Best way to organize collaborative map editing work?

[a4xrbj1]

Hi Wazers,

would like to hear your ideas or how you’re organizing the necessary map editing work with a country of only some major highways and parts of the big towns mapped out?

I think this is a point that is still overlooked by Waze itself, as you guys claim yourself as a social community GPS, how can the community organize itself (meaning the work that need to be done on the map) without help from Waze?

How about maybe a special class of Update requests, that only we can only set in Cartouche, meaning to mark a specific areas that’s needs attention too? Combine this with a class like the street system, meaning, Interstate, major/minor highway, primary street and street, so that we can work ourselves from top to bottom!

That would really help, even further if we could “claim” one of these special update requests for ourselves, highlighting that we’re working on it so that other can concentrate on something else (nothing worse than two people editing at the same spot - don’t know how your server sorts this out).

Finally a category to mark those “tasks” as being completed, that’ why I think we need something similar to update request, just like “mapping tasks” maybe.

What do you think? How do you attack such a problem? Would like to get our small base of map editors get better organized, to make the map better quickly.

Also, there’s not a good system in the forum itself where you can see who’s actually using Cartouche in your area, so that you can communicate with each other. Thus it’s leading to all kinds of additional work, as people name cities wrong (btw, when can we use districts in there?), spell in CAPITAL LETTERS, don’t use E1 or other numbers in front, etc.

Putting it up in FAQ isn’t enough as you can guess from everydays work.

Waze is something special, but it also needs some special attention from you guys not to let it die on the spot like so many other community projects. 2.5 million users, but how many are active? How many stay active more than 1 month? Especially in a country like Malaysia where the map is still crappy?

Lastly, I fully agree that us map editors should be given more attention, maybe you start by looking at my wish list above. It would help us achieve our task much quicker. Ah, and please give us some points that we deserve for our work!

Cheers,

Andreas

[AlanOfTheBerg]

In the Wiki is one suggestion, called the To Do list for Major Cities which could be adopted for other geographies. I think having a standard for updating update Requests in Cartouche is very important, but I haven’t seen anything in the Wiki yet, both for AM-to-AM visibility, but also to make sure we are communicating back to the users reporting updates in a timely, clear and respectful and helpful manner. The difference in perception is huge for someone submitting their first Update Request and getting a reply within a day compared to a month or more.

[a4xrbj1]

@AlanOfTheBerg

In the Wiki is one suggestion, called the To Do list for Major Cities which could be adopted for other geographies. I think having a standard for updating update Requests in Cartouche is very important, but I haven’t seen anything in the Wiki yet, both for AM-to-AM visibility, but also to make sure we are communicating back to the users reporting updates in a timely, clear and respectful and helpful manner. The difference in perception is huge for someone submitting their first Update Request and getting a reply within a day compared to a month or more.

Hi Alan, sounds like a great idea to organize at least in the meantime, while we’re waiting for a better solution from Waze itself

Will see that I first of all can start a country page for Malaysia in Wiki and then setup a page similar to the US page you’re referring too

Cheers,

Andreas

[SmartGuy]

Since Google Maps are propriety, is it possible to use http://www.openstreetmap.org/?

Thanks

[unwallflower]

@SmartGuy

Since Google Maps are propriety, is it possible to use http://www.openstreetmap.org/?

Thanks

No. Doing so will cause them to delete that area of the map.

[harling]

@unwallflower

@SmartGuy

Since Google Maps are propriety, is it possible to use http://www.openstreetmap.org/?

No. Doing so will cause them to delete that area of the map.

So “open” is a relative term. :roll:

FWIW, this evening I made some changes to the Boston To-do list (see link in my .sig), in the hope that being prepared to delegate tasks will encourage people to volunteer: “build it, and they will come”, as it were.

As for collaborating more closely than, “you do that freeway, I’ll do this one”, I would expect a team to communicate at least via PM or direct eMail, and in cases where a consensus or judgment call is needed (or an area manager’s approval is required), IM. Each team’s comfort level & solution will be different, and that’s fine.

[a4xrbj1]

@harling

FWIW, this evening I made some changes to the Boston To-do list (see link in my .sig), in the hope that being prepared to delegate tasks will encourage people to volunteer: “build it, and they will come”, as it were.

As for collaborating more closely than, “you do that freeway, I’ll do this one”, I would expect a team to communicate at least via PM or direct eMail, and in cases where a consensus or judgment call is needed (or an area manager’s approval is required), IM. Each team’s comfort level & solution will be different, and that’s fine.

Hi Harling,

that is exactly my line of thought, good that I’m not the only one with that need. BTW, i you like my idea, you can vote for it so it get’s done by Waze developers (somehow lost the link, grrrr).

Andreas

[a4xrbj1]

@AlanOfTheBerg

In the Wiki is one suggestion, called the To Do list for Major Cities which could be adopted for other geographies.

Can anybody help me to setup the country page for Malaysia? I don’t get it on that Wiki, somehow being to stupid or maybe it’s my rights, don’t know.

Help needed! Would like to setup Alan’s idea of To Do list for Major Cities in Malaysia

Thanks in advance,

Andreas

[AlanOfTheBerg]

@harling

As for collaborating more closely than, “you do that freeway, I’ll do this one”, I would expect a team to communicate at least via PM or direct eMail, and in cases where a consensus or judgment call is needed (or an area manager’s approval is required), IM. Each team’s comfort level & solution will be different, and that’s fine.

IMO, Google Wave (so close to Waze!) would have been a superb platform for multiple mappers to communicate with. Having so much easy functionality for instant, threaded conversations, embedding of links and images, etc. Too bad Waze didn’t take off sooner. Maybe we could have saved Wave.

[unwallflower]

@harling

So “open” is a relative term. :roll:

It seems that way. There was a problem a few months ago where they found that some OSM data had unintentionally been added to the map, and it resulted in them temporarily removing map data from several countries. Here’s a link to the blog post where they announced that.

The way I understand it is that OSM is “open” to users… not so much other companies. I know this has something to do with their licensing, but I don’t think I understand it enough to explain in more detail because I seem to have left my lawyer hat at home.

FWIW, the FAQ also talks about why they haven’t (yet) collaborated with OSM:

@Waze FAQ

Waze has the technology to create dynamic maps from consumer driving relatively quickly. This is how we created the map in Israel, but when we planned on making our app available on the US market, we decided to use an existing map as a base, rather than start the map building from scratch, and considered various map providers including OSM and TIGER.

We are committed to keeping waze free for our end users who help build the system, yet we’re a commercial company who’s looking to generate revenue down the line. When looking at the OSM licensing terms, we felt that they might limit us from certain business models in the future, and, therefore, we decided to use TIGER maps. This may change in the future, however, and we are open to potential cooperation with OSM, and other, similar, services.