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Chains/Places Harmonisation

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Hi guys, let's discuss options of harmonising chains on this card.

A few points worth noting:
- the search function values alternative names a lot even though they remain invisible in the app
- search results show the street and city which helps picking a result
- short POI names remain visible on the map for longer (depending on how crowded the surroundings are)

See attachments below for example search results for "Aldi Ashbourne" Or "Tesco Ashbourne" - I was abroad at the time of the screenshots and I was expecting to see 1 Mega Meter for this distance :mrgreen: :lol:

Let's keep all entries in this Google Spreadsheet:



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Last edited by YanisKyr on Thu Nov 07, 2019 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post by Inactive user -1649923503-
I think a great start. A couple of ideas on the list:
Include categories and possible alternative, for the ones so far they are relatively simple but you start getting into the challenges of coffee shops do you want to include they are a bakery. McDonald's is fast food but some chain might be considered restaurants.
Add a note column

I like the utilizing the chain's store name as an alternative, as the primary name will show in the map if it is an area and "Aldi" is cleaner than "Aldi Ashbourne" on the map.

My understanding is currently you are following the UK practice on Places Area vs Point. Do you want to define these harmonized places category on this list? The USA defines all categories. This might be a different discussion altogether for the Area vs Point topic.

Another consideration is creating this in a google sheet, easier to update and you could also embed it into a Wazeopedia page.

Do you want submissions to be via the forum or a google form (could go into a separate tab on the sheet)

I have a couple of chains that I was thinking of suggesting, Ill post them a little later.
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Post by Inactive user -1649923503-
Localization for chains can be difficult. Sometimes it is enough for people to see the address when they click on a result. Sometimes one needs more of a name for the place to be better prepared to pick the right location.

Examples Aldi (Website and twitter in text format refers itself as "Aldi" despite their logo being all caps "ALDI", interestingly in the USA they do have more consistent usage of the all caps). Much of the time the address or distance from you will be adequate to pick the correct Aldi.

Looking at Tesco (Similar case where the logo is all caps but in text they refer to themselves as Tesco on their website). I am not familiar with the different brands of Tesco stores. Quickly looking at their website reveals many types, but when I look at their store fronts they seam to have little differences.


PL to Location
PL to Location

But if I search for a place I will see that it is Ashbourne or other with the visible address, do we need to include the name?

However I know with my recent travels I stayed at a Maldron Hotel in Dublin and this does become quickly confusing on which one to is the correct one


Maldon @ the Airport - Might benefit from including in the name Dublin Airport?
Maldron elsewhere in Dublin

Which actually brings up my first suggested place
Maldron Hotels - Name: Maldron Hotels - (Location Name), Category: Hotel, A/P: Area Place, Website: https://www.maldronhotels.com/
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Post by davidg666
Kevintiobraid wrote:My own preference is only to have the type of store for supermarkets, e.g. Tesco Metro or just Supervalu, rather than the town or location name as well. It gets a bit unwieldy otherwise. The street and town will always appear in the search results, as seen in Yanis's screenshot, so you will have reassurance that you are going to the right one. Tesco Metro Ashbourne could be an alternative name.
For hotels, its always helpful to have the full name as given by the hotel, Jurys Inn Parnell Street.
In the past, I've named supermarkets without the type but with the location (eg "Tesco Ashbourne"), and I don't care that much for the type (eg Metro/Extra/whatever).

Looking just now, I find the information shown in search results (for "Tesco", for example) to be not all that useful when the location name isn't included, but I probably need to fiddle with it some more.

One thing I need to check out (to firm up my opinion) is what Carplay shows in search results - it might not be as useful as what's shown on the phone. I'll check at the weekend and report back...

About the spreadsheet: Yanis, can you enable suggestions? The chain name for Aldi is "Aldi", not "ALDI".

For road interchanges: I think I prefer "M/Nxx Jnn" or "M/Nxx Jnn / M/Nyy Jmm" rather than using the alternate name, because nobody (except for road engineering staff :) ) ever navigates to an interchange - all we care about here is what we show on screen.

++David
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Post by davidg666
YanisKyr wrote:
davidg666 wrote:One thing I need to check out (to firm up my opinion) is what Carplay shows in search results - it might not be as useful as what's shown on the phone. I'll check at the weekend and report back...
It would be interesting to see how Android Auto shows stuff. I've never ever used it myself, haven't even seen it in action.
When I searched for "Tesco Ashbourne" with Waze running in Carplay I got two results: the one in Ashbourne, and the one in Wicklow town (which is weird, because it's certainly not the closest Tesco to me). I tried to take a screenshot, but a combination of not being able to remember the buttons to press for a screenshot and knocking the USB cable (and disconnecting the phone from the car) put paid to that.

I'm starting to lean strongly in favour of having the location name as part of the primary Place name.
YanisKyr wrote:
davidg666 wrote:About the spreadsheet: Yanis, can you enable suggestions? The chain name for Aldi is "Aldi", not "ALDI".
Actual chain name for Aldi is ALDI - that's how they call themselves. Not sure I get you here.
The name in the logo appears in all caps, yes, but it originated as a an abbreviation (not an acronym, so no need to capitalise) of "Albrecht Diskont".

On their Irish website, their name appears almost always just as "Aldi", and the company name is "Aldi stored (Ireland) Limited". Showing it in capitals just looks wrong to me.

The UK site uses "Aldi" too, but the Germans sites for both Aldi Süd (the version we have in Ireland) and Aldi Nord use "ALDI". The US and Australian sites (those countries also both have Aldi Süd) use "ALDI".

In my opinion we should use the formatting the local (Irish) company uses: "Aldi".

++David
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Post by davidg666
YanisKyr wrote:One more thing to consider, is that if we add the locality we'll end up with towns looking like a canvas of their own name - Ashbourne Garda, Tesco Ashbourne, Lidl Ashbourne, Aldi Ashbourne, Dunnes Ashbourne etc. The town name will repeat multiple times in the app when the only useful element is the brand.
Good point! I find (in Carplay anyway; I almost never use Waze on the phone by itself, although I imagine the majority of users do) that only a small number of Places show up on the screen (and Waze on Carplay is a bit weird in that regard too: it often shows one or two obscure places prominently and doesn't show others unless they're quite close).

More experimenting required. I've renamed several supermarkets near me to just their name (+rank, for Tesco) - so just "Tesco Superstore", "Lidl", "Aldi", "Supervalu", etc, with the place name as part of the alternative name ("Tesco Greystones", "Lidl Greystones", "Aldi Greystones", etc...)

After the next tile update I'll check out how it looks/works in the client (both with and without Carplay)

++David
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Post by davidg666
YanisKyr wrote:@David, did you get a chance to test Android Auto more?
Not on Android Auto (I don't have an Android phone), but I did try over the weekend with Apple Carplay. It worked fine for all but one of the supermarket chains in Greystones (Tesco, Aldi, Lidl and Supervalu) but one of them (I forget which) didn't show the location in the search list. This is odd, because they all have an address in WME.

One annoying thing about Carplay is that the list of search results only has room for one item at a time (although you can scroll through it) because the on-screen keyboard takes up almost all of the screen. Maybe I need a better car with a bigger screen :) I'll try to take screenshots next time I'm in the car.

More usefully, I'll also try again next time in the car and see which of the four supermarket chains didn't quite work right.

++David
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Post by davidg666
YanisKyr wrote:Carplay, I have to remind myself that some people don't use Android :D
My current position is that I prefer having the location name (town/suburb) as part of the Place name. This is because (on Carplay anyway), the space for the address is very small, so in the search results, we get something like (sorry, I don't have a screenshot):

----
Tesco Superstore
5.2km | R123 Some...
----

...where the road name in the Place address could be "R123 Somename Rd" - however, unless the user knows the area very well, they might have no idea what or where "R123 Somename Rd" is, and even less of an idea if it's truncated aggressively into a very short space. When I'm trying to find somewhere, I know vaguely that there's a Tesco in (for example) Baldoyle, so I want the search results to show me the Baldoyle Tesco, but I might not know what the road names in that area are and I want to be able to tell which Tesco in the search results is the Baldoyle one.

For the above reason, I think we should append the town/suburb name to the Place name, so we'd have "Tesco Superstore Baldoyle" in the example above.

On Carplay, this would show in the search results as:

----
Tesco Superstore Baldoyle
5.2km | R123 Some...
----
Tesco Balgriffin
7.2km | Mumble...
---
Tesco Express Inchicore
9.9km | R321 Kilmain...
---

On a different but related note: typically supermarkets and similar businesses are in a small shopping centre with a few other shops. Because of this, I think they should be mapped as point Places (along with the other businesses there), and there should be an area Place for the entire shopping centre. This way, the user will see the shopping centre on the map display, and not think that the only thing there is the supermarket (or similar).

The only exception to this would be when there a supermarket (or similar) is the *only* thing at that location, which does happen occasionally. In that case, I think it should be mapped as an area Place.

++David
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Post by davidg666
FaustasL wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 1:41 pm Hi, I can't find "Convenience Store" in categories list on WME. Why this happened? 
 
https://waze.com/en-GB/editor?env=row&l ... t=16308380 

 
You found it, no? https://waze.com/editor?env=row&lat=52. ... t=16308380

++D
 
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Post by davidg666
FaustasL wrote: Fri Aug 20, 2021 3:19 pm No, I can't find it.

 
Putting this here for the record from our Slack conversation:

The names of the categories you get depend on your selected language in WME. UK English and all other English variants use different names for Convenience Store. They probably also use different names for some of the other categories.

In UK English, "Convenience Store" appears as just "Shop" instead. 

To change your WME language, pick the tab on the left with the little gear icon. Below most of the other settings, there's a drop-down list for choosing the language. If you're feeling brave, you can pick any one of lots of different language, including US English, UK English, Australian English and TEN (if I'm counting right) languages just called "English". WTF...

++David
 
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Post by FaustasL
Hi, I can't find "Convenience Store" in categories list on WME. Why this happened? 
 
https://waze.com/en-GB/editor?env=row&l ... t=16308380 
 
 
 
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