I’m confused over the last couple days of dialogue in this thread. It seems like two different tools are being discussed.
The ‘clear road geometry’ tool and the ‘suppress unneeded geometry’ tool.
Clear road geometry I use a lot, particularly with never-touched roads that fork in ways that don’t exist or are misplaced. I’ll clear the geometry and then ‘move’ the road to its actual location per satellite view. I’ve used that tool since rank 1. It’s not a mass edit tool and can be accomplished (more slowly) using the default WME editing, holding ‘d’ over the geometry nodes. Removing this tool would possibly make people lean more towards deleting and re-creating the segment for segments with really high geometry counts, which is even worse. I don’t see that it needs any limitations at all other than the fact that it’s not a mass edit tool. Possibly limiting it to only one segment at a time. But if a person is determined to grief the map, they’re going to do it with or without this tool, so I don’t see that the tool is at fault.
Now for the suppress unneeded geometry tool. I recently became an Area Manager and have gotten to use the tool fairly extensively. And I have yet to see the harm in it. The before and after look practically identical, all it’s really doing is reducing data strain on the server. Yes, it gives me a high edit count rather quickly (but only in places someone else hasn’t done it first). And you can really only do it once per area, after that the segments are already simplified and that’s that. (I don’t really care about points, I just care about edit count so I can unlock rank. And even that I don’t really care about, I just ‘let it happen’ while taking care of the map.)
The most that can be said against it is that it floods the map with you as last editor, and has the potential to change the 44 to 46, etc. Generally speaking, that should only happen on intersections that haven’t been touched by an editor that knows what they’re doing, because any geometry nodes set close enough to the junction won’t get simplified anyway, even if they’re 44 or 46, which as was said shouldn’t be used anyway. I know I originally argued this point myself, but after seeing it in action, it barely changes any junction angles at all, so the 44 to 46 issue is possibly only 1% on the time, and only in areas that are massively untouched anyway. Any ‘touched’ intersection done correctly is going to be completely avoided by the tool.
I agree with the ‘incremental improvement’ philosophy that sketch mentioned. I know some editors have the philosophy that if you put your name on it, it should be perfect and every possible problem addressed. I, however, look at the map as a crowd-sourced tool. Every improvement made is an improvement. Faulting someone for not making enough improvement discourages them from wanting to make any improvement at all.
It’s one thing to fault someone for reducing the map’s effectiveness, breaking something, or not fully doing their job (like red roads or adding parking lots). Also if they’re going against any rules or standards set in place for them to follow, of course. But if that flaw was there before they got here (like the wrong name on a road, or a turn restriction they didn’t check), and they showed up and fixed something else (for instance, functional class of road types), and now their name is there, do they really deserve to be harassed for failing to fix other issues? Pointing out other ways they can improve the map, or things they missed, sure. But every improvement is an improvement.
Especially with functional class, if I had to stop to fix every little bit of road that I was changing the functional class on to be ‘perfect’, it’d take 10 times as long to get the functional class set on the area I’m trying to get it set in. I catch the obvious issues as I go, but I don’t have the time to sit and perfect every square inch. I try to do that when I come back with my zoom level 5 sweep. Functional class has such an increased improvement to routing that it’s worth it to get it done ASAP and then come back and do the closer inspection sweep later.
And even on my ‘sweep’ there’s things that I don’t do. I don’t check house numbers on every segment, or road names. There’s parts of map editing I’m good at and can do quickly and efficiently, and parts that I leave for other editors, perhaps newbies. I focus more on UR’s than anything else. I’m more concerned with what people are actively experiencing a problem with, rather than theoretical problems that might occur if anyone ever makes it to this random spot in the middle of nowhere.
So I’ve never really been concerned about slapping my name on something ‘incomplete.’ As long as what I did was an improvement over what was already there, and follows the rules, I’m happy. And the ‘suppress unnecessary geometry’ tool is an improvement, 99.9% of the time (where only the 44 to 46 angle changes in untouched areas could possibly be considered as a detriment.)
So I’m not sure what’s so ‘dangerous’ about this tool. Now that I have access to it, I am more than willing to reserve use of it in situations where I shouldn’t…but I haven’t seen anyone really make a good case of when and where you shouldn’t. The only case I’ve seen is someone who runs around using this tool everywhere WITHOUT doing anything else to clean up the map in that area, because a high-level editor has now left their name on uncompleted areas, and others may use that as a guide to follow.
And personally, I don’t do that. I sweep the map at zoom level 5 looking for all the issues I feel comfortable with addressing. (Never-touched gas stations, changing area places to points when they should be, double-checking turn restrictions, removing soft turns, addressing UR’s and place updates, and more.) And I hit the 4 area tools I have access to on every screen. Suppress unneeded junctions, suppress unneeded geometry, delete expired restrictions, auto add node to loops. I hit the JNF on every junction that validator or toolbox point out as having soft turns or u-turns. I catch any other validator issues that pop up. This is how I ‘clean’ the map.
Since getting access to the area tools, my edit count has jumped, yes. It wasn’t long before I hit rank 4. The ‘suppress unneeded geometry’ in particular probably accounted for about 60-70% of my edit count in that time. But if there’s a time when I should think to myself “hold on, don’t hit that area button yet” I don’t know when or where that would be.
And, honestly, if I came across a situation like that, I would be more likely to report it here, and say “the area button did something it should not have” than to avoid hitting the area button any time that situation is on screen. Does that make sense? Like how I reported that the loops tool was causing save errors on lollipops. I’d rather the loop tool be fixed than to avoid hitting the button anytime a lollipop is on the screen. Does that make sense?
So as far as I can tell, locking away area tools from newbies is more a case of helping to keep their edit count low to give them time to learn the manual ways before getting higher ranks cheap and easy through use of area tools. And I can support that. But locking them even higher…why? I don’t get that.
