Dear DACH Community,

I'd like to share once more how nice it was to spend a full day+ with you all in Cologne, and how happy I am that it was a very productive meetup that is already showing results (keep reading...).

Besides that, I'd like to express my sadness that only our friends from Germany participated from this event. Let's make sure that next year we all meet together, Germany, Austria and Switzerland!

And now, as promised, I'l glad to share the answers to some questions that had remained unanswered during the meetup.

But before of that, a little update regarding the star topic: Gas Price Feeds in Germany. I wanted you to know that we analyzed the data and it looks promising. We're facing a few technical challenges, the main of them being that our Venues server currently doesn't have the ability to decide, when to display gas prices and when not to (and as you know, the German law forbids to display any gas price when a gas station is closed).

We can always develop such capabilities, but as you might understand, such a project should be added to our pool of many other projects and be prioritized above other, more global developments (usually with higher priority). I'd like to try to take a shortcut and speed up the process. So what I did is emailing my colleagues in Google to try to get as much information from them to understand how they're supporting this feature in Google Maps Germany. My dream is to just bring their feed and plug it into Waze (things are usually more complicated than that though). Once I hear back from them, I'll let you know!

As for the questions...

Question1 (ralseu): One thing that adds to the challenge of processing MPs creating from the ADAC feed is that clicking on the marker brings you directly to one of the two end points, which are often quite far away from the marker (which is usually part of a stack of two or more). This often means that we then need to zoom out, find the markers, and zoom back in to make them selectable. Can you please change that so that the map doesn’t jump anymore?
Answer: Can you please share an example so we can look at it closely?

Q2 (ralseu): Please don’t integrate Places feeds before consulting with the community. I’m also editing the map in France sometimes, and those PURs are nearly 100% garbage.
A: Can you please share an example so we can look at it closely?

Q3 (heetENkoel): This question is a bit tricky. In Germany, more and more speed cameras are being purchased and placed in trailers at the side of the road. These stand there then longer time. However, the speed camera pin disappears after a few minutes/hours because they may not be confirmed. Is it worth considering that we put these speed cameras on the map via the reporting tool and when a certain number of users have reported that this speed camera is no longer present, then it disappears from the map.
A: We're currently looking at the possibility to add more camera types. Please request your coordinators to add your request here.

Q4 (Andy_NA): For some editors the koi-foish segments are not visible in WME. For me it happens on Chrome, Firefox & Edge. Using WME Beta it works fine. Is it known and when will it be fixed?
A: Can you please share an example so we can look at it closely? It would be even better if you did it here.

Q5 (ChrisDeBirk): As I understand the function personalized ETA, this is only functional for already driven segments or routes and not for all routings. The result is a chasing the own ETA on new long houl routings. Are there any plans to expand the data of pETA for all routings - to correct the ETA to realistic times?
A: If possible, please respond to this thread to reopen the discussion. If, for any reason, you prefer not to, please report it as a Feature Request on WazeDiscuss instead of a bug report. Feel free to tag me and/or share the new link with me for close internal monitoring. Thanks!

Q6 (LLLOOOMMM22): Can you give a rough estimate about how many app users Waze has in Germany / DACH?
A: Unfortunately, we cannot share actual numbers, but we can share the trend, and the trend of the drives it looks very nice in DACH, especially since the beginning of this year!
https://screenshot.googleplex.com/682RZYZf7q79D8a.png

Q7 (ChristophGP14): Do you have us an update, for a account for the community to comment Google Play store reviews? The question came also up in Bern last year. There are many negative reviews, which can be fixed by a short answer and thus win back the users. Only in this way we could increase our Wazer-density a bit and contact our local users.
A: Unfortunately this won't be possible but we're constantly looking for different ways to communicate with our users directly and improve their perception of the app.

Q8 (ChrisDeBirk): We see standard-comments in URs, if they are produced via AA or CarPlay. Will there be an option for customizing this text to signal to other editors that this UR is sent by another editor, which will handle this UR him/herself?
A: We agree that this is a feature that can be very helpful and I'm sorry for this but can you please submit it to the WME Suggestion Box for upvoting and prioritization?
 
 
Q9 (ralseu): The filter for URs with/without a description would instantly become a lot more useful if it considered “Reported from AAOS” as an empty description.
A: We're looking into adding more details to URs so we might be able to solve this issue in a different way. Thanks!

Q10 (ChrisDeBirk): Customized presets would be fine, to concentrate fast on the next planned tasks and to process URs MPs etc more efficient.
A: Yes, this is planned as "saved search" - select a certain set of filters and save those searches for the future

Q11 (heetENkoel): In WME you can set up multi entrance for POI. But in the app you can only sometime chose them in iOS. Are there plans to use this useful function in all platforms?
A: This is one of the top requests from different communities and our representatives in the relevant squad have tried to raise its priority multiple times. We haven't been successfully but we'll keep trying

Q12 (heetENkoel): I think this will be the 1000th question when do you give us the option to map timebase speed limit?
A: This will be developed as part of Permanent Hazard (phase 2). It's not part of H2 2023 at the moment but we will keep you posted.

Q13 (endradon): When using CarPlay Waze uses a GPS position provided by the car instead of the phone. Some manufacturers pre-process the position that is passed on to CarPlay by combining the raw GPS data and other sensory data like speed and matching it to the car's own map data. This is great in situations with bad connectivity like tunnels but leads to bad position data where a road's geo has changed dramatically or otherwise differs in Waze's and the car's map. This in turn leads to constant rerouting and calculating in the affected areas. See this Discuss thread for examples. Do you guys have any update on this? Can this be fixed or remedied on your end or are is there only waiting until Apple or the manufacturers fix this?
A: As you mentioned correctly on the WazeDiscuss thread, this is an Apple issue, which treats location differently between Apple Maps vs. third-party apps. We're in communication with Apple to better understand a time estimation for a fix on their end. Meanwhile, a workaround for this is to launch the app on your phone and it'll fix the issue. Thanks!

Q14 (endradon and Iridium1): How should we treat duplicated EV stations?
A:  When we open the live feed in your country, the new PURs may replace some previously sent stations which will clear up many of these issues. In this case accept the new PUR and delete the old station. If you're unsure to which one is the newest one and which one the oldest, please send us some examples and we'll guide you through.

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That's it for now!

I hope you have enjoyed and you're invited to leave your comments on the above answers in this thread.

Thank you!