I tend to agree with daknife...

If we had a "southwest locking guidance" I would generally think it would be to err on locking to a lower level rather than higher because of a lower population density and less maturity in editing of some roads.

I also ask the question, "Why would we need a southwest locking guidance?" Irowiki, why do you think we need one? I can think of non-technical answers that focus more on the social aspects of Waze... for instance, that it would be harder to do this country-wide, so let's just work to advance our region.

Technically I think that the two issues I mentioned above are more critical than regionalism of locking... that is population density and roadway maturity.

ply8808 wrote:Not an attempt to answer for irowiki, ...

Nuts, I should have coordinated with my fellow Mentor about this. As his Mentor, I was trying to put irowiki on the spot (a little bit) to defend his position publicly!

ply8808 wrote:Bummer
But I do not feel we should let your mentee completely off the hook as he did start the topic, and I for one am very interested in his response

No problem! Defense of editors against tyrannical champs is a virtue! I look forward to his response too!

skidoomxz01 wrote:One thing I noticed while playing with the beta editor was the amount of level 6 locks in SD and surrounding cities. I know it has been talked about making the highest the traffic lock will go is 5. But even then, is it really necessary? If over 70% of primary street and above are TL at 5 then editing is going to get really difficult. ...

-ski

Ski,

There should be no Rank-6 locks unless there is some extraordinary issue going on, like vandalism, a rogue Rank-5 CM editors, construction or other differences between the areal images and real roads, etc. Rank-6 locks should typically also be temporary whenever possible, even though temporary may be months.

Rank-5 locks were generally agreed upon to be important for freeways and their ramps. There are unlock forums and any higher-rank editor that is willing to help can temporarily unlock these for your needs.

I have seen whole towns locked at Rank-5 for an unknown reason... we found out the Champ that did it and heard that there was a vandalism issue in the area, and one of their solutions was to lock down the area. Because everyone's busy, they forgot about it and didn't get back to it. We just recently mass-unlocked the town and applied some lower-level locks to roads per other parts of this discussion. So... what you're seeing may have been a legacy lock that was forgotten about by whoever did it.

I am concerned that you have seen Rank-6 locks in SD that you're worried about. Who did them, how old are those locks (best guess from last edit date)? Have you written to the person who is Rank-6 and asked? If you'd like me to take a look, send me a PM and I will give you a hand figuring it out.

No problem... I have been busy with graduations and am not back up to speed on the forum. I just read and commented on the traffic locks here:

viewtopic.php?f=129&t=91632&start=30

Great discussion. Thanks everyone.

The more I consider this, the more I realize it is a local issue both spatially and temporally. Here are some more thoughts after considering all that has been said. I think this is a good topic to bring to the WIki discussion and create a Wiki page for national guidance at some point. Mayabe we can help the seed of that here.

Different regions and areas can choose to change most of this that doesn't violate some hard-and-fast rules such as Freeway and their Ramps at Rank-5. Even this may be adjusted temporarily to allow a lower-level editor to do work, as long as there is some oversight of that region.

I tried to capture all the ideas I heard about and thought about myself as to what would cause one to increase rank locks and what would cause one to decrease rank locks. I put them on the New Mexico Page to sort out the ideas but will reproduce a snapshot here:


When higher lock levels are usually needed:

• When areal images do not match actual ground conditions. This includes construction areas.
• Higher value routes that would inconvenience many users if damaged.
• Particular locations that are frequently damaged by new editors.
• Areas of the map that are well developed but not frequently visited by editors to check condition, and error reports.
• Items that have had significant research in creating data in the item such as the naming of a Ramp and the creation and information of a Place.

When lower lock levels are possible:

• Areas where few mistakes or acts of vandalism occur.
• Areas that will be frequently visited by AMs or other higher-ranked editors, such that they can keep an eye out for problems.
• Areas that are purposefully unlocked or reduced in lock level so a lower-level editor can manage and watch over them for an extended period.
• Items that are briefly unlocked under the real-time oversight of a higher-level editor, then locked after adjustment by a lower-level editor.

The actual set of locking guidance for NM on Roads and Places is here:
https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/index.php?ti ... .26_Places

For simplicity of a base rule set I like the F/R-5, MH-4, mH-3, PS-2, S-1 then adjusted based upon the above, except we've already agreed nationally that F and R are at Rank-5. I tried to throw some ideas for Places on that page, too.

I guess I am not feeling strongly about this because my position has wavered.

Originally I favored low lock levels. Then later perhaps I was jaded by continual edits of the same area over and over again by new editors coming aboard. They seem to be attracted to "hot-spots" of editing where roadways are split, unnecessary turn lanes are entered, and turn restrictions are all reset to "allow" causing inaccurate routing for Wazers both locally and across major highways and other cross-state routes. This happens in cities and rural areas. In addition, because New Mexico is rather large and spread out, these problems can persist for a long time before they are reported or a passing editor sees them.

Editing areas over and over again four or five times has made me just lock these areas at a higher level and favor a simple tiered lock level.

I was less worried about lock levels going up for these reasons: (1) With WME Chat coming into the picture because editors could ask for immediate unlock help, which I have given around the country a number of times while watching over their shoulder. I know others do this a lot more than me. (2) With the concept of Formal Mentoring, we are seeking to increase the number of Rank-3 and Rank-5 editors that should handle most of these issues as a team.

I am OK with Kentsmith9's suggested minimum criteria as needed as long as their can be state and local differences. I think the idea here is we are trying to nudge up the protection of the map as it becomes more mature without dissuading new editors.

Let's say we did that (or something else), then perhaps we can also suggest reasons why things might be locked at a lower or higher level from this... (I have dejavu that some of this was brought up before but I am too tired to look)

Higher:

• Areas that attract repeated bad edits.
• Areas with vandalism (temporary)
• Areas with difference from areal imagery, often new construction.
• etc...

Lower:

• Areas that have historically few bad edits.
• Areas where construction is occurring but a lower-level editor is assigned constant surveillance. (temporary)
• etc...

DwarfLoard, mdavidsonjr, and others...

I think the concept of a test is a good one, primarily as a gate that keeps out people that want to edit for the wrong reasons and likely just one or two times. The issue is likely that there is little hurtle for a Rank-1 editor new to the scene to just mess things up if they are really not caring. Why should they care? They signed up for free and can edit immediately. If things are not locked for those who don't care or have initial understanding of common community interest -- then what happens, happens.

It's interesting to me to see two Rank-3 AM editors have this opinion as it seems to validate some that have been around a bit longer. Very good observations articulately stated...

I recall being a new editor, even as a Rank-3 AM somewhat frustrated because freeways were locked at 5 and sometimes arbitrary items were locked at 5. I had to go request unlocks. I did that during the transition period where being an AM allowed you to edit anything, even Rank-5 locks. When it changed, it was painful to not be able to fix those things without an unlock request. Thank goodness for clearing fields of red arrows (before good scripts) in untouched towns -- hello Rank-5.

From talking to various Waze staff at a couple Meetups including the world and US community managers and the CEO, it is extremely clear that their interest is to allow new editors to edit and open up the ranks of local self-management to new blood. They do not favor negative or unnecessarily punitive actions. They do favor positive, proactive actions, such as Formal Mentoring informal mentoring venues like WME Chat, training and webinars, etc., to help new editors edit correctly and mature some of those editors into the self-management team. I would imagine the Waze staff have some keen strategic insight, gained from world-wide activity, as to why this is important for their goals, so I would not oppose it but rather work with the direction set forth.

My guess is that a Waze-sponsored test of some sort would be viewed as a negative approach and too high of a gate to erect to becoming an editor. It would be nice if something like this was needed to go from Rank-1 to Rank-2 -- nothing onerous, but a challenge to separate out those who care to edit from those who want to do the right thing. In that case, Rank-1 is a playground to figure that out. My guess is that it won't happen because it is negative and also a low priority.

The traffic-lock auto lock experiment/approach didn't seem to work the last time it was tried. I am not sure if it is in the beta editor as I've not looked recently.

What we have been talking about here is what is reasonable to do for locking. I set out a strawman draft idea of a linear locking structure and put it on the New Mexico page. I put that down with extreme discretion on the part of the editor as critical to this, along with some principles about where locks ought to be somewhat higher and where they ought to be somewhat lower. We don't want this to become another set of rules we can argue about or condemn an editor about. Some argue very well that it ought to be a bit lower, like Kent Smith's recent post. That seems reasonable to me too.

The whole point of this is to do exactly what DwarfLord eloquently described... avoid people dismissing Waze as an unreliable GPS app -- because people randomly mess up the map. I think Waze staff may underestimate the importance of this reliability issue as Waze matures.

My opinion is that even with locks, there is enough to edit by Rank-1 editors. There are streets. There are Places. If people are really interested in editing, they can go on a Waze drive to open up new areas -- as many of us did in the past. I wonder if my rank has biased my view on this because I now don't have to worry about what I can and cannot edit.

DwarfLord wrote:Thanks so much vectorspace for the great information!

If Waze HQ would balk at an entrance exam, how about a voluntary exam that you always pass even if you get every answer wrong? ...

Wow... outstanding suggestion! I say this because another topic I think Waze staff are interested in, but perhaps frustrated in applying, is "gamification." That is, turning tasks into games, something done very well by the research group that converted protein folding calculations into games with Fold-It.

I think this is quite worthy of suggesting to Waze staff, but perhaps needs a bit more development. Right now there is a play editor mode where you can edit without actually changing the map. What you're suggesting here is perhaps another version with a bit of an automated assistant or AI that would guide the user through some tests. Even if it was just a series of tests that didn't matter if you got it right, you could gamify this activity by providing points to the user as they play or upon reaching a goal of correct answers. In this way it would be worth it to play in the perspective of the user. I wonder if Waze staff have thought about that.

I think your example about figuring out how to property route from A to B by correcting a number of errors in the map would be perfect. The route Waze would use could be dynamically redrawn and would show that the route didn't make sense. As they fix each thing, the route would change and points would be added.

Good comments...

I don't see a problem with increasing the lock level of tricky areas, high-value roads, etc. ... as long as there are responsive LOCAL people to unlock them for lower-rank motivated editors. We also have the option of doing a quick mentoring session to raise a Rank-1 editor to Rank-2 so they can work some of the locks that are simply intended to prevent frequent newbie errors on critical items.