I sympathize with the local editors dealing with deletion of some mH and MH roads with no trace in TX. I don't know the extent, but certainly is a headache and an insult to the editors that worked so hard to get the roads to where they were navigable. I offer my help to them if they wish.

I think the problem with large metro areas is the possibility for vandalism from visiting editors or from rebelious teenagers getting their hands on their parents laptop. The knee jerk reaction to lock higher may really not be so much about the worries about actual editing, but a visiting editor can simply delete without doing any traceable editing and being only a rank 2 or grandfathered 3 (with less than 25,000 edits) could cause deletions of mH and MH in Nevada without being noticed until UR's start showing up perhaps days later, and causing many many hours of work to fix. If we lock higher, then it doesn't keep someone from creating a parking lot road and trying to attach it to the locked road, but we will find it with validator as not being attached. So I don't see any drawbacks to locking higher, because I don't see it preventing a new editor from trying to edit the roads that truly need editing. I do see it as being incentive to learning how to edit and finding a way to communicate with more experienced editors. I see it mentoring lower ranking editors that they focus on tweaking the main roads and completely ignore the obvious needs on the ps and streets, and even parking lot roads still needed to access businesses off the main collectors and arterials. Unfortunately, sometimes the best new editors actually don't like to socialize as much on PM's, gho or now slack. Admitably on the behalf of new editors, working on more important roads generate a much higher satisfaction level and feeling of making an impact. This is WHY more communication with new editors is so much MORE important as the US map is maturing than ever before. They may even read the wiki and try to work on the roads they drive to work and shopping, just to discover they can't. If we don't establish required communication earlier with new well intentioned editors, then yes... we will disenchant them by not allowing them to edit. What tools do AM's, SM's and RC's have to communicate with new editors? We have to kind of just find them by their mistakes and hope they eventually check their private messages IF they've set it up on their profile.

I think we need to emphasize reading the basic wiki prior to going very far with edits, maybe a checklist of reading requirements before getting to rank 2, and additional advanced wiki reading and state and regional forum awareness before getting rank 3. At least an acknowledgement that the material is available for reading. There is a continuing need to keep new editors from being "invisible" and also not having their profile set up to have a working email or PM's. Places being added by "trusted" Wazers has an obvious need to improve on standards both on adding the places as well as approving the places. (to include appropriate pictures)

I subscribe to the idea of major metro areas being a higher lock standard than rural areas. One particular reason being newer editors not understanding FC standards and a rank 2 trying to change a mH back to ps because they don't think the road segment qualifies for anything with the name "highway" in it. The same could even apply for editors with some history that have rank 3 that change MH to a lower level and ignoring a FC conversion. There is a possibility that even within the city itself, major impact roads (Like S Las Vegas Blvd / AKA "The Strip" should be locally locked even higher than the FC would imply.

FW & ramps 5
MH 4 URBAN / 3 rural
mH 3 URBAN / 2 rural
ps 2
st 1
At grade connectors locked at highest lock on connecting segment

5/4/3/2/1 easy to remember sort of?

The reason I would want a higher lock in urban areas for MH or mH is that in NV we have essentially matured the map to the point that we know they are accurate enough for a lock, and we have established communication with the active area editors. ALSO the reason for higher lock on mH and MH is that in Large Metro areas like Las Vegas, we have a huge influx of 41 million airport passengers a year from all over the world, and many drivers that have their own standards in their own parts of the world that might try to edit Las Vegas without reading the Nevada Wiki page or even understanding US standards and try their hand at editing. I don't think in NV we are exempt from waze "terrorist" activities and deleting roads.

Perhaps the real issue here is that we need an automatic alert in Waze that identifies any editor based on rank that is deleting more than one ps, mH and MH. Realistically, when is there any need to delete more than one or two roads designated as ps or higher?

Jacob wrote
Edit, Another idea: make deletion require 1 rank higher than all other forms of the lock. In other words, if a segment is locked at 2, you would need level 3 to delete. But, all other activities could be done at 2.

Now I like this idea!!

