I also like the idea but have reservations about standards being totally different in the UK and elsewhere. Waze is international. In particular, some Waze editors are international. By all means campaign for car parks to be points rather than areas everywhere, but I would worry about being that different in the UK only. UK editors might end up spending some of their time “correcting” car parks “corrected” by overseas editors.
But perhaps I worry too much. Editors are mostly concerned with roads, who cares about overseas car parks?
I hope and expect that you are joking, in that you would contact last editor and/or AM first and give them the opportunity to change the car park to conform to (new) standards.
What’s the thinking on the boundary of places for schools and hospitals? I can’t see anything in the draft guidelines.
The majority (80%+) I’ve come across since starting editing have been mapped as an area to the fence rather than the building outline so that’s what I’ve been doing when adding unmapped ones or finding ones that only map the building.
Given the often sprawling nature of hospital and school buildings it would seem a large effort to try and map the buildings individually. School premises often also include playing fields/sports courts - if the decision is to map the school buildings only then do we need to map the playing fields too? (Some, for example the school I’ve linked above, are open for non-school use outside school hours).
I’ve struggled to figure out how Schools and Hospitals fit in. They are kinda covered by a couple guidelines in Area section, i.e. ‘include immediate non-drivable concrete’, and ‘cluster buildings into 1 landmark’. Not driving in landmarks is countered by ‘unless private’.
So, I like to draw Schools to include all the hard surfaces, and excluding the green bits. This is perhaps more useful to drivers who want to see where the physical structures are in relation to the map.
However, I accept that many Schools have been drawn ‘to the fenceline’ and that’s probably okay to keep going forward if that’s preferable to everyone. Same with Hospitals.
I also note the comment about being too different from international guidelines. There should be a sensible middle ground we can settle on…
I can see I’m going to be revisiting a lot of my places when this is finalised, my OCD means I get a bit giddy when it comes to the detail on buildings and I enjoy nothing more than mapping and naming individual buildings on a University campus :oops:
I’m also a terrible car park mapper, I’ve toned it down a lot from mapping every last road to just the outer ones but it’s going to be quite an adjustment to totally move away from area mapping for them, I’ll adjust though, change is good… change is good…
The proposals make sense though, the key will be ensuring the message gets out to as many editors as possible I guess.
I’ve been in the habit of changing normal public "street"s to “private road” when I’ve felt it appropriate to stop Waze using them from (usually traffic-avoiding) through routes. This Wiki page explicitly says “private road” should not be used for this purpose, in which case the alternative is presumably to use “parking road” instead. Is this advice we want to follow in the UK?
I don’t agree with the rationale behind that wiki page, as PLRs also don’t look different in the client, and don’t prevent jams. The two are pretty much identical.
I think you’re fine to continue using private roads as you are.
I think I’m happy with the guidelines as they are now, and feel they’re reasonably close to the global guidelines. Please read the link in the first post again shout out now if you disagree with anything, or if there’s anything which is not clear.
Summary
Only draw Areas around buildings, with as few corners as possible (ideally 4)
Clusters of buildings or large complexes (e.g. schools, hospitals) can be drawn to fence line
Shopping centres to be drawn as an Area around building + Points for each business
Small places (less than 40 metres) should preferably be Points
e.g. anything the size of a McDonald’s or smaller
Only draw car park Areas if they are public access and general purpose, and not for customers
All compliant car parks should be properly named as per local signage. Not with [P]!
Parking Lot Roads should be left unnamed, except for lay-bys
I think the guidelines need more clarity for hospitals. My inclination would be to have a “fence line” area for the hospital, with points for particular departments (if anybody can be bothered to create them). However a single area for a hospital would almost always cover loads of roads, breaking the other tentative guideline about not having navigable roads within an area place (except for petrol stations and indoor car parks).
Schools and military bases may be similar.
^ yes, I’m inclined to agree with you, ditchi. I’ve struggled to come up with any alternate that I was happy with, so will err towards what the global guidelines say, which is pretty much as you wrote.
The ‘not drive in landmarks’ is a loose rule-of-thumb rather than a strict guideline, as we frequently have roads over rivers and through parks, hospitals, etc. I may remove this from the final document.
Regarding military sites: should these be marked with areas, or cities? I think anything like a barracks within a larger town should be an area, while a large army base or airfield out in the country could be a ‘city’. We have examples of both, and should probably think about a unified approach.
