In 2020, Waze asked us to change the way we map, but the expectations have been unclear, hopefully, until now. These guidelines have been a long time coming, and I apologise to you all that it has taken so long. After a busy weekend, I would like to invite the Australian editing community to review some draft new guidelines for mapping in Australia found here and provide your valuable feedback:
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Australia/New_technology,_new_mapping_standards
It covers topics including:
- An introduction to snapper
- Revised Waze editing philosophy
- Mapping standards:
- Road alignments and angles
- Removing excess junction and geometry nodes
- Dividing roads
- Lane guidance (link only, more to come)
- Road width (coming later)
- Road shields (coming later)
- Turn instructions
- Junction boxes
- A rethink around mapping intersections
- A list of now banned map hacks.
I have done my best to present the ideas in a clear way, with the rationale where possible, and lots of images to make learning easy. The vast majority of this has come from what Waze has told us they want. Other components are solidifying things we have talked about in the community, and others points are adding onto your knowledgebase.
Do you hate reading long blocks of text? You’re not alone, but I’m guilty of writing a lot of it, sorry. I highly recommend this Read Aloud: A text to speech voice reader plugin for your Chrome browser. There are also versions for most major browsers out there. Simply select a block of text, right mouse click and hit Read Aloud.
We have also launched a refreshed Wazeopedia Australia home page that we hope you’ll love:
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/Australia/Main_Page
It is important we hear back from you with any feedback between now and 13 September 2021. Please discuss this page with your peers and leaders, and share your feedback with the community either in this forum post or on Discord. Of course, if you spot any typos or errors, please let me know and we’ll quickly sort them out!
Many thanks in advance and I look forward to discussing these with you.