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Post by DwarfLord
whathappened15 wrote:I realize I'm late to the party here, but reading back one I notice other advantage of the Airport AP in the app (in addition to basic orientation) that hasn't been mentioned. Seeing an AP for "XYZ Airport" can help users understand the low flying aircraft they may observe over the roadway, even (especially) when airport facilities are not directly visible to the user. I would suggest adding a clause to the proposed Scope paragraph for airports whose approach or departure routes immediately cross over roadways.
This is an excellent point that hadn't occurred to me, thanks.

My two concerns would be (1) that for the tiny handful of little-used airstrips that would not get Area Places under the proposed guidance (before the satellite imagery aspect was added), there would be so little air traffic that this aspect would seldom arise; and (2) that it would be very difficult for editors to assess how often planes actually use one of these backyard strips as part of the threshold for an Area Place.
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Post by DwarfLord
Kartografer wrote:The original post that started this discussion was actually about not mapping private airports at all, even with point places...
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood this. I do suspect, however, you meant to say "not mapping barely-used, lacking-any-services, invisible-from-the-road, non-public-facing private airports at all" because unless I've misunderstood (again) the OP was primarily concerned about certain remote Alaska airstrips that basically amount to a dirt road behind a few residences where the extent of "services" is that Old Butch comes out with his chainsaw and cuts a few trees every Spring.
jm6087 wrote:...what are the drawbacks from them being an Area Place? Is it just because someone will see it in the app? Is it because someone will see it in the app and want to drive to it?
The question "what's wrong with adding an Area Place" has been wildly contentious for all the years I've been involved with Waze and I don't have enough beer on hand to see me through another such discussion :mrgreen: But personally, I see no orientation or emergency value in making unknown, invisible, barely-maintained, backyard airstrips part of every Wazer's display experience.
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Post by DwarfLord
dfw_gis wrote:And we can always clarify the search results with a specific description for those private fields in the naming convention akin to what was mentioned earlier - "Private Airfield - Anderson Lake 0AK1" or
"Private - Anderson Lake Airstrip 0AK1".
I like where this is going for Point Places. For Area Places, however, I'd be concerned that very long primary names would display awkwardly. Perhaps we can come up with graded nomenclature, for example:

Point Place for backyard locations -- "Private Airstrip (OAK1)", with alt names as necessary to ensure lookup and mirroring the convention for public airports;

Area Place for private locations that have visibility and/or public-facing services -- "Private Airfield (OAK1)", again with alt names as necessary, and also mirroring the public-airport convention, but minimizing text on the display; and of course

Area Place for public locations "Oakland International Airport (OAK)"

This suggestion uses the terms "private airstrip", "private airfield", and "airport" in the primary name to help distinguish the different grades, even though they might all get the "Airport" category. That's intuitive to me, but it might not be to everybody? Just a suggestion.
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Post by DwarfLord
jm6087 wrote:Since Area Places are no longer an issue with rendering in the app, the Area Places in question would be generally small in size anyway and we are talking about areas of the map where map clutter is not a concern, I still don't see an issue with them being an Area Place.
I didn't mean to mischaracterize your position, and if I did so I am sorry. My understanding is that you feel any airstrip that can be recognized as such from aerial imagery should get an Area Place, regardless of any other factors (including visibility to Wazers on the ground). Is that not correct?

So, when it comes to Area Places, every time I've found myself in this discussion the conversation always seems to wind up with two perspectives that cannot be reconciled.

Perspective #1 places the burden of proof on those who do want the Area Place. They are asked to prove why it is useful.

Perspective #2 places the burden of proof on those who don't want the Area Place. They are asked to prove why it is a problem.

I adhere to Perspective #1, as a matter of principle, because:
  • Waze has a long history as a "spare" app with minimalist instructions and display;
  • the Waze app display is poor at communicating relative significance of display objects;
  • The more information is on the display, the more likely some driver somewhere will suffer some level of cognitive or visual impairment while inspecting it;
  • Area Place polygons and their primary names become part of the display experience of all Wazers in the vicinity, not just those interested in the Area Place.
Because I put the burden of proof on adding the Area Place, I need to be convinced that displaying an Area Place for an unknown, minimally-used, non-public-facing private airstrip with no facilities that is invisible from the ground is a benefit to Wazers. That hasn't happened so far.

But if one places the burden of proof on removing the Area Place, then one needs to be convinced that that specific Area Place somehow harms the Wazer experience. For these bottom-end private airstrips we're discussing, I agree that is difficult, maybe even impossible to show.

Unless we can agree on who has the burden of proof, I don't see that we can agree on a policy.
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Post by DwarfLord
jm6087 wrote:...I don't think Waze has a "Simpler is better" philosophy (especially when it comes to mapping area places). If they did then we wouldn't have PLAs showing everywhere on the map.
Ain't THAT the the truth!

Since Waze squeezed out those baneful gray polygons everywhere like ten thousand mice in the cellar after getting into the grain, then appeared to move on to other things saying "our work here is done", I've begun to suspect they don't have any human-factors philosophy at all.

