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Map editing should NOT get you the most points!

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The concept of giving map editors so much points is really flawed, to me.

I feel it is UNFAIR that map editing account for that much points. There are people who aren't always on their computers, they have a busy(actual) life, and reporting road hazards, police, closures, etc is well enough for their contribution, to help others. Not spending 12/7 on Waze.com map editing to spend that free time.

Obviously, editing map should be a thankful/appreciative task, I do not disagree with this, but maybe getting a honor badge that's called "Major Map Editor" (or something more creative) is suffice rather than give them the MOST points everytime they edit maps, that makes them beat those who actually drive/report traffic to get points..

Most points should ALWAYS BELONG ON THE ROAD, AMONG REAL TRAFFIC, not ever on the computer in a basement, ALONE!

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Post by CBenson
daknife wrote:I continued to expand across the state until I hit enough points for CM status
Just for completeness sake, I don't think this is correct. I think you completed enough edits for CM status. You don't rise in though the editing permissions by point count.
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Post by CBenson
Well as you noted this was a previously dead topic so I thought I'd be brief.

But as far as substance goes, the point is that you don't need to rise in points to advance as an editor. The argument would go something like this. Editors get to show their progress though their editing rank. This is unaffected by how many points/edit you get. Thus you could let those that are driving and reporting get rewarded by rising in the points scoreboard and let editors get rewarded through their editing rank. You would do this by map editing not getting the most points.
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Post by Daknife
petervdveen wrote:Well... I think with driving you do get more points then with editing.

I think if you drive a lot, you can get a million points in a year.

No editor has done that yet.
Also, if your country has no basemap it's even easier to get points.

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Me on 6/12 2012 (when I started keeping a daily tally for fun) 529692 points
Me on 5/26 2013 (last nights totals) 2399778 points
1.8 million points in less than a year, of that I've driven just over 15,000 miles. Do the math, 1 million points in a year from editing is most definitely possible, I just might make it to 2 mil within a year.

As to the OP, without all those points, most of five states would still be mostly un-useable in Waze. Oh the freeways were mostly okay (but not entirely), but the city streets were a mess even in big cities. When I first hit CM status to be able to edit outside my state, I followed a UR report down to Las Vegas, what I found there was thousands of unresolved UR's dating back to the import of the US base-map. I'm sure there were a few locals who occasionally tried to fix things but they were overhwhelmed and for the most part there was no real evidence of local editing. I spent days working over that city cleaning up directionality false roads and turn restrictions from the basemap import and what few GPS tracks I found away from the interstate freeway, a couple other visiting editors who'd traveled to Vegas just about then joined me in cleaning and editing, making the basic system worked. And before long local editors soon joined in. Now UR's rarely sit for more than a couple days before being resolved, there are multiple editors down there keeping the maps clean, up-to date and functional. I saw the same thing Happen in the Reno-Carson area, Near Idaho Falls, Couer d'lain (sorry about the spelling Haydenray) and other cities in the intermountain west. Once the big cities were cleaned up I moved on to all the small towns that to this day may have never had a wazer go through them, but again I cleaned them up so when someone does need to visit those towns they can. I've traced thousands of miles of state and US highways through winding canyons fixing them so they are complete with clean connections at all points and so that Waze can actually navigate along them, even through areas with no signal meaning no traffic data to autofix the routes.

I've dealt with a very creative state DOT that has in the last few years introduced Utah drivers to CFI's, DDI's, Thru-turns(it's ugly but it works, and it works well), and a few unique traffic design layouts and I've made those intersections work. You've driven to and from work every day for a year. Why should you get more points than me? I made the maps work in Utah Idaho, Nevada, and Wyoming and in parts of Colorado, Arizona, and Montana (as did all the other editors in their respective areas.) You simply drove to and from work as you would have done if Waze had never existed. You've contributed a traffic reports and traffic data, but all that would be meaningless if Waze insisted on plotting a 200 mile zigzag route to take you on your 100 mile drive.

