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Nation wide Lock level standard?

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I just wanted to make sure if this has been discussed and a final decision has been made with the US/NA making FC changes nationwide.

Has a set lock level standard been agreed upon or recognized as the standard for the US? What I am understanding is the following:

PM= Primary Street mH=Minor Highway MH=Major Highway
  1. PM/mH= L2
  2. MH= L3
  3. Freeway/Ramps= L4
What I feel is a good lock level is the following:
  1. PM= L2
  2. mH/MH= L3
  3. Freeway/Ramps= L4
Your thoughts?

[Edit]
Almost forgot to add Railroads. What is a recommend lock level for railroads?

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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
I've read all the previous discussion. I will reiterate my opinion that except for areas of known issues, special circumstances, etc., if we have state managers at L4 whom we are supposed to be trusting with edits across the entire state, that the general standard maximum lock level should be 4. If you have a L4 that you don't trust to edit freeways, then demote them.
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Post by CBenson
The major problem with high level locking I have is the assumption:
PhantomSoul wrote:With an L5, we know the person has engaged the community enough to be able to count on the editor to ask, or at the very least has made enough edits for the community to have engaged that editor.
This hasn't been true in the past. You just ranked up by edit count. I've experienced major editing failures on freeways by out of town L5 editors that very few locals can correct when they discover the problems. This is getting better as the existing high level editors either drift away from editing or actually gain the experience we expect and community management makes having the required skills to achieve high levels more likely. So I'm more willing to lock now.
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Post by coontex
One thing that I would suggest to make things alittle easier might be to has state unlock request pages for every state so that the unlock request can be managed and found easier then having to go through so many at one time.


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Post by Daknife
Great points vector, other than Freeways and ramps at 5 and Mh at 3, I'm not a fan of blanket locks. Especially in more rural areas. Highly populated areas it does make sense as I have seen actual vandalism as well as novice mistakes that cause or could cause major problems. But I have yet to see any such in rural areas, and am thus hesitant about locking down such areas when a statewide AM or a CM might only look at that area once a year or less often.

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Post by DallasGrant
Here is my feelings:

Everything should be based on the level of completion of the road (unless we had a string of bad updates in an area).

Here's what I mean: Before locks should realistically be considered, the road must be correct meaning that until a construction project comes along, there is nothing left to do to the road. This means it must be named to the correct name (same name as the house number name), it needs to use the correct geometry (roads generally have smooth curves and not jagged ones), it needs correct FC, and it needs the correct house numbering.

If the road is not to these standards, it should be a level 1 until the road is correct. The only exception I have to this rule is freeways and ramps where I believe they always should have a lock of at least a level 3.

Now, if the road is correct, here is my proposal:

In Cities:
Freeways - 5
Major Highways - 4
mH and PS -3
Streets -2

In rural areas:
Freeways -4
Major Highways -3
mH, PS, and Streets - 2
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Post by DallasGrant
Mostly because they are often not monitored well at all and to make it easier for lower level Wazers to make construction alterations without massive unlock requests.

I personally wouldn't mind the same locks everywhere but once had a huge debate with another editor about locks I set in place for roads I had set correct and see his point so I carried it into this lock plan.

I had a debate about this in the Minnesota forum and it ultimately created a stir on making edits for the masses, but I firmly believe, if a road is to a level that needs no alterations, it should be locked out to the masses. I finally got a lower level Wazer to recognize I'm not taking away the ability to do edits because it takes a lot of hard work to get the roads to a locked standard and there is no reason ever to get edit points for bumping a road that needs no more work currently.
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Post by DallasGrant
I agree... I actually was locking everything to a minimum of a level 3 (a level that is really easy to get to) but it started a huge debate with a level 5 in my state so I altered my plans there to different levels and agreed I probably was going too far. But this is a debate much like Functional Class.. We know placing restrictions on roads that need no more work is a good way to prevent incorrect edits, but some people will have major problems with the idea. I say like FC because it took me forever to convince a person how much FC makes sense.

The thing here is yes it is true that the editing should be available to the masses, but roads don't change very often (sometimes you won't see a change in a road in 30 years) and if the road is to a way that it needs no editing, why not lock it out from people that may be naive to editing standards.
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Post by DallasGrant
davielde wrote: One thing that hit home is that while we should have a balance, blanket locks by road type that are "too high" (whatever that means to different areas of the country) will have a negative impact on editors. Having to fill out "too many" unlock requests (whatever that means to different editors) is a turnoff to both newer and established lower-level editors, and it also creates more work for those who have to unlock.
This is exactly why I feel we need to be limited on what pushes a lock.

Obviously, a freeway and ramps should be locked to a high level. These roads we want little reason for the routing to fail. Also, because there is no house numbering needed, we have little to do to make the roads correct. Just the naming of the road and make sure direction, connections, and elevation are correct to be recognized on navigation. Even though I currently am a level 4 (about 10,000 edits from a level 5), I firmly believe all freeways and ramps no matter where they are should be a level 5. I actually am not completely for locking anything at a level 6 because I believe if you are a level 5 and are still completely messing everything up, what is allowing us to keep you at a level 5 ranking?

