Revisiting Lock Level Standards - Regional

I'll just reiterate - does one really think that connecting PLRs to MHs needs to be done by someone at the level of state manager? Because that is the net effect of the proposal on the table.

I'll just reiterate - does one really think that connecting PLRs to MHs needs to be done by someone at the level of state manager? Because that is the net effect of the proposal on the table.

My answer would be no, but it should be under the guidance/approval of a rank 4, this situation would be a simple contact to AM who would relay to a rank 4 if they deem it justified, but a simpler solution would be ask on WME chat, I perform these types of requests each I am active on the WME editor, and there are times that I do not feel comfortable making that decision in a region I am not familiar without reviewing their wiki and standards. If I feel uncomfortable about something I would think the other editor should feel the same and understand why we study the guidelines not only for national but also regional and state.
Connections to main routes can be damaging in so many ways that new editors are not aware of and they should seek guidance.
I believe this comes down to convenience and that alone does not justify low locks.

Part of the problem for editors that are relatively new is that they tend to want to work on the more important roads even though they don't know how many problems they can create by a disabled turn, or many other small issues they won't even realize. To Jacob's point, if an experienced rank 3 would like to work on a MH locked at 4 in an urban area, they would have to get an unlock. The more connected in communicating the rank 3 would be, the less difficult it becomes to get the unlock and get informal instant help. If they are not communicating on the WME chat, (which is right in their face on the screen) gho's and the Slack and even the slower Waze PM's, then they need to be. So if an editor is a rank 3 and doesn't communicate at all and got there by mass editing, and not reading the wiki and not communicating with the advanced and senior editors, then maybe they SHOULD be prior to getting more involved with editing MH roads which I propose be locked at 4 in the urban areas. Rank 4 and 5 is NOT automatic, and their prior edits would be reviewed by SM and RC before they get promoted at or even before they reach the wiki standard of 100k and 250k edits. If someone were allowing themselves to be in communication with the other advanced editors, there is less chance of them going crazy because they realize the implicaitons on all the wazers and their social status in the editing group. So this actually firms up my belief in locking MH at 4 and mH at 3 in urban areas.

On the other hand, why would you lock up an urban area at higher levels without first making sure the map is mature. Literally going segment by segment and making sure the roads have no issues. Who would decide if they are mature? The SM and RC should decide this prior to locking at a higher standard.

In Nevada, we had "someone" unknown go through and delete parking lot roads off MH roads for gas stations and minor strip malls for some unknown reason, when they are actually needed in most cases. This was not catastrophic nor affecting navigation in any major way, but again a case for locking more important roads like mH and MH at higher levels to create the need for more communication between editors. This could have been done by any number of the millions of visitors we get through Las Vegas and Reno each year thinking they know a better way to do a road than we do. I would imagine this is also the case in the top tourism cities in the US:
1) NYC
2) LA
3) Chicago
4) DC
5) Las Vegas
6) San Francisco
7) Hawaii
8) New Orleans

Why not just lock MHs at 4 only after they have been deemed "mature" and otherwise lock at 3?

To me, mature means:
- Every PLR has been connected with at least a stub and turn restrictions set.
- House numbers are completed

My feeling is a lot of these "mature" urban MHs are actually far from complete when you consider those points, at least in Los Angeles

Why not just lock MHs at 4 only after they have been deemed "mature" and otherwise lock at 3?

To me, mature means:
- Every PLR has been connected with at least a stub and turn restrictions set.
- House numbers are completed

My feeling is a lot of these "mature" urban MHs are actually far from complete when you consider those points, at least in Los Angeles

You make a valid point and this would be preferred, but we must consider when we made the FC changes that many editors were changing the FCs back, this forced a mass locking for FC segments and unfortunately we are playing catch up on what you describe, but it protects the FCs even from rank 3's who do not read the forums or wiki.
I will follow this up with an recent example, but need more time to type, I am slow

Hmm. Ask any parent about when their offspring is "mature". I'm sure the definition varies from the offspring.

So if an editor is a rank 3 and doesn't communicate at all and got there by mass editing, and not reading the wiki and not communicating with the advanced and senior editors

Such an editor shouldn't be Rank 3 in the first place, and if there already, should be demoted. In the least confrontational way possible, of course, with a clear description of what needs to be demonstrated for (re)promotion. But demoted all the same. Rank 3 should mean something.

To me this is far preferable to putting roads out of reach of all the responsible Rank 3 editors who worked hard to reach that rank, reading the wiki, communicating, and practicing.

Roads should be locked according to the skill, comprehension, and communication level required to edit them, not the fear that an undeservedly-promoted editor will come along and wreck them. Doing otherwise punishes good editors more than it does the clunkers.

So if an editor is a rank 3 and doesn't communicate at all and got there by mass editing, and not reading the wiki and not communicating with the advanced and senior editors

Such an editor shouldn't be Rank 3 in the first place, and if there already, should be demoted. In the least confrontational way possible, of course, with a clear description of what needs to be demonstrated for (re)promotion. But demoted all the same. Rank 3 should mean something.

While it doesn't happen often, it has happened. So it's not like there isn't a precedence for demoting a disruptive editor. I know of an editor (not going to mention any names) who had made it to R4 who wound up getting himself kicked back to R2. Instead of taking his lumps and doing what was needed to get reinstated, I'm pretty sure he left (haven't seen any activity from him in the editor or forums since then). Which is fine with me - someone with his attitude isn't beneficial, and isn't needed. Ok, I got a big sidetracked there, but the point I was trying to make is that it's not like there isn't a precedence for doing a demotion where needed. Try to educate first, of course, but if they're just refusing to learn, demote them. Then they'll either get the message or leave; IMHO either one is a win at that point.

To me this is far preferable to putting roads out of reach of all the responsible Rank 3 editors who worked hard to reach that rank, reading the wiki, communicating, and practicing.

Roads should be locked according to the skill, comprehension, and communication level required to edit them, not the fear that an undeservedly-promoted editor will come along and wreck them. Doing otherwise punishes good editors more than it does the clunkers.

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Good conversation, and I'm generally opposed to increasing lock levels. I've been a level 3 "area manager" for 2 years and have been increasingly frustrated at my inability to do simple edits on arterials in my own city, having to resort to asking for unlocks or bugging the heck out of the other editors in my area. Which makes this point very salient:

There are two sides to the locking coin. One is the lock level. The other is our process for promotion, demotion, and blocking. They go together; we can't talk about one without the other.

Saying that lock levels are too low is identical to saying that promotion is too easy, demotion too rare, and blocking too hard.

I would rather see us evolve better strategies for promotion, demotion, and blocking than to respond to isolated events by placing more of the map out of reach of good editors.

This. This is the key.

From what I understand, only the level 1 to level 2 promotion is currently automatic. In order for someone to become level 3, they need to have actually communicated with someone and demonstrated some level of competence or knowledge of the wiki, etc. I have no problem with locking mH or higher at level 3. But as soon as you talk about locking something at level 4, you're saying you don't trust an Area Manager to manage his/her own area, typically including arterials that he/she is very familiar with. That sort of heavy-handed lack of trust will drive away well intentioned, good editors who haven't accumulated 100K edits to get level 4.

Which is another issue. We need to totally deemphasize number of edits as the measure of editing ability/skill/experience. It may have been appropriate in the early days of fixing the auto-import to a usable map, but once a city has been "fixed up" the number of edits turns into the opposite measure... encouraging someone to tweak stuff that doesn't need tweaking, add more unnecessary PLRs (since there aren't any other roads needing adding), and in general do a lot of editing work that is less important than the NEEDED work (responding to MPs and URs, updating Places, adding house numbers) that generates far too little "edit count". Which makes me agree 100% with this comment:

Bad Behavior
As someone who recently got Level 3, and only from mentorship and map raid promotion - not even edit count, this change in my area (Los Angeles) would make me hang up my hat and leave Waze map editing. It is, 100%, the wrong approach to solving this problem.

1.) It won't stop vandalism. It's only a matter of time before a level 4, 5, or 6 goes off the rails and destroys something in a big way. What then, bump major highways to level 5? Keep escalating?
2.) It encourages bad edits. I could sit around wiggling segments to get my edit numbers up. Better yet, I could write a script to do it for me. But I don't, because at least I don't feel it necessary to actually get my level to the place I need it to do meaningful edits. Make it so I need 100k to effectively reach what is, right now, level 3, and such bad behavior is far more tempting.
3.) It alienates smart, well-intentioned editors from participation.

What we can do as a community, immediately, is change our procedures for promotion. Align levels with some measure of experience/participation/community that is unrelated to edit count, but is more appropriate to the "level of trust" we expect people to have before editing roads with higher importance.

Not only that, but totally get rid of the emphasis on edit count. Seriously. It's counter-productive. It encourages mass edits. It encourages useless edits. It encourages cheating. It discourages doing the real, slow, hard work that actually improves the map. Get rid of the shield icons. Get rid of the tie between edit count and promotions. Completely. Not even the automatic level 2 at 1000 (possibly bad) edits.

The ideal solution is out of our hands, but in the hands of developers:

it is complete insanity that Waze isn't exposing complete revision history to the relevant parties. Rolling back should be in the toolset. Transactions should be recorded.

In a lot of ways, Waze is like wikipedia. Everyone is encouraged to edit. People "own" certain pages (areas) and have the power to "undo" bad changes. Some pages can be "locked" to prevent vandalism. Unfortunately for us, Waze has not put in fundamental, basic procedures to prevent vandalism. And it should not be OUR overriding concern as editors to stop it, at the cost of making more work for ourselves, and making it harder to recruit and train additional editors (leading to more work for ourselves). No... if road deletion/vandalism is a concern to a company making money with a popular driving app, then it is the for-profit company's responsibility to put in measures to prevent vandalism, not the responsibility of a volunteer community.

Vandalism will happen no matter what we do to prevent it. Waze needs better recovery procedures. If we lock more important roads, people can/will just vandalize the lower locked roads, and perhaps more of them. Think the recovery workload for volunteer editors. will be any easier rebuilding neighborhoods than a long, straight stretch of an arterial? Not likely.

But back to what we can do as a community, this is spot on:

1.) Make mentorship mandatory. No one should hit level 2 without mentor training in my opinion. Make mentorship a formal institution. If you can't communicate with other human beings, we don't want you in the map editor anyway. Likewise, make advancing to the higher levels require mentoring others. You solidify knowledge when you have to start teaching others. This would be a huge win for the community.

Agree 1000%. Level 1 can still be the entry level for "anyone". Level 2 should be a "provisional" temporary level that one can easily get once they jump through a few small hoops that we actually want them to... enroll as a mentee with a mentor, display knowledge that the wiki and forum exists, get in contact (PMs or GHO or whatever) with their local AM/SM/RM, etc. They can learn, edit, get mentored, and then have some sort of "test" of knowledge (when (not) to split roads, functional classification, etc.) in order to be promoted to level 3, where we should TRUST them to actually manage their area and not vandalize it.

2.) Edit counts should be removed from the rank chart on the wiki. It's useful info for someone issuing promotions to have, but it needs to stop being a goal for editors. Rank increases should only come from experienced editors recognizing your understanding and quality of work. For some, that could be in a few edits - others will take thousands. Make having to sell yourself to your peers part of the advancement process. There should be no default edit count to fall back on as a means for promotion.

I would go beyond this and say we should really get rid of the edit count altogether. It's a useless metric anymore. It's too easy to "cheat" and there is no real correlation between editor quality and number of edits. We should get rid of the edit count shields in everyone's signatures.

Edit, Another idea: make deletion require 1 rank higher than all other forms of the lock. In other words, if a segment is locked at 2, you would need level 3 to delete. But, all other activities could be done at 2.

Unfortunately this can be easily worked around by a vandal by lowering levels. However, as others have mentioned, some sort of "flag" should prevent mass deletions, or require a particular level to delete independent of the actual lock level of the road. Some restrictions on what level it takes to delete a road could be based on if a segment that has existed longer than X days, or has accumulated Y amount of traffic data on it, or sees Z amount of traffic/routing engine selection per day, etc.

After seeing firsthand the destruction in this recent issue I feel that a minimum of lock 3 on PS/mH is justifiable, with MH at 4 and Freeway/Ramp at 5.

In urban areas, I agree with you. In rural areas, not so much.

This is an important distinction. If "national standards" are developed they need to recognize that locks in rural areas (with fewer (or no) local editors, but less of an impact on overall routing) are different than urban areas (where all collectors are important and the above comment's levels are spot on).

Locking roads is not the end of editing for junior editors, it is an opportunity to get more involved with senior editors and to gain editing, research, visibility and become great editors with their commitment.

How exactly do they get experience in actual editing if most of the roads are locked above their rank and the ones that aren't don't need editing? You can talk about something until you're blue in the face, but for a LOT of people, actually doing it and applying what is being taught is the way they learn to do it. "Involvement" also means doing editing, not just discussing it.

And I think I have an idea that may address that. Have the "area manager" designation and geographical area tied to locking ability. Someone who is a level 2 might become an "area manager" of their hometown, and get level 3 (or even 4, as they display ability) permission in that small geographical area, but still only have level 2 permissions as they drive cross country into other people's territories. This would permit granting of small areas of higher permission... kind of a fast way to let someone display editing ability, even on higher locked roads, in a small scale, controlled manner consistent with their knowledge and experience. The longer someone edits, the more they communicate with their other local AMs, SMs, RMs, etc., the bigger those areas can get.

And this can be tied hand in glove with the formal mentorship program.

FW & ramps 5
MH 4 URBAN / 3 rural
mH 3 URBAN / 2 rural
ps 2
st 1
At grade connectors locked at highest lock on connecting segment

This is pretty much what we are already doing, with the exception that it is rare to see MH locked to 4.
The general assumption that there is enough QC on the L3 promotion that they can be trusted with MH.

Now, I don't know what the details are on the Texas situation, but just a thought....

Set a policy so that NO MH or mH may be deleted without, and in this order:
1 - Lowering its road type to Dirt/4x4 + SAVE
2 - Lowering its lock level to Automatic(1) + SAVE
and upon completion of operation #2:
3 - Immediate Email and PM notification to the local *C/*Ms (RC, LC, CM, SM, AM) including a PL and the name of the editor who performed the operations

This will prevent:
1 - Accidental deletions
2 - Angry teenager getting into a notebook

No, it won't prevent a rogue L5/6 from doing the damage... only slow them down, and yes, a script or bookmarklet could be written to automate those functions.
But it WOULD slow them down, and with the addition of #3, prevent this from being done anonymously, and with 5-10 *Ms on the distribution list, prevented from going unnoticed for days.
No, a rogue editor who doesn't give a crap and does it as a "last hurrah" can still do serious damage this way... there is simply no way to prevent this without the ability to rollback.

Yes, there will be some situations where these operations would be legitimate. Perhaps it's a test area that an editor set up, so there will be some false alarms. Perhaps the email could also include the segment's creator and created-by date so a quick look at the email will tell the *C/*M that it is not a long-standing road segment.

Much the same logic that was applied to the change in WMETB that took away the ability to simplify segments without actually selecting them... we can't eliminate the possibility of vandalism, and we don't want to be overly restrictive to the majority of editors who are simply attempting to work, but we can make it less convenient for the vandal, the same way that a security system in your car makes it a less attractive target than the one parked next to it with the windows open.