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Ranks, Points & the Scoreboard: The Eventual Death of Waze

Post by CivicDuty29
(insert subtitle here):
Editing for Points Sake


I've been using Waze for several years now, and editing for almost two. And actually earning points by driving using Waze. I've seen a lot of changes in that time.

But what I have noticed, especially after the introduction of Apple's Maps App, and the gaining popularity of Waze in the last few months, is that the quality, screen readability, and effectiveness of the map is deteriorating on an exponential basis. You'd think it'd only get better, right?

There is no test required to be able to edit the public map. No need to understand usability or simplicity concepts, read forum postings, or understand the best practices before you can edit. Sign up, go to "Update Map", find where you've been, and pillage away.

Go ahead: Add landmarks. After all, there is a landmark feature with plenty of categories that supposedly, we're not to use. But they're there anyway. Use 'em.

Make 500+ node inch-accuracy detailed outlines of landmarks while you're at it, because that little number inside the floppy disc icon is going to boost your points by 1.5x that much, right???

Let's add every single travel lane in a parking lot. Every one. Every single alleyway, whether it's truly accessible, one-way, crater pothole filled, limited width access, or not. It's more points. Convert those 5' diameter traffic calming circles into roundabouts because you can. It's easy. And it's points.

Let's add every business we know of, starting with our favorites that *WE* want on the map, but ignoring the others immediately around them. Let's create and add a label to every occupancy of a strip mall, because there's a "stall" category that's just for that purpose, right? Let's do an outline of every single building we see on the aerial view, and if we don't know exactly what it is, simply label it "Office Building" or "Industry". Found a 10'x10' coffee stand in the middle of a parking lot? Add it. Don't forget the one-way travel lanes around it too. But leave out the name/city so they simply stay red, because you never read the editing Wiki, and you yourself have no clue why they are showing up red, and not at all on your phone. For banks, make sure you enter "$$$" in the description and add every lane of the drive-thru teller island. For fast-food joints, put in "Mmmmm goood!" so we'll know if it's even worthy of navigating to... even though those comments will never appear in the client app. Spelling or capitalization doesn't count here, either - leave those for a professional looking app. And feel free to leave personal comments in there too ("This place sux!") positive or otherwise.

Let's create landmarks for places we would never be navigating to using Waze; islands in the middle of a lake with no roads to them. Airport runways. Speaking of water, let's create a "Sea/Lake/Levee" for every stormwater retention pond, we can find. Neighborhood creek? That's a river/stream. Map it!!! After all, we're going to want to navigate to those in a canoe one day, right? They are there for the taking - free points!!!

Did you find an unlandmarked parking lot? What are you waiting for? Someone's going to claim those points if you don't! If you're really creative, create an individual parking lot landmark for each row of parking between every travel lane, because you don't understand how the parking lot landmark feature works. And, it's more points that way. You're getting close to that almighty crown. Don't quit now!

But that's why we have Area Managers, right? Well, apparently that "vetting" process has gone to **** too. I've seen rogue editors who have done everything I've mentioned above become Area Managers within a month of joining Waze. 5000 edits is all we ask - who cares if they were appropriate or not - does anyone even look?? "Send a message to those people and give them guidance" is the suggestion. Tried that - sometimes it works, and sometimes not - most recently I was pretty much told along the lines of "I'll do whatever the hell I want, who are you to police Waze?? You're wasting your time talking to me." And that was from a newly minted, less than 2 months old Waze user who was already a Level 3 editor... but gosh dang, he was #2 in the state for the week!!! Awesome! :P

I'm not sure what it's going to take to fix the problem. I get the idea of having an incentive (ranks, moods, etc) to encourage people to make edits. But at the same time, when there is a scoreboard, ranks, the "Top three weekly points" mood/status icons, and The Almighty Crown out there waiting, people are going to be motivated to do whatever it takes to reach those goals, proper or not.

What Waze needs, and needs quickly, is an extensive online learning "course" and detailed skills/knowledge test, for even basic editing. There's a "test" for Area Managers now, but it's obscenely simple. And apparently just window dressing. There needs to be an accountability system for improper edits. There needs to be a consistent, easy to find, regularly updated and enforced "Best Practices" guide - especially for landmark designations. There should be an easy way to give feedback to a user for an improper/inappropriate edit or landmark - i.e. once the landmark or segment is highlighted - a "comment/feedback to last editor" option available. And that then emails the editor with the comment and a permalink to the item in question.

Something's going to give. I don't see Google keeping their highly respected name on this hodge-podge database of inconsistent, app-screen clogging data for long. It's not their style. Either they are going to abandon ship and Waze loses access to a good resource, or they will lock out editing to EVERYONE. Which might not be such a bad idea. They certainly aren't asking and/or giving the general population permission to edit their OWN map database, and there's a reason for that. Getting rid of the points/scoreboard/rank system would be a start - I'll still be here if that happens...

Til then, I'll keep editing where needed. And cleaning up the garbage. You'll see me on the map with my new screen nickname of "Waze Garbageman" After all, there's points in deleting edits too.
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Last edited by CivicDuty29 on Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:06 pm, edited 5 times in total.

Post by AlanOfTheBerg
Rank 3 <> Area Manager. It's just a rank based on editing but doesn't mean they have a defined area with permanent editing capability regardless of driving. Depending on the country, you can't get past Rank 2 without community/country permission.
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Post by AlanOfTheBerg
CivicDuty29 wrote:In referring to "Rank" I was meaning the user ranks of Waze Baby, Grown-Up, Warrior, Knight & Royalty. Not the editor level.