Major highways are another one I firmly believe should be locked to a high standard because these are the secondary route that Waze will use; however, I also firmly believe that Waze needs to look past just does the standard route provide good navigation ... we also need to focus on if this route will take us to the correct destination. House numbering is the only way that this can be done. I believe major highways should be locked to a level 3 and if house numbering is correct, we should lock to a level 4. I know some areas of the country, house numbering is an almost impossible task because there are not good GIS mapping systems to know what these house numbers are, but this should be a major priority for editors to be concerned about.

Minor highways and primary streets are important to me too because if there is a traffic jam on a major highway and a freeway is too far to conceivably use, Waze should find value in these other road types. I believe these should be set to a level 2 if the road name and FC are correct and a level 3 if house numbering is correct.

All other road types should be a level 1 until house numbering is correct then a level 2.

Obviously though, I agree that this is all based on the area and I agree that a lock standard may be unrealistic for the country as a whole because some areas need higher locks on everything; however, I do believe that if a road has house numbering, street name, and geometry set correctly, then there is no reason to not lock the road no matter where in the world this road is. Doing house numbering is not an easy task at all. It is very time-consuming and can be a lot of hard work. Why have something that would take so much time to complete easily messed up?
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Post by davielde
As I mentioned in the California thread, since running a trial for FC since last October, Michigan has had numerous downgrades in urban areas where minor arterials are set to minor highways and only locked at 2. Through experimentation, a lock at 3 instead of 1 or 2 has been much more appropriate to prevent downgrades for both mH and MH. This may certainly depend on the local editing community and word association, but people have tended to focus too much on the word "highway"--as in "This 30mph road through the middle of a city is not a 'highway'. It's much more suitable as a Primary Street or Street". Numerous newer editors or those who may be active 2+ but don't follow the forums or wiki need some time to be educated in the new FC system. The time that it takes to get to 1,000 edits and upgrade to rank 2 often is not enough to get over the initial shock of so much red and yellow where it doesn't seem appropriate at face value. This obviously may settle down more over time though where a mH at 2 would be appropriate.

I think that there could be value in lowering freeway to 4 in that it would lighten the load on 5+ editors for changes (particularly keeping up with construction or closure edits). On the other hand, it allows tinkering where certain things may have been edited correctly already. As a tinkerer (sometimes to the chagrin of my RC), I could go either way.

Railroads should be locked at 5 or as high as a local editor can lock them.

Also, let's not forget Traffic Locks coming at some point. How does or should this factor in to manual locking decisions? Depending on the Waze population in an area and a few other factors, there are sections of freeway that would be traffic locked at 5 anyway while other sections would need a manual lock of 4 or 5 due to low usage. The same could be said of other road types.

EDIT: I love it when there are new posts that I don't see while I'm drafting one.
qwaletee wrote:We've just recently moved toward Functional Classification forcing roads that do not look at all like a highway to become mH and even MH. Whether you agree to that approach or not, the designations serve to give the routing engine more choices or more consistency in choices of longer distance routes. It shouldn't necessarily follow that this is needed for their lock levels as well. If a local 2-lane shopping strip is MH because that's what the FC says, do we really want to force it up to the AM lock rank? Or do we want to allow most editors to edit it?
Great point! As bad as I made mH at 2 sound above, it is true that the great majority of mH and even MH left at 1 have been untouched. That's because there are much fewer drivers and no active editors in many areas. Even in a metro area, the impact is small when you have rank 1 and 2 editors making changes simply because their drive area is so small. While the re-work has often been a nuisance (we have not treated it as an educational PM with a "here's what to fix and why" and instead just re-upgraded immediately), downgrades have typically been caught within a few days and fixed. So, it becomes a question of how to balance infrequent, bad edits with encouraging good editors who may start in an area. If you have more of an active editing community, it may not be a big deal to leave FC-classed arterials at a lower lock level or not lock at all because someone can just jump in and clean up. If you edit in an area where you may be the only active one, I could easily see you advocating for higher locks to protect the work you've done. That makes it difficult to set a standard nationally as qwaletee brought up.
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Post by davielde
Fredo-p wrote:As for establishing a nationwide lock level system, I think this discussion is proving that the US/NA is a fickle beast and wouldn't do well with an auto-lock system. As some of you have commented, there are a lot of areas that do not have any active, or lack, editors. This would have an effect should a lock standard be established. [...] The more we talk about this, the more we can convince Waze to steer clear of Auto-locks in the US. Participation and involvement are key and we are showing that we are doing this.
Just to clarify, what is meant by your use of "auto-lock"? Are you talking about traffic locks or the proposed standard in this thread that would automatically lock a road based on type?

Even at the regional level, I'm not sure that you would have consensus for locking guidelines unless you allow for exceptions. Even at the state level, I'm not sure that you could get consensus. Assuming that the number of active editors in an area is proportional to the Waze user community, you may be able to get some consensus for urban areas at the regional or state level, but there are still a lot of untouched areas in the US that simply would never need a high lock even for higher road types. It's not necessarily because you wouldn't want to protect the map, it's just because no one edits there and few people if any drive there.
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