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Basemapped segments in the wrong state

Post by mapcat
I'm posting this because I want to feel unappreciated and angry again.

After doing some editing in Montana over the past few weeks, I was reminded of an annoyance that I hadn't encountered for a while. In the western half of the state, all unnamed roads have state set to Idaho instead of Montana. Others here have mentioned similar situations in Mississippi, the Carolinas, and a few other states. Editing (splitting or merging) such segments and attempting to save causes an error: "The highlighted road is too far from the state it was added to." Saving can't proceed until the state name is changed to the correct one.

There is a very simple solution to this problem. You see, every one of these segments already has the correct state coded into its segment ID. Everything in Montana is in the 28-29000000 range. Everything in Idaho is closer to 13000000. The segment IDs are ordered by state, so the highest Montana value is just below the lowest Nebraska value. So if someone could sort the database by segment ID, determine Montana's minimum and maximum values, and change the state field for every one of those entries to Montana, the problem would disappear. In minutes. Forever.

The same could be done with segments whose state is set to "other" due to inattentive editing (or cartouche_old issues). It could be used to erase Portola Valley from every one of the hundreds of thousands of segments mistakenly labelled with that city. In minutes.

I remember sharing this information with Dror, and later Shirli, and receiving replies of "Oh, that's very helpful. We'll pass that along right away to [whoever] so they can look into it." Further inquiries after 10 days had gone by were met with "Yes, it's on the list, but not the highest priority at the moment." Finally I just decided that, because they were employees of the company, they were exhibiting the values of the company, which in this case illustrated that the company didn't think this was a big deal. Therefore, it isn't a big deal and nothing needs to be done. I was fine with that until a recent conversation with an AM who seems to think this is a big deal.

So, if anyone else feels the way I do, please post here and confirm that segments assigned to the wrong state don't annoy you at all, or that you prefer to change them one at a time, or that you actually enjoy it when you try to save 100 edits and fail because one of the segments you edited had the wrong state. Then I can send a message onto management that, by continuing to do nothing about this, they're doing exactly what we want and keeping editing the pleasant diversion that it is.

But to be fair, on the off chance that you DON'T agree with the company on this one, and actually think making these simple changes could be a wise use of an afternoon, please share your thoughts here also. I promise to forward them as well to someone who will read them, think about them for a few minutes, and then do nothing.
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Post by jasonh300
OMG! Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Germany!
https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=66851593

I also saw a newly drawn road with Alabama on it in Louisiana earlier. I fixed it without thinking much of it, but I"m not sure how they accomplished that, because I can't make a new segment show Alabama (or Germany).
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Post by jasonh300
crazycomputingdotnet wrote:I am finding some Lousianas in Oklahoma myself. and this is in Oklahoma City, not anywhere near a border... :/
Who is the editor on these segments or are they basemapped? I wonder if it's someone local to Louisiana, although I've never been able to get any other state options to come up once I'm a good distance away from the border.
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Post by jasonh300
So do these maps have Portola Valley all over them?
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Post by jondrush
The Northern and Eastern Pennsylvania map has many, many segments with New York and New Jersey as the state. It definitely slows me down when I am trying to fix up an area.
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Post by jondrush
Gotta count Alabama everywhere.
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Post by kentsmith9
On the Portola Valley issue, can't we determine the long/lat of the actual city and any segment outside of that long/lat area gets cleared to no city in the DB?

If that is not possible, for California at least, I don't think I have ever seen one segment have a road name when it was in the wrong part of CA -- it is always blank. Maybe the DB can be edited so any Portola Valley entry without a street name can be set to blank city. If the street is really in Portola Valley, that loss of information seems much less significant for unnamed streets than the benefit of removing Portola Valley from the hundreds of thousands of unnamed roads through the rest of CA.
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Post by kentsmith9
All the Portola Valley I hit is for streets that appear to have not been named during original import. This even shows up inside some city limits periodically.

Mostly it is on roads that are dirt type, but sometimes it is for real roads, but they have no name.

The problem is when those roads touch a real road and you adjust the intersection, you don't realize it is PV and if you don't immediately save, you don't realize that segment cannot be moved with that city name being too far from its real location. Then you undo everything after that edit. Very frustrating.

That is why I am convinced Waze can fix the database of the majority of these. The editor knows that segment is too far from where it should be. So just blank it out. We can fill it in later if necessary. At least it will stop frustration. It sounded like they were working on it in the last update communication to us at least.
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Post by mapcat
jasonh300 wrote:I think that your logic about the numbers being serial may be where the problem lies. I think those high values for one state and low values for the next state actually end where Waze thinks the border is and that's the reason why the state border is in the wrong place.

OR, there's a discrepancy between these numbers in the basemap and where Waze actually thinks the state border is, which is why a new segment can default to one state, but then Waze gives an error about it being the wrong state (in which case, your solution might actually work).
OK, here are some examples of unedited segments within the boundaries of Montana.

Named segment in a city (state=Montana): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29610016
Unnamed segment in a city (state=Montana): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29615069
Named segment outside a city (state=Montana): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29608103
Unnamed segment outside a city (state=Idaho): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29614273

Here are some examples of unedited segments within the boundaries of Idaho, near Montana.

Named segment in a city (state=Idaho): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=13554815
Unnamed segment in a city (state=Idaho): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=13577066
Named segment outside a city (state=Idaho): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=13553911
Unnamed segment outside a city (state=Idaho): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=13577156

In contrast, here are examples from eastern Montana:
Named (state=Montana): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29297875
Unnamed (state=Montana): https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... s=29295336

A city is nearby in case you want to check whether things are different there.

Click on named and unnamed, unedited segments around here and see if you notice a pattern in the segment IDs:

Louisiana in Mississippi: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 7,26429732
Mississippi in Mississippi: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 9,26435390
Louisiana in Louisiana: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 1,21011582
North Carolina in Tennessee: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 9,45615281
Tennessee in Tennessee: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... 0,45609789
North Carolina in North Carolina: https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat ... 8,35983431

I didn't see any examples supporting your position, so post some and maybe we can figure out what else might be causing this.
I always thought that there were invisible geometric outlines of the states on a layer we can't see in the editor, and that this was what defined the state. If your solution won't work, then maybe there needs to be these geometric outlines and then set the state field for once and for all and eliminate it from the editor completely. There's no reason for there to be multiple state options, ever. It's not like someone can say that they've changed their mind and that this street should be in Missouri, although all of the surrounding streets are in Alabama.

Likewise, I think these invisible geometric outlines are also what defines the country area, which prevents CMs from editing coastal California, and the western(!?) half of Manhattan, but allows US CMs to edit 3/4 of the way into the town of Niagara Falls, Ontario.
I think you're right about the invisible outlines, but I don't think they have anything to do with the segment IDs. I suspect that Waze imported all the segments, didn't notice anything special about the IDs, and proceeded to create that invisible layer so that we would have states. Completely unnecessarily, it seems.

Oh, and in case anyone cares, the same ID system is in place for the Canadian provinces. Yes, Waze knows. No, they don't have any plans to do anything with it.
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Post by mapcat
jasonh300 wrote:So are you saying that every (basemapped) segment in Montana starts with 29 and every segment in Idaho starts with 16, etc.?

Nevermind...I found spots where this is not the case.

We'd still have to figure out where one state ends and the next begins. Or do you think Waze knows this already?
I have a general idea where the break points are but would really need to access the whole db. Which is not going to happen, obviously.

But...you're saying that you found places where basemapped roads started with numbers outside the range? If that's the case then my theory has a flaw...

Post links please.
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