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Post by Daknife
I'd say National Forest should NOT be landmarked, A National Park or Monument yes but not a forest. Besides how are they accounting for private land mixed in with the National Forest? Well based on your complaint about towns inside the "landmark" not at all, but that is an issue. I vote to delete such a landmark.
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Post by Daknife
And I recall a thread where someone in Europe posted a map pic regarding some other issue but it was solid landmarks, with roads weaving between them and names overlapping the landmarks to the point that some of them I couldn't tell which landmark they belonged to.

AND

One more point/question with landmarks: Regarding the landmarking and naming of local businesses be they large or small, could a user labeled business being on the map somehow conflict with a Waze marketing agreement like they have with Shell stations? Could Shell complain about all the Chevron and Texaco stations being landmarked for free while they are paying for their advertising agreement (granted I understand the Shell stores get a Shell Logo whereas the competitors would just be landmarks. I don't think it should be an issue, but could it be?
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Post by Daknife
It's something they were doing in CA at least. I've never actually seen how they show up, as there are very few Shell stations in Utah and none near me. But it's been well discussed due to a coupon/discount campaign they were running with Shell in CA. It was supposed to be a forerunner of things to come as Waze finds ways to monetize Waze.
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Post by Daknife
Time for a bump, based on this question viewtopic.php?f=13&t=33447&p=333311#p305597 in the newcommers sub-forum. It seems to me we've reached a consensus as to the limited scope of landmarks that should be emplaced. Can one of you wonderful Wiki-masters work on getting the Wiki to echo the limited list of acceptable Landmark/POI's to be placed. The question that prompted this post was about Malaysia so it wouldn't be a total answer but if we can point to a limited list in the US perhaps it can help establish a standard for limited lists elsewhere as well.
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Post by Daknife
That's an idea, but this thread (with participation of several Champs and active CM's) had already come to a general consensus as to the limited nature and scope of landmarks. Why do we need to wait for the Champs to come to a second exclusive consensus? and then get to thrash that all out again.

Edited to add that the CT list is pretty good, but excludes some landmarks accepted in this thread such as significant Religious landmarks, while excluding everyday houses of worship. This is a point here in Utah where there is an LDS (Mormon) Chapel on every other block in some areas, those I've always excluded (I am LDS) as well as all other regular houses of worship, but LDS Temples are considered special destinations even here in Utah where we have 12 of them, and thus I've allowed them as well as the Hare-Krishna Temple and the one Catholic Cathedral in the State. Similarly in this thread it was mentioned and not contested (and thus accepted in my understanding) that bodies of water that are common driver navigation landmarks and are NOT found in the water layer are allowed. The river running the length of the Salt Lake Valley, the Jordan River, is not in the water layer for most of it's length so I've just authorized the editor who has been begging to add it, to do so.
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Post by Daknife
Okay but you exclude a number of very concerned CM's and even AM's who are trying to enforce the editing guidelines in their area's. The Wiki is currently worthless in regards to landmarks. We had a very good discussion in this thread. It seemed like a general consensus was achieved here, one that involved more active editors than just the exclusive champs. And then you decide to just toss that and exclude those who haven't been able to make it to a meet-up from the discussion. One that has already been had and to my opinion an agreement or at least a baseline was achieved. One that is similar but different from the list in the CT wiki page.

Meanwhile the average editor who cares enough to try to follow the wiki is given nothing to work with in regards to landmarks. So we end up with messes like in thread I linked to a few posts ago where so much is landmarked that landmarks become worthless.
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Post by Daknife
You are right that it is jumbled but the points where I see consensus where when someone would post a view on acceptable landmarks and nobody really questioned it. When there were questions and debate there was obviously no consensus but there are a few points where acceptable landmark types were given and not questioned or argued further.

Your own list was mostly supported
viewtopic.php?f=276&t=26005&start=10#p248225But you've changed the religious sites item.
Mapcat made a very valid point on water
viewtopic.php?f=276&t=26005&start=20.
As was addressed by me above when I mentioned that most of a significant river running through the main population center of Utah is NOT in the water layer. I had been regularly deleting any attempt to put it in with landmarks until another local editor pointed out mapcat's post. And in the very next post you agreed with him in effect that if it's not there then it can be mapped. Nobody else contradicted that point.

Some other areas:
Multiple posters including Jason300 mentioned that they keep cemeteries as many came in with the basemap import.

Military bases: I use the landmark for because there are large areas of those bases that do not have roads to maintain the "City" border. That and the landmark for Hill AFB in my case was there before I started editing. I've adjusted it but felt no need to delete it as it does mark a significant landmark/travel obstacle that must be gone around rather than through.

