The "building" / "front door" language is meant to encompass places that have their own front door, basically. So, for one building with one store, place it at the door. If there are multiple doors on the same façade, like a supermarket, place it at the point equidistant from and collinear with the two front doors. If there are multiple doors on different façades, like some mall anchor stores, if there's no "obvious" front door I guess place it at the door facing the largest parking lot, or at the door facing the street on which the street address for that location is.

When a number of Point Places exist within a single building, it depends on the configuration of the building. Of course, at a strip mall, the "front door" language can still be followed. At a larger mall, though, put the markers as close as possible to the actual location of the store, so the user can get an idea where to go, and so the routing server can pick the parking lot road actually nearest to that store. Office buildings are a bit tougher — for the one posted above, seems like it's no problem, because I imagine the building is set off somewhat and has its own parking lot. But for such an office downtown, people should be led to the front door of the building, since that's the point through which all these offices are actually accessed.

Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with breaking that small wall of text down into organized bullet points and throwing it in the article. There's a whole "how to place the marker" section in there waiting to be fleshed out, anyhow.

I don't know that a single-tenant office park should be represented with a point, but otherwise this seems a pretty reasonable position.

The "free advertising" argument has been brought up many times. I don't find it convincing. Landmarking is just that, not advertising, but serving as a point of reference on a map. As a landmark, Apple's campus is just as important as University of Santa Clara's.

I want to be clear that I don't mean to be short with you or dismissive, this is just a quick mobile response.


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And then you're "advertising" every time a town decides to name the street Home Depot is on "Home Depot Blvd". Or advertising for Connecticut tourism when you name a residential street in Kenner, La. "Connecticut St". Pushing Harvard and Yale by naming streets in a subdivision named after universities.

We are here representing what's there. Labeling a McDonald's on the map is not an advertisement. Having a pop-up every time you stop at a light that says "Go to Taco Bell, only 34 minutes off your route", that's an advertisement. And there is no possible cognizable claim that will stand against Waze for any such thing in a court of law.

Naming some offices and not others is not a final decision and is certainly up for debate. But the "free advertising" rationale should be put to rest. We are not advertising, we are providing information. Other GPS providers do the very same thing.

OK, but if a town names a street Home Depot Blvd we still put it on the map, because that's the street's name, and because we put all streets on the map. If we decide to put all hardware stores on the map, we put that there too because it's what we put on the map.

The primary definition of "advertise" in the New Oxford English Dictionary is "describe or draw attention to (a product, service, or event) in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance". It's that last part – the intent clause – that separates advertising from mere description.

The intent of the map editor is not to represent every corporate entity equally, it's to represent that which the driver sees uniformly. If a driver sees a large office building or a bunch of office buildings and is curious what it is, there's a right answer, whether it's "Yahoo!" or "Lakeshore Tower".

To be honest, I don't think it should make a difference. I would like to see a more diverse set of area places on the map. Many editors have said they have a problem with the "clutter" when maps look like this; every time I see an "over-landmarked" area, I think it looks quite nice in the normal app color schemes.

I agree. I think it's about time we seriously reconsider putting these things on the map. Are these "splotches" of grey "all over the map" really so disgusting? Is that really "clutter"?



I saw a few buildings in downtown Detroit on the map and I thought it looked quite nice. A lot easier to look at a map than to try to determine which building is which from their facades in the middle of a big city.

I don't mean to make it any more subjective than it is, just less arbitrary and more permissive. Or rather, less fearful of area places.

The only reason the labels don't show on those is because I am navigating in 3D mode. If I were to pan the map, or if I had been in 2D mode, the labels would be there. Importantly, if I were looking at an overview of a destination I'd picked around there, the map preview would be in 2D, and the labels therefore shown. I was driving so I didn't have time to stage an elaborate set of shots.

Regardless, I fail to see how that is "clutter". I don't find the gray areas' existence at all takes away from the distinctiveness of the roadways or the route line at all. The place names aren't shown while navigating—to declutter the map. But when they're most important—when panning around for reference or when looking at a search result—the labels are shown.


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DwarfLord wrote: I sense the "fear" of area places comes from an honest concern that without an objective framework we would invite landmark wars. You and I may not think that screenshot shows clutter, but probably some editor out there does. What if that editor goes to the WME, looks at those area places, and decides one or more of them is not valid but has no objective framework on which to proceed? He has two choices left: either start a he-said she-said landmark war or live with it. Well most editors are too polite to start a landmark war. But that means any landmark that even just one person wants, stays, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Yeah...I do find that scary!

It actually comes from the old landmarks system, which was not designed to be comprehensive. It also comes from a lot of complaints about clutter from landmarks, a lot of talk about "blue blobs" all over the map – which is a symptom of a bunch of map editors driving around with the Map Editors color scheme in their clients. Not a true indicator of the user experience.

Allowing for more liberal use of area places will not lead to any more edit wars than the current guidance does. Neither is more or less objective or subjective than the other. Actually, I'd like to take some of the subjectivity out of it – namely, much of the "area or point, depending" guidance.