Looks like the majority of us are in group 1

https://preview.ibb.co/hcSSFn/MMR_Groups.png

I think this is going to be an interesting map raid, already several hundred editors from around the world have joined up. It is a good opportunity for new editors to get experience of working from scratch on creating new roads and earn a significant number of edits. L1 & L2 editors are particularly welcome as most of the new roads will only be created at L1.

That said, working in a LHD drive country, in km and with some rather unusual traffic rules (no left turn across the traffic except at traffic lights in the cities!!) is going to be challenging. Add this to fairly poor aerial images and all place and road names in Russian, I think we are going to be kept busy.

There are already a few UK editors signed up for this and there is a UK forum in Discord where anyone who is unsure of something can ask questions of editors they already know and (hopefully) get a sensible reply quite quickly.

Go on, you know you want to..............

There is a lot of information on the internet, but most applies to people actually intending to drive there. However in amongst that there is information on speed limits and turn restrictions.
A few are:
http://factsanddetails.com/russia/Educa ... -5158.html
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/travel/country/russia/

As far as the road and place names, these are all in Cyrillic. - Russia = Россия, Moscow = Москва, road = Дорога, highway = шоссе.

If you are going to try and name anything you will need access to a Cyrillic virtual keyboard and a lot of copy and paste!! Fortunately the standard Google translator seems to be very good.
Also I understand there are going to be quite a few Russians joining in the raid and so I expect them to take on most of the place and road naming and we will just need to copy and paste once they have done the first one.

The big issue, as with the previous raid I took part in, will be finding a source of information (road maps, place names etc) that is not copyright controlled. You will need to read the information about map raids that will be around before the raid starts to make sure you do not use information that is not allowed - google maps and any other proprietary maps are copyright protected and are definitely out .
On with the fun.

Hi Steve (and any other new map raiders who where thinking about this),

Funny you should ask. Following all the excitement about it in Discord, I have just spent several hours reading and digesting the information about mentoring that our American cousins have produced.
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Mentoring/Formal
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Me ... Guidelines
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Me ... /Resources
https://wazeopedia.waze.com/wiki/USA/Mentoring/Informal

In my opinion, we (the UK) are not in the position to undertake any "Formal Mentoring" as detailed in the Wazopedia pages yet, and even if we could, I am not sure I am qualified to do so.

However, the "Informal Mentoring is fine, a general agreement to help out with answering questions and offering advice. This is not so much different to what we currently do via the forum anyway.

Having said that, I have only done one raid so far, and actually, aside from the confusion of the start and end dates and getting the area to go live, the actual raid was very simple. Find a bit of land where you can see roads in the aerial that are not drawn and draw them. Find a town that is not linked to anywhere and draw the road to link it to another town. If you fancy it, stay in one place and draw in the roads inside the town. The land mass is so great this time that even with the 500+ editors that have already signed up I expect you will hardly ever see another one.
The raids are fairly basic, just trying to get the base map in place, no one (well almost no one, there were a few comments if the road was too far from the aerial image!) is worried about the exact shapes of the roads or the speed limits or even the street names if they had one, that is for the locals to do once the raid is over. The big challenge this time is the language. We have been told each team with have at least one Russian, and so their job will have to be be the town and main road naming.

Personally, I don't think you will need a mentor, (definitely not a Formal one). I am sure as a UK L3 editor you will be fine, just don't get too cross with some of the smaller countries L1 & 2's (and even an L5 in Zimbabwe) who don't seem to have quite got the hang of making sure the new roads actually connect together! You may just need someone to send the questions to and I am more than happy to do that. We do not need to be even in the same team as I suspect, as last time, we will all be able to see the whole area.
Ian

Ankh-Morpork wrote:I still have to get the hang of Discord, there are so many channels on the Waze group. And I seem to get tagged a lot by a user called Orbitc, to be assigned or something...? Not sure (yet) what that is about.

Now you're assigned to the MMR-Russia group, and group assignments being made for others,you're being notified about. You may be best switching off the notifications for the Waze server these assignments are done.

I did some of the India one which wasn't as long as this one so am looking forward to getting in with a longer raid period for the second one

For the India map raid it was very similar to how Ian explained. When I had the free time. I jumped on and found an area where new roads needed to be added. I personally avoided all the main towns on the India map raid as most of them had already either been imported in or already been covered by other editors. I myself stuck to joining lots of distant villages and settlements together with some crazy long segments. I also enjoy sticking to the country areas as you find yourself going on little adventures all over the map due to getting diverted by a turn or a fork.
I can highly recommend making yourself a personal list of Permalinks so when you finish up for the day or get distracted/lost by another road you have found, you are able to come back to it if you need to follow it along a different way to do some more editing.

You may also find one of the map raid team have created a script for WME to allow you to jump from place to place around the map raid region.

Other than that the only other real issue I could find myself having sometimes is working out what to designate a road as; street, primary street etc. Though more often than not most major highways are already mapped

Thanks, gonna give this one a go, my first mapraid

@Ianinessex, looks like you're going to be fielding a few questions from us MapRaid newbies

@Ianinessex, @Challenger3802 would one of you consider being my mentor for this MapRaid as it's my first please? I can then post something in the discord group so they can pair us up;

Thanks in anticipation