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Post by DG567
Yes, that's true, but at the moment Waze shows landmark labels in the distance in 3d view. "Such and such senior school" or "Whatever town country park" are long strings of text to have floating around the top of the map.
Perhaps the answer is to change the way Waze displays landmark labels, or to have them as an optional layer, then editors can add them at will without detracting from the basic function of providing clear navigation instructions.
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Post by DrockMiller
What about marking Camp Sites as parks similar to what is done for beaches? In Illinois at least many camp sites are a part of State/National parks, but there are some privately run camp sites. There are private beaches as well that are marked as parks so I think camp sites and parks are pretty analogous.
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Post by DwarfLord
The Parking-Lot landmark being perhaps the most egregiously overused and misused, yearning for guidance, a few weeks ago I started a forum thread regarding Parking-Lot landmarks.

Based on responses and encouraged by a senior editor, today I added a section on the Parking Lot landmark to the US wiki on landmarks by type. I also added a preamble to that wiki with a few general words about all landmarks.

The point is to provide guidance and support for editors trying to do the right thing, and I welcome reactions as we hopefully cement consensus around this or something like it. As a relative newcomer to Waze I'm a bit apprehensive about putting this up but it seemed so necessary to have something in writing I can't seem to help myself.

Reactions to the preamble could perhaps go in this thread, but reactions to the specifics of the Parking Lot guidance should probably go in the Parking-Lot specific thread linked above.
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Post by gabmtl
I still do not know what needs to be be done ...

If I look at the "official" position on landmarks ... http://www.waze.com/wiki/index.php/Crea ... a_landmark I see:
"Creating and Editing a landmark
Some landmark types have the property of suppressing traffic jams, and this may be an unintentional consequence of suppressing traffic jams on adjacent roads and highways. Therefore, best practice when creating or editing landmarks is that the landmarks should not be snapped to roads, or cover roads that are not part of the landmark."

Any new user/editor would see that as an invitation to create all landmarks as they are available from the interface drop down menu for landmark type. That list is extensive, and since a Store/Stall would be a valid choice, as would shopping Centers, however small they may be someone is bound to add them or modify them to suite their understanding of the rules.
We do need better rules.

One question would arises: How accurate the landmark needs to be to the satellite images ?
Any new user would think that the landmark needs to be closer to reality instead of a big blob. We recognize some buildings by their shape so that does makes sense. Some landmarks include the parking lot so it becomes a bigger one, thus more visible on the client. How does that translate to reality ? If the landmark goes beyond the building limits that would mean it will cover some parking roads but that is against the rules (see above). Unless we put in a Parking lot landmark, but then we would have two landmarks that really is hard to read in the client.

If the parking lot is attached to the shopping center, then the landmark should be the shopping center. If the parking is a stand alone one it should stay a parking lot. So this would mean that all landmarks would go beyond the buildings and include nearby parking lots. There are a few shopping malls that have HUGE parking lots so once we go in that area we have no way of knowing how to go out (unless we use common sense). Thus we create parking lot roads.

So, WHO can create the rules ? ...

The client code may wish to use or not the landmarks information, but as the code gets better it could use the information to improve searches, or directions.
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Post by gabmtl
@Jpere ... I agree with you, but as you can see, in 3 posts we went off subject.

There are lots of issues that need to be fixed and that need rules.