I too appreciate very much that everyone's been thoughtful and cordial. That's a win right there :D
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Post by DwarfLord
sketch wrote:...what does it matter "the airport offers services to the general public such as flying lessons or demonstrations" if we're allegedly not doing this for people navigating to the airport?
Thanks for the thoughtful and carefully-considered perspective. I will think about this for awhile, but I did want to respond to the above question.

The reason I wanted to add "offers services to the public" as a criterion was to assure some level of name recognition. My thinking was that even the tiniest airstrip with no shared or public-facing facilities that is far removed from any through road could still get an Area Place if it has a recognizable name because of public-facing activities or events. So this is not just to support people going there, but because people can orient themselves relative to a known location. I agree there might be a better way to formulate this provision.

I also agree that hard-and-fast binary rules are much, much easier to follow and verify than subjective rules. There is room in the Waze community, I would hope, for each editor to exercise judgment, so subjective rules don't bother me as much. But even if allowing for editor judgment doesn't bother me, I do recognize value in binary rules.

And, there is a strong regional difference in perspective here. Coming as I do from a densely-populated area where points of reference are abundant on the Waze map, I never, ever look at the display and wish there were more there to look at! But I can understand how folks from other regions might feel differently.

I still adhere to what I called Perspective #1 -- that the burden of proof is those advocating an Area Place to demonstrate benefit, rather than on those opposed to the Area Place to demonstrate harm. But if take off my "principle" hat for a moment and just be pragmatic, there are so few airstrips in the country that the proposal applies to that I'm just not sure it's worth further discussion. I've already agreed that even the tiniest, most minimally-maintained airstrip should be mapped as an Area Place if it has any shared facilities or can be seen from a through road. So all this Sturm und Drang is about a handful of rinky-dink airstrips in the boonies that virtually nobody knows about and virtually nobody would miss.

I don't think mapping these things as Area Places benefits Wazing drivers. But I can't show (and don't really think) that, by themselves, they cause much that harm either because they'll typically be so far away from anything important anyway.

Perhaps we should set aside the discussion of Area Places and focus instead on naming?
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Post by DwarfLord
My main concern with long Area Place names is that they become a pile of text floating around the display. Even if one doesn't care about that by itself :cry:, the long place names will appear to be more significant than the short ones. That can be a faulty impression. For example, if the following three things appear on the screen...

76
Girdwood Station Mall
Anderson Lake Airstrip (OAK1) (private)

...the third item will display more text than the other two put together, despite the fact that the overwhelming number of drivers will be more interested in the other two.

If we can find a way to shorten the primary names of private airstrips and airfields I think that would be a service to average Waze users.
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Last edited by DwarfLord on Thu Mar 07, 2019 5:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Post by DwarfLord
I'm still thinking of the dregs-end of the airstrip spectrum here. I have no problem with big long names for major international airports, or even for public regional airports. Small private airfields I have mixed feelings.

But these barely-maintained, not-quite-abandoned, invisible-from-any-road dirt patches in the sticks that we're deciding should get Area Places, should they really display long specific names too? I'm frankly bewildered that these locations have aroused such staunch defense. But if we're going to put them on the Waze display for every Wazer in the region to see, as if they were important, I think the display name needs to convey that they are not really that important. Being short and sweet would help do that. "Private Airstrip" or "Private Airstrip (XYZ1)" would work fine for me.

This seems analogous to how the community decided to call railroads just "Railroad" (before they displayed looking like a railroad and it was necessary to remind drivers that they weren't drivable roads). Yes, that meant not displaying interesting information that might be useful to railfans, but the community was OK with that.
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Post by DwarfLord
It's simply because I am focused on the display appearance for what I regard as completely unimportant display objects of no value to drivers.

Unfortunately, Waze's design forces us to use the same primary name for searches as will be displayed for Area Place rendering. This means we can't optimize for both search and display at the same time. What I am hearing is that we should prioritize for search and what everyone sees on the display is a secondary concern. That's OK for San Francisco International Airport, but is it also OK for private property, unknown except to a tiny few, invisible from any road, where nobody from the public is ever invited?

Here is an example of an airstrip that folks appear to be saying should be mapped as an Area Place and have a name displayed on the app.

I have been to this location on foot. Nobody can drive there, there are no roads; it is miles away from the nearest "civilization". However, it is active and maintained and recognizable from space, so it satisfies what I am hearing should be the only criteria for an airstrip Area Place (the runway itself was included in the original basemap, I cleaned it up a couple of years ago). To my knowledge the airstrip is used only by a few members of a single family to reach a private inholding.

This is the only flavor of airstrip I'm talking about. The app can display gray polygons and full names for all the others and that's fine. I don't understand why it is so vital that airstrips like this get the same display treatment as international airports.

Now, if we can agree that below some threshold, airstrips like this one can be Point Places, all my concerns are satisfied and we can name them any way we want. We were almost there and got hung up over whether they were visible to drivers.
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Post by DwarfLord
Yes, that comes back to the unsolvable aesthetic dilemma between "when in doubt leave it out" and "if it's not a sin leave it in". Folks holding those opposing perspectives will be incapable of agreeing on an aesthetic policy.
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