This proves once again how much the product team is disconnected from the community.
I’ve been saying this for 6 years now…
Till the product team will not start listening to the community …for real. It will be just frustration gaining and gaining…
The guidance that the product team receives and has received from day 1 from Waze management it’s not to listen to community…just do your thing and implement your ideas.
Well …this situation and this attitude need to change ASAP
@levin@shmupi your words are fully correct ;
Till Product Mangers will not change their mind and their way of thinking …plugging in back to the community, I believe any effort of the Staff will not get basic results .
I think the real issue is Waze no longer values the free labour they get.
As a software developer I can feel the pain of script developers every time something gets changed and their scripts are broken, if the payd waze staff cant find time to develop an API or communicate changes why should developers waste their free time to fix stuff they did not break? That time could be spent developing new features.
Due to this lack of communication and proper management of community issues one of our community managers has retired today. He will be greatly missed by the brazilian community and I doubt we can replace him.
levin, thanks for supporting my thoughts!
I wrote earlier about this in the thread but your opinion as a GC has a lot more weight on things.
It seems to me that Waze has grown too big to handle for the current team. Of course, growing and actually becoming a big company can have bad effect on communication but I have hope that Waze as a whole can overcome current problems
As far as what Shirli has posted - coming from a small country with good map and hectic CM appearance, I find it necessary to make some exceptions for chain of communication and user promotions. It wouldn’t be easy, of course, but it would also help a lot during problematic times (reckless editors, country-specific issues etc).
If you’re in a self managed community the chain of communication should first be to try to handle your CM appearance problems with the CM directly to see if there isn’t a way you could perhaps get in touch with him easily in case of urgent problems. Then it seems your country has a LC (zCougar), so you would then have to speak with him to handle local issues or promotions.
As you pointed out it’s hard enough for the current staff team to communicate well about global problems, features, issues. So I don’t think they should be the exceptional go to people for any local items (reckless editors, country specific issues etc…) that a Local Champ (or perhaps a Global Champ from a neighbor country) could handle very well.
While they might prefer not to handle promotions in Estonia directly, they could help with the dicussions and process. And they could certainly help to block reckless editors and provide guidance for other country specific issues, including ones where staff might be needed as they would be able to get in touch with them easily.[/hide]
FWIW Waze volume is media volume for me, and navigation to contacts just started working. However, I absolutely agree with what you say about dynamic arrows. When working correctly they are a slight improvement, but in complex junctions and roundabouts it is almost impossible to model the complexity, and why fix something that isn’t broken in the first place? On the other hand, allowing editors to set voiced turn instructions directly is a step in the right direction, so thanks for that, and maybe the storage of turn data in TurnGraphs will enable further improvements. What about letting editors choose those dynamic arrows too? Or even letting editors add lane data into these junctions :shock:?
I understand that we don’t call the shots and are not privy to the big picture that management sees, orders from Google, competitive pressure, etc. With that said, from my limited vantage point it seems that Waze cares more about releasing new features of dubious utility and stability than leveraging existing strengths (accurate and timely routing, a simple and interactive interface and an active and engaged community).
this thread is about issues in the communication channels, it’s about needed changes in the communication strategy. It is not about the top pressing issues in the editor, the app or the routing server. So please keep this thread focussed.
Correct.
The short list I gave were just examples for the effects of bad communication and ignoring users’ feedback on the Waze client quality.
The specifics of these issues should be discussed in CenterCode, and country specific management should be discussed in other threads in the forums.
I wouldn’t bother investing work into such lists unless there is a commitment from the product team about the impact these lists will have on priorities…
Iain,
I couldn’t agree ore with you, I too felt desillutionated by Waze earlier. I began editing in 2011, became country coordinator, Local Champ, country manager, etc, etc, etc.
I left all behind, I do edit every now and then, not as before, but whenever I want.
All of the sudden I felt like they (Waze) were demanding me to spend more time on the forums and other things (that’s why I never looked forward to be a Global Champ) until they made me choose between getting more involved or quit been a coordinator. That’s when I said no more, this is something that’s supposed to be fun and something that you do in your free time… Why, because one just likes doing it, it has never been about money or something else.
So I made my mind and left.
Do I miss been involved? I do, but never the less I believe it was something I had to do.
