Error adding places in WME

Map Editors Community Ireland
1

Hello,

For over a week now, I have been experiencing an issue with WME where I am unable to add places in certain locations. What’s strange about this is that I can create a lake place say at position (x, y), but I then I can’t create a neighbouring lake at say (x+200m, y).
Just for reference, I am editing in Co. Monaghan.

What I know so far:

  • There is no way to tell if a place addition is going to throw an error.
  • It is seemingly random, but it happens for a higher percentage of places near the border with the UK. (Although this would not explain the error appearing right in the middle of the county).
  • Larger places tend to throw the error more often. These are especially frustrating since it could have taken up to 5 minutes to draw the lake/lough, only for the error to throw.
  • You can create point places in “working areas” and move them gradually up to the desired place by moving a short distance, then saving and repeating.
  • Whether or not a place is near a “city” in Waze, doesn’t seem to have an effect.
  • This seems to be a localised problem. Ie. I’m not experiencing this problem when I add places in my UK areas.
  • It’s an instantaneous error. It happens as soon as you click save. As if it isn’t trying to save server side.

I haven’t found a consistently working workaround or temporary fix for this problem, and I’m experiencing it both in WME and WME Beta. The closest to a workaround is the one mentioned above, but this is very tedious indeed.

Here’s a screen recording of the error happening in WME.

Permalink from the video if any other editor would like to try to add this location. Any places I have tried to add that haven’t worked have a point comment on them. If you successfully managed to add a place, remember to remove the comment!

2

Hi Chris,

I’ll wait a couple of days to see if anything changes or if anybody else replies to say they’ve got the same problem, but I’ll contact Waze HQ if neither of those things happen.

I was going to ask if this happens more near the edge of your AM area, but I see from your permalink that that isn’t the case either.

However: what happens if you create a small place, save, and (if the save succeeds), enlarge the place and save again? Is it just the creating of places in the first place that fails, or does editing of places that already exist also fail?

++David

3

Creating a small place has worked in some instances, but usually only if the place I was originally trying to add was very large. (So I guess the smaller place was in a “working” area).
In one or two cases as well I have been able to start with a point place, sucessfully save it then change it to an area.

Correct, just initial place creation is giving an error. If a place exists, it can be edited without issue.

4

Could it be something simple causing a conflict - like being outside your Editable area? Do you have that layer enabled?

Also, have you tried another browser/incognito session?

5

It’s definitely in my editable area (right in the center!), and I always have the layer enabled. I have tried all the usual browsers, and I get it both on my home PC and university laptop, and also on a university desktop PC which gets reset daily.

6

Hi Chris,

Here are my results:
Test 1 [Passed]: creation of area place (+6000m2/Lake) in AM area in Co. Galway (Zoom 6) without street name
Test 2 [Failed]: creation of area place (+40000m2/Lake/Forest) in AM area in Co. Galway (Zoom 6/5/4/3/2/1) without street name
Test 3 [Failed]: creation of area place (+246000m2/Lake) in AM area in Co. Leitrim (Zoom 4/3/2/1) without street name
Test 4 [Passed]: creation of area place (+246000m2/Lake) in AM area in Co. Leitrim (Zoom 4) with street name

7

Thanks for checking. I wonder if it’s a known issue with AM areas that span country borders.

I’ve sent a message to our community contact asking if it’s a known issue and asking that they look into it.

++David

8

Chris,

Can you try the workaround below?

  1. Add a street name to the place and save.
  2. Edit and delete the added street name and save. (zoom out if necessary and leave State field blank if close to UK border)
9

Genius! Works every time!

10

Glad to hear that!
Waze country borders don’t always match the “official” ones. You probably notice it when you move the map around when you have Toolbox (or others) script installed. Therefore we get unexpected results…
Here, it happens even far away from the border (maybe close to editable area boundary)
The difficulty is to guess what Waze expect us to feed in to avoid those errors… :x

11

Yeah toolbox goes crazy near the borders! Next time I’m editing I’ll see if that workaround works for places that are “on” borders and report back here.

12

I have been successfully able to add places that span borders. Sometimes it is fussy about whether it should be in the UK or Ireland, but setting it to the other one if the first fails should work.