HillsSnackBar wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 2:10 pm

tooltime_tim wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:28 pm Hi Nataliia,

Thanks for this feedback on the last update. I read from your comments that HQ has recognized that the update has met with a lot of justified criticism.
I can understand that Waze wants to offer an attractive, tidy and clear user interface for new editors. But for all existing editors, the WME is a tool that they use every day to keep Waze up to date and attractive for all users. We need a functional and clearly structured UI to use our time economically.

So now I have a request for you and HQ. Listen to the needs of the editors and make the WME future-proof but also a working tool again. I don't think a dark mode should have top priority there.

best regards 
Daniel 
 
 


 

 Completing Implementation of Shields in CarPlay should be done years before Dark Mode ever has a line of code written.

 

tooltime_tim wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:28 pm Hi Nataliia,

Thanks for this feedback on the last update. I read from your comments that HQ has recognized that the update has met with a lot of justified criticism.
I can understand that Waze wants to offer an attractive, tidy and clear user interface for new editors. But for all existing editors, the WME is a tool that they use every day to keep Waze up to date and attractive for all users. We need a functional and clearly structured UI to use our time economically.

So now I have a request for you and HQ. Listen to the needs of the editors and make the WME future-proof but also a working tool again. I don't think a dark mode should have top priority there.

best regards 
Daniel 
 
 

 

Webs101 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 2:24 pmDoes this mean that getting the left sidebar to scroll in Safari is not a priority?

More precisely, the left sidebar will not scroll in Safari when a road segment is selected. It scrolls fine when nothing is selected and when a map comment or a place is selected.


 

SeveriorumPatrem wrote: ↑Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:54 pm I've had a lot to say, and have been saying it in different ways again and again, because my concerns and questions to staff have been reliably ignored on the release thread. I'm noisy and difficult, I know it, but I'm not alone. There's a bunch of introverted editors (admit it, we all know the typical demographic of our editing community) that are very upset but maybe not so noisy. They matter, too.

My questions and concerns are, in my opinion, reasonable, and presented respectfully, and by the large number of 'thank's they've accumulated both here and on Discord, represent the feelings of numerous other editors and script authors. Staff has already seen what those questions and concerns are, despite not answering them, so I'm not going to repeat them, as I've recently been chastised for repeating myself in frustration.

Staff's post above asks us to be mindful of community guidelines and show respect.  Respectfully, I'd like the WME dev decision-making staff to try to respect the community a little more....

• Respect the editors. Without your volunteer editors, Waze will literally die. Editors are like your single most critical resource. It has been literally years, not unrealistically a decade in fact, that editors have been BEGGING staff to make the UI more functional and accessible, and yet update after update while some cool new features have been added, the overall trend of usability has seen consistent regression. Why do you keep doing this to your most precious resource?
• Respect the script authors. The wonderful script authors have, on their own time, created tools that have massively improved editing efficiency to overcome WME's well-known design deficiencies, which directly helps sustain the Waze business model.  Your script authors are directly responsible for many millions of edits that would not have been possible without efficiency improvements, and are simultaneously directly responsible for millions of error-free edits due to a variety of validating tools that edits are correct up front and ensure problems are caught and fixed promptly. Yet despite ample warnings that announced WME changes would harm script improvements, you rolled them out anyway, making it harder than ever to maintain scripts, and incurring major system performance issues on your editors in the process.  Why would you do this to your second most precious resource?
• Respect WME beta testers. The WME beta forum is filled with posts calling out major and in some cases fully show-stopping bugs that you were warned would cause serious problems, yet so often those bugs are rolled into production anyway.  I used to be part of that program but I quit because so many of our warnings went unheeded or overtly ignored and it felt like a waste of my time. Your WME beta testers are willingly spending time in a less than ideal environment to try to help Waze keep the editing lifeline that is essential for the future of the company unbroken, how do you think they feel when you roll stuff out anyway without explanation. Why would you do that to yet another precious resource?

