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Post by PhantomSoul
What's the relationship between landmarks and POI's? I thought destination searches were done based on addresses or POI's, a separate database from landmarks. Are all landmarks POI's? Just some, perhaps? Are all POI's landmarks? Again, just some, maybe? How can you tell the difference in a not-too-subjective way?
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Post by PhantomSoul
Shouldn't POI's be points instead of complex polygons, just from a database perspective? Complex polygons are OK for true landmarks, which, by definition, are supposed to be few and far between (i.e., you really should not see 6 different landmarks on a single block of road; most of those things would probably not be actual landmarks then). There's no limit, however, to how many POI's you could have in any given area though.

A landmark is, by definition, prominent. I think one of the things that has to be decided is whether we want to limit landmarks to physical prominence - in other words, does the thing, say, visually stand out from the vast majority of things around it, perhaps for at least a few miles? Or, do we also want to include objects of social prominence as well - like, for example, does everyone - at least in the local area - know where and what the thing is even though it may not stand out visually like a tall building or some other tall structure? This would potentially include businesses with well-known branding along the side of the road. The caveat here, I think, would be that social prominence is far more subjective than physical prominence, making the system more prone to clutter, but we should probably also not forget that the social aspects of Waze are one of its biggest features that make it stand out from all the other cell-phone navigation options out there.
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Post by PhantomSoul
The lack of being able to define a single point for a POI (POINT of interest - who knew?) to navigate to strikes again. Just sayin' (Is anyone keeping count?)

That being said, don't the landmark polygons have an anchor point that serves as the spot Waze would navigate to if you put that landmark in as a destination - or is that just for like moving the whole landmark in WME? Follow up question: should the anchor point serve this purpose?
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Post by PhantomSoul
I think we're still very divided on whether POI's in general should be included as landmarks, since Waze does not provide any kind of interface in the WME for inputting and maintaining a native database of POIs and there's a lot of frustration with such POI's not appearing visually on the map.

We seem to just keep see-sawing back in forth where the yay-sayers add businesses they feel are navigationally significant, while the nay-sayers just go around deleting them and the yay-sayers then re-add them...

...lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

Frankly, until we can get a better consensus on POIs, which is what businesses are - not landmarks, an official wiki will have limited effect because people are going to just do whatever they want while about half the community supports them and the other half tries to slam them.
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Post by PhantomSoul
So then why are we just not landmarking everything that can pretty much be traced from the aerials? In fact, it's probably where we're heading anyway, because if we keep on locking all the roads we edit in our wake - or if they are auto-locked by the system, it will leave little else for new editors to do except add landmark traces.
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Post by PhantomSoul
Two things:

1. I thought the CONST ZN suffix was only for segments totally disconnected from the road network during construction but expected to be reconnected at some point in the future. We do this instead of deleting them to avoid losing the road metric data they've collected, and the CONST ZN serves as note to anyone reviewing the map for disconnected segments as to why it's there and disconnected. So I'm not sure what the fuss about TTS trying to read CONST ZN is about.

2. As I understand it, there is no reliable predictability, at least within the context of WME, for which landmarks will appear, when, and for how long, or whether a particular landmark's name is displayed in any of the Waze clients. Rather they are rendered (or hidden) as a function of zoom level and other higher priority things drawn on the map around it, like other roads, their names, city names, the navigation line and its bubble names, etc. As such, denoting construction zones with landmarks does not really add any kind of reliable value to the Waze clients, but it does add extra noise to the landmarks database.

I would think that we should have a way to identify long-term construction zones in a broader sense than just temporarily re-configuring sections of roads. If fed to the Waze clients correctly, it could provider the driver with valuable information about constructions zones up ahead and maybe even a warning to keep an eye out since the map may be slightly outdated there. However, because of the way landmarks are rendered, I do not think that landmarks will adequately meet this objective.
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Post by razor2k
vectorspace wrote:I enter small bodies of water because they were never on the water layer in Waze and never showed up on the client. I think they are vital visual references to understand the map that is displayed on the client and should be entered. If you mark them as sea/lake/levee, then Waze can always choose to not display them.
I see your point to the visual reference thing, which would be fine if you just do a simple polygon of the object. However, I've seen detailed outlines of "retention ponds" which have probably upwards of 100 nodes. :o ....This is not good.
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Post by razor2k
jasonh300 wrote:One thing I'd like to mention is that I'd like to see the quick link to Parking Lots removed from the Landmarks pulldown in the editor. I really don't think Gas Stations needs to be there anymore after the import, but I guess that could be useful for countries where the gas stations have not yet been imported. They're both inviting people to use them improperly now.
I would like to see the whole landmarks dropdown revamped. Many options serve no purpose anymore.

It could be so much more simplified.

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Post by razor2k
jemay wrote:If you only searched for LAX, you would have been routed to the wrong entrance to LAX (closer to the coast), so I have created a small landmark https://www.waze.com/editor/#?%23%3F=&z ... rks=797743 and now when you search you get LAX, Los Angeles, CA in the top two items of the search. So I know the search is using landmark information in the client and map editor... Creating the landmark may have not been in the best practices but I was able to get the search to work and it returns the correct location.
Great way to simplify :) However, all the terminals, taxi-ways, runways etc,,seem way too detailed. Is that really necessary? I know you didn't create them.....I just think all those extra nodes just take up unnecessary storage. Should all that be whittled down also?

Just thinking out loud :)
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Post by razor2k
TruckOttr wrote:
What I heard, very resoundingly clear from Ehud, was that he wanted more content. He probably wanted more content than the editors were capable of being comfortable (for various good technical and emotional reasons). So, debating about putting in POIs or not, deleting them, etc., seems a bit silly when the app could do well with more content, both that which shows on the map and that which does not.
Now that it's official that Google is acquiring Waze, does it make sense for us to either hold off or check with Waze to see what their direction and intentions are? Although this was discussed in May, it's quite possible that this will be changing with the acquisition, even with Waze remaining operationally independent for a few years.

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