Last weekend my wife and I took a drive down I-95 into the heart of the Commonwealth. Along the way, while in the passenger seat, I noticed a large polygon on my Waze map labeled “RUTHER GLEN”.
Putting aside the ALL CAPS, which can easily be fixed, I wonder whether Ruther Glen should be marked as a city on the Waze map at all. According to Wikipedia, Ruther Glen is an unincorporated area, not a city or town, and it does not appear to be a CDP either. There is a Ruther Glen post office and ZIP code, but we don’t usually go by those. Generally, in Virginia, we only give city names to cities, towns, and CDPs. Is there a reason to make an exception for this one place?
My own opinion, which counts for exactly what you paid for it, is if it is NOT a CDP, incorporated city/town, etc. at all and would otherwise be “No City” then if the local editors think it should be labeled then there’s no real harm.
I have to admit to creating similar myself in Loudoun, e.g. River Creek and Potomac Station. I know there were a couple other neighborhoods mapped out by other editors closer to Sterling.
I guess the only thing to be careful of is that it is a unique name within the state.
Of course, I’m happy to be overruled by a more senior editor, so long as it’s explained so I understand the rationale behind it so my editing is consistent with what everyone thinks should be done.
Under the current guidance, I would think we should remove Ruther Glen. One of the problems with including it is where should the boundaries be. Should the entire ZIP are be called Ruther Glen? The current guidance was designed on the premise that the city names were only for display and reporting purposes. That is the guidance is based on the idea that the search results come from Google.
We could now begin to take into account how the city names on the segments effect search results, as the waze house numbers are used in searches. The problem is that as far as I can tell, house numbers on segments with no city names are ignored. Thus searching for 10561 Gallant Fox Way would seem to return the Google result if we remove the city name. Thus, I am beginning to lean towards n8nagel’s idea that if the area otherwise would have no city name and someone has a city name to use for it, then maybe we should leave it. (Although for the most part there is not a problem using the Google address data.) I’m not sure how we would codify avoid no city name as guidance. It also may be premature to be taking into the effects of city names on search results as the search results seem to be in somewhat of a state of flux.
Given the uncertainty about removing the name, Carl, could you please ask Waze staff to update the name of the City object from “RUTHER GLEN” to “Ruther Glen”? Thanks.
My rationale for putting in city names had nothing to do with addresses and searches but more traffic reporting in the app e.g. ‘near Potomac Station’ gives more granular information to a user than ‘near Ashburn’ or ‘near Leesburg.’
Is there more info out there about the no city address behavior mentioned above? Would like to learn more…