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[Updated Page Proposal] The Parking-Lot Place Area

Post by DwarfLord
I have rewritten the Parking-Lot Place Area text to focus on principles and to be more appropriate for a global audience. The current text came from the US Landmark wiki and sports a number of US- and landmark-centrisms. The proposed update is here:

https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Places#Parking_Lot
<Released 4 April 2014, original draft location removed>
<Released 23 April 2014, second draft location removed>

There are no substantive changes to policy in this text, unless one counts:
  • the explicit support of privately-operated short-term parking;
  • the explicit exclusion of stadium parking; and
  • the suggestion that certain circumstances may warrant Parking-Lot Place Areas for unnamed public parking at transit centers (driven by discussions about European parking needs and practices).
Comments very welcome. If the principles themselves come into question that would be something I don't feel qualified to arbitrate, so I hope I've captured them correctly. Everything else in this proposal flowed from the principles, so if they are not correct it would affect the whole wiki.

(EDIT: Having just realized that airport rental-car returns grandfathered from the previous Landmark document do not satisfy the foundational principles for a Parking Lot, I've updated the draft wiki to say they should be represented with Car Rental Places and not with Parking-Lot Places.)
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Last edited by DwarfLord on Thu Apr 24, 2014 4:28 am, edited 3 times in total.

Post by DwarfLord
CBenson wrote:...many buildings include a garage that is leased to a company that operates the garage for profit by providing public parking. [...] These seem to be the type of garage that was not to be landmarked previously. However, under this proposal these would seem to qualify.
My thinking on this shifted due to Waze's explicit endorsement of landmarking private businesses.

I believe most drivers decide whether to park in municipal or private lots based only on cost. Indeed in some urban neighborhoods there is no municipal parking so it's private or nothing. With the municipal vs. private issue apparently diminishing there seemed no longer any reason to exclude private lots from user consideration.
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Post by DwarfLord
nzahn1 wrote:So, the community consensus is that named designated parking lots around stadiums, college campuses, and others should NOT be mapped as AREAs.
To clarify, this proposal flows from the principle that the Parking Lot Place Area should be both general-purpose and for the general public. Parking dedicated to a destination does not satisfy the general-purpose principle. If exceptions are made for stadiums, they should be made for campuses, theme parks, and other similar venues with named designated parking, and there's been a lot of resistance to that.

I don't know about the particular case you linked, but if anybody can park there to go anywhere, not just the stadium, without risking being towed, it would satisfy the principles and would be OK.

Now, if I've misunderstood the principles and special-purpose parking -- the kind where you could get towed if you don't use it for its intended purpose -- is OK to mark with the parking-lot type, that's fine too, but somebody will need to codify that principle because it really shakes things up.

(Edit: I definitely like the idea of using a Parking-Lot Place Point to identify parking that does not satisfy the general-purpose and general-public principles.)
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Last edited by DwarfLord on Wed Apr 02, 2014 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Post by DwarfLord
CBenson wrote:
DwarfLord wrote:My thinking on this shifted due to Waze's explicit endorsement of landmarking private businesses.
I agree with your logic. But, if we are going to mark every urban pay parking lot as an area place, we are essentially conceding that downtown areas will be completely covered with area places. Such lots aren't reference points for navigation, they are just potential destinations.

I guess the question becomes - are we intending to mark every office building as an area place? If so, then there is certainly no reason not including parking as a category for such a place. On the other hand, if we are marking office buildings primarily as points, except when they are a particularly notable location that would be used for navigational reference such as say the Sears Tower or Rockefeller Center, then it would seem silly to mark the garage underneath as an area place.
This is terrifically thought-provoking. The fundamental question is, how can we help an average driver find a place to park. Since I don't really know how Points present I still have my Area blinders on when trying to answer this question.
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Post by DwarfLord
CBenson wrote:Then the draft needs be altered to reflect when to use an area and when to use a point, doesn't it?
I'm not sure of the principle to apply here. Here are two alternatives:

Orientation. Only use the Area type if the Parking Lot is distinctive and significant enough to orient drivers. This eliminates garages whose only expression to the outside world is a half-buried cave entrance, but could get funky at airports where there is parking every which way and it is hard to claim any of it is distinctive. Or...

Dedicated to parking. Only use the Area type if the area to be enclosed is dedicated to parking and nothing else. This is clearer guidance to follow and enforce but perhaps a bit farther from the fundamental goal of orienting drivers while minimizing clutter.

Opinions? Other alternatives?
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Post by DwarfLord
qwaletee wrote:Perhaps guidance should be that if a parking lot is inside a structure that primarily has non-PL purposes, it should only be mapped as a point at its one or two primary entrances. If it is open air or has a dedicated parking building, it can be marked as a point if it has one or two primary entrances, or as an area if it is either a prominent "landmark" or has many entrances that would cause clutter if marked individually.
I really like the idea of using entrance count as a criterion for area vs. point, combining with the requirement that the entire enclosed area be dedicated to parking.

My initial thought is that even just two entrances would qualify a dedicated parking area for the Area type, but that depends on what happens if one sticks with Place Points instead. Is there leaning towards providing facilities with multiple entrances with a separate Place Point for each entrance? That's a head-scratcher for me due to the editor clutter and maintenance overhead involved.

I would think that multiple entries into a parking facility, at least, should be handled with Parking-Lot Roads and the routing engine combined with a single Point (located slightly interior rather than explicitly favoring one entrance or the other).
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Post by DwarfLord
I've updated the draft page to add a "distinctive and significant" principle that I interpret as limiting use to structures fully dedicated to parking (am holding off on the entrance count criterion).

Also adjusted the language in a number of places to accommodate the concept of simply adding "Parking Lot" to the type list of an incorporating Place Area that's already there for other reasons.
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Post by DwarfLord
kentsmith9 wrote:So the first question is if this is a subpage of the Place page, or Parking Lot Page.

I propose a sub of the Place page and also have a link from the Parking Lot section/page to here.

Possibly one of these depending on whether the Places page needs to be subsectioned:
* Places/Parking Lot Area
* Places/Area/Parking Lot
I'm not married to that title by any means :D As you say, it depends on the context in which the wiki is placed.

Since the WME continues to offer "Parking Lot", as a Place Area, for direct access via the write menu, it seems logical to locate the discussion at a higher level in the wiki structure with links as appropriate. I'm delighted to comply with any way of accomplishing that you suggest, I'm new to wiki structuring.
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Post by DwarfLord
kentsmith9 wrote:The actual structure is more about association so when you are on a page you can see the parent pages like [[Places/Areas/Parking Lot]]. That tells you this parking lot information is bound under Areas under Places.
Ah, I think I get it, since the reader can see the parent pages there is less need for an exhaustively descriptive title.

(Nomenclature quandary...the field into which we put "Parking Lot", "Shopping Center", "Swimming Pool" etc. is called out in WME as "Type". However the initial Places wiki calls it "Category" and uses the word "Type" for whether it's an Area or Point. I'll bring this up in the Places wiki thread. Meanwhile in the following I use "Type" according to the WME, not the wiki.)

It seems like we are headed towards most Place Types being either Area or Point, with very few being eligible for both. That would seem to suggest structuring the Places wiki along the lines of Places/<Type> rather than Places/Area/<Type> and Places/Point/<Type>.

For the Parking Lot wiki, we are starting with just Area but I and others have seen a number of opportunities for Point so I wrote in a a stub for that at the end of the wiki. It seems to work; the wiki discusses the primary application of Parking Lot (Area) but can then have a subheading, or perhaps a subsection, treating the secondary application (Point).

I've retitled my draft as simply "Parking Lot", with the first subsection being "Primary Application (Area or Point)" in which it's declared that Area is the primary application of the Parking Lot type. Just a strawman for now.
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Post by DwarfLord
Is it time for me to replace the Parking Lot text in the Places wiki with this draft, or shall we let the comment period continue for awhile? I'm fine either way.
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