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Post by davidg666
paddyfroggy wrote:Thanks for the information. I am not sure how Waze know how many petrol stations are required, possibly some government piece of info? It may be something that our country manager could find out so that we know the target and possibly find out what is the current number mapped.
There is a Waze-maintained list of all the petrol stations currently mapped in each country (I don't have the link handy, but it is mentioned in some of the other forums). As for the total number of petrol stations, I don't believe they have any official source, but if we supplied them with a total number (and good evidence for it being correct) they would probably use that.
paddyfroggy wrote:I would be happy to take some more areas, even if I may not be that familiar with them, and map against the satellite imagery. How to find out where is the biggest need? Probably the CM again?
There's a spreadsheet I created that shows all towns/cities in Ireland with a population of more than 1500 people - if you look back about six months in the Ireland forum you'll see it.

The idea is that the spreadsheet can be edited by anybody. It doesn't have complete information about every town, so do add to it as necessary, with a permalink to each town on the map, and information about how complete the maps are there.

If you want to help out with mapping the undermapped areas, I suggest this approach (that's how I started off anyway):

1. Start with a town (or area) you know reasonably well and check the completeness of the maps for this town. If you've driven around it recently, you'll have editing rights for it. Add any missing roads (bearing in mind that the satellite images may be out of date). Don't forget to name the roads, set turn restrictions, make sure junctions will behave properly, and so on.
2. If you're fairly familiar with a town or area, apply to be an area manager for that town/area. This will bring your editing level up to level 3, which will let you override certain locks, and will also let you edit within a wider radius of the routes you've driven. Bear in mind that an area manager is supposed to pay attention to URs for their area(s) and to keep an eye on the state of the map in that area. I did places like Wicklow. Carlow, Kilkenny, Enniscorthy and Wexford this way.
3. For areas other than towns: follow main roads to check them for completeness, and also (within your editable area) map all roads that join those main roads. Make sure all roads have the correct type and name, and that all junctions are set up properly.

There are *many* towns out there that are either not mapped at all or that have only been edited a little, so that most of their roads, residential areas and so on are still not mapped.

One thing I suggest though, as a matter of courtesy: when you start editing in a new town or area, have a look at the last modification dates and editor names of road segments in case another editor is also working in the same area (the WME Highlights script can help you find recent edits in an area). If you do find that another editor has been working in the same area recently, send them a message to coordinate your work so that you don't end up tripping over each other as you edit. I've found out (the hard way...) that it's easy to accidentally annoy other editors if you modify roads that they've recently edited or are in the middle of editing.

Good luck with your editing - and stay in touch with other editors here in the forum and by PM. I've got a draft version of a new wiki page for Irish editing standards - I'm looking for feedback on this (again, look back a few threads to find it) so I'd be interested to see if you have any opinions. It covers how we name roads in Ireland, what road types to use, how to name cities, and so on.

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Post by davidg666
Addendum to the previous post:

For the list of towns in Ireland, see this forum thread:

https://world.waze.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 59#p364863

For the draft wiki page about road naming in Ireland, see here:

http://world.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Ho ... d%29_DRAFT

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Post by davidg666
paddyfroggy wrote:Thanks for the links, I have added my name to the ones I can work on.
The roads naming page is very useful thanks for sharing
You're welcome! The roads naming page is still just a draft, so if you have any opinions, remarks or proposals, then please state them.

It's been in draft for many months now, so I think I'll move it out of draft and use it to replace the current Ireland wiki page shortly - then we can point at it and use it as a reference for how we do things in Ireland. Even then we can still change it, of course.

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Post by davidg666
marlow925 wrote:I'd say it should be pretty difficult to actually know, how many petrol stations there are in Ireland. Especially with the massive closures in recent years due to redevelepment.
I think Waze would be happy to accept a reasonably-calculated estimate of the total. Failing that, it might be possible to get totals from each of the major petrol companies, although this wouldn't account for the independent petrol stations. I think this is what they did in the UK (where the gas prices feature is enabled) and Australia (where they're still mapping stations).

In the UK, they also got detailed lists some companies, such as Esso, with coordinates that they were able to get Waze to import into the database. The Esso list must have included Ireland, because I keep coming across Esso stations here mapped as a small square with telephone number and so on in an unusual format.
marlow925 wrote:Is there anywhere we can find out what the estimated total and the actually mapped figures are ?
Waze maintain a list of these figures for every country here: ... although I can't open that document any more. In any case, they can tell us how many are mapped, and we can probably estimate and tell them how many stations there are. I imagine there's a reasonable proportion of petrol stations to populations that's similar in many European countries.

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Post by davidg666
More about petrol prices; I just found the thread discussing how many petrol stations need to be mapped in various countries; the thread itself is here:

viewtopic.php?f=417&t=44808&view=unread#unread

...and the spreadsheet with the number of stations mapped (compared to the number that need to be mapped) is here:



...as you can see, we've got about 500 mapped here in Ireland, but the spreadsheet doesn't show how many there are in total that need to be mapped. I guess we need to work that out (or come up with a reasonable estimate) and give that to Waze.

