There was a good amount of discussion on this topic almost a year ago now, but ultimately nothing made it into the NYS Wazeopedia page. I recently gained something like 5 states worth of EA and found it very beneficial to go to a state’s Wazeopedia page and find the UR procedure/etiquette laid out very clearly. DrivingWithBill proved that new editors also have a hard time finding the procedure for handling URs.
I had worked up a draft in my Wazo namespace here back when we first started the discussion:
Can anyone suggest any further edits there (or a rewrite) to make this sufficient to add to the NYS Wazo page to provide guidance to new editors and out-of-staters? I know that the 0/4/10 day schedule is being considered, but can we put 0/7/7 as the current guidance until a consensus is reached on the actual time table? Short of this, editors would fall back to national guidance which is 0/7 which does not seem optimal.
Thanks for considering it.
Edit: Further discussion has led to a new draft here:
We should probably include the part about:
“If the Reporter replies to your request for more information, and you need to ask a followup question, consider that the start of a new cycle; i.e. wait 7 days, add a reminder, then close no earlier than 7 days after the reminder”
A minor note - if suggesting a Google search, we should reference why: “. . . since many?/some? bad destination or routing results are because the app got a bad Google pin, . . .”
Also, since the NYC UR Project is long-term and ongoing, and since a lot of out-of-state Wazers show up there, I think we should mention the project, and the 0/4/10 guidance (and change the Wazeo when the project closes).
Pennsylvania just adopted text for their WoP page. It would be worth taking a look there and seeing if it works for us. Sharing language across the region would be beneficial.
Thanks for the feedback - if we like the words that PA is using on their page, I think like Pete said it’s good to share language between states in the region. PA does have similar bullet points to ours, so I don’t think anything would be lost by using their verbiage. We did have a section on closing clustered URs that I think would be worth supplementing with. I’ve mocked up another example, using PA’s section as a template here:
IMO - the biggest challenge is that most waze users are not aware about the “inbox” in the app - adding inbox notification to the main screen will help getting more updates from original reporters.
Personally I like 7/7 standard.
I view that it would be a problem with having a different standard only for those involved in the NYC UR project. Editing in NYC can still be performed by other editors not in the project and they are going to see the UR project editors doing a different standard than what they are called upon to do. This is counter intuitive and then raises the question of how one gets involved in the project. I would caution strongly about having two sets of standards for the same area. NYC May need to have a different handling solution for their URs due to performance issues however the standard should be universal for all editors.
Also the original guidance of 1/7/7 was intended not to match any national guidance but for what was being referred to “weekend warriors” with the intention of ensuring we had a weekend covered in between responses in case the reporter is only a casual driver. The reality is that the further you get it from the initial report the less likely you are to elicit a response. A quicker window for follow up is key. It is a pity that the request for guidance from drivingwithbill did not further reinvigorate this debate at that time.
The rush should not be to close a UR but to give the end user the best chance to respond by quickly finding new ones and providing quick follow up. Closing can be elongated as that allows patterns to develop if we are not getting any responses.
Plenty of drivers (and editors) have notifications disabled and may never see the inbox response also those drivers without an account (you don’t need to register to start driving with waze) never even get an inbox message. 1/7/7 vs 1/4/7 the biggest issue is a qualitative analysis of each UR even before responding. Check street view, look at GPS readany message google the street name. You would be surprised how many can be solved without anymore info from the driver and that was what the NYC UR project was all about.
As Johnsninja58 has pointed out, this situation is undesirable. I have seen multiple instances where a participating editor leaves a reminder on Day 4, and then a non-participating editor comes along on Day 11, sees a UR that has been open for 7 days without response, and closes it. So instead of either 0/4/10 or 0/7/7, we end up with 0/4/7.
FYI all this thread has sparked a big convo in the statement manages channel and I think we are coming to a consensus which we will share here as soon as possible. For further discussion with the rest of the team. Thanks JD
As JD alluded to, there has been discussion and modification to the draft that was proposed and the NYS SMs have approved the verbiage and timeline outlined in the following NYS UR guidance draft:
The big change to note here from our current guidance is the UR response/resolution timeline. The desire is to get our guidelines more inline with national guidance (7 days total) with the addition of the reminder after 3 days (1/3/4).
Please take a look at the SM approved draft and provide any feedback as you see fit.
I like the new guidance. After working the UR project, and being an active editor in NY, I see very little difference in response rate between here and the rest of the US even though the wait time is considerably longer in the NY area.
I’m good with this change.
From my memory, very few user responses come in between the Day-7 reminder and the Day-14 closure. Of the ones that do, they come in right after the 7 day reminder, probably because the user had forgotten to answer the initial Day-0 question. In this case, it’s not a matter of the 7th day, but the reminder message itself. I would suspect a Day-3 reminder would be just as effective.
I would also suspect that at the Day-7 mark, many users don’t reply because their response is “how the heck would I remember what I reported last week?” so quicker reminders may actually improve user response as they may be more likely to remember on Day-3.
I like the proposed draft. I believe that having a reminder message go out at Day 3 will be beneficial as the reporter may remember the issue better than when they would have received a reminder message at Day 7.
I don’t see NOR having a standard UR Guidance any time soon, especially one thats only 4 days long. The national USA Standard is 7 days, NY is working to bring us closer to the national standard, not further from it.
