If you are fortunate (?) enough to have access to Beta WME (not the same thing as Beta on the app), then you may notice new speed limit UR’s.
A bit of history, when speed limits were first introduced to Waze, there were unsurprisingly a lot of UR’s reporting missing or incorrect limits. Some editors complained that they were overwhelmed with them, whereupon instead of providing some help, Waze simply stopped them appearing on WME. But they still appeared on the Beta version, presumably an oversight at HQ.
A while back they stopped appearing altogether, even on Beta. But now they have started appearing again. A lot of them are useful reports pointing out map errors, so are worth looking at if you have Beta WME.
On the other hand, a lot of them are reports of variable speed limits on smart motorways, or of short-term roadworks. I suggest you have a standard script explaining politely that we’re not interested in those, so you can quickly paste & send the message and the close the UR for such cases.
The other quirk to be aware of is that, in an attempt to cut down numbers, Waze sometimes amalgamate more that one report into a single UR. So far from helping, this makes life harder as it destroys the route trace and mixes reports in opposite directions
Despite the hassle, I would urge editors with Beta access to look at them. Unfortunately, in some areas, there’s a backlog going back a couple of years. I would suggest being fairly cavalier in closing any old ones that look like they might have been due to roadworks with only minimal investigation - and of course some of them may be reporting errors which have already been fixed.
Unfortunately you can’t ask for Beta WME just so that you can help to improve the map.
HQ probably haven’t noticed that Beta is essential to see speed limit UR’s, they probably think they’re still hiding them all.
You have to express an enthusiasm for testing new versions of WME, and then you probably get told that they’ve got enough Beta testers at the moment. You also have to promise to keep secret any new features that may be on the way (probably I shouldn’t have mentioned speed limit UR’s in a public forum :oops: , but my defence is that they’re not new, just old features that have somehow got lost).
There’s a thread (old but I don’t think anything’s changed) on the topic here. So my answer would be, send a PM to Timbones, but be prepared for the message to come back that HQ aren’t interested at the moment.
Ian
Just been on the beta editor for the first time in ages and there’s quite a few on the M27 in the roadworks section which have been reported recently, since the speed limit has already been changed I’ve closed them.
I’ve just been told that you can see Beta WME, including speed limit UR’s, without being an authorised Beta-tester. Apparently what you have to do is load the Beta editor web page and then select “Practise mode”.
Unfortunately you can’t update in practise mode, and I imagine this includes not being able to reply to UR’s. But at least you can see them, and use the UK Editor Requests forum to prod someone else into action if required.
Just finished clearing East Anglia & Kent. What a mix, some only a few days old, some well over a year!!
The biggest clusters are where there had been roadworks, but there were a few that were actual correct reports. :o
I have done a few of these and was pleasantly surprised how easy it is compared with just asking the question, sometimes of the same people. Just mention FoI and it all becomes much more organised. Just a few points:
You do have to be quite specific with the question/s you ask. You usually just get the answer, no more. The best is to ask for a copy of a specific Order or Restriction applying to a road or junction.
The more “tech speak” you add in, (TRO is a good one, but quoting specific marking from the highway code often works as well) the more likely you are to get the answer from the right department.
The question is best asked by someone who lives in the area. Better response from a local voter / ratepayer.
Back on the issue of old speed reports, I have now cleared a few hundred of these and about 10% are turning out to be good reports, much more than previously seen with the earlier batches. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, there are over 3000 of the little perishers. :o
Cleared another couple of hundred!! Still seems to be about 3700 to go.
I think I have cleared everything before July 2018 so far. Still about 10% are good ones, even that old.
Seem to have reached the end ! Got to last November and then it jumped to Feb this year. Most of the ones since Feb have been good information so hopefully drivers are finally starting to use it correctly.
I wonder where Nov, Dec, Jan & Feb’s ones have gone and whether they will make an appearance at some time in the future. :?
An additional note about these SLURs. If you respond to one, the reporter will get the standard email from Waze, which will include a link to WME.
An incident happened today in Chat, where such a reporter clicked on the link and then couldn’t see the report to reply to - because, of course, the UR is only visible in Beta WME, to which they didn’t have access! They were asking for help in Chat - furtunately, ianinessex (who had replied to the UR) was online so they got in touch with each other.
I don’t think there’s much we can do about this whilst SLURs remain only in Beta. But just be aware of it - if you get a user reporting difficulty responding to a SLUR.
Maybe it’s time to ask Waze to put SLUR’s on to main WME. I’ve been waiting for the backlog to go before suggesting that we push for this. It would also be good if they’d stop combining reports. In other words, remove all the special code they’ve put in to make it hard for editors to pick up and deal with SLUR’s - at least for the UK.
Is it possible to put this back into “production” WME just for the UK?
If so now would be a good time (not wait until July to ask). While working through these, although there was a few silly “side road should be 60 mph” and a lot of the old ones were before the speed limit had been added to the road, most of the recent one were actually good reports. We do not want to miss replying, because it is only the Beta editors who can, and put drivers off reporting.
Got back to dealing with these after a week or so being too busy … done the oldest four - each one of them was a useful report leading to a map correction.
However while the numbers are not overwhelming, there are too many for me to deal with on my own…
