We’ve got to have better tools for getting urgent PMs to new editors!
As a newly-minted Area Manager, I have been using PMs to welcome new editors in my area and alert them to guidelines. Since I started doing this in May, I have “cold-called” 33 editors. Of those 33 PMs, 12 are still waiting in my outbox, never even read. Two of those twelve editors continued to use uninformed editing technique and damage the maps (sadly one had to be blocked, the original PM and several others still sitting unread in my outbox).
This situation needs to change. We can’t have editors continuing unintentionally to damage the maps simply because they have their ears off! From an AM perspective it also begins to feel like a waste of energy to send personal friendly greetings and helpful links to people who have a 1 in 3 chance of not even reading them.
The most fantastic solution would be if Waze could be persuaded to make the presence of new PMs something almost annoyingly visible in the standard, default editor window. (I haven’t used the pop-up notification system offered by the forum, and don’t know if it is sufficiently “in your face”, but however it works it is not the default.)
Less fantastic, but not requiring Waze’s help, would be for the community to keep a list of the “most wanted” editors – kind of like an “all points bulletin” (APB) – and if anyone sees one of these editing with Live Users, they can try to get the editor’s attention. This would not be finger pointing, the list wouldn’t accuse anybody of anything, the goal would be just to get it through to the editor to HEY! READ YOUR PMs!
(I just got a vision – if a user has continually unread PMs for some length of time, his hardhat changes to a dunce cap in the Live Users view.)
As the community grows the urgency of establishing communication with new editors will only rise. Help!
If the user is truly damaging the map through inappropriate edits, they should be blocked ASAP if they haven’t read their PM in some reasonable (say 2-3 days, tops, unless the damage is so severe it’s warranted sooner) timeframe.
In one case that’s exactly the procedure that was followed, although I gave it a week of bad edits after sending my PM, not 2-3 days. The other user is still “at large” because he/she is rarely editing. When he/she does, turn restrictions get corrupted, clearly by accident, but there are so few edits we can keep up with it.
Waze has clearly said (so I’m told) that encouraging beginning editors is terrifically important to them. So important that they would rather see the maps damaged than discourage a new editor. Well, I can’t think of anything that would discourage a new editor more than being blocked without knowing why.
This understanding – that Waze would rather see damaged maps than discouraged beginners – is why I am so hesitant to ask to block editors that clearly mean well but are just unreachable.
Is it articulated in a place that beginning editors are sure to read that if they don’t read urgent PMs within 2-3 days their editing privileges may be blocked? I haven’t read that anywhere. I don’t disagree with the practice, it’s just if beginners don’t know that, it makes their experience much more negative. It will feel arbitrary and unfair, especially since (as far as I know) when one is blocked one is given no information as to why – not even a suggestion to read PMs (?).
Waze has put the advancing editor in a awful and difficult situation. They have deliberately omitted training and tests in order to encourage beginners; they tell advancing editors to support beginners as much as possible; but then they do not provide a guaranteed way to communicate with those same beginners, necessitating extreme and unpleasant measures when the beginners make serious mistakes. To be clear, in my situation, it has not been that the editor reads and ignores PMs, it’s that the editor doesn’t even read them in the first place!
I can see encouraging beginners to edit with no training and no tests. But I can’t see encouraging them to edit with no communication. This has got to change.
Or maybe an auto-block – you simply can’t edit if you have pending unread PMs! The parameters could be tweaked, for example they would have to be unread for at least a day before you’re auto-blocked. And it could be abused, so maybe the only PMs that could cause this would have to come from an AM or other senior editor and be flagged in some way as a “blocking” PM. But that would make a huge, huge difference.
This should be something for the waze staff to consider in a future update. I am sure that the more senior editors would agree on this but need there opinion also.
Again, talk to your RC. If they believe the damage is bad enough, they’ll get them blocked. If they decide to perhaps attempt to reach out to them before blocking, that’s up to them.
As an AM, it’s not really your place to request an editor block. It is, however, your role to let your SM and RC know about a bad editor.
I believe when one is blocked, they’re instructed to contact a CM or Champ on the forums. As for talking about repercussions for bad editing, we don’t really do that in the wiki, AFAIK.
Yes – and blocking them sends them to the forums, where they can then make contact and perhaps read your PM.
Again, it depends on the gravity. A few red roads? Hardly worth it. Clear map damage? Block now, ask questions later. Of course, there are responses in between.
I have submitted a WME feature request for Waze to grant AMs the ability to apply a temporary block via a PM; once the PM is read the block would be automatically and immediately lifted.
It may be that Waze and the senior editors do not think it wise for AMs to be involved even in temporary and editor-liftable blocks like this proposed functionality; that even such a light-handed alerting technique should be reserved to the RC. That would be a useful discussion.
It may also be that Waze and the senior editors think the current system for dealing with uninformed editors who are not checking PMs – a block requested by the RC – is adequate. I don’t see how that squares with Waze’s philosophy that a damaged map is better than a discouraged editor. But maybe that’s the community perspective.
