Forum reorganization proposal

Map Editors Community General Topics
1

Wazers,

The majority of this post below is taken from a couple different posts in a thread I started with the Waze Champs about reorganizing the forums. This is for your visibility and commentary. Waze has accepted this organization and we look to implement it in the next week or so. However, I would like some more community feedback, especially those with experience with other large forums.

I’d like to know if you agree with one of my main points, “…we should be open to the users posting a question or issue in a forum which is directly connected to where they experienced the error…” That is, does this make sense? Or does it make things too loose?

Thanks
-Alan

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Forums are split into multiple subcategories, the uses of which are overlapping and confusing. Like the general forum has a “Bugs” sub-forum which we often redirect people to the Client or Map forum instead. From and end-user perspective, coming into the forums, which are spread far and wide, appears daunting.

My proposal is to make the forums more friendly to the end-users who are coming here to find answers and ask questions and post feature requests. To that end, I suggest dramatic pruning, mostly of subforums. To my way of thinking, we should be open to the users posting a question or issue in a forum which is directly connected to where they experienced the error.

The proposal below of the forum structure also shows how existing forums will be collapsed. Forums to be combined are to the right of the <- and in italics. Some forums have a 1:1 match, but many don’t. Some I am also recommending just renaming. You can figure these out by seeing there is just a single forum collapsing into one new one and the name is substantially similar.

  • Official Announcements <- Announcements and Updates
  • New Here? Go here first
  • Waze App <- Client, User Live Reports and Road Validation, General Options and Usability
  • Search <- Search
  • Navigation <- Navigation
  • App Beta Testing <- Beta
  • Waze Editor <- Map, View and Search, Editing, General Options and Usability, Help When Waze…x3
  • WME Beta Testing <- WME - beta group, Beta editor experts
  • Papyrus - alpha forum [closed]
  • Website, Community, General <- Community, Newcomers and General Discussion, Thoughts and Suggestions, Bugs
  • Ranks and Points <- Permissions, Ranks and Points
  • Waze Global Champs <- waze champs forum
  • Wiki Updates <- Wiki changes
  • Off-topic <- Off-topic
  • Country (Language) Forums <- Country (Language) Forums
  • Hierarchy remains
  • United States (and other countries)
  • Unlock/Update Requests (new forum)
  • Localization <- Localization experts

Forums recommended to Archive:

  • Map/Editing/Unlock Requests
  • Map/Editing/Update Requests
  • Wazeperts

The reason I would like to see changes made is mostly for the end-user experience, but the reduction of compartmentalization of information is going to be reduced and help us all. I often find the “new posts” in the web and “recent” view in Tapatalk doesn’t actually show me everything that is unread that I want to see. By reducing the places we click and look into, the faster and hopefully better, our forum experience will be. Same goes for the majority of users.

The new “read me first” forum needs to be populated with a handful of threads about the usage of each forum and the places in the wiki which need to be read/searched first. That the forum they post in should be the same as where they experienced the problem (App, Editor, Website) As well as pointing them to using the nanorep tool. A thread specifically about why the Country(Language) forums exist and when they should be used needs to be posted in this area.

There should be new rules established and posted setting some expectations of the end users. Information like Waze (the company) doesn’t often respond to most posts would be good.

2

Hey Alan, First of all thanks for the hard work in doing this :smiley:

My only recommendation would be to move the wiki section to the editing forum …make sense?

Thoughts?

3

My thought about that is that the wiki is (supposed to be) about more than just editing. I don’t necessarily see it as editor-specific.

Tapatalk made me do it.

4

Fair enough…Personally I use the wiki pretty much only for editing. But I realize that may not be the case for everyone :slight_smile:

Guess that’s why it’s called a "proposal" :lol:

5

The more I think about this, the more I think the “Help When Waze … x3” posts should really be migrated to the “Navigation” forum.

6

I could support that.

7

A thought: the unlock requests sub-forums under each country should have the country identifier in their names e.g. “Unlock Requests UK”.

That way, when viewing “new posts”, it will be much clearer which country an unlock request is for without having to view the post. It might also help with getting people to post in the right one. :wink:

8

That would be useful. They can install this mod to do that. It works for “new posts” list too.

9

I had been considering that! Hadn’t landed on a decision, though. If your post gets 12 thanks, it will be so. :slight_smile:

10

Suggestion for the Country Forums:

  • Continent
    • Country
      Or something along those lines. I see Latin America has it’s own sub-forum. So maybe “Continents” would not be used to group the countries: perhaps “Regions.” And, not to step on any toes, but isn’t Brazil a part of Latin America?
11

+1 on the continent breakdown. The country list is growing and I’m sure the UK guys will agree with me that it takes several scrolls to get to the bottom of that list and its easy to overshoot.

Via my iPhone 3GS.

12

That’s why I use a tweaked version of the “Cleaner Waze” forum cleaner script – I have it set to show only the “United States” and “Canada” subforums on the “Countries” forum page. (Not that I think that the other countries are unimportant, of course :wink: – they’re just outside of my bailiwick. :))

13

A new user would expect information on the client and web site functions to be there as well. It was one of the first places I went to figure out how Waze worked. I went back there when I wanted to start editing. Also, it provides a good place to put known issues near where the user is reading about the proper operation/process.

14

Send me a copy of your tweak. I use it to filter New Posts, but not the forum “tree”.

Via my iPhone 3GS.

15

Spil, could you send it or link it yo mee as well ?
Thanks

16

Actually, I already posted it (back in January :oops:) in that thread ;):

Just an additional note – before you make that change “live” on your computer, be sure to “whitelist” all the boards that you want to be able to see, or else you’ll find yourself not seeing everything that you need to see! I recommend logging in on two different browsers, one with the script and one without, then walking them together through the forum, so that you can see if you’re missing something important to you and make the necessary changes. :wink:

17

Here’s an update to the forum layout. Please make note of the change to adding a layer of “Regional Geography”-based splits before you get to the countries. For the countries breakdown by Region first, I am proposing to follow http://www.internetworldstats.com/list1.htm.

  • Official Announcements <- Announcements and Updates
  • New Here? Go here first
  • Waze App <- Client, User Live Reports and Road Validation, General Options and Usability
  • Search <- Search
  • Navigation <- Navigation, Help When Waze…x3 (from Map forum)
  • App Beta Testing <- Beta
  • Waze Editor <- Map, View and Search, Editing, General Options and Usability
  • WME Beta Testing <- WME - beta group, Beta editor experts
  • Papyrus - alpha forum [closed]
  • Website, Community, General <- Community, Newcomers and General Discussion, Thoughts and Suggestions, Bugs
  • Ranks and Points <- Permissions, Ranks and Points
  • Waze Global Champs <- waze champs forum
  • Wiki Updates <- Wiki changes
  • Off-topic <- Off-topic
  • Country (Language) Forums <- Country (Language) Forums
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Americas and Caribbean
  • Europe
  • Middle East
  • Oceania
  • Localization <- Localization experts

Forums recommended to Archive:

  • Map/Editing/Unlock Requests
  • Map/Editing/Update Requests
  • Wazeperts
18

In case you were wondering, the Country (language) forums are on the move.

19

Thanks. It might need another tweak down the road, but it’s a far sight better than the mess we’ve got now.

Any chance the outdated information on the main community page will be dealt with? Under Recent Map Updates I’ve been seeing that Popeye7751 made some road geometry changes in Tyler, Texas for… well, the past 7 months. Not close to professional-looking at all.

20

Who is organizing the move of Turkey? It’s already in the wrong place.

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