Street Names: Long name or abbreviated?

[bad-codriver]

I was of the impression, maybe wrongly, that we should be naming streets with the abbreviated name of streets instead of the long form.
Example: “Parramatta Rd” should be used instead of “Parramatta Road”, “Harris St” should be used instead of the “Harris Street” form.

I have been away from editing for a couple of weeks and returned to find that a level-4 editor has gone through and renamed a lot of road names to their unabbreviated form and then locked them at level-4 (I’m a level-3 editor), so I’m unable to change the names back again, even if this were the right thing to do. Obvious this level-4 editor thinks that someone (me?) might change them back to the abbreviated form, and thus has locked them. I’m not convinced this locking is the right approach without Waze community consultation and concensus.

I was of the impression that abbreviated names were preferred for the following reasons:
a) Less space used in the database to store these names :!: ,
b) Less space used on screen on a Client platform (iPhone, Android phone, etc) for the text, so the screen display looks less cluttered. Some short streets with lengthy names look bad if the long form of the street name is placed on the display. Some long names disappear off the side of the screen as well.

The Waze Wiki for Australia contains information about how to abbreviate the names of streets to standard forms. If we were not meant to be abbreviating street names, this part of the Wiki would not exist, or would exist as a simple admonishment “Abbreviations & Acronyms (Australia): Don’t abbreviate.” As such, I have been editing street names to their abbreviated forms whenever possible. This includes changing streets such as, “Minor Ln” to the recommended, “Minor Lane” as recommended in the Wiki.

So, what’s it to be?
Long name or Abbreviated name?

I’m in favour of the Abbreviated name due to it taking less pixel space on my iPhone client, especially useful in crowded areas on the map.

Bill

:!: Assuming that the street names are stored as text and that “Street”, “Road”, “Circuit”, “Lane”, etc are not stored as tokens in the database. If they are stored as tokens, then the space used for “Street” would be the same as for “St”, “Road” would be stored in the same space as for its “Rd” abbreviation.

[jasonh300]

Unless Australia has a different naming convention than everywhere else, the road…suffix(?) should be abbreviated. You might send the offending editor a PM or if you are uncomfortable doing that, contact your country coordinator.

Via my iPhone 4S.

[lakeyboy]

Abbreviations should be used and is standard Waze practice. The 2 main advantages of doing this is to free up screen real estate, and the fact that the text to speech still works with these abbreviations. Also quicker to type into the editor as well. Perhaps a private message to the user in question should set them on the right course?

[jeedo]

+1 from me for abbreviated names and sending a Private Message to the editor to ask why they’re using the long form.

A discussion has also begun about locking to allow more users to edit the maps. We’d welcome their point of view on the subject.

Failing that may want to contact a Country Manager.

[ispyisail]

I’m neutral on this topic, actually I think I use both methods depending on the mood

I know this is a Waze forum but this is how OSM does it.

Abbreviation (don’t do it)

An extreme example of abbreviation: Lake Washington Boulevard Northeast and Main Street
If the name can be spelled without an abbreviation, then don’t abbreviate it. Computers can easily shorten words but not the other way (St. could be Street or Saint). If the signs have abbreviated words and you don’t know what the full word is, then use it temporarily until someone else complete it. Using short forms is a decision of software i.e. the underlying data should have the full street name. This will allow a renderer, a router or a location finder to introduce abbreviations as necessary. See for instance the list of abbreviations used by Name Finder and Nominatim.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names

They have a good point

[bad-codriver]

@ispyisail

I’m neutral on this topic, actually I think I use both methods depending on the mood

I know this is a Waze forum but this is how OSM does it.
… [cut]

That may be true of Open Street Maps (OSM), but as you say we are editors working with Waze and so we need to work by Waze’s standards. In principle I agree with you regarding the ability of computers to automatically abbreviate street names, but the Waze server/clients don’t minimise screen clutter by abbreviating the street name. For this reason, until Waze tells us that the long form of street name is preferred (and abbreviated before it is displayed), then I think we should continue to use the abbreviated form.

Permalink example:
Atherden Street: Shortest street in Sydney with long form name

Bill

[Hoppy2510]

Most people are used to seeing St instead of Street, and Rd instead of Road written on signposts, as well as it saving space on the maps, so I think abbreviations are acceptable.

[TimAThing]

I’ve been trying to follow the Abbreviations and Acronyms (Australia) instructions from the wiki, but there’s a part I’m confused about:

• Whether the suffixes N/E/S/W for North/East/South/West should be abbreviated or not.
• If they are not, whether the preceding street type (St, Rd, Ave etc.) should be unabbreviated.

Let’s take, as an example, Northumberland Ln E, Stanmore, NSW.
Based on the wiki, section “Other Abbreviations”, bullet point 2:

2. Directional abbreviations include: East (E), South West (SW), Central (CN), Upper (UP), and Lower (LR).
   In addition to not being abbreviated, …

This suggests that the name should be changed to Northumberland Ln East. But then this leaves us with an abbreviation in the middle. Semantically, we know that “Ln” and “East” are both part of the suffix, but that won’t be obvious to a computer. Does doing this cause problems for the TTS?

The alternative seems a little counter-intuitive, having Northumberland Lane East (unabbreviated Lane), but just 100m to the west, Northumberland Ln (abbreviated Ln).

So, what is the best/preferred style in this situation? I’m happy to wordsmith the wiki once I know what the answer is.

Thanks

Tim

[glomp]

Basically it would be Northumberland Ln East, most street signs would show the name in this format.

It is a bit hard to check the sign in this case as you cannot see any street signs for the two laneways.

It would be named like this due to two laneways being named the same. The only way to differentiate them is adding the directional. But this is due to it being on the eastern side of Northumberland Ave.

The other one could technically be called Northumberland Ln West.