Incorrect suburbs / Suburb limits

[bad-codriver]

Ive been editing around the area I live: Rosehill, NSW, and have discovered that there is a City label of "Newport" right in the middle of this suburb which really shouldn't be there, but I've been unable to find out what map elements are making this City name appear.
Permalink is: https://world.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat=-33.82108&lon=151.01798&layers=BFTFFTTTTTTFTTTTTTTTTFT
I'm using both Safari 6.0.2 with Wazebar 0.0.49 on a Mac, as well as Mac Firefox 17.0.1,but believe from the documentation that only area managers can filter on the City fields in the WME Color Highlights to find out which map elements are defined as being in Newport.

As some roads have been locked in this Rosehill suburb, I'm guessing that it might be a locked road segment(s) whose City might have been set to Newport. I've checked online with Australia Post and discovered there is a Newport in Victoria, Queensland and NSW. I don't know if this has anything to do with the faulty City label above.

Also, there is a Rosehill, NSW and a Rosehill, QLD. Should I be using the "<Suburb>, <State Abbreviation in capitals>" format for City, given the issue of ambiguity, at least until Waze resolves the state issue for Australia?

[bad-codriver]

Thanks dave_cairns,

I've gone through my suburb of Rosehill, NSW and tried to regularise the naming convention to "Rosehill, NSW" so that it may be differentiated from "Rosehill, QLD". I think I've changed all Streets, Roundabout segments and Landmarks, but it is difficult since the search function on the WME doesn't seem to be able to locate map objects that are named "Rosehill" and not "Rosehill, NSW".

The whole region just south and east of Parramatta remains a horrible hotchpotch of city region colours: e.g. https://world.waze.com/editor/?lon=151.01214&lat=-33.82408&zoom=4&layers=BTTFFTTTTTTFTTTTTTTTTFT, implying a lack of accuracy or rigour in naming. As I go along I'm trying to fix these, but I'm not sure when the City layer is updated in the WME - is it instantly updated as I edit or does it have to wait for an map update?

Does anyone know whether the alternate street name is taken into account in the Waze client software? In the WME (Firefox Mac), searching for "Good St, Harris Park, Australia" finds entries for "Good St, Harris Park, Australia" and "Good Street, Harris Park, Australia", even though I can't find any road segment named "Good Street" and all the appropriate road segments are named as the abbreviated "Good St". A search for "Good St, Rosehill, NSW, Australia" only brings up the suggestion of "Good St, Granville, NSW, Australia": this is correct, but there should be a "Good St, Rosehill, NSW, Australia" as the suburb boundary line between Harris Park and Rosehill runs along this road and in theory, there are addresses in Good St that might be considered to be in either suburb.

A search on the iPhone Waze client (3.5.2.0) just gave the following results:
Search term: "Good St, Rosehill"
Result: First suggestion: "Rosehill St, Parramatta", no other relevant results

Search term: "Good St, Rosehill, NSW"
Result: First Suggestion: "Good St, Granville, NSW", no other relevant results

Search term: "Good St, Harris Park"
Result: First Suggestion: "Good St, Harris Park" (correct), Second suggestion: "Good Street, Harris Park", no other relevant results

Search term: "Good St, Harris Park, NSW"
Result: First Suggestion: "Good St, Harris Park" (correct), Second suggestion: "Good Street, Harris Park", no other relevant results

Unfortunately, as I've read in other Waze forums, the inability to reliably search for a street name is what seems to be putting off new users, preventing them becoming long term users. The second and later suggestions brought back by a search seemed to have little relevance to the original search string, where you would expect it to return the correct Street and City, then Street and nearby City, as alternative addresses. I understand this is beyond what Waze is currently designed (everyday travel between two pre-designated points) for but it is putting off new users who expect it to work like other GPS programs.

[bad-codriver]

Thanks Dan,

The key to fixing the Cities field is the WME Color Highlights scripts as you said - but to use the most useful city scripts you have to be an Area Manager (Level 3 or above). So after your posting above I applied to become an area manager for the area that included Rosehill NSW, was granted it, and have now fixed up Rosehill so the city field for all elements reads "Rosehill, NSW" which should make any future Wazers in Rosehill, QLD happier but from the looks of that suburb it might take a while.

Using the same scripts, I have looked but can't find anything named that could possibly make the city name "Newtown" still appear in the middle of Rosehill. I guess it might be one of those things that we might have to live with, as there are so many roads still to add, to name and to get the turn restrictions accurate before worrying about the odd anomaly.

[bad-codriver]

Waze has Oklahoma Ave listed as the next suburb across (Girraween) - any idea if you folk can move entire suburbs for me?

Fixed: you now live in Toongabbie. As far as I can make it every street that is in Toongabbie is now "Toongabbie, NSW" instead of just "Toongabbie". There's still a lot of suburb and street work to be done in the Eastern end of Toongabbie, but that should keep your local area good for now.

The WME Color Highlights Level 3 (only) scripts are invaluable for this, but you still have to do a lot of clicking and typing.