To get back to the subject. "Landmarks".
I did a few edits and I tested some of them, so here are my observations:
1- Small stores have no visibility on the client (iphone4s) ... minimum size required.
2- The 3D view is much better to see Landmarks in the client.
3- The important point would be for the driver to know there is a Wallmart close by. This would mean that the size of the landmark needs to be as big as possible. This may mean including small parking lots in the landmark.
4- For bigger shopping malls, parking lot roads make sense for main entrance/exits, but the parking lot roads close to the streets need to be at specific distance in the map otherwise user gets "snapped" to the street. Maybe for much bigger one "Parking lot landmark" would make sense as well, with or without parking lot roads. (testing some of that at the moment)
5- Naming of the landmark needs to be small if there are other landmarks near by. I think that at some point we need to keep the landmarks generic ("Library of Old-guy-dead-for-may-year-yet-important" should be only "Library", unless the actual library name is small.)
6- We are missing POI in the client. Once that could be activated the landmarks would be less important. We need to have at least the basic ones (Gas, shopping, police, fire, hospital, pharmacy, auto_repair, and a few others.)
7- It would be of some importance to have many small store merged in the same landmark but with NoName so that the user knows there is something of importance there, without messing up the map.
8- The client is not good enough at the moment to properly display satellite accurate landmarks, so a Blob would do the job just as well.
9- I see many alerts from Waze regarding undefined gas stations. So for these landmarks we need to understand if the Gas Landmark suppresses trafic or if we need to edit Parking lot roads.
10- Editing needs to be fast and easy. At the moment we wave way too many Landmarks type from the editor. The Editor should focus on the minimal work required. Once all of that is defined, then they can add in the bonus ones :)

I did not test everything yet, and I am sure a ton of people have more experience than me so I am willing to adapt as long as it makes sense.
.
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Post by gabmtl
I played around with a few landmarks and now that I was able to test an update on my iphone4s I think we are missing a critical piece in the editor.

We are missing an importance metric for landmarks.

All landmarks should be created if they can be properly maintained. The major or critical landmarks should have a greater importance. At the moment, it seems that the client landmark display is based on size and but it is not always the case, some weird algorithm.

So we need to ask for a change in the editor
e1:- add importance metric for every landmark (so we can put small stuff as non important)
e2:- attach point for label (especially useful for large landmarks)
e4:- many small unimportant landmarks should be visually merged in a no-name landmark. (at the moment they disappear)

Some of the editor changes also apply to the client and vice versa.
We also need to ask for a change in the client for the way landmarks are displayed.
c1:- smaller font on less critical landmarks. Or an option to include specific level landmarks.
c2:- shorter text on long names (so the landmark name does not impact the road names or other landmarks)
c3:- attach point for landmarks (Would be nice to have a small list of available landmarks and their location on map with an arrow or line. This can be based on selected landmark types chosen.)
c4:- wrap around for hyphen words (MrBigshotSuchandSuch-Oldschool-Landmark should be on 2or3 lines so it will be easier to read)
c5:- Critical landmarks to have type visible even if not zoomed in. Hospital, Police. Maybe include Icons for critical landmarks.

We need the Police and Firestation and hospital to be more important than City-Hall, gas stations to have priority over convenience stores and some Supermarkets to have priority over large parks.We need a priority list of all things displayed.

What do you think about this ? :?:
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Post by HandofMadness
I have a question. How should national forest land be covered? Currently, its one GIGANTIC landmark in the client. The problem I'm running into, is there are numerous cities within this gigantic landmark. And its impossible for me to select any existing landmarks, as any time I try to click on one, the National Forest landmark is selected instead. Do we really need landmarks that cover hundreds of square miles of mountain land, including all forest, roads, etc?
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Post by HandofMadness
mtlgab wrote:@Jpere ... I agree with you, but as you can see, in 3 posts we went off subject.

There are lots of issues that need to be fixed and that need rules.

To get back to the subject. "Landmarks".
I did a few edits and I tested some of them, so here are my observations:
1- Small stores have no visibility on the client (iphone4s) ... minimum size required..
From the UK landmark page:
"Landmarks smaller than about 1600m² (40m x 40m) won't appear on the client, so there's no point adding them to the map. (A standard build McDonald's with Drive-thru is approximately 1000m²) "
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Post by HandofMadness
I know adding gas station landmarks won't affect the gas station/price search, but I don't think it would conflict or cause any problems, with the added benefit of suppressing traffic errors.

Plus the landmarks are small enough they won't show up on the client.
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Post by HandofMadness
One of the local users has used the Road to River script to turn all the local train routes into landmarks on the map. I figured this script/use of landmarks should be discussed in this thread and included on the Wiki page whenever it actually gets made.
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