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Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Sun Feb 10, 2013 4:19 pm
by bgodette
kentsmith9 wrote:I had noticed something similar in an area near me that had a wide multi-lane road with a single 2-way segment mapping it. The road in the neighborhood parallel to the main road seemed to be closer to my car according to the GPS. Periodically it would snap me to the adjacent road and then after I passed that area it went back.

I pulled the main road segments a bit closer to the adjacent road and I also pushed the neighborhood road a further away (still on the visible street though). That solved the erratic behavior. I assume the visual map was a bit off from the physical causing the problem.
Which would be a reasonable guess except that in all recordings I'm driving in the far left lane, and it snaps to the far left side roads as well and happens in the exact same places across at least 4 known E/W roads but no known N/S roads. It all points to an error in a look-up table to convert lon/lat into map x/y, especially since it happens on Android and iOS across 5 different phones (iow not a math problem in CPU).

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 7:50 pm
by bscharff
Waze has instructed us specifically to NOT landmark businesses. Only schools and parks and the like.
As for him deleting your parking lot roads... some editors have a habit of "if it was done bad, delete it and do it right." But since someone is outright deleting it, you might wanna have a level 5 lock it once you're done creating it... just to have the last word :P

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 7:03 pm
by gettingthere
I don't think anyone from Waze ever said not to map POI's. It was the Waze community's recommendation not to map POI's in the Waze map if your country has good POI data via the other search options in the client (Google, Bing, FourSquare, Yelp, etc.)

Here is why POI's should generally not be mapped in the Waze Map Editor:

* There is no ability to add POI details that show in the client with a search - phone number, address, etc.
* Since there is no ability to add these details it makes it difficult to determine which location you want to go to for common searches. Eg. if you search for McDonalds is it helpful to see the street address in the search results to help you determine which location you want to go to. Also very helpful to click on the phone number if you want to call to see if the POI is open, etc. The external providers POI data contains these details.
* If some editors are mapping some POI's, these POI's will show up in the default Waze search results even if they are hundreds or thousands of miles away. Eg, if someone adds a POI for McDonalds in Oregon and I am searching in San Diego my Waze client shows me the location in Oregon in the Waze results instead of showing one of the better options that shows relevant data.
* POI's that are added need to be maintained. Restaurants, stores, etc are always changing. If the POI is added and it changes, the data is wrong until someone finds and edits it. There are already great sources of this data that are being updated, why do we need yet another source of POI data?

Really in countries such as the USA only Parks and large POI landmarks that should show in the client map view should be mapped. Leave the rest out.

Again, this may not be relevant for other counties that don't have good POI data via the other providers.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2013 9:27 pm
by gettingthere
Why not just use a Parking Lot Landmark if you are concerned about traffic suppression when Wazers are in the lot?

Also, unless things have changes if the last segment that a Wazer was on was a Parking lot road traffic reports should be suppressed as long as the Wazer is not snapped to a non parking lot road segment.

Although my long standing opinion is that the client should be less snappy. If a Wazer is driving anywhere that is not mapped there should be no jams created. Should be no need for any of this mapping/landmarking of Parking Lots to avoid false traffic jams. Waze needs to focus more resources on fixing this mess without the community having to over-map.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 3:29 am
by gettingthere
Yes, sometimes there are benefits to roads in parking lots, but there are also downsides:

* The client may instruct you turn to onto or off of a parking lot road(s) using an adjacent street name, so the directions are technically incorrect. This would not be an issue if we named the parking lot roads in some manner but we were unable to come to some agreement as a community on naming.
* When parking lots start to get mapped, Wazers see the parking lots mapped and then start to map more parking lots. Then they tend to get carried away and map every aisle.
* Every segment of parking lot road needs to have turns set correctly. Often these are not done correctly leading to Update requests to 'fix' the problem.
* More road segments = more data that Waze needs to store and serve to the clients. With vector graphics the affect is not so great, but it's something.
* Yes, it can help with learning but so can finding a neighborhood with real roads that are not frequently traveled may be a better option. Even minute that we are spending as editors working on Parking Lots is time that we could be spending on other more valuable mapping activities.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2013 5:29 pm
by gettingthere
Although with my unscientific study - most time when any Parking lot mapping is done it ends up creating more Update Requests with problems it creates vs. problems it solves. Many times this is due to incorrect mapping and turn restrictions but other times it's just the parking lot mapping in general.

I think some of this is a perception issue. If Wazers don't get direction to the exact location of the POI in the parking lot and they see it's not mapped they understand and find their way. If the lot is mapped they then expect it to work perfectly and when it doesn't they put in an update request.

This also explains why some editors just delete all of the parking lot roads. They often cause more mapping issues in the editor than they solve.

We know that Parking Lot landmarks look ugly in the client and don't suppress traffic jams BUT they do seem to suppress future map problems. A lot of parking lots get mapped since Waze generates a map problem when a Wazer has Waze running when they drive the parking lot from one mapped road to another. This prompts editors to map the lot. When a landmark is placed it stops pointing editors to the lot to map it to supposedly fix a map problem that is auto generated by Waze.

In any case, this whole thing with parking lots, suppressing traffic jams by parking lots, suppressing map problems in parking lots, etc. is a huge waste of editing time by the community. Map it, fix the problems caused by mapping it, delete it, landmark it, lock it, unlock it, delete the landmark, delete the mapped roads just to start all over again. Waze needs to address this and provide a long term fix and better guidance on what level of mapping is necessary for their solution to work properly.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 5:41 pm
by gettingthere
Also be aware that Wazers that are driving in unnamed Parking Lot roads where turns are being instructed will generally have roads that are named announced as the name of the parking lot road where the turn is being instructed. Basically Waze will use the first named road later in the instruction list incorrectly.

This is one of the big problems with mapping parking lots. The directions are then technically incorrect.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 10:52 pm
by gettingthere
I agree that it sounds very unlikely that Wazers driving on the main road, on a route are being snapped to the Parking Lot roads. The Waze application has a very strong snap-to-route.

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2013 3:59 pm
by gettingthere
bgodette wrote:Except of course when it's suffering from the GPS->Car on map translation table bug that's been present ever since 3.0, and is still in the current betas.
Does it do the same if you are in navigation mode/on a route?

Re: Contribution frustrated in Mountain View, CA

Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 11:50 pm
by HandofMadness
AndyPoms wrote:We usually don't lock parking lots down, but in this case I'm going to do it...

I need you to keep a VERY close eye on it (check it as often as you can) to see if it gets deleted again (by a level 5 editor). If it does, there may be evidence as to who did the deletion on the main roads out front (i.e. last modified will change if two segments are merged when a junction is deleted).

I'm really hoping for a PM/forum post from the user asking why it's locked and I'll refer them to this thread and to talk to you.
FYI, it now shows locked by me because I'm stupid. :oops: