The Philippines is a SELF-MANAGED waze community.
This means that all editing related issues need to go thru the Pinoy waze community.

With the surge of new users (including editors), Barangay waze is now experiancing a high rate of map vandalism. This includes inadvertent edits of well intentioned individuals.
Intended or not, bottom line is the waze maps gets damaged and throws wazers into utter chaos.

To prevent this, the ranking and level locks were put in place.
no, they were NOT placed in the sytem for power tripping (as what some fools with overwhelming sense of entitlement out there percieve it to be).

Barangay waze is currently in the process of clamping down on level ups and editors who are not in contact with the Pinoy community (hermit/lone wolf editors) and are in contradiction of global & particularly the local editing conventions.

Patience is a virtue most admired by senior editors.
The prerequisites installed often weeds out those who edit just for points or just for fad.
For those who persevere, leveling up is more than just an achievement. It becomes an accomplishment!
Editing waze style is nowhere near other mapping styles (Google, OSM, Foursqaure, Wikimapia, Facebook et al)
Mind you, impatience only led Anakin to the dark side.

Nevertheless, the Pinoy waze community always welcome all those who wish to help and contribute and be part of the community to make a better waze experience for the general public. You are most welcome to join.

Community FB group page: http://www.facebook.com/groups/WazePhilippines
Community Forum: http://www.waze.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=309

In addition, I didn't see it mentioned, but loading and using some of the more key extensions/add-ons will help you, (if you haven't checked them out already). Example, the WME Toolbox and one of the highlighting add-on's, such as "WME Color Highlights". Even one's that seem similar have different functionality. Addons, Extensions, and Scripts is one of my favorite forums, LOL:

viewforum.php?f=819

Bottom line:
1. They help you identify items that need updates or fixes.
2. They quickly show when something is not done correctly .. by us the editors.

Many of us feel that L2 is too easy to obtain. We have new editors in my area (very mature map with reasonable lock levels) who are making L2 while still drawing unconfirmed roads, and failing to request an unlock when one needs to be connected to a segment that is locked above their level.

Another good one in some parts of the US is correcting improperly abbreviated Spanish prefixes.
"Pso" is not an appropriate abbreviation for "Paseo"... Likewise for "Cmt" in place of "Caminita" or "Cll" in place of "Calle"

In some cases, such as "Calle", TTS still won't get it right, but it IS correct, and we have to keep in mind that we are routing to Google pins as well as Waze pins and the Google pins will have the correct spelling in most cases.
The big problem is if the correct location is on an improperly spelled segment, and there is a properly spelled segment within 10 miles, THAT is where Waze will go, regardless of the house number.
We have similar issues with "N Main St" "Main St" "S Main St"
If we have a "S Main" and "Main" and someone is searching for something on "N Main" it's a coin toss as to whether they are directed to N or S Main.

So there is a LOT that an L1 editor can do using Streetview to confirm/correct street names, that actually contribute a lot of value to the map.

Validator is also an excellent tool for locating potential issues, as the report will pull items from Highlighter and Toolbox, but the inexperienced editor needs to keep in mind that the goal is NOT to completely clear the Validator report... it is simply an indication that something needs to be examined as a possible problem.

crazycaveman wrote:The dashboard is updated no more than once per day;

And sometimes we're lucky if it updates once a week.

As of this moment, it updated 15 hours ago, but the cutoff for yesterday's edits was about 21 hours ago, so anything done in the last 21 hours may not appear.

Mkonci wrote:Do I get point also when I mark post office, hospital, backery....?

Please keep in mind that of these three, only the post office and hospital should be "area" places. The bakery would be a point.
Also, "Hospital" use is limited to facilities that offer emergency room services. A doctor, dentist, or veterinarian should be classified as "Professional and Public > Office" and should be a point, not an area.
We don't want someone in need of urgent medical care to search Waze for "Hospital" at 2am and be directed to a dentist.

JFeather60 wrote:

taco909 wrote:

Mkonci wrote:Do I get point also when I mark post office, hospital, backery....?

Please keep in mind that of these three, only the post office and hospital should be "area" places. The bakery would be a point. <snip>

The national standard identifies Post Office as a point place. Some states, like Texas, do use an area place for PO, so be mindful of state guidelines.

We do the same in SoCal.
The idea being that is is a government installation, and they often tend to be out of the way (less expensive property) so the visual aid provided by the area place is helpful.

That reminds me... I've got a Jiffy Lube that I saw on the app today (from 2 miles away) that I need to convert to a point

This came up before with useful tips in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=8&p=872058#p872058

What sort of restrictions are you facing? Things that prevent you editing at all, or factors that just mean your edits need approval?

I think one of the changes that was made when I was about half way through level 1 was that suddenly place edits needed L2+ approval (I didn't see this announced, so at first I thought I was being restricted because I'd done something wrong, but that's another story). Once I realised this, I continued doing place edits - while I didn't get edit points straight away, they did eventually come through once they'd been approved. In fact, I think it wasn't very long that the need for approval disappeared because the edits I'd made were being approved (because I followed the instructions).

So I'd just keep plugging away at whatever you can see. In my area (which was already pretty well mapped out), I still found things to fix:

• Incorrect road suffixes that wouldn't work with Text to Speech (TTS). In my area that included Avenues using "Av" instead of "Ave" ("Ave" works in TTS, "Av" doesn't).
• Roads that didn't have a road name (not many in my area, but there were some).
• Places that didn't have a road name. Add in the appropriate road name (and house number if relevant), phone number if it has one, check whether the classification is correct.
• Missing "parking lot" roads in gas stations (see the Style Guide). This helps with navigation (helps someone stopping to refuel being misinterpreted as a traffic slow-down) and scores some easy points. If the station is on a level 1 road then there's nothing to block you - if it's higher level then draw the roads but don't connect them; then post an unlock request in your country's forum.
• Adding parking lot roads where they were missing, and simplifying parking lots where they'd been mapped with too much complexity (e.g. adding in every single lanes). See the Style Guide for good practice.
• Smudged cities or duplicated cities - this happens where a some roads in a city have been entered with one city name, but other cities have been entered with a different city name. Fixing these so that the city boundary is fixed solves some problems and racks up points pretty quickly. (Don't forget to find the places and fix their city name too!)
• Are there missing useful places - schools, parks etc? While a fair few of these were mapped, I was surprised at how many weren't - or had been mapped but not given a name. Naming them makes them searchable.

I hope this helps. These things helped me get to level 2 in a reasonable amount of time (but not unduly quickly). That said, I did notice that my edit rate increased once I reached level 2 - but I'm not sure whether that was less restrictions (in our area, very few roads are locked at L2; L3 is far more common) or increased competence with the tools that help you find problems.

Tim