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[Page Update] Places

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Before the wazeopeadia project resulted in the USA wazeopedia, there were many (IMO) good proposals that went nowhere as global consensus was sought. Can we now implement these suggestions in the USA wazeopeadia?

For example, there was this discussion about Area-Point Combinations and Naming. The only non-US voice in that thread questioned whether this should be global guidance and the proposal was left waiting for other countries to weigh in. Is there a reason not to now move that discussion to this forum and make the changes to the Places page in the USA wazeopedia?

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Post by Inactive user -1649923503-
I agree and support the thought process that any category that does not have guidance should be point. As we know new categories from time to time get added and by having that guidance will help provide guidance for future state until further discussions occur.
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Post by Inactive user -1649923503-
Places - Description
With the YEXT imports the topic of place descriptions has been coming up more frequently and a topic of conversation today in the wazeopedia_usa channel. I was hoping to gauge the community on best practices of using the description field and maybe even some guidance for editors as the current info on the wiki lacking.
Place Wiki
Do not use the description field for notes to other editors. This field is visible in the Waze app and should only contain details pertinent to the place itself.


Question 1:
To start at the most simple question and for the purpose of this starting question, lets pretend that YEXT imports didnt exist. What should we as editors be putting in this field?
It is unique as almost everything else we enter is factual: phone number, website, services, external providers, categories, etc. And yet here we can enter almost anything we choose. We see guidance from time to time of factual info to include: pharmacy hours for a convenience store, line info for a train station, post office details, charging cable types for EV charging station, which all of these is again factual information.

However from time to time we see people add about us information from a company website, or worse copying from google place info. Obviously copying from yelp or google is against our sources policy, however a companies website appears to enter into a grey area. I personally feel about us, advertisement slogans, or other descriptions run into a grey area that we should avoid. We may not be following their corporate policies on utilization of their copyrighted/trademarked IP. And in the end it makes our places more advertisements than destinations.

What would be best guidance here?
-Only use factual information in this field that is not subject to dispute, opinion, or copyright/trademark?

Question 2:

This is where things get more complicated, as I dont think we as editors should be adding place descriptions, however the YEXT imports were ultimately a paid advertisement with included descriptions. It is further complicated by the fact that these descriptions can exceed the character limit we in WME are given for the description field. What is our best practice for handling these descriptions?

Overall I am inclined to leave them, a company paid for them and we should respect that. However when we get into situations where their places dont meet our PNH or other guidance standards it quickly becomes more complicated. Adding as an example, pharmacy hours is often impossible without deleting the description due to character limits.
Should we reduce the length of their description or remove all together and add our PNH/Guidance descriptor?
-I believe it is an all or nothing situation, where we can not start the habit of modifying their content. If we need to add something to the description per guidance/standards we should clear any other description out.

Question 3:
What to do with existing descriptions? The decisions to add a description is one thing, but what do we do with ones that we suspect may not be from an YEXT or other advertisement import? The ability to see the history of a place can quickly be confusing if it was merged, or without the proper script. How can we verify with and without script support? This one is probably the most challenging question as we discussed today answers to this from leadership could change on a week to week basis. However in keeping with the concept of retention we should always stride to preserve data unless we have clear evidence that it is not appropriate.

I think that state/regional leadership should still be consulted however I know that is something that could be subject to debate and I ask for your thoughts on this one and all the previous questions.

The YEXT imports provide a complicated example of a place which as has been many times discussed do not meet our standards, how much of it is ok and how much should be adjusted? How do we provide guidance to our editors that recognizes the exception that they might be?
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Post by Inactive user -1649923503-
jm6087 wrote:
DL's old proposal, plus additions recommended since, wrote: Users see the Description field only when viewing details for a Place. Its contents are not searchable.

Descriptions must be limited to brief, easily verifiable facts that:
  • help drivers locate, identify, or reach a destination;
  • help them park for a destination if potentially confusing;
  • confirm the destination being offered is what the user wanted;
  • highlight possibly unexpected restrictions, such as a park that doesn't allow dogs;
  • qualify the destination's details; or
  • differentiate the hours or other details of any sub-destinations, such as a pharmacy within a larger store.
Descriptions are not for reviews, opinions, or redundant, obvious, or offhand comments, nor are they for educational discussions of history or significance. To offer such information, set the Place's website field to the destination's official website.

If a description appears to have been added by a Waze-approved third party, you may leave it as is aside from any necessary corrections to facts or grammar. You may shorten or remove an existing description in order to include any of the essential information listed above, and you may edit descriptions that seem excessively opinionated in order to improve neutrality, but please respect the standing of advertisers who may have paid Waze to add the Place and its description. Consult local leadership if in doubt.
I think I like it
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
subs5 wrote:Over all the update looks good.

Some minor considerations:
1) Since you can merge more than two places as once, it might be worth adding that information.
2) Discuss about keeping the information on imported places for Gas Stations (Waze3rdParty(staff)) and other places (NavAds, etc). The backend information can update some things (either now or in the future).
I am suggesting that if there is one place that has the backend data hooks then it should be the one that everything is merged into. I am not sure that the backend data is properly merged if it goes into a user or editor created place. This might be something that requires staff input for the correct answer.
  1. Mark's draft already says "You are able to merge two or more venues into a single venue." I would use "place" instead of "venue", since that is the current term, but it does say "or more" :) Venue is just left over in Permalinks since that's what they were first called.
  2. This post says that all backend data hooks are preserved, even if multiple places with these are merged together. If it doesn't work that way, we were told it should, and we can report as a bug.
Thanks for taking this on, Mark.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
I don't know what document you're talking about. Your draft page has only been edited by you, and the US places page has not been edited yet this month.

As for the backend links at gas stations for price updates, Irad and Daliah both said that the merge feature was being developed to support them. I understand that they said this a year ago, but that was the explicit promise, so our guidance should conform to this until we get evidence to the contrary. It's not like something was left up in the air and we need to test or whatever. Besides, live updates of gas prices don't even happen in the US, so we really can't test. While it would be nice to get an answer from staff on whether merge still keeps those links, waiting for that answer should not hold up publication of this guidance. We should get this guidance into the wiki fast, since this is an important new feature.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
NathanHirschWard wrote:The point versus area table on this page is not alphabetized according to place categories (e.g. "Culture & Entertainment" before "Transportation"). I understand that this isn't necessary per se; however, it might make the table easier to read. Thoughts?
The table is ordered in the same way that the categories are in WME and, with the exception of parking lot, in the app. This is the most logical order, don't you think?

However the categories are ordered, we do need to add the category trash & recycling facility, and point should be fairly obvious for this. Also the category cell phones should be added as a do not use point, as IIRC it's for staff use with infrastructure rather than stores.

I noticed that farm is listed as using NONE instead of area or point. I propose simply changing that to point. Apparently the guidance from the beginning has been not to use this category. I'm not sure why. Definitely some farms are businesses that people search for, especially in the fall,but of course not every farm should be mapped. It's kind of silly to classify that under natural feature, since they are never natural, but that's where it is.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
The guidance for select categories section was just a list of subpages with inconsistent capitalization. I fixed it up and also made capitalization more consistent across other section headings to use sentence case.
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Post by Inactive user -1697532064-
If there aren't defined front doors, like with town center malls where it's just a cluster of buildings and you can walk around anywhere, we should put the entry points at the access roads that lead into the property. If there's just one front door, like with many hospitals and schools, I'm not even sure we should be using multiple entry points.
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