Thanks for the comments guys, especially David for going into so much detail. I appreciate that being relatively late to the party, there aren't too many new roads to add to the NI map (I feel I'm eating egg & onion sandwiches after everyone's scoffed the chipolatas and swiss rolls!!) but the sheer volume of edits or driving points is what's puzzling me. If I imagine a repmobile doing (say) 400 miles daily, that's 2000 points daily, or (say) 10K weekly, even doubling that gives a max of 20K, with perhaps a few bonus points thrown in, but it doesn't give the poor sod doing the driving much time to edit the map, unless they're spending their entire weekend making edits - looking at the recent scoreboard (perhaps with a few anomalies thrown in), there are still 15 people getting 25K + points I'm fortunate to be able to work from home 3 days a week (not much commuting other than a few 10 mile runs to leave kids to swimming, scouts etc), so do get to have a bit of spare time to tweak things, but even the time I've spent this past week (when i really should be doing something more productive for my employer!!) isn't putting me anywhere near this. Purely editing alone, to hit 25K points would need 8K edits - even taking into account areas where the map isn't complete, and roads need added, it makes me wonder do these people never sleep!!!

To be honest, if I can reach and maintain the top 1%, I'll be very happy. While I'm aiming for L3 (or AM status) I'm not likely to ever reach L4 - there just aren't enough roads over here, and most of the NI wazers have the disadvantage we can't even drive the length of the island without incurring roaming costs, so that limits our ROI editing potential too

John

seriousarsonist wrote: As for editing left to be done, there is plenty if that, just keep an eye on the google earth sightseer page for updates to the sat imagery!

I'll have to look out for that, some of the areas I've been doing have seriously dodgy sat images, it's like looking for needles in haystacks!

seriousarsonist wrote: The other thing you can do is follow (an)other editor(s) about and fix all the bits they make a mess of!

Ahem, I did find a few issues with some L5 edits, including a few reverse connections at Parliament Buildings, Dundonald House and within the HMP Maghaberry complex - I've probably driven on all the roads in question in a professional capacity, although not in the last dozen years!! I was slightly puzzled as to the need to have routing within Maghaberry, most people going there aren't in for a commute

John

Thanks, handy to have that link, unfortunately none of them are covering my editable areas at the moment, I guess a trip to Portrush must be on the cards

The bits I changed round the Stormont Estate were the two diagonal roads cutting up to and from directly in front of Parliament Buildings, plus the one way loop round running along the front of Dundonald House (before it loops back round the visitors' car park), plus (if you're familiar with the area) the bit near the staff mess in Maghaberry. WME seems to not be displaying the roads at the moment on my laptop, otherwise I'd give you permalinks, but you seemed to be the last editor of all the (Stormont) segments in question, but I can't recall the last edited dates.

John

Here's the permalinks, I had to delete the segments and redraw them to get the reverse routing corrected, so the history has gone for the ones at the top of the "mile"

https://www.waze.com/editor/?lon=-5.832 ... ,248513903

https://www.waze.com/editor/?lon=-5.827 ... ,246349609

Editor shows more when you've got all the necessary layers switched on!! Trip to Barrys is a must, I've still got a few tokens in the house from last year's expedition to the north coast

Perhaps he's a wannabe-arsonist, but can't find any matches

I guess if we're abiding by the letter of the law, I've used the WME Validator to "cheat" - I certainly never considered it as cheating, I ran the script and acted on what it advised. I've run it on pretty much all the areas I've driven, and acted on the instructions I gave - perhaps a bit naively, but I though where it gave (say) same endpoints, that would affect the routing, so I spent quite a bit of time splitting segments etc. I've certainly (both before this thread was posted, and in the past few days) added lots of new roads, cross checking with google earth that the junctions exist where I think they do, especially in the bits of NI where the sat images are a complete blur.

My point count has "soared" from 1K to 8K in about 3 weeks, I couldn't pin any sort of percentage down to actual additions and "legitimate" edits, and those thrown up by WME V, but it may be 50/50 - if I try to become a L3, and someone waves a big stick at me, I'll hang my head in shame

John

I guess as Pip has said, there's no chance I'm ever going to make it near the top of the tables, and my initial query was really how the big scorers achieve this. Even with using the validator tool, I'm nowhere near the top scorers, even using waze for about 4+ hours daily (working from home has some advantages ) and doing hundreds of edits daily, these being a mix of same routes to an endpoint, lots of incorrect U turns, a few reverse geometry etc, and more recently, since I've cleaned all my driven area, adding lots of NI back roads as I've scanned my recent routes. The beauty I've found with the validator is it's picked up some of my own edits, perhaps where a junction didn't quite form correctly, so I've been able to correct them before they hit the published map.

Without wanting to tar everyone with the same brush, are there holes in the Waze system which some (obviously not all) are exploiting, or are there armies of (eg) Chinese or Indian "slaves" locked in a room alternating between making Waze maps and Minecraft worlds??

John

Cheers Tim & co, lots of new Co Down/Armagh bits to run the validator script against

seriousarsonist wrote: Good luck finding much wrong

And there's me thinking you were infallible

My new 4 mile range for driven areas (outside my AM map) has just uncovered a UR that had been opened for a couple of days with no initial reply so I've pinged the reporter for more info, my new powers are being put to the test already

I think it's probably a matter of courtesy when "holiday" editing in another country, to make contact with the locals. London is a major tourist destination and we've had many problems with foreign editors diving in without experience or paying any attention to local editing conventions.

I'm not saying that the Sicily map doesn't need a lot of work, or that they won't be grateful for the help. It's worth checking the AM layer: if you see a local AM, check the forums to see if they've posted recently and are therefore active. If Sicily has a country-specific forum, you may be able to find out if there are some active CMs.

Just say "Bonjourno" (or whatever)! You may end up making some friends. One if the ways I ended up a Global Champ was by not just sticking to the UK, but by getting involved with and trying to help out users in other countries.