Part of the problem for editors that are relatively new is that they tend to want to work on the more important roads even though they don't know how many problems they can create by a disabled turn, or many other small issues they won't even realize. To Jacob's point, if an experienced rank 3 would like to work on a MH locked at 4 in an urban area, they would have to get an unlock. The more connected in communicating the rank 3 would be, the less difficult it becomes to get the unlock and get informal instant help. If they are not communicating on the WME chat, (which is right in their face on the screen) gho's and the Slack and even the slower Waze PM's, then they need to be. So if an editor is a rank 3 and doesn't communicate at all and got there by mass editing, and not reading the wiki and not communicating with the advanced and senior editors, then maybe they SHOULD be prior to getting more involved with editing MH roads which I propose be locked at 4 in the urban areas. Rank 4 and 5 is NOT automatic, and their prior edits would be reviewed by SM and RC before they get promoted at or even before they reach the wiki standard of 100k and 250k edits. If someone were allowing themselves to be in communication with the other advanced editors, there is less chance of them going crazy because they realize the implicaitons on all the wazers and their social status in the editing group. So this actually firms up my belief in locking MH at 4 and mH at 3 in urban areas.

On the other hand, why would you lock up an urban area at higher levels without first making sure the map is mature. Literally going segment by segment and making sure the roads have no issues. Who would decide if they are mature? The SM and RC should decide this prior to locking at a higher standard.

In Nevada, we had "someone" unknown go through and delete parking lot roads off MH roads for gas stations and minor strip malls for some unknown reason, when they are actually needed in most cases. This was not catastrophic nor affecting navigation in any major way, but again a case for locking more important roads like mH and MH at higher levels to create the need for more communication between editors. This could have been done by any number of the millions of visitors we get through Las Vegas and Reno each year thinking they know a better way to do a road than we do. I would imagine this is also the case in the top tourism cities in the US:
1) NYC
2) LA
3) Chicago
4) DC
5) Las Vegas
6) San Francisco
7) Hawaii
8) New Orleans

Hmm. Ask any parent about when their offspring is "mature". I'm sure the definition varies from the offspring.

I for one have changed my view on locks several times, each time was based on more experiences with the issues involved.
After seeing firsthand the destruction in this recent issue I feel that a minimum of lock 3 on PS/mH is justifiable, with MH at 4 and Freeway/Ramp at 5.
This could be viewed as a knee jerk reaction but considering the damage and outcome there must be consideration for protecting the map even if it means extra effort on both junior and senior editors.
My thoughts above are suggestions to the national standard but want to address the rural and AM concerns. Due to the possibility of an out of the way area being damaged we could consider these locks and make adjustments for areas that become managed, if an editor is given an area then we could adjust some of the standards to meet their rank so they can be efficient, this would be due to the confidence we have in them for the responsibility of AM and the known oversight of that area and any damage would be noticed quickly by that AM.
Some may argue that an SM has rights to an entire state, or that CMs to the entire country and they should be able to find these issues quickly........that would be the individuals who are not aware of the size and scope of which is being discussed or the additional responsibilities that come with these roles.
Locking roads is not the end of editing for junior editors, it is an opportunity to get more involved with senior editors and to gain editing, research, visibility and become great editors with their commitment.

JJohnston84 wrote:I'll just reiterate - does one really think that connecting PLRs to MHs needs to be done by someone at the level of state manager? Because that is the net effect of the proposal on the table.

My answer would be no, but it should be under the guidance/approval of a rank 4, this situation would be a simple contact to AM who would relay to a rank 4 if they deem it justified, but a simpler solution would be ask on WME chat, I perform these types of requests each I am active on the WME editor, and there are times that I do not feel comfortable making that decision in a region I am not familiar without reviewing their wiki and standards. If I feel uncomfortable about something I would think the other editor should feel the same and understand why we study the guidelines not only for national but also regional and state.
Connections to main routes can be damaging in so many ways that new editors are not aware of and they should seek guidance.
I believe this comes down to convenience and that alone does not justify low locks.

JJohnston84 wrote:Why not just lock MHs at 4 only after they have been deemed "mature" and otherwise lock at 3?