I don’t know where you’re coming up with this philosophy that a damaged map is better than a discouraged editor… Because that isn’t the impression I get from our staff contacts or the other Champs.
I’d be happy to be wrong about that. I’m paraphrasing what I thought I saw in a post by a senior editor reporting, I believe, from a meetup. But I have had terrible luck going back and finding posts I “could swear I read”. I’ll post a link when (or if, sigh) I find it. In the meantime if anybody else sees this and knows what I’m referring to please chime in.
I was not really talking about a block that the am would have but something to hay you need to read this before continuing to edit. Something would point them to the pm would be good. That way they know about it and if ignored them the am could go to the RC.
Exactly my thoughts as well. Maybe I shouldn’t use the word “block”…? Although that’s basically what it is when Waze prevents a person from editing. Until they read their PMs they are, effectively, blocked.
The difference is, this flavor of block would come with a clear message saying “you have to read your PMs before you can continue to edit.” Once the editor did so, the block would be automatically and instantly lifted with no outside intervention required.
The idea is to get the editor’s attention, not really to stop them from editing. They could, if they wished, just open the PM screen and close it again. They could clear the block themselves in a matter of seconds.
If behavior didn’t change, the AM would probably not send another “blocking PM”. The relationship between editor, AM, and RC would shift to what we have now.
I’m on board. I’m not an AM, although I’m considering it since I’ve been a fairly active editor and basically “adopted” a few favorite areas I’m extremely familiar with.
I’ve come across several new editors, and even one who’s somehow an AM (although they don’t meet the criteria, somehow they’re an AM and I have no idea where) who have gone the full spectrum from a leaving a couple of “red roads” to complete disregard for best practices and guidelines where they draw roads in every single lane in a shopping center parking lot, draw roads that are still under construction and won’t be open for months, delete segments and then re-draw them incorrectly and disable all turns on some major highways where users are directed to turn around and get on surface streets because of these bad edits. Some of these editors obviously mean well, but need someone to show them the way and maybe lead them to the wiki pages and forums. I’ve had varied results with the PMs.
Like DwarfLord mentioned, I’ve got several over the last couple of months who still have PMs sitting in my outbox. Some have read them and obviously ignored them, requiring the intervention of an SM or RC. I think the current system is lacking and could be improved, however sometimes the immediate intervention of the RC is necessary to stop someone from creating havoc. I do have reservations about contacting the RC to inform them of a new editor who’s doing more harm than good. I’m sure they have other things to do, and I don’t want to burden them simply because a new editor hasn’t read their PMs. Most of the time, all they need to do is read the PM and I’ve been able to establish a good rapport with them and help them along. I have come across several in a short period of time where I didn’t want to contact the RC, mainly because I didn’t want to seem like I was complaining or to be the squeaky wheel. I’m still finding messed up parts of the map or things that shouldn’t be mapped according to our state guidelines and fixing them.
The crux of this issue is the lack of notification of PMs. Some people don’t want an email, or don’t bother to check the email account associated with their Waze account, that notifies them of a PM. Many don’t know how to check their PMs because they don’t go to the user control panel. I’ve found a sort of stop-gap measure for that. In a case where a new editor has responded to a UR, or in a case where I created a UR in an area where a new editor had made a mistake, I identified them by their user name and asked them to check their PMs, providing a link in the UR for them. That might be a trick that’s useful if no other solutions are developed or instituted.
Hola!
Level 1 user should not be allowed to modify the maps, they shuold only “suggest” modifications, later users level 3 should modify them o allow them.
Fernando
Sorry I do not agree. Even level 1 editors should be allowed to edit because this gives them time to learn. Everyone has to learn and we all made mistakes when level 1. I would say that they need to make sure that if they are unsure that they should contact the AM. Also that is why the important roads are locked to higher levels. I find mistakes all the time.
I do think the it should not be a selection for the live users. They need to be seen when they are editing. Also the pm’s if there are any to them should be the first thing that pops up when logging in.
Coontex is correct. Allowing new editors to change the maps is fundamental to the intent of Waze. If we didn’t allow new editors to modify the maps at all, I’d be willing to bet the number of new editors would fall off dramatically.
What we need is better ways to communicate with new editors, and for them to communicate with more advanced editors. For example, right now there is nothing in WME that tells a new editor there even is such a thing as an area manager, and the area-manager layer is nearly useless in most cases.
But my reason for starting this thread was to beg for a way to require the attention of an otherwise uncommunicative editor who is unintentionally damaging the maps. We have to be able to stop the damage, but we can’t block the editor until we’ve tried – and tried – and tried – to reach them, during which time the hurting just keeps on. You can send a PM in the evening, and by morning there’s an hour of work to be done cleaning up the damage and the PM is still sitting there unread.
This is something Waze can implement very easily, but so far they haven’t. It is by far the most discouraging thing about being an Area Manager that we have no immediate tools to get an uncommunicative editor to pause.
Hey, if AOL could do it with their “Welcome, You’ve Got Mail” prompt when you log in (for several years now), it should be relatively easy for Waze to set a trigger that runs a prompt whenever an unread PM is present upon login.