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Post by doctorkb
daknife wrote:
doctorkb wrote:One thing we're also leaving out... people can get navigation from multiple sources. They could have instructions from their friend on how to get to place X -- having the same data points (which may include "turn left at the church" or "go past the McDonald's") aids the user significantly, even if those instructions aren't read aloud or displayed in text form on the screen.
If they are asking a person for directions they won't be relying on a GPS. The GPS won't know about the red barn with the faded tobacco ad, or the Oak tree painted red white and blue, or the Smiths farm, or the church (not all churchs are easily recognized as churches and don't always show up on paper maps anyway.) Local landmark navigation? Talk to Cousin Larry. Address based GPS navigation? landmarks are not needed just turn when it tells you to turn. We rely on GPS to get away from having to ask for such directions. If you want to combine them, well when told to turn left at the little white church, and the GPS tells you to turn left and there is a little white church there, then you know it's okay to turn.
Smart people don't rely on a single source for navigation, especially in areas they don't know.

When stupid people do rely on one source, they end up in the middle of the Australian outback... or worse.

Cousin Larry gives you some good data... "if you pass the red house with the white fence, you've gone too far"... Google gives you some good data... "turn left on 123 St".

Why is there such a problem with Waze giving both?

I'm not suggesting every little thing be marked... I've deleted my fair share of parking lot landmarks.

But really... unless there's a church on two out of every four corners for 10 blocks, what's the harm in listing them?

Same with the cemeteries?

Sometimes it's just plain interesting. And I'd certainly prefer to know about the cemetery I'm driving next to, than where the nearest Ramada is, with an ugly call-out to point it out.
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Post by doctorkb
Pretty sure cemeteries don't move.

And I don't remember the last time I heard of a Wal-mart closing.

And while churches move, that happens about as often as a street changes names.

So... Again, what's the deal?

I'm not suggesting we need to landmark every little thing.. But the rules proposed are overly arbitrary.
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Post by Ericular
vectorspace wrote: What I heard, very resoundingly clear from Ehud, was that he wanted more content. He probably wanted more content than the editors were capable of being comfortable (for various good technical and emotional reasons). So, debating about putting in POIs or not, deleting them, etc., seems a bit silly when the app could do well with more content, both that which shows on the map and that which does not.
It would be nice to see a roadmap of when the client might be improved to either have selectable landmark/POI layers, or more intelligent display based on zoom level and road type. One of the most frustrating parts of map editing for me is having to do non-intuitive things just to cater to the shortcomings of the client. In theory, the more Waze knows, the better it can be. The sooner I can snap to a parking lot road in a confusing shopping complex and get routed to a main road, the better my experience will be. The more landmarks Waze knows the accurate location of, the better it can guide me to them (in theory).

I have some landmarks mapped in my area that are probably valid landmarks that would help people navigate, but they look bad on the client so I consider removing them. It's too bad. Same with points of interest that don't bring you to the ideal location. It's too bad the answer is to improve third-party POI providers when a location is off or business is incorrect, rather than improving Waze.

Still, I understand why things are the way they are, and in most areas road and turn cleanup is priority #1. But once that's completed and thousands of eager map editors are left with nothing to do, I think we could keep up with a lot of these less-popular landmarks types.
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Post by HandofMadness
The parking lot landmark suppresses auto generated errors for "missing roads" so is used to solve those errors. There's no reason though to cover buildings with it. I don't know that it harms anything other than cluttering up the client map.

:: sits back and waits to be corrected ::
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Post by HandofMadness
mapcat wrote:In the US there is already a TOTALLY SEPARATE gas station landmark layer that has NOTHING TO DO with the gas stations that may exist as visible landmarks in WME. Please don't add (or delete) any gas stations in WME in the US.

We can't edit the real gas station layer. (Yet.)
What about for automated error suppression? Should I use the parking lot landmark instead, even if the location is a gas station?
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Post by HandofMadness
jasonh300 wrote:A gas station landmark will suppress reports there, and would be more correct than a parking lot. However, it was mentioned a week or two ago not to add any gas stations until we got to some point with the gas prices functionality. I'm not sure if that's correct or still the case.
Was that from Waze? I would think it would be okay to add them if you are doing it to suppress traffic and error reports.
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Post by HandofMadness
Let me know if this is the wrong thread for this. I believe there's another thread somewhere also discussing the best practices for landmarks in the US.

Here's the problem, landmark's entered into Waze do show up on the Waze tab search results (at least some of the time). Waze tries to route you to the middle of the landmark. This is causing problems at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank as it is the first result users see is the Waze tab.
http://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=251&t=53258 (Current discussion)

Now an obvious answer is to delete the private road servicing that one hanger (even through there are GPS tracks showing people are using it), but I think there's still a good chance that Waze will not be directing people to the terminals, but to a nearby closer road.

Is there anything that could or should be done in this case?
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Post by HandofMadness
Just wanted to add to the discussion from a few pages ago.. Add supermarket's to one of the landmarks that turn up when searching.
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Post by HandofMadness
Rather than trying to get consensus on landmarks in general. Can we start going down the list of landmarks one by one and seeing if we can get a consensus on whether that type of land mark should be used? With any where its clear there is not a consensus, we move on and mark it to come back to later? I think we can probably knock quite a few out that way and at least be able to add a "Landmark's you should not use in the US" page in the wiki to refer people to while we hammer out the details on the more contentious landmark types.

I haven't read this entire thread (about half of it), so forgive me if this has already happened previously or been decided against.
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Post by HandofMadness
Ah ok, thanks Andy. Guess I didn't search back far enough in the archives.
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