Database fiddling causing massive problems in town names

Map Editors Community China
1

Recently someone at Waze/Google had a fiddle to ‘fix’ town names by adding Chinese.

However, research was not done first.

In China a place name goes like this:

Village name
township name
district or county name
city name
province

Example; Xyz Village, Qinzao Town, Gangzha District, Nantong City, Jiangsu Province

permalink example: https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=row&lon=120.88719&lat=32.04757&layers=2981&zoom=4

The issue we now have is that town name has been used but without district name, thus there will be hundreds of places with the same name, ouuch!

EG: ‘二甲 Erjia, China’

Where is this place, exactly? What city, what district or county?
permalink example: https://www.waze.com/editor/?lon=120.93613&lat=31.91026&zoom=1

Erjia should be part of Tongzhou District, Nantong.

Also, in part of this city, the city name ‘Nantong’ has gone, being replaced with only the distict name!

Bear in mind that Provinces have been fully neglected, this will become a problem too as there are multiple places named ‘Tongzhou’ as a single example although the Chinese may not be the same, when using Pinyin, it is identical.

Please do some research before making wholesale changes!

might want to start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_China
and here for Jiangsu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_administrative_divisions_of_Jiangsu

there are even new town names that do not exist such as: 南州市通州区 this means ‘south’ but in fact it is in the north west part of Tongzhou 通州 and as far as I know does not exist at all.

Seriously, it is hard enough with the fonts.googleapi.com being very slow or not loading, no satellite images or not even loading at all for anyone to do anything for Waze. Why make it more difficult by non-researched wholesale changes?!

Why on earth have a 3 mile limitation for anyone in China?
This does not make sense at all for this location. Change that so your lowly users at least have a chance to make a difference.
Ohh and by the way we use Kilometres in this country, what are these ‘Miles’ about in 2014?

And yes, I have requested area/country manager, but it seems that the programming of that gave me just over 1 square kilometre. It would be good if those guys actually checked what they have programmed to make sure it is correct. I tried 3 times, now given up on that…

The river here, The Changjiang [Yangtse], a major world river, flows through the streets on live map and it seems of nil importance to anyone at Waze. Same with the Sea too. Must say, that looks totally un-professional.

Now, I would like to suggest to all Waze users here in China, a better alternate:

http://www.openstreetmap.org

where multilanguage is fully supported,
where placenames are done with localised standards,
where one can edit freely anywhere without limitation.
where the sea and rivers can be adjusted as new land is made or rivers change course

Waze, hear this; the ‘open’ competition is better, clean up your act fast or be left behind!

2

做广告还用英语？

3

thanks for the thanks Basinger, I guess you feel my pain!

As to wangsynet, perhaps you should use a translation tool?

‘Advertising’ yeah, sure, Waze is severly broken for China, and now even more so with incompetence by lack of research and a heavy handed database ‘update’ to 'make Waze display Chinese.

This is an utter fail added to an already highly difficult situation.

Thus, I have no hesitation is ‘Advertising’ a better alternative.

Since I am here posting again after waiting 10 full minutes for this page to load I will add another gripe:

Why ‘o’ why is Hong Kong lumped in as ‘China’? Sure, it is part of China but effetively not the same country. Perhaps Waze should apply the same dumb attitude and call Canada part of USA?

I wonder if Taiwan is lumped in too, not sure about that.

4

Very true that you say, Hong Kong is another world on China, but politically it belongs. I think Waze appreciates it that way.

5

Hi daxigua,
Thanks for your long message, suggestions and advices. I try my best to response some of them.

It is a good reference and legally we can use as a reference for our mapping. OSM (openstreetmap) is not a navigation app and cannot be compared with Waze. Waze development is quite mature in many countries. Thanks for all the users’ effort to improve the map.

In China, we still have not enough users to help. If we can find some users they can step up to lead other users, it will make a big difference. I personally not live in China but have the right to edit the map in the whole China area (well, say 95%) including Hong Kong. I keep trying to help as much as I can, espicailly in Hong Kong area. I’m doing some translation for China, Taiwan and Hong Kong too. (Note: not political reason I say China, Taiwan & HK, just these three area/countries have slightly different in language and transportation system.) I believe you can help to do translation too?

Waze is a community driven app. More users better the app. More volunteers to step up to lead and create a general agreement and put it in the wiki as a guidance for all users and mappers. It will make a big difference.

I asked Waze to give Hong Kong it’s own country name as HK has different transporting system. IIRC it was 2 years ago. Now we have it just few months ago. However, there are still two things have to be resolved. 1-the border and 2-LHD for HK.

Sigh…I agree that Waze normally takes too long to improve some important issues :cry:

6

Not correct, I am now using OSM as a navigation app in preference to Waze because it is now at the point of ‘A better alternative to Waze’

Waze is falling behind very fast due to slow response and making stupid mistakes like the database fiddling

ALL users in China should have this ‘right’ as there are still major expressways not connected that ‘could’ be fixed but are not, and very few working on Waze in China.

