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Post by AndyPoms
dctdye wrote:Do we have a guideline on Cemeteries? I've been seeing a lot here lately.
Most of those came from the basemap import.

If you look at the proposed guidelines over here (http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=129&t=38934) they say
5.8 Cemetery - Typically not mapped and handled by POI Search. HOWEVER, those cemeteries with historical significance or a significant tourist draw can be mapped using this type. Internal roads, if needed, are mapped using the Parking Lot Road Type whether or not the landmark is used. Please see local Wiki Pages / local Area Managers for information on which, if any, cemeteries are mapped for this category in your area.
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Post by AndyPoms
russblau wrote:First, the whole document is a series of instructions in the form "map this, don't map that", without any explanation. That would be fine if this were an employee manual, where people who don't follow arbitrary rules can be disciplined or fired, but the purpose of this document is to provide guidance to a group of volunteers who are unsupervised and pursuing their own personal motivations. If you just tell them "don't map X" without explaining why, they will ignore if it they feel like it. At a minimum, this document needs some explanation of what is the difference between a landmark and a POI, and why it matters for mapping.
There is another document being prepared that will explain the difference between Landmarks & POI and provide more detailed mapping instructions. Those are just the type by type guidelines. That is explained by this part of that topic
the Waze Champs are currently working with the Waze Staff to sort out some misconceptions about landmarks (snapping to roads, suppression of various reports, etc) and will also be creating a page that better addresses the Theory of Operation behind Landmarks shortly.
russblau wrote:Second, given what I understand to be the purpose of landmarks, many of these guidelines make no sense. Why is the "historical importance" of a cemetery of any value in deciding whether it is useful to drivers seeking to orient themselves on the road network? Why are parks or schools, which may be located far off a road, more useful for navigation than a store or office building? A McDonald's at a major intersection may be a more useful landmark than a church that is at the end of a long dead-end street and not visible from any other road. Again, what's the reason for these distinctions?
Well, there is a long standing guideline that we "do not map individual businesses", so that takes care of McDonalds, etc. The thing you need to remember is that Waze isn't going to say "Drive to McDonalds and take a left", it will tell you to "turn left on Main St", it does not matter if McDonalds happens to be at that intersection.

As for the Church, it typically would not get mapped as most churches are not considered "Major" - think more along the lines of the Vatican, Kaaba, & Western Wall.
russblau wrote:...the purpose of this document is to provide guidance to a group of volunteers who are unsupervised and pursuing their own personal motivations.
The Waze Champs, Country Manager & Area Managers actually do supervise the editors, make sure people are following the guidelines, and communicate with the editors. You should also be aware that editors that do not follow the guidelines and refuse to communicate with the Champs can and have had their editing privileges limited and/or revoked.
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Post by AndyPoms
vectorspace wrote:So is anyone going to tackle the Landmarks guidance on the Wiki, which is mostly blank? I know AndyPoms was going to get to it and that he has been otherwise occupied.
Things have slowed down a little bit and I have actually have started working on compiling the public comments - since the thread got so long, I'm actually doing this by hand on paper (the thread is about 35 printed pages long).
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Post by AndyPoms
vectorspace wrote:What I heard, very resoundingly clear from Ehud, was that he wanted more content. He probably wanted more content than the editors were capable of being comfortable (for various good technical and emotional reasons). So, debating about putting in POIs or not, deleting them, etc., seems a bit silly when the app could do well with more content, both that which shows on the map and that which does not.
Yes, but the other thing we discussed at the meet-up was that there is a difference between Landmarks and POIs and they need to be separate systems. Landmarks are polygons that may or may not appear shaded on the client map (a State Park would appear, a Gas Station would not, but would maintain the same MP suppression we currently have). A POI is a pin-point navigation point that Waze can route to. The other part of this is that a landmark, can have one or more associated POIs - think of a landmark named "Waze State Park", with two associate POIs names "Main Entrance" and "East Entrance". When someone searched for "Waze State Park", they would get two results "Waze State Park - Main Entrance" and "Waze State Park - East Entrance" for navigation purposes.
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Post by AndyPoms
shawndoc wrote:Rather than trying to get consensus on landmarks in general. Can we start going down the list of landmarks one by one and seeing if we can get a consensus on whether that type of land mark should be used? With any where its clear there is not a consensus, we move on and mark it to come back to later? I think we can probably knock quite a few out that way and at least be able to add a "Landmark's you should not use in the US" page in the wiki to refer people to while we hammer out the details on the more contentious landmark types.

I haven't read this entire thread (about half of it), so forgive me if this has already happened previously or been decided against.
We already did that HERE. I've complied the results, the Champs are talking about a few things that were brought up in that discussion (although it's been moved to the back burner because of major changes to WME most of us are beta testing - trust me, they are worth it). This is the 2nd item on my plate - I hope to have the first item cleared by this weekend, and then I have to write up a "theory of landmarks" wiki page & start getting things posted.
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Post by AndyPoms
Simple answer - MPs are something to look at, not necessarily something to fix.

I get a few MPs a month because drivers don't see/ignore a no left turn sign, go the wrong way down a one way street, etc. There is nothing to fix in those cases, but it's reasonable to take a look at it...

Just mark the MPs solved & move on...
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Post by aubie1988
Hi, I suspect that a 7-11 gas station located at the corner of 104th and Idalia is creating false slow traffic alerts on 104th to appear. Is it recommended to add a parking lot landmark there to try to suppress these false reports?

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Post by aubie1988
Ok thanks for the quick reply. Ill try a small parking lot and see if that helps. Thanks much!
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Post by bgodette
mapcat wrote:As far as I can tell, Waze no longer routes to landmarks in its own database. It will use an external provider (since most landmarks were never added) and use its roads to get to that place.
Grrrrrrrrrrr this recent change broke on of my Waze Wins. Waze used to be the ONLY navigation app that had Buffalo Creek Gun Club / Campfickes as a searchable and routable destination.
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Post by bgodette
vectorspace wrote:
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
PhantomSoul wrote:What's the relationship between landmarks and POI's?
In Waze? There is no relationship because there is no POI database. It's only landmarks, which are, often, being "abused" to input POIs. And "abused" only in the sense that we simply do not have another option.
That's interesting. I thought landmarks would be accessible in a POI search. I read or heard somewhere from Waze that they would like to expand their internal database of search information too. Jason's comment a few posts back in this topic seemed to indicate that landmark access in POI search started occurring about three weeks ago (unless I misunderstood). I thought I verified it worked by searching for some of my landmarks (BIA was one when I went there for a meeting).

mike
Landmarks in search results worked for a long time (back when we were using 2.4 and well into 3.x), but then broke sometime around gas prices, and has recently returned to working again.
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