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Post by davidg666
Hi Des,
CTCNetwork wrote:On my occasional visits I have (on my return) mapped some stations. I have also been adding a parking lot road through the station (so stays do not affect/create traffic reports) and then naming them "Fuel". I have since started changing to [F].

You can come slap me if I have been too presumptuous. I do find that the street name (Fuel or [F]) shows up on the map sooner than the actual landmark..

You comments would be welcome.
Thanks for mapping petrol stations here!

I think the gas station landmark type is supposed to suppress creation of traffic reports from cars stopped at the petrol station, even though cars stopped there *appear* to be on the adjacent road. That said, I also place parking lot roads in petrol stations, both to make the car appear to be off the road and to give proper directions to cars leaving petrol stations.

I don't usually name the parking lot road in petrol stations, although when I first started mapping I was a little inconsistent and sometimes named them "petrol station" and sometimes with the name of the fuel company.

Anyway, back to the point: do you think that naming the gas station landmark with something (whether it be the brand name, "Fuel" or "[F"]) would look better than naming the associated parking lot road? I wonder if the two would clash visually if both the landmark and the parking lot road were named. I haven't come across any of your petrol stations yet, so maybe they look fine!

What's the UK practice for labelling petrol stations? I'd be happy with any approach over here that looks good on the client and is consistent - we certainly aren't consistent at all yet.

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Post by davidg666
CTCNetwork wrote:There is no strict rule for naming - aka no name should be Ok. The parking lot road does pull you off the main road so aiding no adding to traffic reports whilst you stop and refuel (or you would need to have the garage landmark covering the road).
I remember reading on the editing forum several months ago (when the petrol prices feature was first introduced) that gas station landmarks would suppress traffic reports and used the actual GPS position of the car to decide whether or not the car was at the petrol station, and not the position of the car on the nearest bit of road. In other words, they should ignore the fact that the car has been snapped to the road on the client display, and realise that it's actually not on the road but inside the landmark.

That said, I imagine it's very easy to be at the edge of a petrol station but under the canopy, so your GPS location isn't perfect, and have Waze think you actually aren't on the landmark, but on the road. I definitely support using parking lot road segments in petrol stations for this reason!
CTCNetwork wrote:We have "adopted" the idea that naming of car parks with "[P] name" is preferable to "name Car Park" as less verbose. Adding [P] to the parking lot roads is also quite acceptable rather than "tesco's Car Park" or whatever.. :)
I like the '[P]' for car parks alright - and although we don't seem to have adopted that convention here, I think it would look good, especially when used with just the '[P]' and no name.

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Post by davidg666
seriousarsonist wrote:The app will, if it thinks you are within the petrol stations, show a pop up asking if you are at a petrol station and do you want to update prices. This feature does work, albeit, intermittently, well up here in the north anyway.
It doesn't do that down here because petrol prices aren't enabled for here yet - I imagine we have only about 30% (very rough guess) of petrol stations mapped. I assume (but have no way of verifying this) that traffic jam suppression still works when you're on a gas station landmark...
seriousarsonist wrote:I prefer to leave the road name blank for gas stations but do like the [P] for car parks as it shows up very clearly. I think waze pulls car park details from somewhere else too and displays something similar but not 100% on that.
Do you mean the little 'P' pins that show up when you're approaching your destination? I think I read somewhere that these come from Foursquare, and aren't sourced from the Waze map at all.

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Post by davidg666
seriousarsonist wrote:Yup the little P pins, and you could be right about foursquare. I may be over the border in the next week so I'll see if it does suppress it, I'll also do as Des is and try and map in as many stations as I can find
Thanks for any mapping you add! Most other local editors down here seem to have gone quiet lately; I don't know if (m)any of them are watching the forums at all. I've been contacting new editors as I see their edits appearing, but I'm not sure how long most of them stick around. How many actively contributing editors would you say you've got up north? I know you also had no base map import, unlike the rest if the UK. (Why is that? Maybe because OSNI is separate from the OS for the island of Britain?)

This is off topic, but I'm sure you've noticed the switch to Google satellite imagery in the editor has helped a lot of areas (and hindered a few others...) Everything south of the border including Dundalk and Drogheda used to be more-or-less uneditable. Plenty of scope for more editing now...

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Post by davidg666
CTCNetwork wrote:Theoretically serious is right, subject to the accuracy of the devices GPS.. :D
I have been prompted for traffic updates whilst in garages where there was no parking lot road.
Same thing when in a lay-by too.
All the more reason to add parking lot roads to petrol stations - and any similar structure (like lay-bys, as you mention) where a car can be stopped without being in traffic.
CTCNetwork wrote:You only get the pop up to prompt for fuel price updates if you have the feature turned on - I update regularly so disabled it as more annoying - just like the ads.. Grr...!!!
Thankfully no ads here (yet), although I have seen them in Italy earlier this year.

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