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The Major/Minor Hwy confusion & Wiki

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How do we fix the Major/Minor Hwy confusion & Wiki?

I'm relatively new. But as far as all of my searching has found, there has never been a clear consensus on the major vs minor highway convention in the US.

Let call this wiki entry #1
http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/How_ ... name_roads

By this guide a Major Hwy is pretty much a freeway that wasn't quite finished so that it still has a few stoplights or cross streets. By this definition, I can only think of two short sections of roads in my state that fully meets the criteria.

Then let’s call this wiki entry #2
http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Map_Legend

By this guideline's statement on minor highways, any highway that is divided, has more than one lane each direction, or perhaps even has more traffic lights than intersections(?) is a Major Hwy.

So I figure let’s look around and see what the old timers standards are. But when I look around I see nothing consistent. I see entire cities using guide #1. They have practically zero Major Hwy's, and anything from 6-lane divided, to one lane with stop-signs is labeled as Minor Hwy. But then I see other cities going by #2. They have a full mix of majors & minors. So what's a new guy to do when even the regulars are still in debate and old timers start reversing my map edits?

Obviously the wiki pages need to be updated to be consistent with each other. But who's version of Major is right? What I think is right is somewhere in the middle, but closer to #2 than #1. I'd be happy to update the wiki's myself (if I could get my login to work correctly there). But some new guy coming in and trying to change the definitions is bound to irritate a lot of people. And I think it's rightfully so on an issue this large. New guys coming in and redefining major classification can cause quite the mess.

So what a new guy to do? Be bold and change the wiki, or just complain about it on the forums and hope someone else fixes it?

Now that I think about it, perhaps I could find an old timer to submit my wiki changes to. Then they could make the changes and take all the heat. Now if I can just find one who agrees with my version of what a Major Hwy should be, this might be a good plan.

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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
I've generally followed the same method as HavanaDay in Oregon. There are a few notable examples and our Oregon To Do wiki page details these. Because there is zero effect between major and minor on routing, I see it as a really minor thing and use it to visually separate, quickly (with color, sorry color-blind folks) state routes from US routes from interstates. I see little reason, currently, for spending a lot of brain time on the merits of the various opinions any longer. We've spent so much time and never come to a satisfactory conclusion.

If, in the future, Waze makes some kind of change whereby Major highways are given some kind of preference to routing due to size/capacity/structure.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
PhantomBlack wrote:Still being rather new this I am in your shoes and still find this subject confusing. I have been reading others opinions here on the forum, and like HavanaDay's guide. Even then I think there are cases when a US Hwy should be demoted to minor or State Hwy demoted to primary.
I would not demote a state DOT designated route to a non-highway road type. That is, as always, just my opinion. I am in favor of promotion, such as a state route which is a freeway, but in general, not too hot on demotions. :)
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
jasonh300 wrote:Everything we know or thought we know about setting street type just went out the window.

Please see this thread, which has a post by Homer(6) who seems to be the developer who handles the coding for street types.

http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=17950
I'm being as ass about this, but I don't believe a lot of what Homer has written. I just don't see how it makes any sense, and certainly is counter to what we've been told repeatedly by others.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
jasonh300 wrote:If we could ever get a working test rig going, we'd be able to get some more info on our own, but I don't think that's happened yet.
The test rig is, generally, working and it shows, according to the current testing, a preference as we would expect of Fwy>Maj>Min>Ramp>Prim>St>Svc>Dirt>Pvt.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
jasonh300 wrote:So it's actually differentiating between the types of highways and between Primary and Street without speed data?
That's what is being suggested. You can ping bgodette about in that thread.
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Post by bgodette
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
jasonh300 wrote:So it's actually differentiating between the types of highways and between Primary and Street without speed data?
That's what is being suggested. You can ping bgodette about in that thread.
I'm not sure how I'm going to do this just yet without rebuilding the whole thing, but I'd like to be able to determine the magnitude of the preference. Right now the horizontal connectors are only 337 meters wide, and the vast majority of the comparisons can't overcome the preference in that distance.

I should also add true Long Route comparisons for types down to at least Service.
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Post by bgodette
Karrows wrote:Well the Wiki does specifically say: "The number one rule of Wiki editing for experienced wazers, is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try!" So I just followed the directions.

Labeling and legend are combined into here
https://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Roa ... _%28USA%29

Legend now redirects to the above

"How to label and name roads", condensed down to just "Road Naming (USA)"https://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Roa ... _%28USA%29

Now we will see what the fallout is.
I can tell you one thing I don't like; For unnumbered exit ramps "Exit to [name]", the Exit is superfluous as TTS will say "Exit to the [direction] at [everything after to]" and just takes up unnecessary space on the client screen. I'd rather have "to [name]", and definitely with a lower case "to". It's also possible the format of "Exit to [name]" will result in TTS saying "Exit to the [direction] at Exit to [name]", and is overly wordy.
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Post by Bigbear3764
X2. Was in st Paul/ Minneapolis for a hockey game. Waze took me to the door and after game got me north to elk river with no problems.

Only had one left turn restriction by mall of America that needed editing so I flagged it and thought once we get settled in our room, I'll pull up waze and fix it. Too late, someone fixed it already. Nice job.


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Post by CBenson
Sure, but Homer was changing edits by a good editor based on what he said. If waze can't get their own staff to march to same drummer with regard to street type classification, I think it is safe to say that a wiki entry that completely clarifies the issue is currently unattainable.
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Post by CBenson
Have we really taken the general map legend page written by the waze staff and converted it into a page specific to the USA? That seems a bit presumptuous. I think if we are going to make these pages US specific they should be linked to from generic waze information pages. I don't think the US centric pages should be the top level instructions.
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