 
Do I think WME dev design decisions are deliberately trying to make editor's lives difficult?  No, but I don't think anyone would be faulted for assuming otherwise based on the evidence!  The number of unforced errors, and design decision actions taken that harm your volunteer community, are staggering!  If it is not deliberate, there aren't many favorable excuses remaining.  Who is steering the WME UI ship? If it continues on this path, what do you really think the long term outcome is going to be?  It's so bad right now that I am literally embarrassed to talk to new editors to explain how to work around the nonsense design flaws that trip them up and hinder their productivity, and sheepishly explain to them that this is just part of the culture we live with. It makes one ask why we choose to live with it. It's painful.

I'm #22 all time in points in the USA with well over 1.5 million edits. My edit count absolutely does not give me special rights or privileges, but it does make me more qualified than most to call out UI issues due to the sheer volume of time I spend on it, and my very large contribution represents my passion and commitment to Waze since 2015.

Some editors have already walked away. Most are silent (remember most of us are introverts), but we've all seen editors (up to and including R5s) leave discord servers this past week or so, and some of those names match some of the DMs I've received. Actual permanent loss of editing resources has already occurred. This last release has pushed Waze's relationship with editors into dangerous territory. We edit because it is fun and relaxing.  When you make it not fun and not relaxing, what is our motivation to keep fighting through it?  We are not employees who can be expected to just get over it. We will move on to find new things we enjoy. We love Waze and want it to succeed, this is why some of us rant and complain, but if this continues, we won't be saying we left Waze, we will be saying Waze left us. Based on the dozen or so DMs I've received (they keep trickling in), the next few weeks or months of WME UI development are very important for Waze's future.

Staff's post to start this thread contains some attempts to encourage us that future UI improvements are on the horizon, namely compact display improvements. Pardon us if we don't believe that at face value, as we've been hearing those promises for literally years and getting pretty much no joy on that front. As evidence of that, I (once again) leave you with the thoughts from the late Iain House, whose post from six years ago may as well have been written last week, seeing as how so little has fundamentally changed in regard to WME UI design choices, and I am 100% positive that Iain would agree with pretty everything I have said today.
#whatwouldiainsay?

iainhouse wrote:As a Waze editor, you are an unpaid volunteer. You work for Waze for nothing and your working environment is WME - the Waze Map Editor. The people who provide this environment treat us with contempt.  images/smilies/icon_evil.gif

For many years it's been obvious that the WME developers never use WME. They design the interface on lovely, big monitors, properly mounted on desks and in first-class condition, whilst utterly ignoring the conditions most of us are working with: the most-used screen size - as measured by global web site visitors - is 1366x768. The result is unfortunate for us: lots of wasted whitespace. The most obvious and annoying example has always been the left-hand panel where the segment details are shown: if your screen is anything less than full HD resolution, you will be constantly scrolling to see all the details.

But what's worse than the bad design are the pointless changes they sometimes make to WME for no good reason. Remember I described WME as your working environment? Imagine one day you come to work and sit down at your desk - and someone has decided to alter your monitor height and fix it in a position that's comfortable for them, but not you. Or they've glued the keyboard to the desk in their preferred position. Or they've changed your favourite mouse for a trackball. You might be able to get used to these changes, but it will always take you time and you may never work as well as you used to.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me came in May 2016. Waze moved the zoom bar from the right side of the screen to the left - for no reason they have EVER explained. So I decided it was time to use my long-rusty programming skills and give something back to the community. The script rapidly grew from there as I worked on improving the WME UI for myself and other people made requests - and as Waze continued to screw up the interface with things like the new layers menu.

Then, in 2017, Waze announced they were going to completely re-design WME. Staff promised us that feedback from users would be taken into account. In October they released the new WME design to beta testers - and it was a direct slap in the face! Apart from incorporating a couple of ideas from WME Clicksaver, the new UI was good-looking, consistent - and a quantum leap backwards in usability. The V2 interface wasted, if anything, slightly more space than V1, whilst also eliminating nearly all contrast from the UI. Buttons lost their button appearance, whilst some menus were now styled as buttons. AND THEY MOVED THE ZOOM CONTROL AGAIN AND REMOVED THE SLIDER! It is awful - and whilst beta testers were still identifying new problems with the V2 interface, Waze released it without warning to production! It took me nearly 2 months to re-write just about every part of this script, to make old features work again and deal with the new screwups.

When they announced they were working on the new design, I foolishly expressed the hope this script would become redundant. Instead it's more necessary than ever.