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Overlocking of segments and WME Magic

Post by iainhouse
In the last few months I have been seeing a worrying development - large amounts of primary & minor highway segments manually locked above their automatic level for no apparently good reason. Since Waze introduced automatic locking a few years back, this has served to protect the majority of important roads across the country and there has been far less reason to manually lock roads.

I have little doubt about the most common reason for this manual locking - WME Magic. When this script was introduced it had default settings that were not adjusted for the UK. These included recommending that all primary street should be locked to 2 and all minor highways should be locked to 3. WME Magic makes suggestions, which should never be followed in preference to UK policy, as outlined on Wazeopedia. Fortunately, I was able to become the UK moderator for Magic and remove these warnings - but before that happened, several editors have used them as an excuse to lock roads. In particular, one level 4 editor mass-locked tens of thousands of segments across all their editable areas - that editor has since been permanently demoted.

I understand that Magic is an incredibly useful tool and I would recommend it's use for any editor. But that is no excuse for not knowing the local rules. Overlocking segments without reason blocks new editors from starting their career.

Having said all that, there are still perfectly good reasons for locking segments. Things like complex junctions; roads not matching aerials/GSV; speed limits that aren't evident in GSV; problems caused by inexperienced editors who don't respond to PMs. But that should be done as a matter of judgment - not simply because it's primary street or minor highway.

If you are aware of any areas where you may have followed Magic's advice and over-locked segments, please find some time to return to those areas and lower the locks again. In the vast majority of cases, automatic locking is sufficient to protect the routes most used by Waze.
iainhouse
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