Adding top posts into the main one so new readers get a summary of opinions and possible sollutions.
Waze has gotten a long way, but it is still not that popular in many locations around the world. This is my list of thoughts and suggestions for making this the most used GPS software out there.
Protect the community’s treasure - The most important feature: Don’t allow lower ranking users to content created by old and (most times) more experienced users. If new users want to change something that was created by a higher ranking users they should have to get in touch with him through the forum and, if he refuses to or does not reply, they then should be able to get in touch with the Waze support team and ask them to solve it by allowing the editions or deciding in some other way.
New users most times don’t know to much about the way the software should work and end up messing things up (even if not on purpose). It is also a way to reward users for their rank and not just display it in a useless scoreboard. I don’t really give a damn if I am the highest ranking user in my area. Others can get points by destroying my data :!:
Old users (including me) are loosing motivation to help if all their contributions are destroyed by rookies. This has to stop. :evil:
Filter out the trash - Roads added using the “buldozer mode” should not be added to the live map before they are confirmed using Cartouche. I will add more to this in “learning by doing”, but the mess of inexisting roads in my city just has to disappear, it makes the software look cheap and buggy. Doesn’t make users wan’t to use it and looks plain stupid every time I want to shot it off.
True Social GPS - Waze is called the “social gps” but where is all the social stuff? Is it really only to be able to receive “chit chat” from perverts all around? (true story) How come I cannot do things like:
-Share directions with friends - Not destinations but DIRECTIONS. After I set up a route on my phone I want to send it to others in my friends list.
-Send out locations - Let users select the location of a party and send it out to users in their friends list.
-Follow mode - Users should be able to select friends and ask to “follow them”. If they “accept” waze should show the others car on the map and rout the destination to its location
I know commercial applications that have some features like this, and Waze is totally missing out and getting old. -ADDED:- Create better communication between Area Managers and users. et suers get in touch with AM and let AM get in touch with users. See this post as an example of this kind of problem.
Learning by doing - Waze has to learn to do some things by itself. Users report speed cams and they don’t get added to the map, but users add roads using the bulldozer and they get added. Isn’t it time to remove this? Shouldn’t waze be able to do more with the data we provide?
-If there is a big enough number of users adding a new road using the client, then it should get created by getting the average of all submissions. If possible the Bulldozer mode should be removed from the application and it should automatically create roads where lots of users pass by.
-Roads should be moved to more precise locations based on the acerage GPS data that comes from all users (and not only be movable using Cartouche)
-Speed cams need to be added ASAP. Take the average speed of users passing at that location, subtract 5km/h and create the damn speed cam! If you can, add a feature to send it out as a report and if enough users “thank/confirm” it keep it there. If not, delete it after some time.If something gets created erroneously this way, some AM will fix it or its speed, but at least no one will get speed tickets anymore!!! Users are bragging about Twitter channels and other cheap apps to get speed cam and police reports and don’t know about waze!
Quick reports widget - Add a desktop widget for road reports. Lots of times I am going to a party in a taxi and I see something I wish to report, but untill the damn application loads I am long past the location.The widget should save the location I am and it should work even without internet access. It should keep that logged and send it out as soon as I get a connection or turn on my 3G signal. This will increase ALLOT the number of road reports available.
Please don’t answer me by saying that waze does not have enough manpower to develop these features. We all know Waze has gotten MAJOR investments in the past year and we all know that users will stop using it if we don’t upgrade. In the last 6 months waze’s interface has gottten better, but no real new features have been added. It’s time to get going.
I disagree only with the automatic road corrections. Especially in areas where not enough users are present this can turn into strange form of streets.
I agree. This would require some sort of “calculation” like “1000 users in the area, if at least X% use that road every Y days then update it in some form”. Not a fixed number, something in relation with the number of users roaming the area. I would not like Waze to mark my garage as a public road
I agree- to a certain extent. There is a certain point where it really doesn’t matter that much anymore. I mean: there is a big difference in experience between 1k points and 10k points, but the difference in experience between 10k points and 20k points is smaller. I think there is little difference in 150k points or 300k points where it concerns experience.
