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Post by DwarfLord
MacroNav wrote:...can we create a USA wiki page for this, that can be linked to from the regions/states that want them? I think this is much better than having no published guide (as is now) or maintaining entries on each state page.
Do we have other USA pages for features that are "opt-in", i.e., "here is national guidance but do not use it unless your state guidance OKs it"?

I understand how that might be better than multiple state pages having identical extended verbiage, which does seem a bit silly. But I don't feel good about the general principle of "opt-in" national guidance. National guidance should be national guidance.

If some clear and easy-to-follow rules could be evolved for when to use such a thing and when not to, I'd be more comfortable getting it into national guidance and allow those states that still don't like it to opt-out.

BUT, on the other hand, some drivers and junior editors may not understand why some interchanges are mapped and others aren't. The drivers could feel that Waze is being inconsistent, and the editors could take it on themselves to map interchanges in a noncompliant way. If we make it a state thing, then both drivers and junior editors might intuitively understand.

Which brings us back to the idea of "opt-in" national guidance, which makes me squirm. Hmmm. I understand why rural editors want this, but I'm not seeing good clean ways of making it national guidance.

I'll think some more about this, but in the meantime, could we at least change the title to include the word "Rural"? E.g., "Rural Interstate Exit Area Place"? I think there's general agreement these are unproductive and quite likely counterproductive in non-rural areas.
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Post by DwarfLord
herrchin wrote:...I think it's a quality proposal to have a single nugget that multiple states/regions can agree on, one that can be embedded exactly into the participating states/regions. Revision processes can be similar to how national wiki guidance is revised. However, it's not nation-wide guidance, it's a multi-state or multi-regional level designation.
Indeed. There have been times I too have explored mechanisms for entire regions to depart from national guidance. But I did so with a figurative tear in one eye.

It always makes me sad to see guidance splinter. When I began working on the wiki there was only one global set of guidance, with a few elaborations associated with a handful of different countries. In the space of just a few years, it has splintered so far that now even a single country (ours) can have potentially 50 different rulebooks.

Personally, after thinking on this for a few days, I've concluded that I don't want Rural Interstate Exit Area Places anywhere near me. I've never missed them. I believe they are unproductive or even counterproductive for driving situations in heavily-Wazed areas. They might be mostly harmless and potentially even useful to some Wazers in wide-open spaces, but even there, having them some places and not others increases the risk of drivers perceiving Waze as inconsistent and of uninformed copycat edits that add them where they don't belong.

So I would not want to see these become a nationally endorsed practice. How we as a community feel about the tradeoffs of further splintering guidance is a separate question.
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Post by DwarfLord
herrchin wrote:
HBiede wrote:Oh, lemme tell ya, I was not expecting this much of a discussion from a (initially seemingly) small idea.
Minimum thread size in Waze is always 3 pages ;)
More if the thread involves adding new Area Places :mrgreen:

Seriously, though, the topic of how much or how little detail the Waze display should show to every Wazer who passes through an area has been contentious as long as I can remember. The fact that Waze itself seems to place a very low priority on display quality does not help. I mean, it wasn't that long ago they finally made railroads look like railroads instead of like drivable roads(!!!). And pedestrian paths still display looking like drivable roads. Meanwhile parking lots display as undifferentiated gray polygons -- how that is supposed to help anybody I sure don't know.

In my dreams, Waze realizes that consistent user-interface graphic design actually matters, overhauls their display, and creates, in close cooperation with global editing communities and human-factor experts, universal display guidelines that increase consistency and clarity while decreasing the risk of distracted driving. Sigh...
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Post by DwarfLord
Kartografer wrote:Don't knock it till you try it.
Fair enough. But I drove through a pile of these in Oregon during a road trip last summer and never noticed them even once. After I got home I went to do some minor editing and was astonished to find them in WME (as I thought they were noncompliant). Seeing them on the editor was the first I knew they were there!

Whether I didn't notice them because the other Area Places nearby outcompeted their names for display real estate, or simply because I was looking at the road like I'm supposed to, I don't know. Either way it reinforces my suspicion that these don't really do that much good.

I don't dispute that, if there is absolutely nothing else going on with the display except a dark distant highway and, up ahead in the distance, a shimmering light of an interchange, knowing that the interchange is Exit 666 could be a net positive for Wazers. But as soon as there is any complexity in the display environment I believe these things quickly become net negatives for drivers, and I don't know how to craft guidance to distinguish the two use cases so that Waze doesn't come across as inconsistent or we get uninformed copycat edits.
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Post by DwarfLord
Kartografer wrote:But if you didn't notice them, how are they a net negative? I was thinking that the reason for opposition was that they would be too noticeable and distracting
I'm glad you asked :mrgreen:

Below is a screenshot of Exit 104 of I-84 at Biggs Junction, Oregon. You'll see the "Exit 104" displayed. What you don't see displayed are any of the three gas stations located at that exit -- a large Pilot Travel Center, a Shell, and a Pacific Pride. Granted that at this zoom the Shell and Pacific Pride might not show, but the Travel Center surely would. I would call this a fail.

