I would say so, just as auto-3 meant an auto elevation to auto-4 when that change came in, so would auto-4 move to auto-5 if that were to be made the auto-ceiling in the future.
Yes please. Wherever a road is manually locked at it’s auto-level, it should be changed to auto. That way, should we ever make further changes to the auto lock levels, those changes will propagate to existing segments.
Auto locks have been with us some time now and I think generally they work well but now we have counties I wonder if the map would be better protected and allow easier editing for us lower ranked editors if auto locking worked at a county level rather than a country level.
The CM’s may not have noticed but being a level 3 it’s very obvious. Living on the outskirts of London I have to ask for an unlock for practically every edit in my home area where even some single track roads (almost dirt tracks) and supermarket car parks get auto locked to level 4. Travel further afield and you will find many Minor Highways only auto lock at level 1.
I guess a few examples may be needed :roll:
Much of North Devon, in fact I believe all roads in this link, are only auto locked to a maximum of L1, whereas both these supermarket roads are auto locked at L4, Asda, High Wycombe and Sainsburys, London Colney. Even the McDonalds car park is Auto L4!
I don’t know about the rest of you but I would rather have a broken access road at a supermarket than the A39 in north Devon, the detour could be miles and you might not even realise why Waze took a roundabout route but I bet the broken supermarket road would very quickly get loads of UR’s alerting us to the fact that it had been broken.
I almost forgot the single track lane, there have been a few UR’s suggesting that it should be a dirt track but I use it as a short cut and I guess many others do as well so I’ve left it as a street but at some times of the year it is almost impassable due to flood water and pot holes. Just because it is well used by locals does it make it more important than big ‘A’ roads out in the country?
Oh, we very definitely have! Tonight is a typical evening for me. I’ve been home for 2 hours and I am still catching up on the forums and checking & replying to editor requests - I’ve yet to do any editing of my own and this is not unusual! Although the forum isn’t showing it for some reason at the moment, I think that more than half of my 5000+ posts are in the Editor Requests forum - and not many of them were requests by me! :lol:
The idea of auto-locking was that it should be a supplement to manual locking by editors. It should catch the roads that are genuinely used by many Wazers that haven’t been manually locked. The examples you give don’t so much highlight that the car parks shouldn’t be locked to 4 - as perhaps the A39 should be manually locked if it’s in “good condition”.
I would say that car parks being auto-locked to 4 is an interesting exception. More relevant is that Crest Road (a street just outside one of them) is also locked to L4. To reach the top auto-lock level, that street must be somewhere in the top 1% of the busiest roads in the country. If there was a mistake there, it would affect vastly more Waze users than a mistake on the A39.
We have to strike a balance. When Waze introduced auto-locking, they originally wanted it to auto-lock up to 5. We wouldn’t have allowed it’s implementation in the UK until we could control the maximum level. Initially we went for a maximum of 3, but there were still incidents where L3 editors “broke” major routes or junctions. Waze do not want us to control the promotion of editors to L3 (in fact, they resist us controlling L4 promotions!). In the past it was pretty easy to reach L3 and it’s not exactly an impossible task now. There’s no way we can go around assessing every L3 editor and demoting them if we don’t think they can be trusted.
Since we increased the maximum auto-lock level to 4, there have been far fewer incidents of accidental map damage. Some editors still try, but you just find unnecessary complications sitting over the junction unconnected.
Something we have asked for before, and will keep asking for, is a way to allow AMs to edit any segment in their AM area. We’ve been under self-management for a long time and we trust our AMs. Unfortunately we never get anywhere with HQ on this.
The other thing editors can do to help the CMs/CAs keep up with the requests (and I know you do this, Andy - the comment is aimed at a wider audience) is to clearly and briefly explain why you want the unlock. It’s now 12:35am and I need to go to bed soon. If I see a request with a clear, simple explanation from an AM, I can do it in seconds and move on. If I see a request that says “fix needed”, or waffles on for 3 paragraphs (pot!) without getting to the point, I’m going to think “I’ll look at that tomorrow”.