even though they are not the same "cities."

Zip codes provide the only completely objective system in New Jersey that is guaranteed to be unique by city name throughout the entire state. Of course, the downside is that you lose things like true municipal, and in some cases even county boundaries, but personally, I think it's more important for Waze to not try to draw incorrect single city polygons clear across the state.

[jondrush]

Why don't you use cityname, countyname format to guarantee uniqueness? That's what we do in PA.