Hi and welcome! I see you made it into our Discord server as well which is great.
Sorry it’s taken a few days to get back to you. I won’t comment on every edit you’ve made, but a few where things are worth knowing. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask here or in Discord!
- Footpaths in Goonellabah - should be removed. Waze is designed for car navigation not as a general purpose map system. Footpaths are generally not useful, and sometimes create additional problems. Refer to Australian Road Types & Naming and Footpaths/Walking Segments. I can see some other footpaths you’ve mapped - they should be removed too.
- Map comments in Dunoon (dam) - comments are great, and a good way of marking things you can’t do. However they will only be acted on if someone finds them - so when you do this, it’s good to follow up by posting a “permalink” (PL for short) in the appropriate forum section or Discord channel (#nsw in this instance). You can get a PL for any road, place, comment etc. by selecting that feature and then going to the “Share location” panel (chain links button) - it gives you a PL like the ones I’ve put in this post.
- Woodlawn Rd diversion - again, appreciate the comments. Sometimes mapping these alignment changes is useful, but in this case probably not - the Waze “snapper” (that works out what road you are on based on your GPS data) would still put people in the correct location without it. Also, Waze doesn’t like having two segments that are joined to each other at both ends - when this happens, one of the segments needs to be split into two. See more info in one of the Mapping Videos (though it’s probably worth watching all of them!).
- You left a comment about Minyon Falls Lookout but it’s already mapped. You might need to check whether you have the Places layer displaying. This is mapped as a Point place (rather than an Area place) so it won’t necessarily display on the map, but it is navigable. For more about mapping places, refer to Australian Place Style Guide
- Churchward Pl geometry change is good,
- For the places you’ve added, it’s helpful to include the address as part of the place information. Road name should match the road as mapped in Waze (with whatever road type we’ve used - we have a standard set of abbreviations listed at Abbreviations and Acronyms (Segments and Places) that we use for consistency). Not all places have a street number, leave it blank if it isn’t relevant or apparent.
- I see another editor @reivaxX162 has already approved a couple of places, but made some changes at the same time. For Rotary Park it might be worth noting the changes made - in this case particularly changing it to an Area rather than a Point, setting the category with more detail, adding the address. The shape of the polygon reivaxX used is a good example of mapping places that aren’t simple rectangles - there are enough points to show the rough shape of the park, but he hasn’t wasted time and data obsessively following the curve of the road or the property lines in the southwest corner. Waze is for navigation, not for documenting ownership boundaries, we don’t benefit from the precision of a cadastral map. Also note that the shape boundary is separate from the road, not going right up to it - again this is preferred practice.
- In a similar vein, Grahams Quarry looks appropriate. You certainly don’t need more shape nodes, and you were right not to map any internal roads. But it would be worth adding alternate names for the location, an Entry point at the natural entry/exit, website/opening hours if you know them.
- I rejected your suggested change to the navigation point for Bunnings, on the basis that the existing central point was better than trying to force people to use a particular entry. I see you added lanes to the car park here - in this case I think just having the entry and boundaries (like the BCF car park just to the south) is better than mapping every lane. Adding lots of lanes to a car park is tempting, but it doesn’t generally improve the map - it can make the map look ugly and confusing, and gets very annoying if someone is navigating and Waze constantly beeps and tells them to turn every ten metres.
- This parking lot road had a problem - it’s one way A->B, but the B end wasn’t connected to anything so there was no way to navigate out of it. I’m assuming this is because you couldn’t attach it to Wyrallah Rd, which is locked to level 3 and higher editors. In this case you left a nice gap so that the issue was obvious - much better than overlapping it with Wyrallah Rd which would make it hard to see the problem. When faced with a situation where you can’t make a change because of a road being locked, there are two options:
- Ask for the needed road segments to be unlocked so you can make the change. A higher-level editor can reduce the locks to your level so that you can make the change, then put the locks back afterwards.
- Ask for a higher level editor to make the change for you.
- Both options can be requested via the relevant state channel in Discord (we’re more likely to see it quicker there) or in the forum at https://www.waze.com/discuss/c/editors/australia/au-unlock-and-update-requests/4011 (see the pinned post for instructions. Sometimes even if you request an unlock, the higher editor will make the change themselves anyway, depending on the road. Significant roads are locked to protect from wholesale chaos if someone breaks navigation on a major route.
- I’m not sure what this runway is supposed to be, but I suspect it shouldn’t be mapped at all.
- These roads don’t look beneficial, should probably be removed. I added the speed bump there though - you can’t add those until you reach level 2, but if there are unmapped ones you know about, you can always ask someone to add it.
I hope that helps, and the materials I’ve linked are helpful to - there can be a fair bit to take in at the start, but it’s worth making the effort because consistent editing practice makes the Waze experience for drivers a lot easier and less confusing.
Again, welcome, hope to see more of you soon!
Tim