kentsmith9 wrote:

skapur1 wrote:

jasonh300 wrote:The more landmarks on the map, the less value they have.

While an individual landmark's value may go down with increasing number of landmarks, the value of the map as a whole goes up as more information is added to the map.

I would also add that more landmarks help find things in a search, but make a visual search more difficult (think Where's Waldo). The question is which is more important.

In addition, wouldn't be nice to limit what you see in client....say...no landmarks or no etc. With option to show or not. But, still be able to search them or visible if you search them?

kentsmith9 wrote:

skapur1 wrote:

jasonh300 wrote:The more landmarks on the map, the less value they have.

While an individual landmark's value may go down with increasing number of landmarks, the value of the map as a whole goes up as more information is added to the map.

I would also add that more landmarks help find things in a search, but make a visual search more difficult (think Where's Waldo). The question is which is more important.

1 of the things I noticed (why I asked about this) is that without any landmarks in an area it is hard to navigate while looking at the map. For example:

Area near a business that has parking lot roads mapped out, but no landmarks, because the parking lot roads do not look any different (skinnier, or different shade) then it seems like I'm looking at an unfamiliar area.

Okay. I've been reading through the forum and it seems Parking Lot Landmarks are not liked very much by more experienced editors.

If for example, there's a large office building complex, (where several people that use Waze drive to) should I encompass the whole complex + parking lot as an office building and draw in main parking lot roads? (Large I'm taking maybe 300 people, 100's of cars, maybe 12 people that use Waze) Or just the building and put parking lot roads around it?

jasonh300 wrote:

kentsmith9 wrote:I would also add that more landmarks help find things in a search, but make a visual search more difficult (think Where's Waldo). The question is which is more important.

Landmarks aren't searchable. Therefore, that McDonald's is going to come up in the text search whether it's landmarked or not.

I keep forgetting they are not (currently or ever of course) searchable, but they still do add value when looking at the map visually. I often know the general area of a park, parking lot, other landmark, but don't recall the exact name to search. So I look at the general area and search the names I see.

skapur1 wrote:

jasonh300 wrote:The more landmarks on the map, the less value they have.

While an individual landmark's value may go down with increasing number of landmarks, the value of the map as a whole goes up as more information is added to the map.

I would also add that more landmarks help find things in a search, but make a visual search more difficult (think Where's Waldo). The question is which is more important.

harling wrote:As I understand it, the Parking Lot landmark type is meant to highlight general parking facilities--like a parking garage or downtown parking lot--not those belonging to a specific destination like a mall, movie theater, restaurant etc. For those destinations, it's usually obvious where to park, so there is no need to highlight it on the map. It's when you have a meeting at an office downtown that does not have its own parking facilities, and on-street parking is limited, that you want Waze to help you find a place to park--and it isn't going to be in the fast-food joint's parking lot across the street.

This makes sense, but I am not sure I have ever heard this recommended before. If we can get consensus I can add it to the Wiki.

I can verify that the landmarks are searchable, and it's already presented a huge problem.

I started seeing URs around the New Orleans airport with people being led the wrong way to the airport.

New Orleans International airport had a landmark covering the entire area of the airport property. The part of the airport closest to I-10 goes right up against a commercial industrial area. When navigating to the airport, regardless of whether you search MSY or New Orleans International, the first result would lead you to one of the dead-end streets in that industrial area, which is a few miles from the actual entrance to the airport by road. That first search result was the landmark, which I realized because the exact name of the landmark was showing in the client.

The only solution I could see was to remove the name from the big landmark and then draw a small landmark over the terminal building and put the name on that one. That way, the only roads leading into the landmark, or near the landmark is the main entrance roads to the airport.

I suspect there are going to be similar problems at other airports and large landmarks like this.

AlanOfTheBerg wrote:I get a hit result for a small kids park in my neighborhood. It's also in 4sq and facebook, but the Waze results also show what I'd expect from the Waze results, including that it is in "Oregon" and is missing the name of my city because the landmark doesn't have it entered.

So, it would appear that (some people?) landmark searching is working. My primary and test accounts all get these results, so it's not a matter of the search engine testing either.

Well, this is new behavior, but wouldn't these be searchable through the search engine, even if there was no landmark? I can understand that the playground may not be listed, but all of the things that we stated are "not to be landmarked" like individual businesses, etc. will show up in the regular search without a landmark.

kentsmith9 wrote:I would also add that more landmarks help find things in a search, but make a visual search more difficult (think Where's Waldo). The question is which is more important.

Landmarks aren't searchable. Therefore, that McDonald's is going to come up in the text search whether it's landmarked or not.