The official Abbreviations and acronyms (Australia) wiki is found here
There has been some discussion in he CM and RM forum simplifying this wiki?
If you want to get pedantic there are over 200 possible abbreviations for Australia.
examples found here here
It is unknown how many abbreviations that the Waze client understands?
If you go through the wiki you will also see that there are also exceptions. So you need to know all the abbreviations plus exceptions. I’m not saying its impossible to remember but its a big list and ts growing and getting harder to remember.
One suggestion has been to cap the abbreviations to the top 10 most commonly used the use the full name for all the rest?
Switching to a smaller set makes sense. For quite a number of the less-common items on there, their “abbreviation” is spelled out in full anyway - for the others, I don’t think we can be confident that the TTS will always render them correctly, particularly if the abbreviation is used elsewhere in the world for a different word.
While AS 4819 compliance might be desirable, it is less important than ensuring that Waze works correctly, i.e.
When someone searches for a street they want to navigate to, Waze finds it.
When they are driving along, the TTS instructions are helpful not unhelpful.
If for example TTS renders “Ave” as “Avenue” correctly, but doesn’t do so for “Av” (note: I haven’t tested this), then unthinking AS compliance actually does us and other Waze users a disservice. If someone sees “Raw Sq” on a street sign but “Raw Square” in Waze, they’re not going to jump to a conclusion that Waze has taken them to the wrong street.
I’d suggest this list, based on what is common and has a confirmed-working abbreviation:
Ave
Blvd/Bvd (personally, I’d lean to just Blvd but happy for contra opinions)
Cres/Cr (personally, I’d lean to Cr only)
Dr (pretty sure this should be marked as working)
Expy
Fwy
Ln
Mtwy
Pde
Pl
Rd
St
and maybe
Plz
Tce
If Cct worked, I’d vote for it too.
If it helps for comparison, this is my current WME Validator template for finding misspelled street endings:
!/ (Aly|Arc|Ave|Blvd|Bvd|Br|Brk|Byp|Cp|Cyn|Cpe|Circuit|Cl|Clf|Cr|Cres|Crk|Ct|Dr|Expy|Fwy|Gr|Hwy|Ln|Mtwy|Mtn|Oval|Opas|Pde|Pk|Pky|Pass|Path|Pl|Plz|Pt|Riv|Rd|Rte|Row|Run|Sq|Sta|Strm|St|Ter|Tce|Trl|Tunl|Upas|Un|Vly|Vlg|Vl|Vw|Walk|Way|Wy|North|East|West|South)$|^$/
although I have to admit that in my time here I don’t think I’ve seen half of those used.
The file you mentioned for NSW indicated that local councils were generally not using AS 4819 for street naming. Certainly the relatively new streets I’ve mapped (or entered names for) in Waze do not show high conformance to the draft version of AS 4819 you provided a link to - and I’m not particularly keen to spend $150+ to get my own copy to see if the final version differs from the draft.
I think it would be handy to know what Waze’s plans are for expanding the TTS understanding of abbreviations. If they NEVER plan to add any more then there is a weight of argument to expand those (not working) abbreviations. However if they do intend to expand the coverage (CCT anyone!) then I think it would be premature of us to jump the gun and go against abbreviating.
Sidenote:
Thes discussion within CM and RM has been initiated byispyisail as well. So feel free to further contribute to the discussion, but it has not been considered a pressing issue.
Still, of course, any improvement (as on anything in Waze) can - once ripe for it - be implemented in the Oz-Wiki
I don’t think they have ever updated or improved the tts engine, so the extra abbr we want is pretty low on the fixit list. Personally don’t see any changes regarding this any time soon.
No need to remember them all, just keep the page open beside the editor, how often does an unusual one pop up in reality? It’s easy to remember the top 5 or 10, the wiki page is there for the rest. That’s the reason reference books exist.
Confirmed - but I’ve also noticed that this list contains different results to the results shown on the wiki for Australia. For example: Dv is listed as a working abbreviation for Drive on the US list, but is shown as a working abbreviation for Divide on the AU list. Assuming that the testing status on both sources is correct, this leads to the conclusion that the TTS for US/CA contains different instructions to the TTS for AU - which seems reasonable to my mind, given that they are different voices for different markets.
No, because I think that would deliver negative value.
The underlying question is “what is/are the purpose/s for the street abbreviations on streets in Waze?”. This can be open to debate, but I’d argue that the points are:
To enable streets to be searched and identified (particularly where there are, say, a Road and a
Lane with the same name in the same suburb/city).
To enable Waze to give spoken navigation instructions (TTS: Text-to-speech) that make sense (i.e. we want it to pronounce “Circuit” not “C-C-T”).
To enable the driver to see if they are on (or moving onto) the correct road.
To minimise the text displayed on screen (i.e. convey the relevant information in the smallest amount of screen real estate available.
I’d similarly argue that the following are not purposes/goals of the abbreviations:
To exactly match what is shown on the street sign (especially since this may vary anyway, e.g. signs at different intersections using different abbreviations or spelling out in full; 90%+ of drivers should be able to conclude that if they see La on a sign but Ln on Waze, they’re still in the right place).
Compliance with AS/NZS 4819 (given that the councils and state road authorities’ compliance to this standard is not high, Waze is not supposed to be an authoritative reference, and AFAIK we are not trying to exchange any data with systems that expect AS/NZS 4819 compliance.)
Making the list of abbreviations easy to remember. (It is easy enough to have the list open in another tab or window and scan/search through it as required.)
If we agree that those are the goals, then the obvious conclusion is to continue working as per the wiki (combined with trying to verify any unverified abbreviations we can, working with Waze to add the abbreviations that would be beneficial to TTS, and spelling out any words that aren’t in TTS).
If we don’t agree that those are the goals (yes, this is an invitation for opposing arguments) then the conclusion we reach might be different. There is no perfect decision we can make because we don’t have control over the externals (signage, TTS), but whatever decision we do make should at least fit a sensible set of goals.