I see many people commenting here now mostly about Iain’s first post, but I feel like it should be pointed out that this thread and most of the discussions it generated happened a month ago, so it’s a bit late to be reacting to page 1 only, and too soon to already judge on anything. Things have happened in one month and more things are supposed to happen that haven’t been given a chance to be happening yet.
Take the time to read the full thread and you’ll see Iain posted other messages after his first one. As GC-Staff communications are not public, you cannot really know if the words of comfort staff posted here are really -all- that has been done by them since this thread was opened. So reading page 2-8 might show you that there has been some improvements already.
I know and realize many have seen a yo-yo effect in the past and believe this is just another temporary improvement, but to be fair I think we should wait and see. It has only been 10 days since we were given staff’s plans to improve things further, it’s too short to be judging yet.
Also realize that if you’re not an LC or a GC you may not see a difference but that would be normal and it wouldn’t mean that things are not changing. This thread is a testimony showing that staff has a hard enough time communicating with a group of a few hundred individuals, so I don’t think other people should “hijack” this thread and use the support it got to put pressure on staff for unrealistic hopes that they would suddenly become communications experts that will devote 100% of their time to reading and responding to everything and everyone in this forum. This simply won’t happen.
The Champ roles have been created by staff for a reason in this growing community which they simply cannot handle all by themselves anymore. As we keep telling the newbies or the “I am Waze ROYALTY!” people who think of themselves as high priority VIPs everytime they make their first-ever forum post about missing points in the “Waze App” forum section: please use your existing communities.
Get in touch with your local people, know who your AM, SM, CM, RC, LC, GC are. Each of them should be able to help you on most problems without needing any communication with staff in the first place, if not, each of them can pass the info to the next one until if even a GC can’t help solve the issue, then he/she should be able to pass it on to staff. And this is where we need communication to be simple, efficient and effective for it to benefit everyone, otherwise we all know what happens when there are traffic jams and how much time they can make us lose.
This is exactly how I feel, Waze wanted to participate more in the forums as if that corrected the maps automatically, the champs used Hangout to agree on how to proceed with the problems and solutions of the system, but to forcefully request the participation in the forums as if I were an employee is not acceptable.
Enough had to be dealing with a particular champ who always opposed the proposals we made as a group and all for lack of criteria of this person and also have to meet a Waze agenda? NO GRACIAS!
Currently I continue to correct the map based on the rules and needs of my city and roads that I commute daily.
This topic is about the problems with communication between staff and the community. It was a very personal post, but one that has obviously struck a major chord with the rest of the community.
As a result of my post and your massive support, things are changing. But it is too early to make conclusions based on processes that are still happening. And it is far too early to judge whether the change will last. So whilst I appreciate the support, you do need to read through the thread to appreciate the changes before commenting.
This is not a topic for anything you want to complain about. Whilst I have every sympathy for the many other problems that exist, adding your complaint about something else to this topic is not appropriate.
This was explained by Vince just a couple of posts above, but it seems to need repeating. It was suggested to me that I lock this topic. I don’t want to do that: this is a very important subject to a great many people and I would not want to obstruct anyone who has something to contribute. It’s also a topic that should not be allowed to go silent and fade away. But I do want the discussion to remain on-topic and I may remove posts that are off-topic.
Am I telling you off? I guess I am - but I can’t reserve all my ranting for HQ. :lol: And as I said right at the beginning: as a Global Champ, I work for you guys, not Waze HQ - and I still love you all.
Despite improvements in communications, it seems there is still plenty of room for things to go wrong.
As you are probably aware, WME was updated a couple of days ago. The update brought some new features to WME. Segment history is a great addition - something we’ve all been wanting for a long time. Other additions weren’t quite so good.
There’s a new layers menu. The principle is good, but lots of people complained about the loss of auto-show/hide in beta. This also caused the devs to move the Chat icon to the opposite side of the screen - and you all know how much I hate pointless re-arrangement of the UI. Neither of these problems was adequately addressed in beta feedback, yet both were released to production. After an outcry, HQ said they are working to restore the auto-hide behaviour. No mention of the Chat Icon.
That’s a relatively minor communication problem compared to two others:
There was no notification to the beta community or Global Champs that this release was going to happen. As a script writer and beta tester, I was aware of the new features. My script already incorporated features to compress segment history and the new layers menu. I had tested some code to auto-hide the Layers menu and move the Chat icon, but it wasn’t included in the script because the script is public and shouldn’t include obvious references to beta features. Like many script writers I was caught out by the lack of warning for the new release. I could have released a new script version within an hour had I known what was coming. After the recent massive improvements in the way HQ deal with the scripting community, this was an unpleasant step backwards.
