Hi All
While browsing around, I looked at the AM area map for the first time for a while. There seems to be a few new AM’s and several “expanding” existing ones. The resulting map looks very busy with lots of strange shapes and many overlaps.
This made me wonder if there is ever a review of areas?
There seem to be several towns in the midlands, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Loughborough and Leicester being examples, where there is no AM coverage (at least not on the map). Conversely in the south, Southampton has 4 and Portsmouth 5!
Would it be worth looking at these and expanding / contracting / tidying up areas to give a better coverage? " I think 2 AM’s in a larger area would give better coverage than 2 in separate smaller areas.
On a related subject, if the AM goes quiet / packs up / disappears, is this picked up and the area re-allocated to ensure we don’t leave the users with a lack of response in these areas?
You’ve uncovered my secret plan to slowly conquer the midlands area, expanding to cover some of said cities :evil:
I was surprised myself that the Birmingham area was lightly covered by AMs but the number of URs compared to the London area is a fraction of the work.
Overlapping areas make sense, I guess the CMs feel they can cope with the areas not covered by AMs.
I had a cunning plan to take over the world piece by piece, but Waze retaliated with the “car park” ploy :o and I soon realised I did not want any more area to manage as you can only add the same car park so many times before you get really irritated. :evil:
Not really. We’d be delighted if competent and enthusiastic people came forward to AM the whole country.
However, we’ve learnt the hard way that it doesn’t help to over-promote an inexperienced or incompetent editor just to fill in a gap in the AM areas. And if you are limited for time, it’s probably better to AM a small area well than a larger area patchily.
If an editor stops editing completely, AM areas (and other “privileges”) will eventually expire automatically. Other than that, we’re unlikely to remove an AM area since it’s existence doesn’t stop other people from becoming AM for the same or overlapping areas.
Overlapping AM areas are encouraged anyway, so that there is cover should people be away/temporarily too busy.
The parking project has been a total disaster, editors have left in disgust, including one of our most valuable CM’s. If it’s still bugging you, just suppress all MP’s. You’ll miss some useful MP’s, but rather that than lose you.
Ian
(these are my personal views, and do not necessarily reflect official CM policy, although I’m not aware of any difference from policy)
HI Ian
Thanks for the detailed reply. I was just surprised there are fairly major towns with no direct AM, where a small addition would add them to the adjacent AM area. I guess it will wait until the AM asks for the extra area.
I do understand the logic of only allocating to “proven” editors, but it must be irritating to live in an area where the response to UR’s is slow and intermittent, assuming the CM’s cannot pick up all of the UR’s in these unloved areas quickly. This does not seem to generate a new editor, just lose a user.
The poke about the car parking project was just (mostly) in jest, I think I understand what has happened, and it is a real shame. I have finally cleared the MP’s in my area (again) and wait to see what happens next.
Indeed! And I dread to think how many users Waze is losing because HQ now suppress speed limit UR’s without letting editors see or reply to them. :shock:
I did wonder where they had gone. I foolishly just assumed they had turned off the option in the app. :?
I hate to think what will happen when they turn that back on.
On the subject of Country Managers, who are the UK CM’s? There is a list of the CA’s in the wiki, but I couldn’t find a list of the CM’s. It would be good to know who is running this ship.
Country Manager and Country Administrator are the same thing. Inconsistent terminology!
EDIT: apologies, this is wrong, see Andrew’s post below. #shouldknowbetter :oops:
iainhouse is currently “resting”. If you find any of his posts in a Waze forum, and look at his “signature” you’ll see why. (A user’s current “signature” is displayed on all forum posts, the signature they may have had at the time of the post is not stored).
We’re hoping he will come back, but he’s been totally out of contact for a while now, so not optimistic.
At least it reduces the confusion between me and other Ian’s and Iain’s, oh wait, who made the last post?
Note that you can also have an Area Manager who has granted country-wide editing rights. This is uncommon but does allow people to have wider rights before reaching level 5.
Generally most of the CMs have large areas where they have assumed responsibility (often as they were progressing through the ranks) to help out in areas without a local AM.
Personally I think that some of these areas should be removed once you reach CM so that the map better reflects the true picture of where we do and do not have AMs with good local knowledge …or… there being some way to distinguish between your ‘home area’ that you know well and an ‘extended area’ that you are keeping an eye on.
At least I now understand why I was confused. So back to the original question - is there a list of CM’s?
I agree strongly with this. At the moment the map of the south of the UK looks very busy, but if you were to remove the CM’s (I am guessing here they are the ones with the large areas) it would be clearer. Also, by showing the spaces I think it would get more newbies to apply for an AM place. Personally, I would not have initially applied if there was already someone covering the area I wanted, particularly if they were a “Senior” editor. Perhaps if the CA team do not want to reduce editors areas, the CM’s could individually apply to have their areas reduced? :o
If we want to encourage new AM’s we need to clear a space for them to slot in and get started.
Meanwhile, on my original subject, we need to encourage existing AM’s to “spread out” into adjacent empty areas to cover the currently unloved towns. :lol:
Quite agree. I’ve often looked at the vacant areas and thought, why not?! But then I’ve already got 3 AM areas and applied for the Isle of Wight (which seems to have gone nowhere), so I guess it might be fairer to let someone else have a bit more territory. Although I’ve never said “No” to a new area if asked nicely enough.
I’ve been thinking about expanding my current area and also adopting a currently unloved area elsewhere. However, I don’t wish to appear to be too keen / wanting to run before I can walk, especially given that I’ve only been an AM for a few months. Is it worth me applying anyway?
If you’ve got the time to put into it, it’s worth doing. All my overseas areas have come as a result of taking part in MapRaids and signing up to take care of an area afterwards.
If you want more area go for it, what’s the worst they can do? (Say No!) If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
I will admit I have quite a few areas both here in the UK and elsewhere. However I have been a little lax over the last few months due to being very ill and in and out of hospital.
Time! That’s the big issue. In my development as an editor, I started with my part of South London as dknight212 and iainhouse were covering south-west and south-east London at the time. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but David decided to retire and we also became self-managing as a country, so I expanded my activities into South-west London, then a bit later, applied for and was given AM for London to the South Coast between Rye and Portsmouth, with the Isle of Wight.
I also took on eastern Jamaica, then the whole of Jamaica as I visit family on the island every few years. That gets a weekly check too and I could spend a lot more time as there are so many unmapped roads - no basemap import, no Streetview, and very limited Jamaican government, Google and Bing maps to cross-check against.
New editors arrived and took on chunks of that English real estate and, now, I only have time for a daily sweep of the City, South/South-west London out to the M25, and a weekly quick run along the south coast from Rye to Littlehampton, around Poole/Bournemouth and Dorset south of the A30.
So, it’s down to time. If you have the time to expand your activities, please do so! Like Pealringer, I’m a Country Manager rather than an Admin, and it’ll be down to the Admin team whether your wishes are granted.
Go for it. It sometimes takes the CM’s a while to consider your request, but usually you will get it as long as you have not been naughty. :o In my humble opinion, the more area we cover with small sections AM’ed by mid level editors the more accurate we will get the map and the better the app will run.
but Waze retaliated with the “car park” ploy :o and I soon realised I did not want any more area to manage as you can only add the same car park so many times before you get really irritated. :evil:
