sketch wrote:The "building" / "front door" language is meant to encompass places that have their own front door, basically. So, for one building with one store, place it at the door. If there are multiple doors on the same façade, like a supermarket, place it at the point equidistant from and collinear with the two front doors. If there are multiple doors on different façades, like some mall anchor stores, if there's no "obvious" front door I guess place it at the door facing the largest parking lot, or at the door facing the street on which the street address for that location is.

When a number of Point Places exist within a single building, it depends on the configuration of the building. Of course, at a strip mall, the "front door" language can still be followed. At a larger mall, though, put the markers as close as possible to the actual location of the store, so the user can get an idea where to go, and so the routing server can pick the parking lot road actually nearest to that store. Office buildings are a bit tougher — for the one posted above, seems like it's no problem, because I imagine the building is set off somewhat and has its own parking lot. But for such an office downtown, people should be led to the front door of the building, since that's the point through which all these offices are actually accessed.

sketch wrote:Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with breaking that small wall of text down into organized bullet points and throwing it in the article. There's a whole "how to place the marker" section in there waiting to be fleshed out, anyhow.

Point Placement wrote:The Point Place is to be placed on or nearest to the segment to which the driver should be navigated. The Waze routing server will navigate the Wazer onto the segment which is physically closest to where the point is placed. Typically, if the Place is inside a building, the marker should be located at or near the location's front door. Think: where would a car stop to drop someone off for this location.
Some Examples

• A building with one Point Place:
  • If there is only one door, place it at that door.
  • If there are multiple doors on the same façade, (like a supermarket,) place it at the point equidistant from and collinear with the two front doors.
  • If there are multiple doors on different façades, (like some mall anchor stores,) if there's no "obvious" front door, place it either at the door facing the largest parking lot, or at the door facing the street on which the street address for that location is.
• A single building with multiple Point Places within:
  • At a strip mall, the "front door" language can still be followed.
  • At a larger mall, put the markers as close as possible to the actual location of the store. This way the user can get an idea where to go, and the routing server can pick the parking lot road actually nearest to that store.
    The caveat is you should use this rule only as long as that doesn't put the point closest to a segment from which the site cannot be accessed. For example if the store is in the back of building, and that would put the point closer to a road segment running behind the building which is not part of the parking lot, then use the front door rule. Otherwise people will be routed to the road behind the building with no way to access the store.
  • Office buildings are a bit tougher, for the caveat just mentioned above. For such an office downtown, people should be led to the front door of the building, since that's the point through which all these offices are actually accessed, and where the car would stop.

Fredo-p wrote:An example already exists to add to this. If you scroll down a bit into the area section, there is already a strip mall with points like described above. Wouldn't that fall into this current discussion?

It seems that this would some what fall into the Area+Points section.

sketch wrote:OK, but if a town names a street Home Depot Blvd we still put it on the map, because that's the street's name, and because we put all streets on the map. If we decide to put all hardware stores on the map, we put that there too because it's what we put on the map.

The primary definition of "advertise" in the New Oxford English Dictionary is "describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance". It's that last part – the intent clause – that separates advertising from mere description.

The intent of the map editor is not to represent every corporate entity equally, it's to represent that which the driver sees uniformly. If a driver sees a large office building or a bunch of office buildings and is curious what it is, there's a right answer, whether it's "Yahoo!" or "Lakeshore Tower".

DwarfLord wrote:

sketch wrote:The primary definition of "advertise" in the New Oxford English Dictionary is "describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance". It's that last part – the intent clause – that separates advertising from mere description.

Wow! The addition of the intent clause changes it substantially. I can see why by this definition one would not call a landmark "free advertising" because by this definition there is no such thing! Or at least if there is, it is very rare, someone intending to promote sales or attendance out of pure unadulterated altruism.

If the dictionaries don't agree on the definition of advertising then we probably won't either, but I do wonder what someone from Microsoft would say about the Apple Inc. landmark

You've clarified another point, which is that the Waze community has no interest in fairness to businesses, only in what is obvious to drivers. I understand that perspective.

So, if we take as given two axioms: (1) area places are not advertising and (2) fairness to businesses is not a valid criterion for choosing an area place versus a point place, then actually -- and quite honestly! -- I agree completely with you, and in fact I would go further and say that in light of those axioms the vagueness of the current guidance is no problem and hereby withdraw any suggestion of changing it.

Everything I've said on the topic, including the discussion of multi-tenant versus single-tenant commercial real estate, etc., was based on my disagreement with those two axioms. If those are our starting place then that's great, I'm glad to have clarity, which is what I want most of all.

davielde wrote:

DwarfLord wrote:That's my impression of why opening this up is so hard. It relies heavily on taste and as a volunteer organization that operates largely by consensus we don't have a good way of dealing with differing tastes except to embrace minimalism.

Can someone offer an objective framework for adjudicating taste in a volunteer/consensus organization?

Whoever yells loudest wins?

There is no way to enforce a standard if a general consensus is ever reached on this or another issue. Appealing to the standard is the best that you can do. Editors edit with or without community guidance and best practices in mind, and guidance can be selectively ignored based on personal taste anyway.

If this discussion embraces the route of starting to map most Places as areas, it may be easier to handle this in the app instead of the editor. Long term, themes could be created that could range from minimal to displaying any type of area. That way, the subjective taste relies on what the driver wants display, but in reality, everything is objectively edited to be included.

CBenson wrote:How will duplicate entries be merged?

StephenR1966 wrote:

CBenson wrote:I guess that you we can give the go ahead to mark anything that fits the new categories, except for residence.

I'm assuming this is because houses are better handled by the House Number interface. That being said, would not a residence/home point place at the office/clubhouse of an apartment complex reasonable? Mark all the buildings with their house number in that interface, but make a point place Named for the name of the apartment complex at the door of the office where prospective tenants would want to check in.

DwarfLord wrote:The Places wiki still says "not to be mapped" for Residence/Home. If the editing community encourages mapping Residence/Home, as I've seen in this thread and elsewhere, why is it still prohibited in the wiki?

When a number of senior editors advise that a wiki article be disregarded and unenforced it is really not fair to diligent editors who still want to respect our guidance. It damages not just this one article but the entire wiki.

Maybe it is time to throw out the Places wiki, or at least the Area-vs-Point table. If it has no buy-in then it is worse than useless.

CBenson wrote:I think we will need to reevaluate what we say about residences once v3.9 is finalized and released.