Wiki page suggestion: Landmarks

[mssusa]

It was meant to be a joke on HQ for their infamous soon/working on it/etc.

But seriously, it might be a good idea to put CT as is in the general wiki for the time being. It is better than nothing. Much better actually.

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[mssusa]

I never bother with Plot landmarks anyway, but what about gas stations? I never did real testing but when I'm filling up I see no traffic reports generated.

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[mtlgab]

I still do not know what needs to be be done ...

If I look at the "official" position on landmarks ... http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Crea ... a_landmark I see:
"Creating and Editing a landmark
Some landmark types have the property of suppressing traffic jams, and this may be an unintentional consequence of suppressing traffic jams on adjacent roads and highways. Therefore, best practice when creating or editing landmarks is that the landmarks should not be snapped to roads, or cover roads that are not part of the landmark."

Any new user/editor would see that as an invitation to create all landmarks as they are available from the interface drop down menu for landmark type. That list is extensive, and since a Store/Stall would be a valid choice, as would shopping Centers, however small they may be someone is bound to add them or modify them to suite their understanding of the rules.
We do need better rules.

One question would arises: How accurate the landmark needs to be to the satellite images ?
Any new user would think that the landmark needs to be closer to reality instead of a big blob. We recognize some buildings by their shape so that does makes sense. Some landmarks include the parking lot so it becomes a bigger one, thus more visible on the client. How does that translate to reality ? If the landmark goes beyond the building limits that would mean it will cover some parking roads but that is against the rules (see above). Unless we put in a Parking lot landmark, but then we would have two landmarks that really is hard to read in the client.

If the parking lot is attached to the shopping center, then the landmark should be the shopping center. If the parking is a stand alone one it should stay a parking lot. So this would mean that all landmarks would go beyond the buildings and include nearby parking lots. There are a few shopping malls that have HUGE parking lots so once we go in that area we have no way of knowing how to go out (unless we use common sense). Thus we create parking lot roads.

So, WHO can create the rules ? ...

The client code may wish to use or not the landmarks information, but as the code gets better it could use the information to improve searches, or directions.

[mtlgab]

@Jpere ... I agree with you, but as you can see, in 3 posts we went off subject.

There are lots of issues that need to be fixed and that need rules.

To get back to the subject. "Landmarks".
I did a few edits and I tested some of them, so here are my observations:
1- Small stores have no visibility on the client (iphone4s) ... minimum size required.
2- The 3D view is much better to see Landmarks in the client.
3- The important point would be for the driver to know there is a Wallmart close by. This would mean that the size of the landmark needs to be as big as possible. This may mean including small parking lots in the landmark.
4- For bigger shopping malls, parking lot roads make sense for main entrance/exits, but the parking lot roads close to the streets need to be at specific distance in the map otherwise user gets "snapped" to the street. Maybe for much bigger one "Parking lot landmark" would make sense as well, with or without parking lot roads. (testing some of that at the moment)
5- Naming of the landmark needs to be small if there are other landmarks near by. I think that at some point we need to keep the landmarks generic ("Library of Old-guy-dead-for-may-year-yet-important" should be only "Library", unless the actual library name is small.)
6- We are missing POI in the client. Once that could be activated the landmarks would be less important. We need to have at least the basic ones (Gas, shopping, police, fire, hospital, pharmacy, auto_repair, and a few others.)
7- It would be of some importance to have many small store merged in the same landmark but with NoName so that the user knows there is something of importance there, without messing up the map.
8- The client is not good enough at the moment to properly display satellite accurate landmarks, so a Blob would do the job just as well.
9- I see many alerts from Waze regarding undefined gas stations. So for these landmarks we need to understand if the Gas Landmark suppresses trafic or if we need to edit Parking lot roads.
10- Editing needs to be fast and easy. At the moment we wave way too many Landmarks type from the editor. The Editor should focus on the minimal work required. Once all of that is defined, then they can add in the bonus ones

I did not test everything yet, and I am sure a ton of people have more experience than me so I am willing to adapt as long as it makes sense.
.

[mtlgab]

I played around with a few landmarks and now that I was able to test an update on my iphone4s I think we are missing a critical piece in the editor.

We are missing an importance metric for landmarks.

All landmarks should be created if they can be properly maintained. The major or critical landmarks should have a greater importance. At the moment, it seems that the client landmark display is based on size and but it is not always the case, some weird algorithm.

