That got your attention! :lol: I don’t actually mean it to sound as forceful as that.
The forums (and the Wiki) are an important resource for map editors. The editor undergoes constant changes as do the standards that we invent & discuss here, then formalise in the Wiki. Even an editor who has read & understood the entire Wiki will soon become out of date if they don’t keep an eye on the forums.
What I would like to propose is a method to persuade editors to visit the forums occasionally. When WME loads, if an editor has not visited the forum within a set number of days, a dialogue box with a link to the forums will appear, asking the editor to visit the forums before continuing to edit.
This method would be, I believe, very simple to implement. Since the date an editor last visited the forum is recorded for every member, it should be easy to check that date against the current date and produce the dialogue box if the editor hasn’t visited within the last, say, 60 days. For new members, the dialogue box should probably appear a lower number of days (say 30) after account creation.
It would not put an undue burden on editors: simply visiting the forum by clicking the link would be sufficient to “unlock” the editor. Whilst I would hope they would have a look around, there is nothing preventing them simply pressing “back” and continuing to edit.
I’m sure that many editors will do just that. But every editor who does not do so stands a chance of learning more about Waze and maybe getting involved in the community. I think that’s a benefit worth pursuing.
I think that this is a really good idea. May be have it linked to updated pages in that number of days also. I have been editing for around 6 months and I do frequent the wiki to see if I am editing correctly and also keep an eye on some of the forums.
Something along these lines could definitely be beneficial, but given how many sub-forums there are, maybe there could be some kind of “top threads since you’ve been gone” functionality, to highlight the most important issues. Ideally you could tailor this to an editor’s location, but even if it was forum-wide, it’d still be better than digging through all the different forums to try to see if anything major has changed.
<delurk> Given the hubristic nature of some who’ve been around a while I suspect more than a few people who try the forums are discouraged fairly quickly </lurk>
WME toolbox has just introduced a feature that pops up an orange box to inform you that you have a new PM. As it can be rather difficult to flag down editors making editing errors before the problem gets out of hand, this WOULD be a big help … if only rank beginners all began by installing toolbox.
That’s why it is such a fabulous idea to incorporate this feature into Waze.
Level 1 and 2 (I’ve even seen a level 3 editor filling parking lots with red roads, but that’s fairly uncommon) could get a big orange box that actually stands in the way of them editing while they have any unread PMs in their inbox.
BAM! It’s the end of the dance party/road art time-wasting attempts to flag down editors.
PS – this only works if the forum account gets created the first time an editor logs in to the editor. otherwise, there is no such thing as checking PMs, or even sending PMs to the new editor. I’m sure the waze team knows how to handle this detail.
Waze states this currently happens (can’t find the statement, it might be with the first edit rather than first log in). However, evidence suggests that the mechanism is not perfect.
It is not perfect. Thanks for letting me know. Several times, I have tried to send a PM to an editor, only to be told that the user does not exist. Now I know that this is a bug, not a feature, and I will know to report the bug to the waze team.
When I first tried to log onto the forum, I got a “duplicate key error” on my username. So I changed my username from the mobile app and tried again – it worked. I reported the problem to the waze team but they reported that they could not find anything wrong to fix.
So there is something about that process that sometimes goes awry.
Waze users can appear on the scoreboard without ever editing - simply by driving. Number 11 in the all-time UK scoreboard has never edited at all, whilst number 14 is only a level 1 editor. And we only have a small island to drive around in. :lol: