A concise version is already there.

iainhouse wrote:...I particularly like the phrase "a concise version" - i.e. the opposite of anything I write.

I really do like your comprehensive answers Iain, as they not only give a reason, but usually the mechanics. When you learn how Waze works, you can often guesstimate why it is broken. I only said concise as it has taken me the past 3 days to revamp the Roads page and it is already long enough

I'm always happy to link back to forum posts from the wiki as there isn't a way for everyone to discuss changes other than within the forum.

Thanks; I appreciate the explanation and the fixes!

There are several reasons for mapping railways

• People will use Waze on trains. Without railways being mapped, the GPS data will "corrupt" road segments parallel to tracks as Waze assumes the train users are driving along them.
• People will also try to pave when they're on trains - probably for the points. If the railway is already there, the paving will have no effect.
• Railways are often very visible in urban driving environments - where roads go under a railway bridge or bridge over railway lines. By having the railways visible on the app (and they weren't until a year or two ago), it can provide extra information to drivers. If Waze is telling you to turn left in x feet and you can see that the turn on the screen is just after a railway line, this can be very helpful in telling you where to turn.
• Mapping level crossings - by joining the railway and road segments - can improve Waze's ability to provide ETAs at such a junction.

However, there is also Waze history to consider. For a long time, railways weren't visible in the app and we didn't have real-time closures, so their impact on the app was much less. But they've also been around for a long time and change very rarely. There also used to be a Waze feature in the very early days that would attempt to improve the map automatically: If two segments with the same level crossed each other without a junction, and servers "saw" drivers turning from one to the other, a junction could be created automatically.

For these reasons, most railways were mapped a long time ago by senior editors. They were all set at elevation -5 (to stop the automatic joining) and locked at L5 (to stop inexperienced editors messing around with them).

Now we have new standards, but since railways aren't very important and there are always plenty of roads to fix, many railways are still at E-5/L5. It's a way of identifying railways that still need sorting out. The new standards are:

• Railways should be set at their "real" elevation as far as practical. i.e. E0 for ground-level railways. E1+ where they are elevated.
• Underground rail sections should not generally be mapped - although there's no need to split up existing segments for short tunnels.
• Railways should be junctioned with roads at level crossings.
• Where a railway crosses (over or under) a road segment, the road segment needs to be split. Real-time closures can only be applied to segment IDs that are updated to the app. Since railway bridges are frequent causes of road closures, if the road segment is split to go over/under the railway in advance, then the closure can be added in the right place without affecting destinations further away on the same segment.
• Railways should never have a segment or city name set.

Generally speaking, it's still only senior editors who bother sorting out railways - because when you start to do it, you often encounter highly-locked road segments that need splitting in the process. But if you have a segment of railway you want to sort out, by all means ask for a downlock.

PJ_Aitken wrote:The Borders Railway should be connected to the rest of the network:

I've joined it, but it's actually completely unneccessary. Waze absolutely will not route along railway segments and will not report map problems involving them. So the fact it wasn't joined would have made no difference.

But I'm glad I did join it. The county for your new segment is "Edinburgh". But the segment I joined it to is "Midlothian". This is another problem with railway segments. They're often long and cross county borders. They must be split and the correct county set. Otherwise, when you create new segments nearby, they will be given the wrong county "picked up" from the rail line. I'd better go and find the border now.

Thanks, Ian. I do have a tendency to post long, detailed explanations of things like this if you catch me in a loquacious mood late at night - and I'm often loquacious. I generally follow it up by keeping a link to the post in the vague hope I'll remember I've answered the question before if it get's asked again.

Personally, I've pretty much given up on Wazzopaedia. I used to edit the Wiki a lot, but after the great, pointless exercise to mangle it onto a different platform, it killed it dead for me. Long periods of inability to edit it at all interspersed with brief periods when I seem to have permission are the main problem. But then the few times I've had permission and tried to edit it, I've found it such an awful experience that I've not wanted to repeat it. I'll just settle for trying to keep track of "the thoughts of Chairman House".

Having said that, atropicshiner has been doing some good work on Wazzopaedia. I was going to point him to this post, but he's already spotted it and pointed to the correct Wazzopaedia link. I particularly like the phrase "a concise version" - i.e. the opposite of anything I write.

"The Quotations of Chairman House" (I looked up the proper title for the Little Red Book) is now part of my Wazzopaedia user page. I do, at least, seem to be able to edit that.

I appreciate that Chris - as I do the considerable amount of work you are putting into the UK Wazzopaedia.

I agree that it's often best to have WP kept as concise as possible and use the forum as an "expansion" for more detailed explanations/discussions. It's not that I can't write concisely. It's just that my natural style is to write in great detail. When I'm finished, I then look at it, realise it's far too long and condense it down from the long version. A fair amount of our Wiki comes from me doing just that.

When I started with Waze, Dave2084 was the main "Wiki guy". Then I did quite a lot, up until Wazzopaedia came along. Now you're doing a lot of it - and I think that, whoever's doing it, it benefits from being mainly done by a single person in a consistent style.

If my ramblings/reminiscences through the history of Waze and editing are helpful to keeping Wazzopaedia up to date then It' good to know I'm still contributing.

This would be a useful addition to the UK Wazopedia so it doesn't get lost in time.