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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
SuperDave1426 wrote:Are gas stations supposed to be point or an area? If point, why? Gas stations cover an area of physical land where cars all come and stop for a while; my understanding of the gas station landmark was that by it being there, it suppresses traffic jam notifications in the client (since cares are expected to stop there). If gas station is just a little dot on the map, what happens to traffic jam notifications?
Many gas stations are mapped with PLot roads already. In that case, there is no need for jam suppression.

And to that point, I find that gas station landmarks may suppress automated jam reporting, but it certainly doesn't stop the "are you stuck in traffic?" prompt when stopped inside a gas station landmark. So, IMO, I don't see the point of the landmark unless it actually suppresses the automated reporting.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
AndyPoms wrote:Having the parking lot road through a gas station is useless and just creates more clutter on the map.
That's debatable. I would say a gas station polygon also uselessly clutters the map. :) (Except for MP suppression.) The map is either cluttered with a polygon or a segment. Personally, I find segments, just like through normal parking lots, to be infinitely more useful than a blob.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
SuperDave1426 wrote:I don't know... I kinda like it when I'm driving and when I look at my client, I see a "blob" labeled "{some brand of gas station}" - it lets me know it's there in case I was thinking of getting gas but hadn't specifically navigated to it.
In the future, though, that "blob" is likely to be replace by a small marker/icon of some kind labeled similarly.

I'm not advocating changing them all right now to one or the other. Area gas stations can remain as-is and Point gas stations could be set up if warranted. What "warrants" it is TBD though.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
I've copied the Parking Lot section from the Landmarks (US) page into the Places page.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
nzahn1 wrote:
petervdveen wrote:Why are these points at the side of the building and not nicely in the middle?
Because the points are the location that drivers will be routed to, and we want the routing to go to the front of the building via the parking lot road, and not to the rear of the building via a neighborhood street (which happens sometimes when placing points in the center of buildings/properties).
Peter, in the situation captured in the screenshot, they could be located more centrally over the individual stores. However, as noted correctly by others, in more complicated areas where they may likely be parking lot roads (or any type of segment) on both sides or near the building structure. In this case, the Point must be located closer to the intended/appropriate segment for the navigation stop-point. In the case of the picture captured, I wanted it to be very clear which side was the correct side and so favored not centering.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
sketch wrote:Regarding gas stations with parking lot roads: For gas stations on corners, they do serve one purpose that the landmark does not: allowing entry from either side. In some circumstances it won't be an issue, but at other times getting to one side of the station from the other street may require either an illegal maneuver or a circuitous and non-self-evident route. Adding a PLot road will allow entry from both sides.
Yes, thank you! I knew in my head I was missing something I felt was also very important about PLot roads into gas stations. It isn't just corner lots either: roads with a median curb prevent left turn but not split due to other factors making splitting unnecessary. A PLot road will correctly direct to the correct side of the road before ending navigation. Otherwise the route ends at the street and you have to drive on to find out how to turn around.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
petervdveen wrote:I just saw the new page.
I always toughed the global wiki pages should be purely functional?
Now this page is full of global guidelines and global rules.
I don't really like that and it would be nice to have those parts removed.
In this case, there was pretty good global consensus on how to map the majority of Places. Regarding the screenshots not matching every country guideline, the two different screenshots show a land area mapped and the other a building mapped, so it isn't defined for one country or another.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
vectorspace wrote:After reviewing it, I have some concern that we're debating point/area when we really don't have principles behind what we are trying to accomplish with those designation. I do see some discussion around it. If we're going to have consistent application, some principles around point/area would be nice. Qwaletee's post seemed to try to get toward principles.
I sort of agree. The current guidance is based on what the current app version does with Area (Landmarks). There was no reason to change the primary stance on not making everything an Area because it makes a blob on that map that is often unnamed and doesn't provide any distinguishing information to make it helpful while driving.

But, since Places is the POI solution, the idea is to get data into the Waze ecosystem while not compromising the visual map quality on the app. In the future, this may very well change as the app matures and display of information is more regulated/helpful.
vectorspace wrote:I also worry that I don't know what this looks like on the client enough to have a valid opinion. Seems some of you do. We are experimenting in NM to have something on the map to drive by with points to see what appears.
I have no idea how these will appear in the app and with no tile update in NA since Mar 22, we will be waiting for several more days.
vectorspace wrote:I generally think that there is too much absolute "either/or" in the table on the Wiki. Some things might be point or area depending on a principle, if we ever get to that state of decision on Places.
I disagree on this. Just like the guidance of many other places in the wiki, such as road types to use, how to map parking lots, etc., I think this page is really quite good as a starting point to getting POI data flooding into the Waze databases without overwhelming the app map with garbage. <- With the caveat that we don't even know how Points will look in the app. It may be a disaster. :)
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
SuperDave1426 wrote:So far, I've driven past places where Points were set and saw absolutely NOTHING in the app map at all, where Areas are showing up just fine.
Because the tiles haven't updated since Mar 22. Although, even if the tiles did update, maybe still nothing would display. We don't know.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
@Sketch, as noted before, tile update hasn't completed since mar 22.
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