jasonh300 wrote:Landmarks aren't searchable. Therefore, that McDonald's is going to come up in the text search whether it's landmarked or not.

They do for me.
I've been able to search landmarks for the past month.
http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=43335

My vote for no parking lot roads nor parking lot landmarks until Waze comes up with a better system that:

* Routes correctly
* Looks good in the client
* Isn't a royal waste of time having to map Parking lots on every square inch of the world
* Is agreed upon the standards for mapping in the editor

Right now there is a war going on:

* Add parking lot roads
* Delete parking lot roads
* Add parking lot landmarks
* Delete parking lot landmarks

All map editors are wasting their time with nearly zero value added to the map.

So my opinion to the original post - don't do anything to the 7-11 lot.

AndyPoms wrote:

skapur1 wrote:1. People are confusing POIs with landmarks. Since Waze does not allow editors to add POIs but allows editors to add landmarks, editors add landmarks when they really want to add POIs. In theory, POIs are searchable whereas landmarks are viewable. They are very similar and related concepts.

EXACTLY!!!!

Well I don't necessarily blame the new editors. This is Waze's fault for not addressing this issue. In fact, in most countries the gas station location updating is via the landmark layer further confusing this.

Also, it is likely that Waze will be asking us to add POI's in the future just as they are doing with house numbers. I feel that Waze has realized that if they ever want to sell the company they are going to need to have their own data vs. relying on lookups via 3rd parties.

Waze needs to add a valid POI layer with required information:

* Company Name
* Address
* Phone number
* Business Hours
* Website URL
* Etc.

Note: I have been very against Waze maintaining their own POI layer in the past since they are integrated with many providers with good data. But I suspect that this will change as Waze will want to have their own data.

PhantomSoul wrote:Not to mention parking lots with parking lot roads inside them (doesn't that cause some kind of interference with the routing system?).

Landmarks do not affect routing. Parking Lot and Gas Station landmarks do suppress automatic map problems such as 'missing road'.

The other concern here is why do we as editors need to deal with every parking lot world-wide? Why can't Waze come up with something:

* If not mapped, assume it's a parking lot, suppress missing road map problems, suppress road speed contribution and traffic jams (yes, this may not work in countries without mature maps)
* Create some better logic to direct the Wazer to the hilighted route when they are not on a mapped road

We as editors are constantly fighting over these parking lot issues with no good solutions.

ModandOp wrote:Okay. I've been reading through the forum and it seems Parking Lot Landmarks are not liked very much by more experienced editors...

As I understand it, the Parking Lot landmark type is meant to highlight general parking facilities--like a parking garage or downtown parking lot--not those belonging to a specific destination like a mall, movie theater, restaurant etc. For those destinations, it's usually obvious where to park, so there is no need to highlight it on the map. It's when you have a meeting at an office downtown that does not have its own parking facilities, and on-street parking is limited, that you want Waze to help you find a place to park--and it isn't going to be in the fast-food joint's parking lot across the street.

The differentiator is whether the parking lot serves an individual business. Most establishments that have their own parking area don't appreciate it when people leave cars in their lot, and then walk off to do business somewhere else. That is the purpose of a public parking facility: to provide parking for other businesses that don't have their own.

jasonh300 wrote:I suspect there are going to be similar problems at other airports and large landmarks like this.

Perhaps a viable solution would be for Waze to give a landmark a "navigation point": something very similar to house numbers? You would specify a single point on an adjacent segment (or one inside the landmark) as the destination that should be routed to for that landmark.

Parking lots are also handled by foursquare.

Individual businesses who want to appear on the map should visit biz.waze.com and pay for an ad.

AndyPoms wrote:

CBenson wrote:

AndyPoms wrote:Remember, Individual businesses (except Gas Stations) should not be added to the map.

This seems like an odd way of stating this. As what I'm hearing is that parking lots that are individual businesses, whether municipally or privately run, should be added to the map as landmarks.

Where are you seeing this?

My interpretation of cbenson's post is that he is saying that privately owned for-profit parking lots should be landmarked...not parking lots of individual businesses.

This would still be wrong because the foursquare POIs should put the [P] pin on those parking lots as you approach your destination.

The more landmarks on the map, the less value they have.