Suggestion: Roadworks UK sub-forum

[iainhouse]

That's it - those are my "example" posts - although the example is a real situation.

You may now all tell me what a wally I am.

[iainhouse]

http://feedthe.waze.hu

Does that mean anyone can sign up to FTW? I thought it was only available to particular people.

In any case, FTW would only be part of keeping track of what's going on. And, of course, it doesn't actually affect routing. It's most useful when the closure is too brief to sort out whilst waiting for updates. If we get 2 updates a week, that's going to be far fewer of them.

[iainhouse]

Thanks for the continuing info. I'll try and register for FTW tonight and roadworks.org is good to know about.

However, whilst it's all useful info, these are ways of finding out about roadworks or notifying them on the map. The specific reason I have made my suggestion is as a way to pull all of this information into one place so that edits made to the map are documented in one place where we can all find it - and where anyone can make changes and document them as part of the same issue.

For example, there's currently a map problem here. People have apparently been turning left onto a walking trail segment. GSV from the summer shows lots of construction work in the area: presumably the AM has done this to deal with some of it. But unless I PM him, I have to go and find out all the info myself. And maybe he didn't actually change the road-type - he might have just corrected the road name. If it was documented in a topic in a Roadworks sub-forum (and linked to from a UR), I could find all the info there. If a closed road has re-opened early, I could edit the map and add the information to the topic. Then, when the original editor comes along to check the situation he will know what I've done, and why.

Right now, I can think of 7 different roadworks in my area that have caused edits to the map (some I have done, some I am simply aware of). For each of them I've had to independently find out what's going on to understand what I need to edit - or what someone else has changed.

So what do you think of the main idea guys? (Come on Roy: you must have an opinion )

[iainhouse]

Thank you all for your input and my apologies for not coming back to this for a couple of (busy) days! Also, my apologies to both xteejx and dmcconachie who made posts I should have answered, but my phone declined to show them to me!

Roy - I've registered for FTW but just requested my AM area (SE London), so I assume any that I raise will go to David as feed manager. Darren - following on from what you said, is the UK covered by at least one Feed Manager everywhere? I now know I'm covered, but other areas might not be.

Darren - you suggested a spreadsheet or a wiki. I'm not sure a spreadsheet would be appropriate, as there will be a fair amount of "freeform" data that might not fit well into a spreadsheet format. As for a Wiki, the question would be "how many of us know how to edit a Wiki and how easy is it?".

Tim - you mentioned a 2-weeks minimum on closures. I am absolutely in agreement with that. Whilst we might soon be getting faster & more regular map updates, I think it would have to be well settled down before we consider editing the map for shorter closures.

What prompted this suggestion was South London, where there are several of us active - and I certainly see support from dknight212 and woodvale. So I would like to propose that we go ahead and create a "UK Roadworks Tracking" (or whatever you want to call it) sub-forum. Even if us Southerners are the only ones who use it at the start, we can at least see how it works out.

We would need a "sticky" post at the top with guidelines - I am happy to write this if you like and submit it for additions/corrections. If you would like me to take on any forum moderation duties (assuming that can be done) I would be happy to help.

[iainhouse]

So the question is do we want to do this via the forum or a document (wiki or google doc)?

What are the views?

I would tend to go for a forum.

It's not quite as "editable" as a document, because it would depend on the original poster or a moderator to keep the OP updated with a summary of the current status. However in terms of history it's ideal simply because each post for any changes is visible there in a timeline.

I think a document might be too "freeform". By doing it in a forum, we are somewhat restricted in terms of what we can do, but I think those restrictions help more than hinder. With a document, any earlier information can be changed or deleted - with a forum, the posts stay there to show the history.

Forum also gets my vote simply because it's something we're all familiar with using. However, I'm not voting against using something like Google Docs. It's simply something I'm completely unfamiliar with. If you guys with more experience of collaborative documents think it's the way to go I would be willing to try.

Just to clarify my thoughts on my original suggestion, the main purpose of this is so that an editor who makes alterations to the map because of roadworks can record what he has done and why. The information is then available to other editors who want to know why a change has been made. If the original editor "goes under a bus" or misses recent changes, someone else can step in and make further alterations, but record them in the same place - but I would expect the original editor to be keeping on top of the situation.

I also want to say that I now think that placing a UR on the livemap with a link to the forum topic is essential. There have been many discussions about better ways to leave notes on the map, but this one is available and it works. Any editor looking at the map will see the UR and will have an instant link to the information available for the changes they are seeing.

[iainhouse]

How do we put urls in a UR? I've tried it a number of times and messed it up each time, so had to close the UR and put a new one in without a link.

I just put the full http address in the text - expecting people to have to copy/paste it. When I looked at the map, the URL had been replaced by a hotlink on the word "here". I just tried it again and that's how it works. I don't know if it's possible to change the word "here" to something else. You might try experimenting with a BBCode link.

[iainhouse]

While we're on the subject, Alie St in E London was dc by me. https://world.waze.com/editor/?lat=51.5 ... TTTTTTTTFT
Waze sent me there Sunday, serious building work, road looks like it'll be, and has been closed for quite some time. Just so Iain and woodvale you're aware

Interesting! It's outside my AM area but within my driving areas, so I occasionally do some work there. As it happens, I fixed a UR for the junction at the end of that road about a month ago - it was either an invalid turn restriction or bad geometry giving wrong instructions. Whichever it was, the road was open then.

A quick search on TFL and roadworks.org doesn't provide any help. But it's an idea use-case. You could have posted your edit to the sub-forum. Someone else could have turned up some source info and added it. Then, when it opens someone else could re-join it.

[iainhouse]

While we're on the subject, Alie St in E London was dc by me. https://world.waze.com/editor/?lat=51.5 ... TTTTTTTTFT
Waze sent me there Sunday, serious building work, road looks like it'll be, and has been closed for quite some time. Just so Iain and woodvale you're aware

Can one of you lot lock this before some idiot comes along and joins it up.

Done - and just in time. There was a "missing road" MP there - an invitation to re-connect it! Unless, of course it has re-opened.

I'll try again to find some concrete info on this one when I get home tonight.

More on topic - since I'm back here again. The discussion is going backwards and forwards between sub-forum and shared document, but it's not getting any further forward. If it's not a real pain to do it, could we please just create a sub-forum and try it? If it doesn't work well, it can't be that hard to transfer it to a shared document model and try that instead.

[iainhouse]

Patients? They're all around me, but none of them have to wear a straight jacket

Never mind - I'll take my pills, Nurse.

[iainhouse]

Thanks be to the Gods of Waze (translation: UK Country Managers ). I got a Christmas present - an new UK Roadworks sub-forum.

I know some of you are doubtful if this will work - I just hope we can prove it will. From the previous posts, I imagine this will be initially used mainly by myself and the London editors, but I hope everyone will feel free to try it out and help us evolve it.

The next step is to provide a "sticky" post for the sub-forum to give some guidance on how to use it. I have prepared a draft and I will add it after this post. Please feel free to suggest any alterations before I post it in the sub-forum. I do tend to be very long-winded (as you've probably noticed ), so I've tried my best to keep it brief whilst including all necessary information.

It's also been suggested to me that this information should probably go into the Wiki at some point. Since there's no other way to "publicise" this forum other than having it in the Wiki, I think that would be a good idea. Until then, it will probably mostly only be noticed by the experienced editors who frequent the forums.