South African Map Editors - Want to form a group?

[zs2cli]

Hi Guys

I've been doing quite a bit of map editing ( currently 13th on the South African ranking ) and was looking for a way of communicating with the other South African map editors.

It would be advantageous to be able to better coordinate our efforts.

I started out working on the East London area, and then spread my efforts on to the rest of the Eastern Cape, the Southern and Western parts of KZN, the Eastern parts of the Western Cape, the Southern parts of the Northern Cape, and most recently the N1 around Polokwane and on to Musina.

I've been focusing on getting the major roads and freeways of South Africa online and routable. Although it is hard to check that road routes well due to the infrequent map updates.

Which areas are the other South African map editors working on? It seems there are some seriously good editors out there, respect to the 12 Editors ranked above me.

Richard zs2cli

[RodNav]

It seems there are some seriously good editors out there, respect to the 12 Editors ranked above me.

Respect gratefully acknowledged by No. 2 ...


But seriously, I think you have a good idea. I am Area Manager for Cape Town and surrounding areas - not that being AM helps that much anymore, since we can't overwrite locks now!

You may have noticed my name on some of the East London roads. I travel around the country a fair bit and before my permissions expired after 3 months, I did a bit of editing there. This year's Sunshine Tour golf season will see me getting editing permission in many areas of South Africa again for a while!

I was most surprised to see that waze will give me a route from Cape Town to Durban now. Although it does go via Joburg (!), and makes quite a detour to the west at Bloemfontein...

I do think it would be good to be able to communicate with other SA editors, so you've got my vote.
Rod (Yup, my waze name, RodNav, is based on my real name)

[zs2cli]

Hi Rod

Yip, the routing is starting to work on the long runs between towns and cities, but the biggest problem I have when trying to fix routing is that one cannot test a route on the update map, you have to wait for it to go live and then test the routing on the livemap. Makes for slow troubleshooting.

I'm trying to get all the Freeways, Major and Minor roads between cities up and running at the moment. So I've got AM status all over South Africa ( 90% of the Eastern Cape, all of the N1 North of Bele Bela to Beitbridge, some of the Central and southern parts of the Northern Cape, and the Eastern parts of the Western Cape, only the Western tip of KZN. ).

If you look on the current Livemap, you'll see the cris-crossing roads of the Eastern Cape looking quite good. I hope that soon the whole country would look the same way.

I'm not venturing into the major centers, there are enough Wazers there like your good self to care for Cape Town, Durban, and the smaller dorpies like Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Yes, I've definitely seen your name on some roads in EL. Thanks for your help here!!!

[zs2cli]

So, are there any Editors working on Bloemfontein? I've been trying to help with some of the outlying suburbs, it looks like Bloem still needs a lot of work.

[Jovan87]

Hi guys,

Hi have the app now for quite some time and it is really starting to grow on me.

I am in Cape Town and do not drive a lot, but would like to contribute.
I haven't done any editing, and did try too update some of the new roads that i spotted. I tried doing this with my PC by logging in, my profile is there but ' i don't have any drives'. Is that information limited to the device you are traveling with? I fear my BB 9300 will not be able to do this.

Any Suggestions, advice or recommendations would much appreciated.

Jovan87

[Kuhlkatz]

Welcome to the forum Jovan,

We have quite a few guys out there using the app, and quite a few actively editing as well, but the most people seem to shy away from the forums. This is an unfortunate situation, as the bulk of the discussions do provide good info for both new editors and even the old hands out there.

Some people tend to be 'lurkers', which will actively read all or most topics , but hardly ever post. This is not a bad thing as they are at least aware of what's happening in current topics

Some of the Champs can be ruthless in responses, so be sure to don your 'thick skin' if you ask a question that have likely been asked a million times before. It's always best to have a quick look around the forum and do some searching before asking some questions or starting a 'We really need this feature' thread.

We do have a ZA specific section as well at https://world.waze.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=62 covering the 'general' stuff and all the provinces.

Have fun, this stuff is quite addictive.

Carel

[rorygren]

Hey, guys!

I was one of the first Wazers in South Africa. I'm from Durban and am AM form most of Southern KZN and part of East London .... not that that makes much difference now! It was great fun to pave the first roads in many areas.

I have done quite a bit of travelling and try to edit wherever I am... although I have been quite dormant for the last few months.

It's good to see so many folk joining in and doing their bit! I did a lot of driving and paving in Polokwane about three months ago and returning this week to see Richard - zs2cli - has edited most of the roads! Well done!

[sarope]

Hey guys, I've been doing quite a bit of editing recently on the Sandton/Woodmead side of Joburg Glad to see that there are so many people out there editing - it's great! Just a quickie, what naming procedure do we use for little slip-ways and give ways to the left? I've noticed quite a number of variations in the way editors do it, so am just wondering if anyone knows the "correct" way to do this?

[RodNav]

Hey guys, I've been doing quite a bit of editing recently on the Sandton/Woodmead side of Joburg Glad to see that there are so many people out there editing - it's great! Just a quickie, what naming procedure do we use for little slip-ways and give ways to the left? I've noticed quite a number of variations in the way editors do it, so am just wondering if anyone knows the "correct" way to do this?

Yes, it's good to see that the maps are becoming good enough to actually work! I generally find that the ETA on a 30 - 40min trip is within a minute or 2. But there's still a lot to do in and around Cape Town. Ah well, shouldn't be long before I hit 100K edits.

I'm not sure which way is regarded as 'correct' but I think slip-ways should be the name of the road that it is going 'to', as opposed to coming 'from'. You can also leave it as 'Unnamed' because when waze routes through an Unnamed segment it looks ahead to the next segment's name and uses that in the instruction.
Note that Unnamed means that the 'None' checkbox for street is ticked, not that the name field hasn't been edited yet!

On a similar point, the segment between the 2 roads of a split road should be Unnamed for 2 reasons:
1. If the segment is less than 15m long (I think that's the distance) and Unnamed it will prevent waze from suggesting a u-turn. Unless of course a u-turn is allowed...
2. If the side roads have different names then the correct name will be used, whichever way you are turning, because the side road will be the next segment.

[Chriseleven]

I have been active mainly in PE, Jhb, Brits/Rustenberg and some minor edits in other places in the country. Spend some time getting rid of reported errors. Nice for users to get the feedback that their report has been attended to.

By the way - how do you know your country ranking?