Other thoughts I have on the list, which I would love to share (thus my biggest aggravation in the discussion being pulled out from under those of us who really care but haven't been able to make it to a meet-up to get the Waze Champ tag (and I can't make the one in march since they chose a drill weekend so I'll be busy playing soldier), and who were very involved in the discussion. Anyway other thoughts, I don't see the value of marking firedepts, people very rarely go to the fire dept it's the other way around. There is no real value as a commuter to seeing the fire dept on the screen. Police on the other hand is another matter. A good safety trick for someone being followed or harassed is to drive to the police dept. And more importantly I have every PD in UT labeled (<City name> Police Dept) my local editors like it as well. I also like marking all golf courses as Parks rather than sporting complexes because I feel the green fits them better. Again several of my local editors agree on this. Plus the green helps see at a glance that it's not just another random mall up ahead but either a park or a GC. So that would be one thing I would suggest for discussion.

Stadiums I include the attached parking lots in the overall shape unless an actual street runs between the complex and the lot. But part of the reason for that is to discourage newer editors from deciding to landmark every parking lot out there. I fully support limiting it to Park and Ride, and maybe free public parking lots in cities. But not paid or just lots belonging to businesses.

I do have another suggestion for discussion, in regards to junctions. Specifically in the night mode at least land-marked junctions don't always show up (don't know why but I've verified this personally). I was trying something to get rid of a part of the Portola Valley Smudge in NV at very rural interchange. I put a landmark but the local I was working with said that while the LM did show up with the exit name, the "City name"(Portola Valley) was larger and bolder. So I then deleted and re-citied every road I could see within the screen, and then relabled the road segment over the freeway with the exit number (example) <Exit 142:> I admit to forgetting where that exit was to go check so I tried it again on a couple rural exits in Utah. I think it works great (but only in rural areas where there are no cities anywhere near. It creates a mini city just for the interchange, and that exit name show's up big and bright on the map as you approach it, and as you are skimming over the map if pre-planning a route. I've only done it on a couple, but I think it's something that should be considered as a proposal for rural exits with no city right there. for an example Note the village the exit is named for is still several miles away and other than the road leading to that village (we call it a town but it doesn't really qualify as that anymore) all other roads leading from that interchange are dirt. And I kept the city designation to only the actual overpass so it keeps the designator small. Again this would probably not work anywhere near a real city.

Don't lock us out of the discussion please, I do recognize that it's hard keeping it on topic when just anyone can post. And periodically someone would come in and post something contrary to what had been discussed before but usually that was straightened out. The CT list isn't bad, but I don't feel it's quite correct and most importantly I don't like being kicked out of a discussion I was very active in. I am a strong advocate of the fewer landmarks the better but really need a concrete list I can point my local editors to. I guess I'll try taking the CT list, editing it to how we want it in Utah and we'll just end up with 50 sets of state specific editing standards. Don't start a discussion in the public realm and then try to pull it out from under us.
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Post by Daknife
AndyPoms wrote:You're correct, there are certainly some changes that have to be made to the CT list to make it National Friendly and part of what I'm working on proposing to the champs first will include a lot of language similar to "Please see local Wiki Pages / local Area Managers for information on what is considered 'Major' and mapped for this category in your area". We will still need local guidelines/specifics.

Religious Sites: Did you see my post above that puts some info about the discussion we had in CT? The one where we decided to landmark "Major" sites & quickly decided that CT had none, so we moved on, but the "Major" discussion is still valid. That's something that would be included the National Guidelines. The basic idea was if the religious site was one which someone would make a pilgrimage to/visit as a tourist attraction, it should probably be mapped - but like I said, we quickly decided that CT doesn't have any (well, since the Holy Land park closed).

Water: I posted above that we were working on figuring out what was there & what wasn't in CT. We did the original work on the guidelines for CT when there were issues with the water layer & we didn't want to mess with it. I would certainly agree (as would the other CT users) that if it's not on the water layer, and is significant it should probably be mapped - HOWEVER, we need to talk to Waze about this as they may be adding other water bodies (they are mostly working on coastlines now) and un-submerging roads.

Cemeteries: Yes, a lot were basemapped, not all were. What value do the add? In CT, we're not going around deleting them, but we aren't adding them either.

Military Bases: There will be exceptions to every guideline as we can't write anything that is iron clad because we need flexibility. You mention Hill AFB, and it's landmarked so people don't go through the base, but 1) isn't there a fence around the entire base? 2) aren't all the roads on base a mix of "Private" and "Parking Lot" (preventing Waze from routing through the base already)? At Naval Submarine Base New London we have to keep renaming the on-base gas station to "NEX Fueling (NO PUBLIC ACCESS)" as we don't want to get complaints about unauthorized people trying to go there from off base. We've tried to reach out to a few of the on-base users (based on their editing) to work more on their map (including landmarks), but they haven't responded. Overlapping landmarks causes issues which is one of the bigger reasons we went with the city layer.