And does it matter how points are gathered? One might do 100.000 km a year and end up with 320.000 points after a year, and suddenly start editing. He/she is still very inexperienced with cartouche!
However, if a high-ranking editor has changed something, the basic elements (directionality, entrance) should not be changed by newbies.
Just out of curiosity: how high do you rank anyway?
Protect the community’s treasure:
This is a difficult one - waze actually has a hierarchy built in but it doesn’t get used. As a veteran editor I can definitely see the need for it but if it is to be used there has to be much more transparency around area managers, who they are, whether they’re still active and how to get in contact. I also think this hierarchy should be based on editing points and not total points (as per Atlas85’s point). AM status should be revoked or suspended based on a time of inactivity!
As raised several times by several users recently there should be a sandbox type environment for new editors to practice and subsequently qualify from before they are let loose!
True Social GPS:
I totally agree here, the “social” side is very weak! I also think we should be able to elect to have a more real-time view of other users on a user-by-user basis!
Learning my doing:
This is difficult again, mainly down to the fact that GPS accuracy can vary wildly.
Only very recently the automatic road correction was switched off for any road which has been manually edited - I think this should be an option in the edit panel - occasionally I don’t have time to edit miles of a road but want to confirm name, connectivity, directionality then let the server adjust the geometry - this isn’t currently possible!
Quick reports widget:
There is an Android widget on the way - whilst we don’t know the full feature set yet I am hopefull that it will have a quick report function! This will however require your GPS to be on more and thus eat battery life!
I had a similar (albeit slightly less structured) rant a few months ago, have a browse through the thread if you’ve time!
Definately a +1 here. You should create this as a suggestion on uservoice. Slight correction for you, I’m assuming you mean “learning by doing” not “my”!
The automatic geometry correction as someone said was turned off not that long ago.
However, I do think that it will work very well with a selective algorithm like you suggest limiting it to 50 users in a week before an edit was made should be sufficient. Even more so if it ranks gps points by the reported accuracy of those points.
They could get even fancier and do flash or other interactive web-based training where they actually can perform actions and be evaluated on their properness.
Yeah, there is no contact whatsoever as how to get in touch with other users. I can be an AM and never check into the forum. I don’t know if revoking AM status is the right idea. Maybe an AM stops editing because there is not much to edit anymore. But if a user applies as an AM in an area where another AM is active, this could need some authorization from the original manager. If he authorizes it, the new user can get control of a sub-area of the master AM. If he doesn’t reply in X days, the other user gets authorized by the system and this somehow could lead to AM loosing their powers.
What exactly do you mean by this? What do you want to see from other users?
Yes but the average of the users GPS signal will always be the best alternative since, that way, the average user will always be on the right road or “poped on it” by waze client.
[/quote]
This would be really great. It would also be nice to do some sort of “partial locking”. Sometimes I want the road to get corrected by the system, but I don’t want it to be changed from a “one way” to a “two way” street.
I always have my GPS enabled and it doesn’t use any battery if it is not in use. The great thing about GPS is that it is not “turned on” when you enable it, it just gets “cleared for application usage” which means it stays turned off but any application can turn it on to use it at any time. Since I don’t have any background application using my GPS it doesn’t use any extra battery.
I’ll take a look at it and see if I can import anything else into this post.
Thanks I corrected that. I will post it as a suggestion only if I get enough attention in this post to “attach” the post as a link to it so they see how important these features are for all users, not only for me.
Why did they remove the automatic geometry correction? Did it not work? It is the most awesome feature of Waze
That would be awesome. I had quite some doubts when I first started mapping for Waze. “is this a highway? is this a major road? is this a ramp or an access road?”
And it would even help us, more experienced users by creating a world-wide pattern. Each country seems to have their own way of adding roads to the application. This shows some pattern, but not a world-wide pattern.
I took the major comments and joined them into the first post. Hope this helps new users to get a quick look faster.
It would be great to hear more of other users and, of course, to get some feedback from the development team as to what we should be expecting and what we should not expect any time soon.
Of course, in our opinion waze needs these features to continue its existence… :geek:
Not sure if this is the right place to put this, but I read quite a few posts in the forum and couldn’t find a better place.
I’ve been using Waze for a long time now, and one of the features I think would really help is if users had the ability to confirm or unconfirm reports, so the data became more trustworthy. Maybe, for example, all reports start off with a certain expiration period, like it does now, BUT people driving through that area can either add or subtract time to the report as they go by. Like let’s say Speed Traps start with an hour on them, and if someone drives by, a dialog comes up and says “Speed trap ahead - did you see a speed trap?” If the user clicks “no” or does nothing, you take 15 minutes off of the expiration time, but if they say “yes”, you add another 15 minutes. Something like that - would need to tune it. I think something like this would greatly improve the accuracy of things like speed traps and accidents.
I thought of this because there used to be someone in the Boston area (northbound Rt 95) near Highland Ave) who would report a “speed trap” just about every day, even though it was just a roadside sign with a K-band transmitter on it. The first few times I heard it, I was driving myself crazy trying to find the cruiser, thinking maybe they were doing the classic “hide in the radar” near the sign, trying to catch people without warning counters (ala Valentine 1). Then I realized it was just someone who got a radar detector squawk every morning and reported it.
Also, something that would help ME a ton is a “motorcycle mode”, where you can lock your phone but keep Waze running in the background instead of timing out. If I’m riding, I can’t take out my phone and click the “keep running in the background” button, so Waze only works for me for the first few minutes, and then shuts itself off. Leaving it running in my pocket without locking it is just asking for a butt-dial. I’m sure there are also other enhancements people could think of to make a cool “motorcycle mode” for people who JUST listen to it for directions and reports over bluetooth headsets. I find Waze awesome for navigating on my motorcycle because I can listen to music on the road and it very nicely lowers the music volume and gives me nav queues at the appropriate places, but it only works for the first few minutes before it automatically shuts down!
Truly social features should also be good realtime features - hooking up with local providers of data like fuel prices would be the most useful thing for the community. I think there’s a request in uservoice for it already, but it would be good to see this happen sooner rather than later.
I’m not sure which platform you’re using but that functionality is already present on the Android (and presumably the iphone) client, especially for police reports. I get a popup as I’m approaching and there is an option to indicate that the police or hazard is no longer there. I assume that when I click that, the report is deleted for other wazers.
I am new, have been using Waze only since late November. I live in a rural area, and work in a federal facility. There are places that have not been touched by the AMs (lots of segments down the road that were one way streets, or creeks that were marked as a road, or a road that has been moved, changed, etc. It took me a few tries to move the roads around, and deleting, adding on roads etc because although the wiki is there, there is still a learning curve on how to use it, how moving one road affects another road etc. Since the only way to learn how to do it is using the actual thing that has possible effects on roads, I am sure I created a huge headache for the AMS (well at least the one that I know is still active).
At the same point, new users like myself may drive in areas that the AM does not or can not drive in so they may not know the change of the road, or may be busy doing other things to not go back and make the change themselves. I am not one that will step on toes or anything, but for example my city is in the processess of moving a major highway from one part of the city to another, the East Bound lanes are already open. I waited 2+ weeks before I decided to take it upon myself to move it. To me this should have been done by a more experienced, and possibly the AM themselves, but it never got done, and two map updates later, I decided to drive on the road myself, then go back to cartuche and using my path, move the road, disconnect the ramps and build new ramps. It took me a couple of 8 hour days to do, but I did it. I had it laid out pretty good. When I went in the next day the AM’s name was on the road, and all my ramps were gone. So I know I stepped on his toes, and pissed him off, but to me having something that a lot of people travel on correct is what is more important.
Anyway, a sandbox to learn the interface, and then a flash based test to pass would have helped me out a lot. I learn most by doing, reading gets me only so far.
On a sidenote what experience level do you need to be an AM? I am thinking about being one surrounding my home since the AM there seems to be inactive. There are lots of roads that need to be converted to two ways, and I don’t plan on driving on them all soon just to be able to edit them.
None at all. You can download and join Waze and two minutes later ask to be an AM and you will probably get it. This is a problem in many of our minds.
