Hey everyone!

It is a pity, but I agree with the topic-starter. Waze HQ need to improve communication skills and services for getting in touch with the community, - which is the most valuable thing Waze has (IMO, of course). Ignorance and absence of reaction for complaints or suggestions strongly demotivates, especially basing on the volunteers' rights.

As for for the scripts.. everything is said. I guess, that devs know about how useful these are in WME. And I have always been wondering, why still any steps forward in implementing some fundamental scripts for mapping (like toolbox, place names, highlight, etc) in WME from the developers' side have not been made so far?
Oh, yes, there is a beta-WME too, but it could be used, to my mind, only for "peeping" what's new is gonna happen next and for mapping stuff like JBs or something that does not work in release. That's all, because the majority of scripts are down there.

As for the meetups... Well, "we map for meetups" (c) - don't you agree? We are all happy to meet each other once again and meet new faces too. It is very disappointing, when, sometimes there is no answer from the staff side for a long time, keeping in mind, that for now we need to announce our meeting plans before 4 months.

To conclude, I can say, that a lot of stuff is based on respect and appropriate treatment. Hope that Waze HQ gets the problem right. Community and all around it is the most unique thing here ever, so everyone engaged should try to save this valuable "heritage" we are all working on every free time we have for it.

All the best for you guys!
Vlad

Thank you, Shirli, appreciate your answer!

First iainhouse, thank you for opening this topic to begin with as well as your update above.

This was the first time actually I saw the mention of Google within the thread. I am not a beta tester anymore myself, I gave that up a long time ago after working with several Software MFG's and a couple of ISP's in the IT side of those companies from MS pre V1 through Windows NT, and Mac OS pre 1.0 through OSX 10.X, etc. I prefer Mac over Windows for better security but, that's another issue.

Yes the communication for you all that are here and the HQ does seem to have gotten worse and better at times, I'm sure. The bigger problem that I have is as either you or another pointed out in one form or another, that the end user has been totally left out of the loop for any true contact with an Issue without having the app installed to begin with. For example with the latest update that was just posted on Nov 8, 2017 which broke the app on my IOS devices to where the app would open and then close. Even after deleting the app and reinstalling it as usually suggested, it did not help at all.
I tried to find a phone # or email to open a TT with Waze support to no avail. It is not possible to do and the only place to get any support hopefully is this forum.

I could not get to this forum either initially since the app would not open and the forum login did not give me even a way to create a new account. Fortunately although I had not backed up my phone in a while I still had the older Waze 3.9.6.ipa in my older iTunes Mobile Applications folder and was able to restore that to my iPhone and had to create a new account here through that restored app just to be able to log in. There should also be a repository for Older versions of the .ipa's that were officially released as iTunes seems to have dissabled that function again to get older versions.

I did post in the appropriate forum area for IOS but also after looking through there and seeing a lot of oh this or that is broken .. I saw very little response on some of the issues. Not making one feel very good there. I am not trying to throw blame on you or others that help here on the forum especially seeing what has been said in this topic regarding communication with HQ.

Getting back to what I said about the first mention of Google though within this topic, when I first heard google was buying Waze back in 2013, I was disappointed and a little scared as I personally dont like Google and their tracking, etc. but, again that is another issue.

That being said though Google Does Own Waze and google has made a lot of changes to various things over the past year including very recently their Google Captcha V2 which does not always work well now with certain Apps unless the Web servers Admin that is using their newly improved (cough) V2 configures it certain ways other than their default method.
As mentioned also previously when Apple introduced Parking Google/Waze woke up so to speak and added the capability into Waze, other than such as that apparently they were not doing a whole lot of improvements, if I remember the post from earlier correctly.

With IOS 11 being released of course many apps released had to be updated but unfortunately backward compatibility is not always part of Apples desire either. It does make it difficult to krrp Apps such as this working properly for the various devices running older IOS also. google and Apple unfortunately are not the best of friends so to speak. There are many issues with the IOS 11 and apple is updating it more than they really should need to IMHO but, then that happens when developers decide to make changes users dont really need or want. Another example is Apple itunes 12.7 will not allow one to back up Apps and a few other things iTunes was able to do easily with previous version. Google does the same thing often and even google maps is more difficult to use as some of the features previously are not there anymore either being replaced with features Google thinks we need or want as end users. On devices I recently used Google Maps to find some directions and to get to the actual street by street directions was worse than what it used to be when I last used the app on the iPhone.

I apologize if this seems off topic or my min novel here is too much but, I had to say what I did and hope it makes some sense as to possible other reasons why communication with HQ is at times probably frustrating to you all. I know it is fro an end user.

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to post a note here to ensure that we’ve heard your message loud and clear. While it saddens me to see such a frustrated post from a leading member of our Community, it’s clear that we need to adjust the flow of communication to address many of the issues mentioned.

Next week I will gather the team to review all of the concerns we see raised in this post and discuss general communication issues. We will come back to you with a plan on how we can best move forward.

While we make many efforts to provide the community with as much information as possible, and create different channels with the goal to increase community impact on different decisions - reading this post, it is crystal clear that something went wrong on our end and we will be sure to review our current channels and workflows.

As I am sure many of you already know, it’s never our intention to be evasive or uncommunicative. We are committed to maintaining a positive and constructive environment for all editors and Waze staff.

Going forward, I want to ask that you raise these kinds of concerns with your community manager more frequently. I believe that many of us were not aware of the hard feelings expressed here and could have maybe avoided some of these issues. If you feel that your concerns are not properly handled, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

So until next week, I only ask that we keep this discussion respectful and solution-oriented. I know that it’s not always (or ever!) a perfect process - but we can only get there if we work together.

