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Post by nzhook
ispyisail wrote: I currently disagree on this but im still in trial stage.

Because of the openness of waze im going to suggest we list both methods and let editors choose. Over time one will become more popular than the other?
Im also still not 100%, but I think if we define what the no city field would do, people can determine their best option. The only option would then be when we then decide that the common method used.

So if we focus down on the Rural bit (as Urban is fine)
Rural Areas
There are two methods used currently to determine road in rural areas of New Zealand, both options are acceptable however an area using one method should not be interchanged with another method unless the whole area is changed.

Method 1, Automatically places an urban indicator around cities/areas and shows less areas on the map
This method uses the 'No City' tick box when the area is no longer built up (eg. commonly when driving at open road speeds). Add at least one alternate street with the closest City/town name entered to aid in searching and navigation. If a road joins two city/towns split the road at an appropriate so both halves can be in each town.

Method 2, The area name appears over all roads, and shows every area on the map.
This method uses the city field populated with the name of the town, village or area in which the road lies. This applies to Freeways, Ramps, Major and Minor Highways, Primary Streets and Streets.
The appropriate name for any given road can be determined using other sources such as an AA Map, government GIS data or council websites.

Where a road extends across boundaries, change the City name at a nearby intersection if appropriate or split the road if necessary in order to change the name in the correct place. As an example of this, Ararimu Road begins in Ramarama, passes through Ararimu and ends in Paparimu. The City field is used to reflect the correct name for any given segment of the road.

Where the boundary of two areas follows the centre of a road, use one area in the City field and add the other area in an alternate City field, for searching and navigational purposes.
I originally had No City (Method 1) last, but it got lost in the description for having a city.
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Post by nzhook
pcp192 wrote: Does this explain why Ngatea appears in exactly the right place and Patea didn't (before nzhook forced the placement by removing the city name from surrounding roads)?
Would have been by coincidence as I had entered the roads for Patea a long time before I clicked No City on the others, and up until I clicked No City all searches returned Patea in the wrong place. (map layer had not updated for a long time so thats a hard one to guess)
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Post by pcp192
Hi all, as noted by someone in a previous post I've been absent from the discussion for a few days. Sorry about that - I've had a busy time at work for the past couple of weeks and not much time to devote to either editing or keeping up on the discussions. Having said that I was reading some of it just didn't have time to respond. I did give it thought though :-)

Here's a few of my thoughts:
1. Editing an area to see the outcome as a trial is a great idea
2. The discussion has been ongoing for a while with various ideas on how to achieve the desired results. We should at this stage take a step back and make sure we're all clear on what the problem(s) is we're needing to solve so that we can make sure the solution achieves this. The 'problems' should also be included in the Wiki documentation so that new users understand the rationale behind any decision on how to do this.
3. The reference to St Loius is not correct - taking a close look at the map both Streets and Primary Streets have the same name in any given area. In the central city area of St Loius they all have the city field of St Loius and in the suburbs all streets and Primary Streets are using the suburb name in the city field. The net effect of this is that the suburb names appear on the map and in the city centre it is named St Loius. If one was to search for 'St Loius' for a destination I'm guessing it would take you to the centre of the area called St Loius.
This is the effect we need in Auckland (and other cities) as well with suburb names appearing correctly on the map.
Looking at this view on the client
photo (1).PNG
(186.02 KiB) Downloaded 285 times
it currently shows suburb names (admitedly not all correct yet). My question is - if we name all primary streets using 'Auckland' what will you see on the client in this scenario? As all 'Streets' are not visible won't it show just Auckland? That is an undesirable outcome.
Using the St Loius example, the Central Auckland area would be named Auckland in the city field and show accordingly on the map, aiding in both display and navigation.

The biggest problem here is that we are trying to create a cludge to solve the fact the Waze cannot achieve exactly what we want. If it had more fields for naming and the ability to geographically pinpoint the centre of any town, then we wouldn't need to even consider a complex set of rules where the city field is used differently in various scenarios and unfortunately the rule as currently proposed does not suit all scenarios.

As has been pointed out by others in previous posts, Waze is designed for a purpose - to route intelligently between two known points. At this time it does that pretty well - getting better with more users of course. Over time I'm sure more functionality will be added that makes it even better but for now, there is no silver bullet to make it work in all the ways (excuse the pun :) ) we want it to. Perhaps we have to accept that the app is limited and stick to the principal of keeping it as simple as possible.
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Post by pcp192
finshona wrote:Does that mean that St Louis and its suburbs actually show what you've been suggesting all along that by using the area name (ie suburb name in a city or the local area in rural areas) used on all roads in that way will display the areas correctly?
I think so yes, but there will always be exceptions given the limitations of the apps architecture.
Who navigates to "Auckland" in fact who navigates to a suburb, im going to suggest not many people. You navigate to street level and use suburb/city to make sure its the right one.
I thought that was one of the things ispy and nzhook had wanted to achieve based on the comment about towns like Patea. Though, having another look at Patea, if you search for Patea on the live map or on the client, it takes you to the centre of the town. I don't know why it shows the label on the map where it is but does it really matter? If a road is in Patea then why not label it so?

I agree with what ispy said above and we don't need to build the map in a way that makes this work - that level of funcationality may come in the future. Right now, we should just name the roads correctly without leaving fields blank and the map will display as well as it can. As you say, it's more important that people can serach for the destination road and use the suburb/city to confirm they have selected the correct one. If we have roads in rural areas with no city field, how will they do that, especially if it's a long road that crosses boundaries between towns or rural areas? Ararimu Rd is a good example as it flows from Ramarama, to Ararimu, to Hunua.
No, have a look at Whangarei, it has been named with our new/proposed naming system for a few update cycles now .
True - but at the same time Whangarei disappears as you zoom out so what's been achieved by naming all the primary streets as Whangarei? All that's visible when zooming out is the surrounding suburbs. How would the map differ if in the suburban areas ALL streets had the suburb name?
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Post by pcp192
Does it really matter what the live map looks like? It's the client that is most important and if someone is looking for Whangarei won't they just search for it anyway which will take them very close to the centre of the city?
I don't think we need to be concerned with the aesthetics of the live map or the view from a high zoom level in any platform.
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Post by pcp192
ispyisail wrote:
Also a small extension to this would be where a city/town/suburb name conflicts, in which case the UK method should be used?
It doesn't look so good but i'm not sure it really matters
Agreed.
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Post by pcp192
nzhook wrote:
pcp192 wrote:Does it really matter what the live map looks like? It's the client that is most important and if someone is looking for Whangarei won't they just search for it anyway which will take them very close to the centre of the city?
I don't think we need to be concerned with the aesthetics of the live map or the view from a high zoom level in any platform.
Who's the 'we'? I dont use Waze to navigate that often, so to me aesthetics is quite important, if I want to look at another city I zoom out move to it and then zoom back in (especially if I cant spell it, after all I have to keep copy and pasting Whangarei).
If all you want is a pretty map use Google or some other platform. Don't try to make Waze something it's not intended to be. The homepage says 'Waze is the world's fastest-growing community-based traffic and navigation app'. The basic principals of Waze are to keep the map as simple as possible to make sure routing works with accurate driving instructions.

If you really want to edit a map for the aesthetics rather than functionality go to google.com/mapmaker. You'll also find it's more tolerant of spelling mistakes. :lol:
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Post by pcp192
Agreed, although we really need to work out what we are trying to achieve, as theres multiple different things that we are trying to address.
- Display of Urban areas
- Searching Urban areas
- Display of Rural areas
- Searching Rural areas
Yes - defining the requirement is essential and this is a good summary.

I believe we are all now in agreement on naming in urban areas:

In urban areas, the Primary city field is used to define the city, town or suburb name of where the street is. The central CBD area of a city should be named using the City name. On the client and live map, this will show the City name in the CBD with suburb names appropriately placed around the city.
The alternate City field is used to aid in searching to ensure the road can be found using either the city or suburb in the search string.


e.g. St Heliers Bay Rd, St Heliers, Auckland.
- Primary City name - St Heliers
- Alt City Name - Auckland
Where a long road passes through multiple Suburbs, the name should change accordingly along the length of the road.


I've left the rural one out for now as I think we should confirm agreement on this first.
I'd suggest running a poll using the forum which it can do, but it seems I don't have permission to setup a Poll - do any of you have that capability?

So far there's only a small number of people actively contributing to the discussion so perhaps a poll is a good way to get more input as well. Either way, anyone reading this, please feel free to submit your ideas and views on the above.
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Post by pcp192
Ispy, can you explain clearly what the benefit is of using the method you've proposed?
I'm not trying to be difficult here, just wanting to get a concise explanation to ensure the reasoning is clearly understood.
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Post by pcp192
As you zoom out, what is the desired effect?
Are you wanting the suburb names to disappear when only primary streets and above are visible?
If not, how will the behaviour differ to having the suburb names on all primary streets as well?

Have you tested both to be sure of the outcome?

Are you wanting the map to look like the St Louis example?
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