Fire Dept: In most places they are considered a "Safe Haven" and you can get emergency medical care there or if they are on a call there is a call box out front. Most maps mark these - It's worth it.

Police Dept: The City/Town name just adds unnecessary words to the map. In your example does the person being followed care if they are going to "Anytown Police Dept" or "Othertown Police Dept"? No, they just care they are going to a "Police Dept", any Police Dept. Anyway, if one were to search, they would use POI search, not landmarks. It's there to help people see it on the map.

Golf Courses: Private Courses will appear in POI Search or can buy advertising from Waze. This falls under the "Don't map individual businesses" guideline.

Stadiums: They just look cooler with the shape & the parking lot roads handle the jams & missing roads reports. It was something we played with before making this decision.

Interchanges: The issue is that larger, more complex interchanges would be very hard to build, label & control. The problem with "hacking" the city layer like that is that a report on the overpass will display as "Main St, <Exit #>" instead of the town where it is.

Other things of note, one does not have to attend a meetup to become a Champ. No one has said anything about locking the userbase out of the discussion, in fact I said the opposite several times.
Okay a couple points of First as to religious sites, you will soon have an LDS Temple in Hartford (you don't have to map it) ;) and members do make pilgrimage like trips to them if they don't live near one. In the US these trips are now mostly day trips because there are enough of our Temples, but many members still make an excursion of a trip. In other parts of the world members sacrifice and save greatly to be able to travel to a Temple just once in their lives. So while not on par by any means with Mecca or other similar sites, these are significant locations. Similarly in Utah we don't have a strong catholic presence but we do have one historical cathedral built about the same time as the Salt Lake City Temple and I made sure it was mapped as it is of importance historically as well as religiously.

Stadiums, okay I can buy the cooler shape argument, but when you map them to their shape that tells newbies to map other buildings to their shapes. Let's be consistent. If it's a large complex (building and parking lots) make it one large landmark just like malls, universities, and so on.

Golf Courses, what tripped me up I now see is the word Private. Most of our Golf courses are publicly owned, and it's not worth the effort to determine which is which, so I've just told my editors to mark em all as parks.

Fire Depts, When there is an insta-care clinic with actual medical personnel usually closer than a fire dept, I'd map those clinics before fire depts. Yes they are also the safe haven for abandoning children, but how common is that actually and a POI search will do just as well. I guess my real objection to it though comes from dealing with editors who wanted to landmark everything and trying to limit them. I just don't see the value in marking them. Yes I know most maps do but still have never seen the need for that either, other than it dates from when the town fire-hall would often double as the town hall or town meeting hall. And half the men in town were members of the volunteer FD force.

As to the Interchange "hack" no it doesn't affect reporting negatively. A report on the overpass will report as being in (if you look at the linked example) Manderfield Exit, Utah, not Manderfield Ut. Any reports on the neighboring roads won't give a city name in the report. And if there is a problem that points me right to the exit rather than the city. As I said before, this will only work in rural areas well away from any actual city. Another location I tried this has Just the exit number as the name. [urlhttps://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=5&lat=38.0715 ... TTTFTTTTFT]Exit 95, Utah[/url] Again I'm not set on this, I think it's clever, I think it works. It always shows up on the client whereas the landmarks do not. As with this one at the south side of Nephi, UT. I just verified that the landmark I placed there months ago does not show in the client in day or night mode, and thus the exit number does not show, which is what I think we really want them to show.

And to Jason, thanks for the info, my biggest frustration here, even more than being or at least feeling excluded from the discussion is the fact that while you guys have been debating this in secret, I've been battling for months with no set resource to point editors to and say "This is how it is to be done." There was a good discussion going, then it suddenly died it seemed to me that lacking anyone taking the initiative and editing the Wiki or saying "Okay it sounds like most people seem to agree with XXX" most editors seemed to just be going along with what had been said that wasn't immediately shot down. Give me (well I just created a Utah guideline page so it's not so important now) something to point new editors at and I'll be happy. Taking the discussion behind closed doors, with no statement to that effect and leaving me with nothing to point new editors at has caused great frustration. I finally had to get one editor banned for a bit as he simply wasn't responding to any effort to get him to communicate, and he stated that lacking any set wiki instructions, he was just trying to mark all the landmarks the drop-down list let him mark.
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Post by Daknife
Okay, Jason but that's not what I was told. I was told that the discussion "had" been moved to the Champs, as in it was ongoing there without the rest of us having any knowledge of it or input into it. What should have been said was something to the effect of, "Good point Dakife, this has kind of dropped off the radar, we'll move all that has been said to the champs and finalize it over the next few days, and then we'll get the wiki updated."
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