As others have noted there have been those who gamed the editing system just for points, but they are quickly identified and dealt with. As with most of us I like the points system, I like tracking my progress, but I edit to make the maps work, not for points. But that said, why should your drives on roads that editors made work, and editors keep updated with current construction improvements be of greater value (in the worthless points value system) than the contributions of the editors who made your drives via Waze even possible. Waze's base-map imports while better (usually) than nothing, are far from usable. Waze editors do deserve more points because they make your driving experience with Waze possible. Without user editors Waze would be years behind the curve, and a stand alone Tom Tom or Garmin with no real-time traffic capability and dynamic rerouting capability would still be the standard for in vehicle navigation. And every editor I've communicated with here also drives and makes reports, but also, based on their experience with the editing they are constantly looking for things that need to be fixed or improved, while most drivers may grumble about a road layout that looks weird or a troublesome turn restriction or may actually hit the report button when they have difficulties with navigation. But most drivers do nothing more than that. Editors not only spend hours and days editing but they also drive to and from work making the same traffic contributions as you do (probably better ones because we tend to have a better idea of what each type of possible report means and how it will be fixed) but we also are identifying areas that need to be improved, we are asking, begging, pleading, and crying for Waze to implement changes to the systems to resolve these issues, and we are the ones who reluctantly work out kludgy work-arounds (see my link to the Thru-turn for kludgy) to make the roads nice and navigable for you the driver to drive on.

And last of all, if you wish to start an honest discussion, YELLING is not the way to do so. Statements in all caps with bold and underlining is simply trying to scream your tantrum even louder.
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Post by Daknife
harling wrote:I think it would be very revealing to turn the statement around and ask the plaintiff, "Who do you think should get the most points?" I wonder how often the answer will boil down to the guy in the mirror.
ME ME ME, oh, oops, just proved your point. :lol: ;)
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Post by Daknife
To be honest it sounds like the editor in question was just learning the process, and just cleard directionality but not turn restrictions, I've seen that many times (and was guilty a couple times early in my career). Rarely was it intentional, but rather not fully understanding how the various edits work together.

A town so edited with just a couple Waze traces through it once in a while will get a few soft turns set by the system resulting in zig-zag routes as you described.

As to the so called lv5 ground scorch locks that's more often just from the days when the practice was to lock everything so the autoedit system wouldn't undo edits. That system is no longer active and those locks have been mostly removed. I've cleaned up large portions of UT, WY, NV, and western CO and the closest to vandalism (unless you are talking about me) ;-) was when Gspot went through Idaho in early 2012 blanket fixing directionality but doing nothing for turn restrictions or even verifying if the roads from the basemap import even existed. But that just meant plenty of edits left for me.

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Post by Daknife
karantechie wrote:i completely agree with what has been posted, Priority should be given to the people who are on the road driving and reporting, Map editors should be given on some other category and they can have ranking among map editors and not in common, This will make people to show less interest if they cannot see their name on the top after driving and reporting so much :) just my view and not offending any one in particular
Please support your position, since the maps would be worthless (and usually were) for driving and accurate navigation without the untold hours spent by editors making the maps useable, updating them to match new construction, and other changes in the road system.

For example in late 2011, When I joined, you could semi-reliably navigate around the Greater Sal Lake City Metro area on the interstates and a few primary routes. Other than that and Waze had you zig-zagging all over the place. That despite editing efforts in the area dating back to the US Maps going live in 2009. Within a few months I and a couple others, but mostly me had cleaned up the four county metro area. I continued to expand across the state until I hit enough points for CM status and looked to neighboring states. At the time Las Vegas was in even worse condition than SLC had been. I cleaned it up enough for it to become usable, locals started using it and are doing the job now, Ditto for the Reno area, Northern Idaho and Eastern Idaho (Idaho Falls to Rigby). I've also traced thousands of miles of rural US and state Hwy's across the west, some of them major traffic routes (US 93 between Las Vegas and Phoenix). Almost every single one of them (including US 93) had multiple breaks in the road that made long distance navigation impossible. Waze had a distance limitation but you couldn't even travel that far without Waze throwing a fit because the roads would have disconnected nodes in the middle of nowhere preventing that route from being used. I found the 93 problem based on a User report posted from a user's driveway in Provo Utah.

Now what have the drivers done to equal those hours and hours of work (enjoyable work in my opinion but still time I could have spent doing something else)? Yes you provide travel data. But Waze can route someone down a new but correctly drawn route without any travel data. It can't/won't route anyone down a broken route, no matter how many people are driving it and reporting map problems until an editor fixes the problem.

Btw nice thread necromancy there only four months from a year with no posts on this thread.
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Post by Daknife
Really, nitpicking? Try adding something of substance.

