Category names are only able to be changed by staff. I think this is just about how we name it in WME
Changed “Police Station” to “Police” and “Ambulance Station” to “Ambulance”. Left “Fire Station” as is.
Modified the formatting of the page a bit.
To me, at first glance this gives the impression there may be a category for Ambulance Station. I would suggest Numbering “Fire Station” and “Ambulance Station” or something to make it stand out better that Ambulance Station uses the category of Fire Department.
Idea #1
Idea #2
Also a questions about
Is this suggesting still use the Police Station / Fire Department Category or should it be Offices?
There are already two main sections, one for each category police and fire, and they are even similarly numbered as in your example when you look at the table of contents in the desktop version (mobile version hides the TOC):
Numbering them a second time would be confusing. But if consensus is to specify categories again for each of the three types of facilities, then so be it.
Yes, this is suggesting to still use the police and fire categories for non-emergency offices, as long as place points are used so they aren’t visible on the mobile app’s map, but a case could be made to use the Offices category there.
I like this last draft.
Thanks, I did not notice the TOC when I was looking at it early this morning.
Sorry for being little late to the party. After reviewing the proposed document, the following came to mind.
Single office/station/house
In the case of a single location in a community combining operations and administration, I’m not a big fan of abbreviating the agency. But, not sure that debate is in order at this point in the discussion.
Hospitals
Hospitals currently use a dash/hyphen to separate “ER” type prefixes from the hospital name. To avoid confusion over differing standards for different types of services it may be preferable to either use the dash/hyphen in this standard or adjust hospital naming to use a colon.
Hospitals provide emergency services, should the hospital category be included in this?
Formatting
From a formatting POV, it might be simplify the TOC by eliminating “Police Station” as a header (as it is essentially redundant to the category header). Changing “Examples” to simply italics would reduce extra nesting. Since there is very little vertical space between the preceding header and the examples, having an extra TOC entry may just serve to complicate the TOC.
I’m a sucker for tables and it would shrink the vertical space changing the examples into two column tables, like this, but more nicely formatted:
[table][tr][td]Primary[/td][td]Alt Name[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: SPD West[/td][td]Seattle Police Department West Precinct[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: LAPD Rampart[/td][td]Los Angeles Police Department Rampart Station[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: NYPD 13th Pct[/td][td]New York Police Department 13th Precinct[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: DSP Troop 7[/td][td]Delaware State Police Troop 7[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: THP Abilene[/td][td]Texas Highway Patrol Abilene Office[/td][/tr][tr][td]Police: YCSO[/td][td]York County Sheriff’s Office[/td][/tr][/table]
You could even get all fancy like and use the expand template if we end up wit a lot of examples.
My two bits.
I agree with this. If there is only one “York County Sheriff’s Office” or only one “Ponchatoula Police Station” then there is no reason to abbreviate it at all. That only serves to create confusion.
When this was originally drafted, the primary emphasis for app visibility was to identify the Place for what it is, not who it is.
To recycle the cited example, the priority was to quickly and simply convey that the place was, for general emergency purposes, a Police Station, whereas the necessity to identify it as the York County Sheriff’s Office on the app’s map was not considered particularly important, though the alt name process is there to capture searches.
Perhaps, following that purist approach, we could completely do away with abbreviations. All of these facilities could be only Police Station, Fire Station, or Ambulance Station on the map, with full names in the alt field as documented, discarding abbreviations altogether.
Interesting discussion, thanks all.
I am a fan of this idea myself.
I too am a fan of this simplicity.
THis simplicity completely hinders the search results list. The primary name is what will be displayed in the search results. If I see 10 “Police Station” in search results, how do I know which is the right one? Alt names are not displayed at all in the client even on the preview screen.
Indeed. We did discuss this before, and I had forgotten it already. Thanks.
Hence why we discuss it. Things may sound good but someone will bring up a point that changes our mind. I take back my statement of being a fan of the idea 
A few quick pointers on this concept. Since almost Every fire dept I heard of, was a fire Dept. (yes there are some called brigades, etc.), Would it make sense to save screen real estate by shortening the prefix for FD from Fire Station to Fire Dept?
For Ambulance, It always made sense to me if the Ambulance was run by the FD to use the FD category. But Hospital run EMS to use the hospital Category (they do provide urgent / emergent care after all). I felt the same way about private run EMS, that they fit better in the hospital / Urgent Care category than under FD.
FInally since Alt names do not display in the client, I would recommend the full facility name be also added to the description.
I would agree with this, if, the urgent care was provided at the facility that they house the ambulances in and it is advertised as such. Since the ambulances travel to “you” and provide “urgent care” at the site of the emergency or in transit to an emergency room, I do not think that the facility qualifies for the Hospital / Urgent Care category (needing X-Ray and Lab on site). Now, if for some reason you ended up on their door step and needed help I’m sure they wouldn’t turn you away, but I would not agree that Urgent Care is the primary purpose of the facility. More of dispatch control or something similar.
I have also seen, for example, El Paso County Search and Rescue here in Colorado that would fit this bill also
Good points, though perhaps EMS should be granted an exception since by virtue of the service they offer, they can stabilize and deliver you to such a capable facility while initiating care.
I can’t agree with that. In general if you need their services you are usually calling 911 and they come to you, you are not using a navigation app to get to them. In most cases this would apply to Police and Fire/Rescue services as well.
But here’s the kicker, they are probably using Waze to get to you…
I disagree with EMS Stations being a hospital by virtue of the service they offer.
If I were using Waze to get to the hospital for an Urgent Care situation, I wouldn’t want to end up at an EMS station where they could stabilize and transport but at a higher cost. If I was wanting the ambulance to start with I would have called 911.
Plus you can’t guarantee someone will be at the station. They could be on a call and you would be up the creek.
Ambulance stations are in most cases like a Fire Stations. I feel they should be treated like one as well. As for naming. I see no misinterpretation in waze search in making the prefix Ambulance than merging in with Fire. Don’t you think that would add confusion to other wazers if we combined them all to Fire?. How it sits now I feel is pretty straight forward.