This is a post for all those that want to help make the Waze map in Malaysia better! In order to achieve this, we still need to do a lot of things. As always when there's so much to do, a little bit of organizing it will make things easier. So therefore here's my suggestion to start with these edits in the following order:

1) Freeways and Major Highways

Those are connecting ones. So which is exactly what? The Freeways are connecting the big cities like the arteries in your body, they're their for long travels. The Major Highways are those (at least for me, you might have a different view) that are listed under this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ex ... n_Malaysia which falls under the first "Expressway" category (actually both Freeways and Major Highways do).

The major highways are more in the cities still, like the E12 AKLEH eg. Still, you can ride them with almost no stop (except for tol plaza).

2) Minor Highways

Those are the ones that are classified in the above article as "Highways classified as Federal Routes", which don't have a Exx number in front of them (BTW, please always add the E-Number to the Lebuhraya, it's international standard). Also here we should use the number upfront in the name of the highway.

3) Connections of the highways (via ramps)

Once in a while a highway will cross into another highway, so it's good to have those connections being done in Waze as otherwise the routing will stop right there. That would be embarrassing and a turn-off point for sure for many new users. Make sure the directions are correct, you address the right levels when they're flying over or under the other highway or ramps. BTW, ramps are those connections between highways, going to (Entry point) and going off (Exit point) of highways. In Google Maps they use a orange color for this, please note that often they continue to use the highway color (yellow) on Google Maps when it's debatable if it's a ramp or not.

4) Exit and entry points of highways

Now we should make sure that the highways are connected to the main streets (primary streets) in our city or outside in Kampung area, otherwise people cannot go off into their area which they might built beautifully as their neighborhood (I also started editing like this, I think a lot of us start with our hood first). Primary streets take once again the higher load vs normal streets. They can be identified again on Google Maps, as they use a yellow color to mark them. Please note that sometimes it's hard to guess if it's a major street or a minor highway, like Jalan Duta or Jalan Kuching eg. I've marked them as minor highways, as they can be found in the above Wikipedia article under the category "Highways classified as Municipal Routes", still look almost like highways anyway (or parking spots at early morning/evening on Jalan Kuching).

5) Primary Streets

Once we do have all the highways done and their connections to themselves, it's time to start on the primary streets, which take more traffic than normal streets and usually have higher average speed (unless traffic jam time). They're mostly know to all Malaysian's like Jalan Ipoh eg here in KL. Note that a lot of them are already mapped out, but just not identified as primary streets. Once again, Google Maps is the solution to identify them, check if they're yellow there and they should be primary streets in Waze as well.

6) Bigger streets

Not sure how to classify them (or name them), but these are streets that eg run in parallel to flyover (like Jalan Tun Razak) and take a lot of traffic as well (BTW, if they're running in parallel under a flyover, they're service roads. If they go on or off, then they're ramps.

7) Popular landmarks

Now it gets more and more debatable if my suggestion is right, but a lot of users are just thinking this is a normal map like Garmin, so I can enter KLCC and it comes up. Guess what, luckily someone built that landmark already, but a lot of those "searched" by the majority of our people are not existing there. There are also a lot of landmarks missing, which people use for orientation (Parliament House, hmmh, bad example, is there already but you get my point) or as meeting points (like gas stations next to highways, park and rest areas). Make sure to built the geometry up to the streets, otherwise you can't enter them or the navigation/routing won't find a route there. It's also nice to categorize the correctly (like gas station, place of worship etc.). Not sure if they're marked differently, but if we're anyway building a nice map, why not make it correct from the beginning on?

8) Normal streets

Guess it's about time to finally start building every small street of your surroundings, where you live and so. You might even want to add house numbers (at least for your own house when you do live in a long street like Jalan Maarof eg), but otherwise if we have one person per suburb we could easily built a very detailed map of the main cities in a short time period. Remember, Italy managed to built 70% of the main cities in 1 week only (ok, but then Italy is the third most active country or so on Waze).

9) Corrections

Well, it's probably always time for corrections once you notice them or your routing stops at one point. But now maybe we can check overall again, do we notice streets not being connected or so. We can try some routing via the web (http://www.waze.com) to see on a bigger screen if it works and Waze finds the right way and alternatives. It's also time to delete (if you have the right to do so, otherwise your delete will be pending for area managers) those stray roads that we've discussed in another forum post. The better our map quality, the less likely they will happen. Means when there's an area with unmapped streets (usually you see the dots on your phone goings all the way, looks like Spaghetti), then our phone GPS will jump from one to the other or even go stray, which creates even more things to clear up. So a tidy place is always better.

10) All the rest

This can be things like forests, lakes and other topology which makes a map just look so much nicer (check out Streetsmap.org for the most beautiful maps). Would be a good idea to get them on Waze anyway, as a side note. A question is also when we're starting to map railroads, LRT as well. I've notice that the number of Wazers using it also on a railroad is increasing. I've found a lot of tracks and even layed the whole KLIA Ekpres myself, as it was often once again confusing the Waze application as long as it wasn't being qualified as a railroad (means you jump to the tracks as well, they got connected with real roads). But in general Waze is first of all for usage in cars, trucks and other motorized vehicle!


Hope this sums it up (and I didn't forgot anything) and it's open for discussion I guess. If you all agree, I'll start to highlight some of the main areas for No 1 that I notice and I hope you'll do the same. Then we can all work together on closing those together, to make the Malaysian Waze map truely outstanding! I know the word boleh already has a negative standing, but I guess we can still use a little bit of "Can do" approach and mentality here.


Looking forward to your views,

Andreas