And apparently in the US, you can become an Area Manager after using Waze for two months and making the edits (5000 of them!) I mentioned above.
Those ranks you mention have nothing to do at all with editing, so you're mixing unrelated information.

The US does self manage. We do not yet manage user's auto-ranking up to 3, so editors can become Rank 3 without approval or review, but they are also not an AM. We do have an application process and the applicants edits are reviewed. It's not perfect, cuz nothing is, but I think it's way better than the Open Season which existed before.

EDIT: In general, I don't disagree with many of the shortcomings of the Waze mapping system you have illuminated.
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Post by AndyPoms
Thortok2000 wrote:I do think a 'communicate with other editors of the segment' and such would be handy. Or a way to add map notes that someone can reply to and you'll be notified of a response.
Map Notes is on the development road map, no ETA yet.
Thortok2000 wrote:For reported map problems, I often want to ask the user additional questions to help me fix the map for them. That'd be handy, too.
Conversations on URs is currently in beta testing - you may have noticed some URs have little quotation marks on them - that indicates that there is a conversation going on in. Currently the contents of the conversation is only available in the beta editor.
Thortok2000 wrote:I'm more than happy to take any additional knowledge of best practices available. I want the map to be accurate, consistent, and simple (in that priority.) I'm happy to put in plenty of effort to get it that way. What do I need to do?
Read the wiki (links in my signature), read the forum, and ask questions here.
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Post by AndyPoms
scott_h wrote:There are some obvious points hounds. One local user has become a level 4 editor within 2 months of joining. They seem to have script capabilities and are "tagging" a massive amount of roads for edit points. This has a consequence of wiping out the proper last edit data so there is no way to know the last time someone purposefully edited a segment which was a feature I used to rely on. I was told that only country managers have access to scripts but this person seems to have found a backdoor. The only posts this person has made are related to scripting. Hopefully they are only after some perceived glory of points and ranking, but the question needs to be asked - could they do something much more devious with their map editing script skills after they achieve an even higher level?
Send the info to your Regional Coordinator or a Waze Champ, they can look into it and take appropriate action.
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Post by CivicDuty29
marcedli wrote:if the community is lead by a small dedicated group, they have the right and power to cover all issues you mentioned
Cover the issues? Correct the issues is more like it. There is still nothing in place to prevent the inappropriate and/or incorrect edits that require that "covering" in the first place.

The solution is to solve the cause of the problem, not the symptoms.
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Post by CivicDuty29
marcedli wrote:lock the city to level 3, you can do it, it's not that hard...
Seems like an easy solution. But then you restrict those who aren't Area Managers from making correct changes and additions. And that still doesn't stop the "handing out" of Area Manager status to people who continue to make the inappropriate edits.

I'm all for locking the entire map to level 6. How about a edit/revision system where all edits are "pending" until approved by a Level 6 editor? That'll put an end to the nonsense.
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Post by CivicDuty29
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:Rank 3 <> Area Manager. It's just a rank based on editing but doesn't mean they have a defined area with permanent editing capability regardless of driving. Depending on the country, you can't get past Rank 2 without community/country permission.
In referring to "Rank" I was meaning the user ranks of Waze Baby, Grown-Up, Warrior, Knight & Royalty. Not the editor level.

And apparently in the US, you can become an Area Manager after using Waze for two months and making the edits (5000 of them!) I mentioned above.
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Post by CivicDuty29
Correct. The user "ranks" have nothing to do with editing permissions.

But it's the end-users "need" for points to move up in rank that is apparently a HUGE motivation to make edits wherever, and whenever possible, correct or not. I've seen it over the past year. They'll make massive inappropriate edits for 2-3 months, or however long it takes to get The Almighty Crown to impress their facebook friends, feed their ego, or whatever... and then they disappear from the editing world.

I wasn't aware, however, that you can become a level 3 editor and NOT be an Area Manager. But 10K of edits isn't hard for these points-motivated people to reach. So it goes back to the need for a "basic" editing test - proof of knowledge and understanding of basic best practices - that would solve a lot of the problem.
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Post by CivicDuty29
mchlkrieger wrote:But then again, that's what makes Waze fun -- it's a group of real people interacting, making things better, and occasionally, making mistakes.
And that's a good thing. Until groups of people, whose only purpose in making edits is to gain points to move up in rank, create hundreds of mistakes, on a daily basis. Some of them get noticed and corrected, but a large number of them won't. They just lie dormant until they affect someone else's navigation.

Making it more difficult to edit, by way of knowledge and skill requirements, would make the final "product" more reliable and consistent. The "game" element needs to be removed because this isn't a "game" - it's not SimCity - it's a real-world navigation app, and "playing" the game simply because you want to change the look of your gamepiece is a bad reason to be editing in the first place. It's like impulse shopping. They "find" things to "fix" that don't need fixing, or are the way they are for a reason. But most new people never read any farther than how to add their favorite landmark, adjust the driveway to their apartment complex, or insert a road to their favorite parking spot.

They don't understand why the geometry of some non-perpendicular intersections have a jog in them. They tell you that the "level 6 editors don't know what they are doing" as justification for why they "straightened it out". There are SO many variables and behind the scenes algorithms for why things are the way they are, or can't be the way they physically look in an aerial photo. But most don't get that far in the wiki to understand that. I certainly don't claim to understand them all myself. They just want their local WalMart and Jack-in-the-Box to show up on the map when they drive past them wearing The Almighty Crown™, and do it because there's nothing in the "beginner editor" process that doesn't tell them not to. They're given a toolbox with a full complement full of tools, but without real instruction for all of them, and only want to use the hammers because they are the easiest to use.
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