A few months ago I applied to Waze HQ to be upgraded from Rank 2 to Rank 3 as I live in Brisbane and stated numerous reasons why I thought I should be upgraded. This was declined. About three months on I am still a rank 2.
Looking at the rank tables, I have just realised that to get to rank 3, it requires 25,000 edits, not 2,500 edits that I thought it did. Considering that most of the main roads in Brisbane are locked to level 3, and I have been an waze editor for 15 months and now have a total just under 1900 edits, this seems like an impossible task.
Is that for real that waze really expects 25,000 edits from current new editors in established cities when most of the main roads are locked to level 3?
I do not have a clue how to get to 25,000 edits. That seems like an impossible standard. It is hard not to swear on the open forum when you feel so frustrated.
Work hard! I have just started editing for 1 month and I already made 1190 edits (last updated 4 days ago). Keep it up and put in effort. You will soon reach that level.
Put in an area manager request for an area that needs work.
While the main roads in Brisbane might be fine, there can be minor roads (that would be unlocked) that need adding or fixing. Also, adding places is a good way of accumulating edit points, especially if you put in full details (full address, phone number, opening hours where relevant) - particularly service stations if they aren’t present. (Also, when adding service stations, adding parking lot roads to connect the service station to the road is helpful - you can always request road locks be dropped temporarily to attach them.
Another option is regional/rural - whether in Queensland or elsewhere - where the mapping may be far from complete (or there may be lots of roads missing names etc.) I know there are problem areas on the north coast of NSW that would benefit from being looked at, so it seems fair to expect that other areas could use some attention too. The advice I received when I asked about applying to be an Area Manager might help you too.
Where are there areas in Qld that need work? I am familiar with Toowoomba, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, could do Nambour, Gympie etc, but apart from that I would just be working from google maps for anywhere else except for Bundaberg, which I have been to a few times.
I see regular reports that take a while to get attention on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, so it seems like those areas are lacking.
Relying on higher level editors to unlock roads to a lower level is a time consuming practice and has caused a lot of friction in the past in in the area of editing etiquette. Sometimes it can take days to get another editor to unlock a road, all for a simple turn that any level one newbie can do, not for someone who has 24,000 edits in experience who Waze rules says still needs to be baby sat.
Thank you. Part of the reason for asking for Qld is that an editor should be familiar with the road rules of the area that they are taking on. So as this would be the first time I would be an area manager, I would be more comfortable with an area in my own state, where I am already familiar with the road rules.
After that, then of course I can venture out further to other states and countries.
If you become an area manager you’ll be levelled up to Rank 3 instantly. Then you’ll have the ability to edit all the L3-locked roads. You can apply to be one for the areas you know.
It wasn’t the case earlier this year. I was still L2 after becoming AM; being promoted to L3 was a separate action by a different person - only a few weeks or a couple of months later, but not the same time.
I wouldn’t despair to much, Sundays are a great day for a drive to increase your editing area, today I went on a 100km drive and doubled my area square kms to 800km. Now I can edit around the Hawkesbury area and north west Sydney. I guess without Waze I probably would have never driven these road in my lifetime, yet the ever changing landscape, from lush green paddocks with sheep and cows or turf farms to dense bush was nice to see, or driving down the never ending Boundary Rd (7km dead straight road) when I think about it, all this starts only about 30 min from my home. So close.
I remember reading a article about the lower penetration of Waze in Australia,
“This was an interesting test for us, since we don’t have a lot of users in Sydney,” Eisnor says. Nevertheless, Waze found in a study last year that 30% of what Sydney users were seeing on the app was new to them. What’s more, 47% of the time, information made it to Waze before it made it to government news sources, despite the low penetration.
Plenty of new roads today
I recently asked an editor for access to the WME road closure feature and was told it’s a lvl 4 feature, and I think that is fair enough, map quality and protection should be paramount so only 95000 edits away for me
Have you read the new elevation rules, https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Elevation_-_bringing_the_Seagull_to_Australia that would give you more edits pretty quickly, even in a dense Brisbane map, as they’ve requested tight markings of bridges, so it might mean adding nodes to an existing segment ( is the quickest way for this process on an existing segment, add new road/s @ end of bridge 90 deg, save, then delete new road/s that were just created, fix elevation between deleted road/s(node/s stay) and now connecting segment/s and than save again??)
Also I’ve found a lot of lvl 1 editors add roads yet don’t complete the naming details so they stay red on in the editor and off the app, so completing them is easy edit points.
Also just noticed the editor has a new speed limit feature for each segment, not sure if active, does it give a warning?? so that’s 2 edits per segment.