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Post by Daknife
That does deserve recognition, okay we award you 1 pt per hundred hours. ;)
No really, while a badge or points may not be awarded, real recognition is due those of you who do spend so much time trying to keep the Wiki up to date with the rapid pace of change with Waze.
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Post by DallasGrant
There are many reasons why I don't agree with you that we are only sitting behind a computer.

First off, I am a level 3 Wazer with just about 5k shy of 100,000 edits. I can only edit within 4 miles of where I travel, and when I started editing, I could only edit within (I believe) a quarter mile of where I traveled. With that at hand, if I want to edit more, I not only have to drive to this location, but often I cannot tell the real travel of the roads until I drive the actual road itself. The more rural one goes in editing, the more the aerial views give too limited of a viewpoint to even tell if that road is paved or not.

As you can see by my profile below, not all my usage is just editing, but also not most of my usage is due to alerts because many of the drives I do are on roads that not much occur.

389989 points
Map Updates: 94464
Driving Alerts: 159
New Recorded Miles: 19.6
Existing Miles: 15222.3
Resolved Update Requests: 329
Forum Posts: 30
Waze Cookie Eater feet: 1583484.3

I also admit that I don't turn on my waze everyday because my standard route to work only has one 12 mile path to get there so realistically I could have much more miles than actually reported.

My main reason I don't believe posting alerts should give more points is the fact that then too many false reports would happen. I see this for edits all the time. I altered something, then someone else edits the same segment but really are not altering the segment at all (if they did, it was to move a point a millimeter to the right then back). At least on the map editing, these false points are not affecting the navigation of the map where as the user reports (aside from reports for the map editors) would be alerting the users about incidences that are not there and eventually annoying them to the point they stop using this app.

Keep in mine, while I would love to work on the maps as a full time job and get paid for this, but I don't. When I started using waze, the maps were a mess everywhere I went unless I stuck to the major highways. Thanks to my edits and edits of others like me, I am able to navigate for many miles, but this has forced me to use my own money and resources just to find more and more areas with issues. Almost every city I travel to has incorrect mapping of wrong street names, poor naming at intersections to give good guidance to exits and exits, or incorrect labeling of directions of the streets. In some small towns, every road is labeled with "unknown" for driving directions meaning that a person going to this location may be brought to an area close to the street that are to travel to and basically be told to figure it out from there. Even a small town of 2000 people requires hours of work and sometimes it requires me to drive many of the streets just to figure out what the real name of the street is and if any street would be considered primary.

And while I said that I can edit within 4 miles of where I have been, keep in mind that if I haven't been to this area in a while (I think it is just 3 months but I might be wrong), then I loose the ability to edit that area. Yes, some wazers and edit basically everywhere, but they earned it. Making a report that you seen a police officer, roadkill, something in the road and such is very important, but that step does not require you to travel outside of where you would normally travel so in a lot of ways you are not using a lot of your own resources to do so. Yes, we are spending hours behind a computer (often everyday), but that is volunteered hours that we will not earn a dime for even though we are one of the main reasons that people use Waze. I know a lot of the roads I have traveled are because I legitimately had a reason to travel the roads, but often I take other routes either to edit the area, see how the road has changed from resent construction, or to analyse the road types. I have probably spent over 1,000$ or more in gas just to travel to areas I normally wouldn't for the benefit of Waze.

Just today alone, I took a trip down a road because I had a strong feeling something changed in the road. The road moved and it is only half done. When I returned home, I fixed this move, but now I realize that I forgot to check street signs for some of the roads that enter this new road and the name of what the old street became since the new road is named what the old street was named. This entire trip may be just 20 total miles outside of my way, but this mistake of mine means that I need to head back a second time and this time I will need to travel some of the other roads around it taking even more time out of my time to travel on a road I only travel on about once every 2 years because there is no reason to drive this road unless you want a scenic drive (it is out of the way for most people, but not everyone).

Sorry that I went on a tangent here, but I think your logic is flawed. I believe that you would not want to use the app if the area you travel was not edited to offer you routes that make sense, you would not be doing much reporting (aside to tell us to get to work) as you would be finding a different app to navigate.
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Post by DallasGrant
Now you have new ways to earn a lot of points and not be an editor. Now if you get to a destination, take a pic of that destination and then fill in the information about the place. If it is a business, you really can add a lot of information and the more information you add the more points you will get.
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