I don’t live in the USA, but up here in Canada we have provinces. Over in Britain and France and other Waze areas they have their own regions. Could we please expand the “state” context on the website to encompass these? I don’t get to see how people in my region are doing or recent updates on the website because it only lets me pick states from the drop-down boxes. Comparing scores is state based as well.
Lets globalize a little.
On that note, I got my first distance reward for driving 100 miles in a country (that like most others in the world) uses kilometres. It may seem silly but things like this can make the rest of us feel less a part of the community.
It would be as simple as changing that field title to “State/Prov” and then adding the Provinces to the list of States. I’m sure there are editors in the Buffalo/Niagara area and the Detroit/Windsor area, etc. that may have AM territory that crosses the border. It’s not like we’re separated by an ocean. The Canadian structure of “City, Province” is pretty much the same as the American “City, State”.
KrankyD told me it isn’t quite as simple as it would seem, since early on the programmers chose to use provincial names as cities, and cities in the provinces as cities within cities. Obviously it didn’t work. They are aware of that and anticipate changing things “soon” (see above for a definition of that word). I plan on bringing this up at the meeting next month, so if you have any ideas on how this should be implemented (in Canada or anywhere else) please post here or get in touch with me.
Questions I have re Canada are:
Within provinces, are Regional Municipalities really important for addressing, or would most people simply search for the city or town name in the RM (or County, or other equivalent unit)? Does this vary from province to province?
If provinces aren’t implemented, should city names ALL have the province abbreviation appended (e.g., Milton, ON and Milton, NS) or should only the smaller/less significant place get the abbreviation (e.g., Milton [by itself for the city in ON] and Milton, NS)? And is the abbreviation ok instead of the entire name? Seeing “Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador” surrounded by many more equally lengthy names may affect readability.
This varies even within a province. In northern Ontario, you’d refer to the “Greater City of Sudbury” which encompasses all land within that city’s purview, but in southern Ontario, many refer to areas by county name, such as “Durham” (which includes major cities like Oshawa).
I’d be tempted to not implement regional names at all initially and just do the provinces themselves.
The abbreviation is always acceptable in Canada for province names as we have so few its very hard to be confused. Its worth noting that many abbreviate Newfoundland & Labrador as NFLD rather than with a two-letter abbreviation, but such discrepancies are not required.
Everyone who sees “Shawville, QC” knows its in Quebec as immediately as “Vancouver, BC” is the city in British Columbia (and not the island of the same name).
As a Canadian that’s also feeling a bit marginalized, I also support this thread. I also suggest that the solution is to treat Canadian provinces and territories exactly as US states for now. The following a are the official two-letter designations for Canadian provinces and territories:
Alberta AB
British Columbia BC
Manitoba MB
New Brunswick NB
Newfoundland and Labrador NL
Northwest Territories NT
Nova Scotia NS
Nunavut NU
Ontario ON
Prince Edward Island PE
Quebec QC
Saskatchewan SK
Yukon YT
So for the designation of each city or municipality, just include the city name, along with the two-letter identifier. Don’t worry about counties or regions, as these are not widely used in Canada. For now, I suggest including these provinces and states in the same list as the 50 American States for now. This way, the program can be expanded to be USA-Canada-friendly with minimal effort, until such time as another drop-down list can be developed to include country names.
I’m convinced that this very simple step will encourage tens of thousands of Canadians to join the Waze community.
That generally matches how it’s done in the States. What’s in a city is in a city, and what’s not anywhere near a city is left blank. The in-between is where it becomes less clear. A main difference between the two countries is the large amount of urbanized and suburbanized land around US cities that has no local government. Our census bureau designates names for some of it, but those aren’t always the names locals use. The main reason I ask is that the basemap import in Alberta allocated everything to an RM (or similar). Pro: every segment in the province has a city. Con: most of those cities are probably in error.
That does seem like the ideal solution. I’ll push for it.
If the goal is getting provinces under the currently-useless “state” field, I’d suggest against adding the provincial abbreviation to all city names at present, since a lot of names would need to be redone once the abbreviation becomes redundant.
Canadians are woefully underrepresented here. While you do have every right to feel left out, you also have every right to step up, start editing, and make it better.
Thanks a lot for the feedback, mapcat. I for one have been very proactive at correcting the maps in my area, prior to which virtually none of the roads had any names. I just achieved area manager status as well, so I certainly intend to contribute more.
However, as I’ve pointed out, all of my map edits (i.e. road names) are being saved as the state of “Other” rather than being saved as the province of “Quebec”. My fear is that when Canadian provinces are added to the list, I will have to redo all of those map edits to change the province!?? So I hesitate to do any further updates before provinces are included.
Also, as an Area Manager, I should be able to see a list of all pending Update Requests on the wiki page (http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Update_Request_List); however there are no pages for any Canadian provinces. So I’m a bit handicapped as an Area Manager.
This just emphasizes that Waze has to become much more Canadian-friendly before we can really help out any more than we are. Please help us to help you.
Thanks a lot for your attention, mapcat. Your support is encouraging!
It’s not just in Canada that this change is needed. Every country in the world has their own version of state/province. In the UK, they are called Counties. We 40+ of them. I wouldn’t wait for this change and stop doing edits, as I think we’d have to wait a very long time.
As an AM, the only way you can currently see a list of your Update Requests is to look at cartouche old and click Update Requests on the View Panel.
The problem with using the State “Other” in Canada is that many towns have the same name in several provinces. Just as there is a Springfield in every State in the USA, there are several occurrences of town such as Milton, Woodstock and Windsor in many Canadian provinces. So when if one searches for 123 Main St, Woodstock, they’re bound to have many occurrences across Canada if the state is not specified.
I’m not sure it’s an issue in countries such as the UK and Mexico, but it’s a problem here. And Waze should make it a priority to address. Plus, it’s a problem so simple to fix considering the architecture already exists for the US. Really, can they not dedicate just a few minutes of programming time to this?
Thanks to wl02703 for the “Cartouche old” hint. It works well.
Most definitely an issue in the UK too! I’ve stressed to HQ that it should be a high priority now but haven’t had anything that gives me confidence we’ll see a solution in the near future I’m afraid.
Adding provinces/region/state/county retrospectively will be relatively easy once the field is available though so don’t let it stop you editing now!
Per Ehud and Dror, Canadian provinces are in the works and will be implemented soon, once we can be sure that doing so won’t create city smudges. I think the extended tools will make this process fairly easy if it’s up to editors to do it, but it’s possible it can be accomplished in the db.