To me, mature means:
- Every PLR has been connected with at least a stub and turn restrictions set.
- House numbers are completed

My feeling is a lot of these "mature" urban MHs are actually far from complete when you consider those points, at least in Los Angeles

You make a valid point and this would be preferred, but we must consider when we made the FC changes that many editors were changing the FCs back, this forced a mass locking for FC segments and unfortunately we are playing catch up on what you describe, but it protects the FCs even from rank 3's who do not read the forums or wiki.
I will follow this up with an recent example, but need more time to type, I am slow

I certainly disagree that rural areas have less of an impact on routing, most freeways and highways traverse through rural areas at some point, and long distance routing would definitely be impacted if damage were to occur.
That brings me to my thoughts on assignment of AM areas verses choice, although it is good for editors to request known areas for their AM, at some point it would benefit the community for assignments of these rural areas as part of their original request or in addition to.
As much as I would like to see an open map for deserving editors to have a free hand, we must consider the other side of the equation and include it on our decision making.
I do believe our self-management set up is addressing the promotion issues, but there are still some who have made the rank through the old system, by finding those individuals and mentoring or at minimum, getting them up to speed, we will eventually have a full crew under the new system.
For those who may feel I speak as a rank 5 and not considerate of what it was like as a junior editor, I offer this, during my gaining of rank there was no WME chat, I never heard of HO's, and I used no scripts until late rank 4, every communication was done by PM and there were many, it was not easy but commitment and determination were keys to get unlocks, assistance and guidance. As I became familiar with different senior editors, the mentoring became one on one and progress faster, so I do remember the challenges and mistakes but with today's open chatting, HO's, slack and mentoring program, I have a hard time seeing the difficulties that are being expressed.
If an editor is consider AM qualified, that is due to their editing skills, involvement, and knowledge, they have the keys to get unlocks quickly and are not deterred by inconvenience, they have communicated and been vetted, they are on their way to future promotions and at that point they will become the go to person.
Locks are necessary, where is the happy medium? I do not have the final answer, I can only offer my thoughts and opinions just as you do and through our discussions there will be a consensus, but the decision will most definitely not please everyone.

I'm also sorry to hear about the map being vandalized in TX. I'm going to assume here that it's known for a fact that there was deliberate intent and not someone making a mistake. What exactly happened, and where in TX, if I may ask?

There's always going to be a trade-off when you have a community editing staff. Make it too hard for new editors to get anything done without constantly having to ask someone to finish it/lower it/whatever it, and I fear we may lose people who would otherwise evolve into really good editors.

Personally, I think that there still needs to be a certain amount of flexibility in lock rank levels by Region. "One size fits all" on a mandatory basis country-wide can be to restrictive in certain areas. Lock it tighter where needed, and where there's a high enough volume of editors to where things can be impacted.

For example, in most of northern/rural NV, ramps and freeways are locked at R4 or R5. In Vegas, they're pretty much all R5, all the time.

What we've pretty much been using in NV is this:

Freeway/Ramp - R4 or R5
MH - R3
mH/PS - R2
Street/PLR/Private/Dirt - R1

It's been working well here; I don't see a need for higher lock levels on the types of roads here because of something that happened in another state. I think those numbers are currently the recommended US lock ranks, other than possibly the freeways & ramps (though at one time I remember reading something saying that those should be R4 or R5 - if that's changed to a hard-and-fast R5, I wasn't aware of it).

Per other recommendations that I've seen, I've been locking places based on certain criteria. Any emergency service (fire/police/medical) gets a R3 lock on it, gas stations get at least a R2, airports get at least a R2. In the L.A. Raid area, I locked gas stations at R3 because the Wiki for the Raid said to use that rank level there.

I've also been locking some more general places at R2 just because there have been "trusted submitters" who can now add pictures without being flagged for review if those places are just at the default R1 (and most of the drivers doing those submissions are only a R1 by default), and there have been unusable pictures that I've caught and deleted. By locking those places to R2, "trusted submitters" at R1 still get flagged for review, which makes pictures like that a LOT easier to find and keep off the map. And it doesn't take that long for an actual new editor to reach R2 level, so it doesn't create much of a "hardship" on them.

MojaveCactusMonkey wrote:[...] If we don't establish required communication earlier with new well intentioned editors, then yes... we will disenchant them by not allowing them to edit. What tools do AM's, SM's and RC's have to communicate with new editors? We have to kind of just find them by their mistakes and hope they eventually check their private messages IF they've set it up on their profile.

