Hi Editors,  

We’re excited to announce that today we’re rolling out Project KoiFish to L5+ editors in WME production!


What’s project KoiFish you ask?  

A few months ago we posted about a new map suggestions feature here, that will give editors super powers that will help impact the quality and accuracy of the Waze Map even more. In the first stage, these Map Suggestions will surface potentially missing segments in WME. You will be able to resolve these suggestions by adding new data to the Waze Map or by sending feedback to Google Maps operators. After some time in beta we are happy to announce the feature is now available to all editors L5+ in production!!!

How to start:

• Activate the map suggestions layer
• Click on a Map suggestion this will allow you to see the pre-populated attributes. In the first stage the only source of the suggestions will be Google Maps.
• Verify the suggested information by using GPS points, satellite imagery and other resources you might find helpful. Please pay extra attention to the street names as they could vary from the accepted Waze convention or even be incorrect.
• Accept or reject a suggestion, You may use the multi-select tool (or multi-select map suggestions like any other segment), this will allow you to perform bulk operations
• If you accept a suggestion it will be added to the Waze Map as is. You can still make some adjustments afterwards of course.
• If you reject a suggestion make sure to choose the correct rejection reason, that’s super important!
• Save as usual (:

 Please make sure to review this Koi Fish Guide before you start editing:




Some suggestions might not be a clear cut and that’s ok, take the time to review it and share it within your communities or ask any questions in this thread and we’ll be happy to assist.


Permissions:

We are launching the feature for L5+.Coordinators will have the ability to request change of lock ranks per country. Everyone will be able to view suggestions. 

Countries with available suggestions: (we’ll roll out to more geographies gradually):

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czechia, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan.

Please reach out to your community coordinators to get access to your country's spreadsheet with map suggestions and for more information regarding an exciting Map Raid planned for this project!

Coming in the near future:

Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela.


Known issues

• Issue tracker - We were hoping to launch this feature as part of the issue tracker, which will allow you to browse through suggestions and filter by road types. Since the issue tracker is not ready yet, we will only be able to present the suggestions in a layer.
• Border issues - Edge case once we open to more levels and country A uses L3 and country B uses L2. When editing in the border area of country B an L2 editor may see suggestions from country A, but won’t be able to edit them.

 What’s next:

• Feedback on the feedback - To show you your impact, we want to close the feedback loop back from Google Maps to you and let you know if Google Maps made changes based on your edits.
• Special points for resolving suggestions
• More segment attributes
• Updated imagery - We know this has been a major ask from you and getting you more updated imagery is already in the works.

 Okay, I read all this, but really what does KoiFish stand for?

As is Waze tradition, we love to name some of our big projects fun names. Many of you were part of Project Falcon or participated in the Waze Mole Program for beacons. To us this project is all about collaboration, creating a feedback loop between two maps (Waze & Google Maps) and complementing each other's strength in order to achieve an accurate map. The two Koi fish symbolize these concepts. 

 Meet our project logo here:  

Happy mapping!

Maia, on behalf of the team