Introduction : palmerit / jpalmer

Map Editors Community United States Florida
1

Hello,

I’m a new wazer. Found out about waze about 5 days ago or so. In that time, I’ve been pouring over the wiki (quick start guide, best practices, etc) and have made about 13k map edits so far.

The vast majority of that editing, has been turning the basic “basemaps” from no entrance, to two way roads and setting the turn restrictions appropriately. I’m mostly doing this to be helpful now, while I’m still learning the do’s and don’ts. I don’t want to start tackling things like bridges, and major roadways just yet.

As soon as I’m comfortable, I plan on editing all of the segments of I-75 between charlotte and sarasota county, to use the “best practices” naming convention (I-75 N, I-75 S) While doing that, I’ll update all of the ramps to use the best practices “to I-75 S Naples” and “Exit 170: Kings Hwy”

I still have to learn about things like disconnected roads, as there are a lot of “Primary roads” or “minor highways” in the area that are disconnected.

Sadly, the number of wazers in charlotte county are… well, nonexistant. My hope is that by changing the larger roads to the appropriate types, fixing the junctions, and making some of the larger residential areas “two way” and finxing the turn restrictions, people won’t be turned off by the poor performance of waze immediately.

So, this was supposed to be an introdcution, and instead turned into a TODO list. Getting back to the point:

I’m Jeff. I’ve lived in florida for all but 2 years of my life. I’m a systems administrator (linux, or BSD primarily) and I have an unhealthy fascination with all things GPS or cartography. I’ll likely need a Waze intervention in the near future.

2

OK, I bit the bullet, and started editing an exit of I-75. I decided to only do one for now in case I broke something. I’ll wait for the next map update, and verify it all works as expected in the client.

I’d like a peer review/critique of the work, If anyone would be so inclined.

Try this link instead?

Also, would you mind verifying the seperation of the railroad tracks just slightly north of that exit?

Before I edited it, the railroad tracks were connected to I-75 via a junction. However, the turn restrictions would have stopped Waze from routing people down the RR tracks!

I split them up, used levels to “seperate” them, and removed several orphaned junctions. I’d love some input from you pro’s (and yes, I want every nit-pick, no matter how “minor” or “pedantic”

And finally, I see a lot of conflicting info on the wiki about locking, or not locking the roads I’ve worked. As near as I can tell… at one point, I should lock a road that was 1-way IF it was close to another road (such as exit ramps) However, it seems as though a recent update/change made it so I don’t need to lock the roads. I’d love a firm answer here. In the meantime, I’ve locked the roads until I know for sure. (I can easily unlock in a single bulk edit. However I didn’t want to risk having the work undone if I should have locked it)

Also, please do me a favor. For the sake of learning, (teach a man to fish style) please don’t edit the map yourself. Point out what I did wrong so I can gain the benefit of your experience. Thanks!

3

Try that permalink again. There’s no exit there, and the nearest ones aren’t edited by you. (Don’t forget to Ctrl-C the address of the permalink after you hit the permalink button…I always forget to do that).

4

Interesting. I think it got parsed oddly by the forum software.

Try this link instead?

5

Okay, good link…I think on that last one, you were thinking about mapping Disney World! :lol:

Now, to pick it apart…The labeling of the exit ramp should match the signs on the Interstate. For instance, “Exit 164: US Hwy 17 / Punta Gorda / Arcadia”. The locals all may call it the “Duncan Road exit”, but you want the TTS to call out what the traveler sees as they’re trying to find their exit…in the dark…in the pouring rain, etc. They may or may not know that they have to go to Duncan Road, but as they’re driving through the unfamiliar area, if their GPS suddenly says “Exit 164: Duncan Road”, and they don’t see a sign that says Duncan Road, they may miss that little 164 at the top of the sign and the next thing they know, they’re in Fort Lauderdale.

Where the exit splits for a right or left turn at the very end, the standard is to leave those unnamed. However, there is a bug right now that causes Waze to completely ignore some ramp names, which can cause a lot of confusion. I’ve experimented with some exit ramps with those extra segments named the same way you have it, and Waze seems to announce the exit properly when it’s like this…the only problem is that it tends to announce it 6 times, which is really annoying. So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t until they fix that bug.

The southbound onramp looks good to me. Sometimes it’s tricky to know what the correct control city is. I would’ve guessed Fort Myers, but the sign on Duncan Rd says Naples, so that’s the correct answer.

6

Awesome, Thank you for that feedback. I guess I misunderstood the best practices for exit ramp naming.

As for the bug, I think I’d rather not have Waze announce it multiple times. So, I’ll set it back to the “unnamed splits” off of the exit, and Waze can fix that bug whenever they’ve decided it’s a priority and pull it out of the backlog.

Thanks for your time, I really appreciate it (and indirectly, all other wazers in the area appreciate it too.)

7

OK, I’ve edited it as per your suggestions. If you’d like to take another look, that would be great.

Any thoughts on the locked/unocked question, I’m still unclear as to what the current best practices are.

8

Beautiful!

9

I might mention that “best practices” get updated from time-to-time, so you will see various syntax such as the space after the hypen on interstates, and now the more recent, no space. The use of colons in exits is also new. Although the wait for the maps to update in the client do take a while, you’re wise to throttle back a little until you see the impact of your edits.

Ah, heck. Floor it!

On the lock/unlock question, there is not 100 percent clarity.

10

Yes, not 100 % clarity.

The general consensus is to only lock segments that are on high value roads (examples: freeway, major highway, ramps leading to/from these road types, maybe also complicated intersections that are likely to be mishandled by newbie editors). Also, you should not lock unless the road segment is ‘done’ being edited and meets all standards. (directionality is correct, segment naming is correct, road type is correct, turn restrictions are correct, etc).

Locking segments that are not correct, not named correctly, etc. could cause issues for lower ranked editors that want to fix them. In addition, someone who wants to contribute as an editor and can’t edit anything that needs to be corrected since it was locked up and not correct is going to be discouraged immediately.

The other side of this is that we want to protect the roads from being vandalized - especially roads that many Wazers are depending on for routing. Tough to strike a balance.

Also, there have been many ‘unlock requests’ here in the forums. This is causing work since multiple editors need to be involved to unlock, delays the fix from being applied, and it seems to be that the segments are just being unlocked without question. So why lock if someone is just going to immediately unlock upon request? (no gerben, I am not picking on you. you are being very helpful in unlocking roads, world-wide so that they can be edited. the question is whether they should have been locked in the first place.)

Waze has guided to lock ‘everything’ that you are done editing. But based on how this is working at this time, this may not be the best approach at this time.

11

Ok, so following the general concensus, I’ve got nearly 13k map edits from last week that are locked. Is there an easy way to bulk-unlock an area? Or is this going to require me reworking everything I did last week (highlight each segment and unlock)

12

Nope, one segment at a time. At this point may be best just to adjust your locking methodology going forward than spending time going back to unlock your prior work.

13

I’ve been fixing many cases like that in Jacksonville, removing the junction, therefore it won’t “accidentally” “correct” the turn restrictions when it shouldn’t be fixed.

14

Whoa, I just found out there’s forums for each state on here.

I’m perhaps one of the lone Wazers who’s been editing the map from North Fort Myers down to Naples. I’m glad that naming conventions is being done correctly and I think I-75 still needs North and South designation on some parts. I still have to message Waze about getting the shields back on the map since it’s a glitch on their end.

I just want to make this post stating that I’m actively updating the SWFL area but as of right now I’m not since I’m in the process of studying for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam coming up a month from now. After May I should be back to helping out the map around SWFL.