Yea, that's a big problem anywhere. I really think the Waze devs (who are the only ones who can help us here in this regard, IMO) need to make some serious changes to help with this. I've always believed that to be able to edit the map, you should have an established forum account with a verified E-Mail address so that you can get notifications when a PM comes in. Once the chat window became available, I quickly became of the opinion that R1/R2 editors should not be able to hide the chat window and should not be able to go invisible. We need to be able to see them and interact with them! Communication is extremely important, especially at early stages when the guy who watched that video now thinks he understands how to do edits right and jumps in.

But without either requirement, we're pretty much hamstrung.

I think we need to emphasize reading the basic wiki prior to going very far with edits, maybe a checklist of reading requirements before getting to rank 2, and additional advanced wiki reading and state and regional forum awareness before getting rank 3. At least an acknowledgement that the material is available for reading. There is a continuing need to keep new editors from being "invisible" and also not having their profile set up to have a working email or PM's. Places being added by "trusted" Wazers has an obvious need to improve on standards both on adding the places as well as approving the places. (to include appropriate pictures)

Yea, given that a driver only has to report 10 places that get approved by an editor to now be "trusted," there's still lots of opportunities to end up with blurry, upside-down, non-useful, or even inappropriate pictures to be added after the fact. Currently, not much that we can do about them adding a new place, but for existing places I've been locking to R2 when I work on them, which will hold up any updates they submit (pic, info) for approval. At least it's something....

I subscribe to the idea of major metro areas being a higher lock standard than rural areas. One particular reason being newer editors not understanding FC standards and a rank 2 trying to change a mH back to ps because they don't think the road segment qualifies for anything with the name "highway" in it. The same could even apply for editors with some history that have rank 3 that change MH to a lower level and ignoring a FC conversion. There is a possibility that even within the city itself, major impact roads (Like S Las Vegas Blvd / AKA "The Strip" should be locally locked even higher than the FC would imply.

Well, we've always been able to lock "special requirement" segments higher than FC. I've got a couple that "might look weird" to a newer editor that are set up to deal with particular routing issues near those segments (like how we deal with private residential areas that have more than one way in/out but only allow guest access through particular entrances and resident-only access for all the others, for example) - you can bet they're locked to higher than the FC says for that type of road. It just makes good sense.

FW & ramps 5
MH 4 URBAN / 3 rural
mH 3 URBAN / 2 rural
ps 2
st 1
At grade connectors locked at highest lock on connecting segment

I thought we already did that on the AGCs..? I can certainly get behind those lock suggestions. We might want to post in the Nevada section to get input from other NV editors; if there's a consensus then it can be added to the NV Wiki page to more formalize it.

Perhaps the real issue here is that we need an automatic alert in Waze that identifies any editor based on rank that is deleting more than one ps, mH and MH. Realistically, when is there any need to delete more than one or two roads designated as ps or higher?

I agree that would be a nice feature if there was a way to do so - sending a notification to any SMs for the state in question and the RC for the region would be good stuff and could potentially head off a bigger situation. But again, that would require getting the Waze devs onboard with there being a need for it....

JJohnston84 wrote:[...] Roll-backs, the right solution to vandalism
I know some of you are not software developers, so the solution to this may not be obvious. But, for those of you who are developers, you should know it is complete insanity that Waze isn't exposing complete revision history to the relevant parties. Rolling back should be in the toolset. Transactions should be recorded.

It'd be utter insanity if I could walk into work and delete all my company's source code. And I can't. I could try, but it would be trivial for any other developer to simply roll back my last changeset and undo all the damage. Waze should be no different. I know there is some nuance in branching/merging data, but this is not an insurmountable obstacle. There is a ton of precedent for dealing with this in the realm of source control, and I don't know why Waze's toolset isn't following suit.

[...] We need help from the Waze devs
Nothing we editors can do actually solves the risk of vandalism. One could easily, with a brand new account, do insane amounts of damage to the Waze map in the period of about a week. I won't detail how in a public forum, but the point is that none of the volunteer editors have the toolset to deal with such vandalism right now. This is a system and infrastructure failure and the only ones that can really fix it are the Waze developers. I'm hoping such a fix is already in the works.

I also wanted to include the above to add my voice to that. I'm absolutely flabbergasted that Waze devs didn't think of this sort of thing from the get-go. Given the nature of the completely public access to editing a map that gets used for navigational people by drivers all over the world, it should have occurred to them that things like this could happen and that they should have built in a method by which bad edits can be undone. I sincerely hope that's something on their near-term to-do list.