I can't speak for others, but my concern is not that these Interchange APs would be distracting all by themselves, and only slightly that they outcompete other Area Places on occasion. Rather I'm concerned that they increase the overall detail and complexity seen by every Waze user while driving. I believe the Waze display does not handle detail or complexity in a way that is easily accessible to drivers who have very limited attention available. As a result, increasing detail and complexity makes it harder for the driver to quickly notice the most important things.

What is our bar for increasing display complexity? Do we ask "is there a significant benefit to drivers" or do we ask "does it not make things significantly worse than they already are"? If the latter, I'll concede that the proposed Area Place passes that bar. But because I'm worried about display complexity in principle, I would wish for our bar to be higher than that.
IMG_2002.jpg
Biggs Junction, OR / I-84, Exit 104
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Post by DwarfLord
I will concede that the problem of out-competing other, more important Area Places will not happen very often. And I will grant that most drivers, like me, aren't even looking at the display that much as we have more important things to look at and will never notice (and thus never care).

My concern is that if these won't do any good for most drivers (most, as in those who frequent the most heavily-Wazed greater metropolitan areas and whose displays are already filled with information) then just because we can construct scenarios where they might help specific people that is not by itself a persuasive case that the whole country should add them everywhere to be shown on all Wazers' displays.

If the the proposal is not that the whole country should add them everywhere, then we should see the proposed language that specifies where they are and are not to be added.
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Post by DwarfLord
Response to kyhtak: As the Waze Map Editor is currently programmed, any editor can create an Area Place. It is true that Waze can adjust that, but if you think it's hard to get an actionable decision made here in the community, you ain't seen nothing. Trying to persuade Waze to do just about anything is virtually impossible, and even if you succeed, it could be years before it manifests in the app or editor.

So, any sentence that begins with "if we could just get Waze to change..." is usually the prelude to a lost cause. I so wish it were otherwise.
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Post by DwarfLord
I thought I'd show an example of an Exit AP in a not-atypical metropolitan area. I tried to size the image so it displays at about the size of a cellphone screen, but you need to click on it (in the forum engine) to view it at a fair size; the thread display shows a smaller version of the image.

IMPORTANT: Before you look at the image below, place yourself at least two feet from your screen. Take off any glasses you use to read close up, or if you need glasses to see at a distance, put them on. Now focus at infinity, out a window if you have one handy. Look intently at whatever's out the window. Now switch your focus to the image for no more than one second (!) and immediately look back out the window.

How much of the display was signal -- it stands out in your mind from what you glimpsed -- and how much is noise that made it harder to distinguish what stood out?

I don't think there's any controversy about this, but it seemed worth an example image.
IMG_2004.jpg
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Post by DwarfLord
dfw_gis wrote:It appears fairly unobtrusive.
Indeed. It is so unobtrusive, especially when viewed under the circumstances I recommended, as to be virtually invisible except to make the rendering of the interchange a bit fuzzier.

Now, imagine some drivers noticed that something was there, and wondered what it said. Or, realized that the text was an Exit ID, but could not make out the number during a brief glance. Some of those drivers would be tempted to stare at the display a bit harder in order to read the text. Though I'm not proud to admit it, I have found myself doing this a few times with the Waze display while driving. Others must have as well. During this effort, there is no doubt we are visually and cognitively impaired.

If drivers have to accept visual and cognitive impairment in order to read the Exit # on the proposed Area Places while driving, is that something the editing community should encourage?
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Post by DwarfLord
kentsmith9 wrote:If we have multiple states using these IEAs, then I propose we have a national page at least describing their existence and purpose. Without that, an editor may have seen one in one state, but a search in their own state or the national pages would turn up nothing.
Because the perspective of the Regional Coordinator heavily influences whether a given state adopts a controversial practice, I wonder if it is time to enhance regional pages so they can be customized? At present we have regional pages (for example, for the Southwest Region) but they are not designed to support region-wide guidance.

One could imagine placing regional guidance on one region's page rather than directly under the national wiki. Then, other regions can say they follow it. For example, the Southwest Region can say they follow the Northwest Region's approach to this or that.

I mention this with mixed feelings, as I suspect that support for region-specific guidance would foster further splintering of our national practices. I don't want that, but I fear it may already be a lost cause. In any event, if we do end up with de facto region-specific guidance, it makes sense to locate that guidance at the level of regional boundaries rather than at the state level.
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