Area can be seen at https://world.waze.com/editor/?lon=150.9354&lat=-33.79583&zoom=4&layers=BFTFFTTTTTTFTTTTFTTTTFT

[bad-codriver]

After a couple of weeks of intensive mapping I've come to the conclusion that the Incorrect Suburbs issue may only be resolvable by eliminating map elements directly from the database, that is, not using the WME.

I saw a problem come about when I was adding a new road, but had mistakenly selected the Landmark tool instead of the Road tool. When I drew the first point and double-clicked on the second, it created a tiny landmark, barely visible on the screen that seemed to be like a straight line instead of a polygon. It then took me a few minutes trying to click on this creation in order to delete it - but eventually I managed to. As a result of this I have come to the conclusion that the spurious City names might be artefacts of similar mistakes: tiny, almost-invisible landmarks that bear the spurious city name but may be almost impossible to select and thus almost impossible to delete in WME.

I also managed to find some streets' Cities far from their proper home, such as Waterloo out in suburbs west of Parramatta. These must be creating problems for the correct locations of suburb labels on the map too.

I think the fix for this is for every map element in the following suburbs to bear the full "City, State" naming convention until what is left are the spurious elements that might be deleted by someone with access to the database directly. The suburbs that seem to be located in spurious places are:
• Waterloo
• Newport
• Newtown

Can anyone tell me the rationale for making streets that are named but have no city? I'm presuming that this was an artefact of when they were created and the editor not knowing which suburb the street might be part of, but had to put something in the City field in order to at save its Name. I can't think of any street that should have a name but not a city.

[bad-codriver]

I've taken it on myself to update the Wiki for the World Waze server to make the recommendation for the inclusion of the name of the Australian state to be included in the City field to be of the form "City, State" to ensure that a city boundary is contained within a state, and that the City field is unique within Australia: http://world.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Australian_City_Names

After a suitable period of time has elapsed, then maybe we can change this from a recommendation to a requirement - unless Waze adds an appropriate State field so this problem is removed.

[bad-codriver]

I've been automatically converting City names to "City, State" format wherever I find it in metro Sydney (as this is my area), regardless of whether the suburb is unique or not.

My reasoning is as follows:
1) It's consistent in naming
2) It should help Waze in the future when they implement a separate field in their database. When that happens, a simple computer script by the database administrators can take the text string after the ", " in the City: ("Suburb, State") field to become the new State field. Without this, Waze won't necessarily know in which state a suburb is located and will have to match the suburb name with the state (admittedly this may not be that difficult).
3) As I tend to work on one suburb at a time, it is easier to see suburbs that I have not checked over as there is a "Suburb" label in the area of the "Suburb, State" label. Once a suburb has been thoroughly worked over, you should only see one City label. At the same time as changing the City: field, I also check for typos in the Street: field, but I also make sure the street names use the recommended short form of the name, as this assists the user when they see the street name in their client. They will see a longer suburb name, but all the street names should be the short form, and the user will see many more street names when using Waze so I think on balance it's better.

I think most of Sydney's suburbs now use the "Suburb, State" format - I don't know about other states. For this reason, when I added this recommendation to the Waze Wiki I didn't make this mandatory for suburbs that are unique until we have some sort of consensus on whether this should be done everywhere.

I have noticed that some streets have had the suburb listed as "No City" (or "Sydney"): I'm not sure why. Either:
a) Someone knew a street name but wasn't sure which suburb the street was in,
b) Someone thought that the street name is unique in Australia, possibly because it's a famous street
c) The street spans multiple suburbs - I think the naming of some streets with the City name of "Sydney" might be for this reason. Tunnels that have no real connection with the suburbs above it would seem reasonable reasons for why people would name them with a trans-suburb name. I'm more in favour of segment names for highways that reflect the local suburb names. Tunnel names I'm not so sure of. Using meta suburb names like "Sydney" will distort the suburb boundaries on the map.

[brad321]

Hopefully a few of the city problems will disappear with the more frequent city layer updates.
Windsor is a particularly prevalent one here in Melbourne also. There appears to be a huge city of Windsor spanning at least Sydney, Melbourne & possibly Brisbane. I have fixed the Melbourne Windsor. It would be nice if a Sydneyite could go and edit the western Sydney Windsor to something appropriate like 'Windsor NSW'. There are only a handful of streets at this stage so it should only take 5 minutes. Use the WME Highlighter addon to see all the relevant streets.
This whole problem is so obvious in the city layer view. It will be too difficult to repair until the Waze gods give us our 8 states.
It appears that in the early days the "Too far away error" was not part of the editor. It now is, so new problems cannot be started but it seems to be possible to extend existing problems. If someone hits enter when trying to choose Wangaratta and accidentally selects Windsor it sometimes does not complain and extends the city of Windsor even further......
Does anyone know if it is possible to discover what city one of the colour polygons from City Layer thinks it belongs to?

[bringitom]

Well thought out, Jinglee and Coogee can't be titled in Western Australia as there are the same in the Far East. There are suburbs listed as Inglewood and Inglewood WA. It would solve both problems.

[cjsimmons]

Yes, this is an annoying problem. Especially when a road has a suburb name that comes from another state. I had to find a road in another state and change it's suburb as it had the NSW suburb in it.

The sooner Waze adds the AU state to the editor, the better.