Indeed, ONE single user

Cantonese is not mutually intelligible, see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility
Furthermore, for example in Hong Kong roads are left not right.

It seems that an ignorant and insentitive, but ‘easy choice’ was made by Waze in the past.
Perhaps instead of making similar mistakes by database fiddling, these issues should be fixed first?!

No, dont want to do traslation on a broken system, absolutley nil point in doing so unless this mess is rectified.

7

I’ve checked your permalinks, looks like you’ve done plenty of work. But seriously, I’m not in favor of using any English or phonetic on Chinese maps, I always believe waze should be by natives, and for natives. As for Chinese map, I think only Chinese should be used.

Chinese natives as myself can ONLY read Chinese, after you edited the map for your convenience, full of English letters, you actually rejected all local users, they will delete waze soon after they find out their hometown map is a unrecognizable “English map”, so only you, no one else, can, and will use the map you edited, are you happy with that?

But I agree with you that waze is fading these years, they don’t care about China, not even a single bit, so I’m fading from waze too, OSM looks great, thanks for your recommendation.

Here’s what a Chinese map looks like:
https://www.waze.com/editor/?env=row&lon=113.99066&lat=22.56504&layers=901&zoom=2

8

I think there u have a misrepresentation, what do u mean “for natives”? what about those foreigners? Google map improved so much these years, it’s already the best navigation app in mobile now. However, it doesn’t work in China as good as in other rest places in the world. Waze can be one of the best navigation app in China to replace google map for those travelling or working foreigners in China, don’t hope them to use Baidu or QQ maps. If we forbid any single English word on the map, this would never be happened. Coz the map language doesn’t follow the system language like google map, It shows as what we edited.

9

As I’m told, waze is an everyday commuting app, not a navi app, so I figure it’s inherently for natives, not for foreigners or travellers. You are minority, if waze is dedicated for you, without natives’ participating therefore no traffic updates, it will become pointless & useless, and this is exactly what we see today in waze of China, well done.

So, as a foreigner in China, you may learn some Chinese to adapt to Chinese maps, or if it’s too hard for you, you may find some alternative navi apps, but you should NOT to have our Chinese maps to adapt to you.

10

Sheesh, as a ‘non native’ but long term resident, I want a map and GPS in English. There was not other chioce except for Waze and doing much work.

The issue with the Chinese ones is that they are ‘copied’ and do not have new roads, do not speak my ‘native’ language and come littered with advertising.

Waze and any other GPS navigation should give the USER a CHOICE of what language is used.

Now that Waze is going down the path of simply writing BOTH languages into their database, there is nil chance of that choice. That choice is taken away and the USER is forced to use BOTH languages.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

How about adding for example, Spanish later? Absolutley nil chance. Waze language is broken, badly broken. Again, I suggest abandoning Waze in favour of http://www.openstreetmap.org which supports I think 5 major SELECTABLE languages.

As the the suggestion of ‘native’ and only using Chinese, well yeah, perhaps a better understanding of the world OUTSIDE might change ones thinking.

11

Yep, I am happy with that as I have, as a user had a positive input.

If you are a Chinese user, you may now work on some translations and Chinese naming.

All good.

12

No one else can read the map you plot, all potential users and editors were, are, and still will be driven away by those weeds you planted, no crop can grow on the land of your city again any more, you just poisoned whole your city, and that’s merely because YOU want a map in English. And you’re pretty satisfied with that, because you feel you’ve done something positive. What a positive man you are.

13

Ahem, Waze is supposedly a ‘Comminity’ thus should be up to its USERS to make the best out of it using whatever language one may choose. Yes, Borden, you done a fine job in your spot, as I have here.
We as USERS chose to contibute in whatever way we were able. This is a community spirit.

Where Waze has broken the ‘community’ and the community spirit, is that Waze themselves are ‘database fiddling’ and are making decisions that has now ‘broken’ and aliented its USERS, because it is now NO LONGER a community.

Waze database fiddling is NOT USER contibution!

This is a serious threat to all USERS and for me at least is a deal breaker especially when BETTER alternates now exist. Go see www.openstreetmap.org !

R.I.P. Waze in China for 1,400,000,000 persons! Not that Waze ever seemed to care about ‘mystical China’

Waze, CHANGE your language selections and usage methods for your USERS, WORLDWIDE now!

14

Not correct. Had Waze delivered a system that speaks multiple languages this would not be a problem.

Waze has failed to do that and the system is broken. Now they are database fiddling to try and treat the symptoms, when in fact they ignore the cause. Completely broken thinking.

15

Thus you suggest that this city barely exist at all?

This is not a community sprit, glad I have had it with Waze.