There a couple of things that I think should be reviewed now that the places feature has been released.
In the general thread regarding the new wiki for places it was mentioned:
I think it would be better to have US centric discussion on this point. I would sugest simply deleting these sections from the state wikis now that there is universal/nationwide guidance.
I would also suggest that it is time to unsticky the “Landmark - Best Practices US” and “[USA] Landmark Guidance - Request for Comments” threads.
Any place consisting of one main building (with or without an attached parking lot) should be mapped as a point, to reduce map clutter.This includes:
Gas stations
Stand-alone retail or strip mall places
Stand-alone restaurants
Any place larger than one main building, or of a large geographic area should be marked as an area, including:
Malls and large shopping centers
Truck stops
Sports Arenas
Public, regional, state, and national parks
Golf courses and country clubs
This is just off the top of my head, as a starting point - especially if we can now map businesses. Using points more than areas will mark places without adding a lot of map clutter.
I’d rather not read through 8+ pages of thread to understand the basics. When can we have a Best Practices wiki page like we had for US landmarks (https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Landmarks)? Besides, the whole point of creating this thread was to break it off of the thread you referenced.
Actually, six hours before this post, this was mentioned in the wiki forum, posted in the Editor feedback thread, chatted multiple times in the editor and tweeted about more than once.
While I like the Places Wiki-page. I feel there is still a place for state specific guidance that do not contradict the National Standards. I do agree that every state doesn’t need a full set of rules as we have needed under the Landmark situation, but there are specific variations that do require local differences.
One example that comes to mind (not a good one, just the first that popped into my mind) is Golf Courses. Under landmarks the Standard most had adopted being AndyPoms’ CT standards said not to mark Golf Courses because in CT they are almost all private clubs and thus under the no longer valid idea of not marking private businesses it was advise to not mark them. But 2000 miles away in the state I reside in nearly all courses are publicly owned and operated facilities and thus the Utah guidelines (which I just clipped out of my signature last night) said to mark them. Granted that local variation is no longer relevant but still highlights the need for some local instructions.
Well one of my favorite points that I’ve made before. larger Religious locations. The Places page says religious places are points. That’s fine for your average house of worship. But Large/historical Cathedrals, Temples (Hindu, Buddist, Hare Krisna, and my favorite, LDS). These are more than just houses of worship, they are pilgrimage destinations, as well as tourist destinations and local landmarks. Utah’s wiki-page will continue to state that these locations, LDS temples, the Hare Krishna Temple in the state and a couple historic Cathedrals, will be marked with areas rather than simple points.
Other exceptions will be found even if we can’t think of them at this time they will arise and state specific instructions will allow for such variations as they are found.
I think that any substantially large enough Place can be reasonably argued to be an Area rather than a point. The Places wiki is to guide for the majority of those Place types. Nothing is ever 100%.
I"m under the impression that this Places system completely replaces the old Landmarks system, as well as its guidances.
Also, are there any plans in the foreseeable future to integrate Waze’s Places data stores with the ones for Google Places - or at least sync the two on the backend, etc., if this isn’t being done so already?
If there are plans to sync the two, maybe we shouldn’t go crazy manually adding places that already exist over on Google Map Maker. Does anyone know?
Well, for what it’s worth (and this may already be known), when I converted an Area into a Point, once the tiles finally updated, the site in question disappeared from the Waze app completely. Areas show up on the map, but Points do not.
At this time, yes. But I would be surprised if they are not app changes planned to change this visibility. In a future version like 3.9 or 4.0, this may get an overhaul. So, for the time being, I’m ok with the majority of Places, because most should be Points, not showing on the map. We are maturing Waze’s data and our ability to quickly adjust, without affecting the app map usability from its current state.
My completely wild guess would be that Areas will continue to show in the app, while Points will become search fodder in the Waze column, but not appear on the map, giving us better control over POI searches and destinations than we currently have, using Google’s markers. Place Points would seem to be, in essence, “stop points on steroids”, i.e. with extra information, but without the visual tie to the House Number in WME.
There would just be too many points to display. It would overwhelm all the Simplicity we’ve fought so hard for.
With the direction being to place them on or near the appropriate segment, rather than the destination itself, it wouldn’t make any sense to make them visual. After all, we don’t see the “stop points” for the Areas.
We were not explicitly told whether Point Places will appear on the map. The app will get an overhaul of the map display in the coming year, like livemap did previously. However, if enhancements for some kind of display for Points will be included, we do not know. If they do, I am sure that they can do some sort of algorithm to do zoom-based density/population of points.