These roads are (usually) Private and should not be navigable. People shouldn’t be routed through a hospital just because it is quicker than staying on the main streets and roads. The same would apply to schools and especially military installations (unless you like dodging small arms fire!).
Firstly - thanks for pulling together Tim. Sorry I’m late to the discussion but been away for a week.
Agree with all the clarification on naming and locking but have a couple of issues:
Sorry - I really don’t agree with this unless it’s the pretty much coincides as the property lines.
Petrol stations work this way - why not everything else.
It seems odd to me to start to have different rules for different categories at such a fundamental level. I think this will lead to confusion and inconsistency between editors.
A ‘Place’ that is worthy of mapping as an area (and not just a point) usually includes one or more buildings, grounds, car park, … etc. I would like to see the true size of the Place rendered on the map.
The stop point is limited in range outside an area place. Some places have large surface level car parks so this may make it impossible to place the stop point at the car park entrance.
Lots of categories don’t relate to buildings - “map to the boundary” works for all.
Here’s an example which works for me and I would not want to change to map just the building for either of these places: WMELive Map
I think large named car parks are fine as areas - I suspect if these are changed, people will miss the point ( :lol: no pun intended) and duplicate by adding a new area.
Also, won’t this result in many more ‘Missing Road’ MPs? IIRC these are currently suppressed when inside a ‘Car Park’ area place.
To me these 2 issues seem stem from the desire to have Waze map only public car parks so we can search for the nearest car park - but then also to magically know where the corresponding private car park is when I search for all other categories. This just isn’t possible with the tools available to us currently, so;
My radical suggestion for car parks is to ask for more features in Waze:
Utilise the public/private attribute for car parks. Only public car parks should be returned in car park searches.
As well as flagging ‘customer parking’ is available for a Place - have an option to link a car park to a place to indicate where the parking is. This would principally be used for private car parks related to that place, but it could also be the nearest public car parks.
Allow multiple stop points for a Place and let Waze work out the quickest route to any of these. This could be used for large car parks and other area categories (e.g. hospital) which have multiple driveable entrances.
Because they’re wrong!
Also, those guidelines weren’t actually written by Waze, but by other community members (in America).
IMHO:
Every other map provider draw the buildings - what’s the advantage to being unconventional?
Drivers can easily see buildings, and use them to orientate themselves (“landmarks”)
Drivers cannot easily see the fence boundaries, nor is it relevant to how they navigate
Area places should be reserved for where you cannot drive (either physically or legally)
Ergo, parking areas can be shown on the map as areas which are not buildings (“whitespace”)
Caveat: Schools + Hospitals are special cases, as most of their grounds are not accessible to the public.
Gas Stations are one of the few places you do drive ‘inside’, and should be mapped to edge of tarmac.
See more points about mapping car parks and landmarks here.
Here is an example of a shopping centre mapped my way. It really does look better in the client now.
Maybe it’s worth trying it out on a small area near you, and see how it works out?
Parking Lots Roads. Waze will route you to the one closest to your destination. There’s no need to clutter up the map with additional landmarks for ‘supermarket car park’ when the user is just looking for said supermarket.
Any more views on this? The more, the merrier! :mrgreen:
I am in general agreement with Tim’s guidelines and think it definitely looks better in the client by NOT mapping car parks, but PealRinger appears to have two goods point above. Intuitively, when WME has a special selection for adding Parking Lots over and above other places, new users will add car parks. There is a lot of Wiki to read before you start editing, very few will read everything thoroughly.
PealRinger’s point about inconsitency is also valid as it could lead to more mistakes. I have tried to think about this with regard to hospitals and schools and offer examples that could work but are not easy to describe how to do to this pattern: hospital and school, but as you can see these go against the 4 points guideline.
It is a compromise whichever route we choose. Whichis the best compromise?
Thanks for putting this together. I’ve had a good read through it now and I’m in agreement with you, however, I can also see PealRinger’s point about Missing Road reports and new map editors putting in car parks for businesses or supermarkets if they’ve only read the non UK specific guide.
Perhaps there’s a happy medium for adding PLRs to car parks where you add enough to make it appear complete in the client - but you don’t add roads that are too close together. I’m not sure though, might get too confusing…
The global wiki also says that only general purpose car parks should be mapped, so the main issue is caused by new editors who haven’t read either of the Guidelines. [Places/Parking_lot]
This is already the Best Practice for mapping car parks. :mrgreen:
