Hi,

Was there too, and some interesting stuff came to the surface.

As an aside and as an "englishman" I find it worth noting that Uk and Ireland, whilst there are some differences in instruction and road layout, are fairly identical. Take that as x years as a colony and the influence that has had on the country.
Ireland is certainly not america. I suspect that most editor are still using "English" as the editor language? I suggest you change to "Uk English" and see what differences it makes for you.

It was mentioned to the Waze staff that Uk English be the default for Uk editors as it really does make a difference. Perhaps Ireland should be included in that?

Des. . .

Hi Pip,

seriousarsonist wrote:As you may have noticed there's a Waze Meetup for the UK AM's etc. happening tomorrow. As a Waze Citizen with sort of dual nationality is there anything that you would like me to try and ask the team that will be present?

Hey, thanks for asking about this! I suspect many of the issues we face here are similar to the UK issues (except that the island of Britain has a basemap import and there's no basemap import here (not that we want one, mind you)).

One thing I would be very interested in getting hold of is a copy of everything from the meetup (Waze presentation slides, etc) and anything interesting that was said by Waze HQ, if at all possible.

I haven't been all that active in Waze for the last month or two (moving house...), however from looking at the topic list, I'd be interested in:

1. stats from HQ about Ireland as well as the UK.
2. Counties: we want counties too!.
3. Road shields: are they available yet and what will we need to do to make them work?
4. Editor notes: nothing to say here, but I'm looking forward to them.

Another thing I'd be interested in asking the team about is if they have any tips or recommendations on community building (both for normal users and for editors) for small countries like Ireland. As you know we have vast areas that are quite under-mapped and a fairly small number of active editors. It'd be good to encourage more editors, but it's just as important to try to keep the quality of editing high. I reckon all new editors start off making a few mistakes (I certainly did!) and probably need feedback to improve their editing but also encouragement to make sure they keep editing. I think a lot of new editors edit a little then get bored and move on. Maybe we should talk to our colleagues in other similar countries - such as New Zealand - to see how they manage.

seriousarsonist wrote:There's a thread over on the UK forum which details what is on the agenda but I'm pretty sure I can ask a few Eire questions of them if you want.

Oh yes - had a read there - thanks. Do tell them that there are a few of us who are very interested in Waze as a whole - and although none of us will be there in person, we are especially interested in any future developments that might affect us.

Oh, on a point of information (sorry, this is one of my personal bugbears ): the name of this country is "Ireland" (it's only "Éire" when using the Irish language) - although I know there's potential for confusion when the name of the country is the same as the name of the geographical island which comprises more than just the country with the same name.

On a completely unrelated note: thanks for your work a couple of months ago with the road closures for the Giro d'Italia. I saw them show up in the app on the day, although I wasn't driving around the area at the time.

Enjoy the meetup Pip - and thanks again for flying two flags!

++David \ davudg666

Hi Des,

CTCNetwork wrote:Was there too, and some interesting stuff came to the surface.

I look forward to hearing all!

CTCNetwork wrote:As an aside and as an "englishman" I find it worth noting that Uk and Ireland, whilst there are some differences in instruction and road layout, are fairly identical. Take that as x years as a colony and the influence that has had on the country.

...except that Ireland isn't still stuck in the middle ages and using those weird units on the road signs. What are those numbers on UK signs? Furlongs per fortnight? Roods and chains to the next town?

CTCNetwork wrote:Ireland is certainly not america. I suspect that most editor are still using "English" as the editor language? I suggest you change to "Uk English" and see what differences it makes for you.

It was mentioned to the Waze staff that Uk English be the default for Uk editors as it really does make a difference. Perhaps Ireland should be included in that?

Yep; I'm already using UK English for my TTS voice and choose that over US English anywhere there's a choice. American spelling just looks so ...wrong ... in many places.

Now, if only we could get the TTS to pronounce Irish placenames properly!

++David \ davidg666

Hi Tim,

Timbones wrote:If there's anything you guys want help with, or have problems you need Waze to look at, send an email to the UK Admin team and we'll be happy to assist however we can.

Thank you! We're almost certainly too small here to have our own admin team, so we'd be very grateful for this kind of assistance.

Timbones wrote:I can certainly tell you what you need for counties and road shields, the latter being much easier and quicker to implement.

Aha - does that mean county support is coming?

As for road shields: would I be right in assuming that what's mostly required is appropriate road naming, or is something needed at the back end too? Looking at the live map, I can see *some* Irish motorways have shields in *some* areas, as do *some* R- roads, and a few N- roads show up too (but without the 'N') around Kerry and west Cork (the N21, N20 and N70, for example)

++David \ davidg666

Hi David,

I'll certainly get a copy of everything I can from the meet up, I'll even try and makes notes too! not like me but hey it's different lol! I'll ask about Ireland stats as obviously some of those are mine. Road shields I'll definitely ask about as they are on the agenda.

I'll broach the subject of community building with the guys tonight at the social meetup, don't think it's quite close enough to be raised during the the day. I will however be asking why you guys weren't invited, we are so often classed as a single entity these days... or something similar (complicated subject I know... I'm off to England for a scout jamboree in August, we are being classed as international... weird)

I was using Eire sort of ironically (sorry no accents I can't be bothered to look for them in windows) same as the point above anyway, I'll probably tweet about some things if you are on twitter, name is the same as waze.

Thanks! took quite a bit of work in the end and it seemed to work well, from what I heard anyway

On another note... I've started to lock some bits round the border at L5, so far just the complicated bits and the bits that kept getting changed. Don't think it was malicious or anything just people being inattentive to the country field. I was thinking of posting about it but I'll sort that when I get back.

Sláinte
Pip

If there's anything you guys want help with, or have problems you need Waze to look at, send an email to the UK Admin team and we'll be happy to assist however we can.

I can certainly tell you what you need for counties and road shields, the latter being much easier and quicker to implement.

davidg666 wrote:Aha - does that mean county support is coming?

"Soon"

davidg666 wrote:As for road shields: would I be right in assuming that what's mostly required is appropriate road naming, or is something needed at the back end too? Looking at the live map, I can see *some* Irish motorways have shields in *some* areas, as do *some* R- roads, and a few N- roads show up too (but without the 'N') around Kerry and west Cork (the N21, N20 and N70, for example)

Yes, although the badges that appear on the Livemap are completely different from those that appear within the client. If you let me know what patterns of road names you have (e.g. Nxx, Rxx, etc) and how you would like them to look, then I can push this through to Waze. Be aware that Waze can't match shields to segment types, only road names.