Best,
Shirli

Hi Everyone,


I wanted to take a moment to update everyone and ensure you that getting the response to Iain’s post and the communications issues is our highest priority.


The team and I sat last week to discuss it and are taking this week to evaluate changes and communication flows.


We’ll post an update next week on the items we’ll be looking to change. Thank you everyone for your patience as we work to strengthen our community.


Have a wonderful weekend!
Shirli

Hello Everyone,

I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their patience and for keeping the discussion in this thread productive and respectful.

As you know, the team and I took these days to evaluate our existing flows and communication with the community. While everyone on the team is passionate about the community and works very hard to empower, communicate, and collaborate - it has become very clear that some things must change and improve. Also, many flows need to be adjusted or clarified.

I wish it wouldn’t have come to such negative feelings, however, I’m glad that at the end of the day it has been brought up and I must thank Iain, as well as other communities and community members, who expressed their pains in a clear and constructive way.

I’d like to share with you a few initial decisions we’ve taken. Of course this will be an ongoing process. We have more plans that need to be developed, and we will continue this discussion as we go.

Different concerns have been brought to our attention. I’ll address a few of them directly, but I think we can all agree that the main pain points lie in the area of communication and transparency.

Existing communication channels and expected changes:
Direct Access:
This is a channel for Global Champs to contact the team directly regarding any issue and get a direct response.
We understand that this channel was not always managed regularly and we intend to reorganize it and commit to our presence and responsiveness there.
What’s changing? More sections will be added to the Direct Access forum to address different kind of topics such as routing, search client, WME etc. Each section will be handled by a different team member who will be responsible for providing the answers. ETA: Beginning of Q1 2017.

To set expectations:

• This forum is question & answer oriented, rather than a discussion one.
• We are committed to review these forums daily (during working days) and provide timely response.
• We will keep you informed about the progress of our verifications and results but we cannot commit to exact response timeframes and for dev/product response or solution.
• Transparency ≠ Saying “yes”. “No”/”not planned”/”not a priority” is, at times, also a possible answer.
• This is not an SOS channel.

Emails to the Community Manager:
A channel for coordinators to communicate directly with their community manager, ask questions, bring up different issues and escalate local issues. Please note that it is preferable to use the Direct Access for issues that can be relevant for more communities.
No specific changes expected here. However, if you feel that there’s an issue that needs to be addressed, please let me know.

SOS mail

• Inbox for urgent issues only
• Reaches the IFS team directly
• Monitored 24/7

How do we define 'Urgent issues'? Critical malfunction which affects a significant number of users experiencing a degradation of service availability, or functionality of the service.
For example: downtimes, routing not available, search not available, WME is down, Suspected damage to the map that need to be immediately stopped/blocked, etc.

• IFS team receives an e-mail and handles the problem reported ASAP.
• A community manager responds to the reporting champ(s) and update about the status and progress. Please note that our priority is to fix the reported issue and the communication will be done as soon as possible, but may be slower outside of working hours.

What’s changing? Today we are not doing a very good job updating the status page with these issues. We are aware of this and started working with the IFS team to improve this process and automate parts of it. ETA: End of Q1 2017.

Don’t have an sos@waze.com permissions? Contact your Community Manager. (GC’s ONLY)

WME
Today, most of the communication happens in the WME beta forum.
Expected changes:

• The communication will not be limited to the beta. We will also announce version releases on the general WME forum. ETA: Early Q1 2017
• We will define a clear community release process and share it with the community to make it easier to understand the status of the version, bugs, requests etc. ETA: Mid Q1 2017

Scripts: copying the relevant part from delilush’s post a few weeks back:
we don't currently have the dev resources required to open an API and maintain it, we definitely want to find a way to help our script writers in preserving important scripts.
Here are a few solutions we came up with, together with our devs (ETA: already in place):

• The beta is a great opportunity for the community to detect issues with scripts and report them before they go to production. We will work with the dev team and do our best to fix the problem before releasing a version to a wide base of editors.
• It is important that you check your scripts and report issues as part of the beta testing. After the beta release, if you notice that scripts are broken send us the details of where the error occurs.
• If the devs are aware of a potential "script breaker" for an upcoming beta version, we will let you know about those changes with the technical information we have, together with the release. That being said, not in every case can we predict where scripts might break.

CAR Form - Community Action Requests.
The place request upgrades, blocks, bans and more.
No specific changes expected here

Waze White Papers (WWP)
Topics which need official answers/process. For now, these are held in the GC forum. Find more information about White Papers here.
We encourage you to contact your community managers to discuss WWPs you’d like to see created.

We hope you feel these changes address your major concerns. As we mentioned, this is a work in progress and we value your input and feedback.

Thanks,
Shirli

Totally agree with all !!!


I think editing count dropped more than 25% after the last WME release and with it all the scripts were broken. In the past we got a promise from Ohad Ron that they can't promise not to brake things but they do promise to help the community in fixing them.

It's just not fun to edit anymore....I'll put it that way.



Shmupi

Well done.

I hope this time we will see facts and not only words.

There is already a big improvement regarding the attitude to the community scripts...so I'm optimistic.

Thank you,
Shmupi

Totally agree with you words Levin.

This proves once again how much the product team is disconnected from the community.

I've been saying this for 6 years now....

Till the product team will not start listening to the community ...for real. It will be just frustration gaining and gaining...

The guidance that the product team receives and has received from day 1 from Waze management it's not to listen to community...just do your thing and implement your ideas.

Well ....this situation and this attitude need to change ASAP

Thanks,
Shmupi

Nomenclator1677 wrote:I totally agree on what you said so well, Iain!

Each of us could see the cup half full or half empty empty. For me me, it is always better to see it half full

+1

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