So we need to ask for a change in the editor
e1:- add importance metric for every landmark (so we can put small stuff as non important)
e2:- attach point for label (especially useful for large landmarks)
e4:- many small unimportant landmarks should be visually merged in a no-name landmark. (at the moment they disappear)

Some of the editor changes also apply to the client and vice versa.
We also need to ask for a change in the client for the way landmarks are displayed.
c1:- smaller font on less critical landmarks. Or an option to include specific level landmarks.
c2:- shorter text on long names (so the landmark name does not impact the road names or other landmarks)
c3:- attach point for landmarks (Would be nice to have a small list of available landmarks and their location on map with an arrow or line. This can be based on selected landmark types chosen.)
c4:- wrap around for hyphen words (MrBigshotSuchandSuch-Oldschool-Landmark should be on 2or3 lines so it will be easier to read)
c5:- Critical landmarks to have type visible even if not zoomed in. Hospital, Police. Maybe include Icons for critical landmarks.

We need the Police and Firestation and hospital to be more important than City-Hall, gas stations to have priority over convenience stores and some Supermarkets to have priority over large parks.We need a priority list of all things displayed.

What do you think about this ?

[ncc1701v]

1.10 Bridge - Bridges can have names other than the name of the road, so maybe, leaning towards yes for major ones - certainly not every bridge. (i.e. George Washington Bridge in NYC - yes, Golden Gate Bridge in CA - yes, the bridge that takes Main St over the Railroad Tracks - no)
1.11 Tunnel - Tunnels can have names other than the name of the road, so maybe, leaning towards yes for major ones - certainly not every tunnel.

Would these show up when navigating? I enjoy being a tourist and learning I'm going over the Koscziusko bridge, or the Pulaski bridge, but most of the time wouldn't most navigators just want clear directions to their destination? Do these help with navigation? Would they be seen as clutter?

For bridges, at first I was thinking I liked the landmark idea, BUT then I thought about traffic/accident reports. Seeing something pop up saying there is a jam on the George Washington Bridge is probably more useful than seeing I-95 as the location.

Would the traffic report appear on the landmark, not the road name?

[ncc1701v]

4- For bigger shopping malls, parking lot roads make sense for main entrance/exits, but the parking lot roads close to the streets need to be at specific distance in the map otherwise user gets "snapped" to the street.

On the other hand if someone is in a parking lot close to the street, you want Waze to know that traveling there is legitimate or he will get snapped to the main road and instructions will make no sense.

Personally I do not create landmarks including parking lots, but I do create the major parking lot roads out of the big ones, so that Waze can say "proceed to the marked route" and the user will have an easy time of doing so. I also add the perimeter road of a parking lot if and only if it's heavily used.

[paulwelch23]

I would love to see a standard way of of mapping landmarks developed via the wiki. I have searched through the forum and I have found a few mentions of them (parking lot traffic jam suppression, gas stations, etc.). However, what is the BEST way to map them?

If there's a strip mall with several shops along a highway, what should be mapped? Only the parking lot to suppress a jam? The shopping center in general, also? Individual shops? I've seen it done a number of ways, but which is the best?

I'm not much of a wiki page developer, and would leave it to someone who has that talent. I would like to open up a discussion about this. What do you think of this idea?

[paulwelch23]

I have not been able to navigate to a landmark (besides gas stations) using the Waze results under navigate search results, so I assume that is not operational. I have not searched for any prior discussion on that capability if someone wants to chime in if they know. Therefore if you know the general area you can use the map to scroll to a spot and then say navigate to this point on the map. I have used that and it did work.

The general understanding (and AFAIK that's the only knowledge on this topic) is that Waze does not route to POIs in the database. It used to, but this functionality was removed at some point in the last few months. Gas stations are part of a separate database, but I don't know if those landmarks are used for routing purposes either.

Great info that I didn't know. I didn't realize that the categories were so limited. It looks like the infrastructure is there to use landmarks in the future, and I have not found any other current uses also. Maybe the page wouldn't be as involved as I previously thought, but would be good to have for the apparent future development with future client updates.

[paulwelch23]

I think it would be great if parking lots did not appear in the client. Can we have them on a separate layer? I think they present a better solution than parking lot roads (which can get pretty nasty looking especially along frontage roads).

(I'm very thankful that I haven't needed to use Waze to get out of any parking lots!!!).


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I completely agree with this idea. I think it would just confuse the average user.

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