Please consider restraint when adding natural features to Waze, especially water features!

If the features are so inconspicuous that a driver would be hard-pressed to see any surface water, just lots of trees and a pipe culvert under the road, that is not good enough to put it in bright blue on the phone of every Waze user in the area.

All Places are navigation destinations. Area Places serve the added purpose of orientation for drivers. Minor watershed information, valuable though it may be to outdoorsmen and hydrologists, is neither a destination nor a visible landmark for the vast majority of drivers. To the extent that you plan to map features hidden or nearly so from drivable roads, what you are proposing is to increase the complexity of all Wazers' displays with information they don't want and can't use.

Now, surface water obvious from the road, that's a different story. That can certainly help orient drivers. With creeks, remember to map just the water, not the culvert or greenspace on either side. Otherwise little trickles end up looking like the Mississippi on the app. If the creek is too thin to map easily just representing the water surface, it is probably best not to map it at all.

Finally, remember that Waze already has a water layer. There's generally no need to re-map something that Waze already has. You can check in Live Map to see.

Sorry if this sounds discouraging! I just want to help you focus your energy where it will do the most good. As an Area Manager I have had to delete some water features added by a new editor and it was rough for both me and the contributor!

hissdudeness wrote:Someone edited a creek right to the edge of the town that I am editing currently. The creek does not end there however. What am I to do: Ask an area manager to remove the whole creek altogether, paint my part of it despite it is rather less noticeable, or leave it as inconsistent as it is now?

It is always good to work with the Area Manager. If it were in my area, I would ask if any surface water is visible to drivers. I wouldn't want bright blue displaying on the app when no surface water can be seen from the road anywhere, even if there is a culvert or greenspace associated with the creek. Your area manager may be more flexible, but based on Mynios' comment, I would suspect not.

Thank you for your extensive explanation. Really appreciated. However, one thing is unclear to me: Someone edited a creek right to the edge of the town that I am editing currently. The creek does not end there however. What am I to do: Ask an area manager to remove the whole creek altogether, paint my part of it despite it is rather less noticeable, or leave it as inconsistent as it is now?
Also, the water layer in my country (Germany) is not that comprehensive. The basemap does hardly contain any water. The major rivers are included, lakes and medium sized rivers (very noticeable though) are still missing in some areas, so it is adding, not re-mapping.

Du solltest immer im Hinterkopf haben dass Waze eine PKW-Navigationsapp ist und Landmarks in Ländern unterschiedlich gehandhabt werden.