The new WME version was released without a release topic on the forum. I was in contact pretty quickly with HQ about this. I got this answer: “As usual, we post release notes after the WME goes to production with as little delay as possible - in this case <2 hours”. I don’t find that is acceptable. In that couple of hours, I saw at least 2 new topics created on the forum by editors wondering what was going on. There were multiple posts on existing topics regarding the changes and the impact on User Scripts. There was a lot of discussion amongst the GCs. And this is only what I was able to see on my phone whilst I was cabling a warehouse.
I can understand that it may not be possible to synchronise release of a new version with the posting of the release topic. But I think that presenting thousands of editors with unexplained changes and broken scripts without warning is not acceptable. If the release and posting can’t be synchronised, then the post should always be made before the WME release.
I know my feedback to HQ has been “shared with the Waze team”. I hope that this will serve to prevent things slipping backwards.
Since you’re not making any mention of it and for fairness’s sake, I’m only going to add that I was as surprised as anyone else about this release to prod WME. However in my case I contacted the same staff person who writes the release notes to ask about it.
She told me she was writing them as we spoke, she knew the devs were going to release it that day but unfortunately she got stuck in a long meeting which didn’t allow her to write them as early as she would have wanted to.
Did the team releasing the beta version to prod know or care that she was stuck in a meeting? I don’t know… Did she care? I think she did, otherwise she wouldn’t have answered in less than a minute that she was in the process of writing those release notes and apologizing for the delay.
All Global Champs were aware of this as I posted that information and what she told me in the Google Hangout where this was discussed. So while I can understand your point of view, in this case I feel like an accident happened, for which we got an explanation and I felt that it should be shared here to point out that there is always two sides to every story.
This is of course unfortunate, not ideal and you’re right, it probably should be avoided for next releases. But under these unforeseen circumstances I find that the issue getting resolved just 1 hour and 30 minutes after the release (to be more precise) remains acceptable, for me at least, anyone is welcome to disagree. Especially since we’re not speaking about longer delays, nor about the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time that we see this happening since the situation originally described improved.
As the original author of this topic, the most-thanked forum post ever, I think it’s about time I updated the issue, particularly in light of what I have recently experienced.
In mid June, I attended the Waze Western EU Champs Meetup in Amsterdam. This was the first meetup I attended since I opened this topic last year. I expected to feel strained relationships between myself and staff: to find gazes avoiding me and conversations difficult. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I brought up the subject of communication to thank HQ for the improvement they have made since last year. I was not expecting was to be publicly thanked by HQ for my post, but that’s what happened. :o What I still describe as “my rant” was referred to as a “document” which HQ are using to guide improvements. Gai commented that one of the biggest reasons Google bought Waze was because of the Waze community. That’s us! So HQ has good reason to take trouble like this in the community seriously. Another Champ told me off for being nice to HQ, but I had to give credit where it was due! :lol:
At the UK Meetup a month later, HQ specifically brought up my post without prompting, again to thank me and point to a commitment to improve.
As I see it, there has been a significant improvement in communications between HQ & the editing community. New processes have been developed and there seems to be a genuine desire to improve communications. I’m glad I was able to highlight a genuine, serious problem and I am grateful to HQ for responding in a positive and responsible manner. Another Champ in Amsterdam told me off for being nice to HQ, but I have to give credit where it’s due! :lol:
Is everything perfect/fixed? No - definitely not. There are still communications issues that need resolving. There are still breakdowns in the existing processes. I’m not going to stop complaining when I see a problem and I don’t expect anyone else to either. A genuine commitment to improve communications does not excuse specific failures, but we should pursue issues in a respectful way, recognising the partnership that has to exist between the community and HQ.
Lastly, I’ve said it before but I can’t repeat it often enough. My rant was a cry in the dark. It was made as much in anger as anything else and I didn’t expect much response. Your response has overwhelmed me. The support and participation of the Waze community has demonstrated our importance to Waze as a whole and shown we do have some power to change things. :mrgreen:
So HQ has good reason to take trouble like this in the community seriously. Another Champ told me off for being nice to HQ, but I had to give credit where it was due! :lol: