Waze forum

Thanks again, Alan!

Apparently, there was a recent change which makes an edit worth 3 points: Change in editing points.

Edit count is also important because it is what makes you get promoted, enlarging your edit area, allowing lock/editing locked segments... Also, this number appears in a lot of forum members' signature.

It is particularly important for new editors, who are eager to help, but also to get promoted. If house numbering were worth more points and edit counts, this tedious task would be gladly taken by some of them (instead, as it is, maybe this task is even disfavoured).

pumrum wrote: So if you go to a long street and add, remove, or fix the position of 1000 house numbers... you get one (1) map edit.

Thanks, pumrum! Like I said and explained before, this is (very) unfair. I hope Waze staff changes that in the future...

bigbear3764 wrote:There was a recent forum post on addresses. If the address in waze was from the mass download, waze won't use it. But, if it has been touched by an editor, then waze will use it. We have been editing our Chicago addresses block by block as users report routing problems to an alley behind the residence. It has worked. Even have had a new street that google didn't have. Adddd street and house numbers and the user is happy. I've been adding house numbers in Beloit, Wisconsin because waze nor google had them.


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As I can attest as a Chicago area editor - touching a street full of HNs is an even bigger labor-of-love than a lot of other edits. But block-by-block as users report them is OK - except there are LOTS of BLOCKS and LOTS of HNs "close to the alley" generating URs. The reporters are getting to know the editors in this area quite well.
Points (aside from strictly point-farming) is a way to measure contribution - and enlisting new editors to do the work is far better than having them overmap parking lots again and again.
A few years back when I was newer at editing, it was the need to have editors swarm the Chicago area to fix all of the alleys that had been imported as streets that prompted me to continue to develop the map in other important areas as well. And editing the alleys was certainly a low-risk way to learn about other edits as well.

This is strange to me that something so important to routing in Waze would give so little in terms of points. It is a pain in the butt to add HNs to all the new roads in a new housing development. I think that a meaningful edit such as adding HNs should be worth more than say realigning a road.

JoshJMM wrote:This is strange to me that something so important to routing in Waze would give so little in terms of points. It is a pain in the butt to add HNs to all the new roads in a new housing development. I think that a meaningful edit such as adding HNs should be worth more than say realigning a road.

I couldn't agree more! I've run into a LOT of housing developments that are newer than the original dump, particularly oblong or spider-like condo developments that have only a few very long segments, so they can easily have 100 or more HNs to add, across barely a half dozen segments or so.

That's a TON of work, painstakingly switching back and forth between WME and the appropriate GIS viewer, even more time and work when there isn't an online GIS viewer, so you have to download the shape layers from [name county here] and build your own map in [name GIS software here].

AlanOfTheBerg wrote: Sorry, but even as a first-month/first-year users I cared little about the points, but wanted to see the map fixed. IMO, everyone should have that in mind, not getting to 100k or whatever the next level is. Sure, it's a kind of goal, but it should be about the last goal in mind.

Alan, agreed, but sitting at L2 leaves you out of several "features", most critically to the task at hand, forcing HNs, so doing this work is even more tedious for no edit points.
I should've applied for L3 back when the limit was 10k.

The unofficial word from Waze support in response to a ticket I opend with regards to how house number changes are figured into your map edit count which determines your map editor rank:

House numbers counts per segment edit, for example if you click on a segment and add 4-5 house numbers they will be counted as one edit.

So if you go to a long street and add, remove, or fix the position of 1000 house numbers... you get one (1) map edit.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:So, for now, it will have to stay the way is, and the reward will be happy drivers.

I think I would be more inclined to devote time to house numbers if I knew there was value to the Waze users... but the Wiki says:

The Waze app and website address search mechanism do not use the internal house numbers and relies on external data sources.

I also read the FAQ and it mentions that it only falls back on the Waze house numbering system if Google fails to find a result. But how often might that happen? Often enough to justify entering tens of millions of house numbers? I'm struggling to find the value...

I won't bog this post down with details, but suffice to say I know realize the high value of putting house numbers into Waze. If we could get POI results to correlate to Waze house numbers first rather than GPS coordinates, it would be even more valuable. It would be great if Waze would reconsider the 'compensation' for adding house numbers, perhaps we could get new editors to focus their effort there rather than mapping every parking lot in the world

In short:
I found a street address that Google knew, but was in the wrong location. This was a confirmed house number that was pinned to the wrong location, not an "approximate" disc-type pin you see when Google guesses the location. Waze did not have any house numbers stored for that street. I verified that the Waze iOS App, Waze Live Map, and Waze Map Editor both returned the (incorrect) Google location. I went into WME and added house numbers for this street, including the one that Google had in the wrong spot. I waited a few days, did a search in all 3 Waze engines, and they all now report the correct location!!

Bumping or adding HNs do not trigger the map tile to update so remember to move a bit a section of the street or intersection in order to force the update and have those numbers available shortly after, it also give you another edit point