Welcome to Waze Turkey!
You want to help too? Read along and join the Waze Turkey community.
What is Waze?
Waze is a free GPS navigation application for mobile telephone or tablet. Waze has speech support, free map updates and uses real time traffic information and actual reports from its users. Users like you! With Waze you can share your driver experience, connect with friends, send your ETA to show when you will be home, or just avoid traffic jams. Waze is crowd-sourced, meaning it is maintained by its users.
- Waze has the application, often called client or just app. You can read more about the app on the global wiki pages.
- There is a map, that is maintained by users, the Waze Map Editor (WME).
- Its users form a community, who work together locally as well as internationally.
This page focuses on the community and Map Editing in Turkey.
Community
The community maintains the Waze map and make sure it works as best as possible. We make guidelines that are specific of our location, as well as work together internationally. The community of Turkey is not very large yet, and much of the map in Turkey is not maintained well. You can help by sharing your experiences, or even edit the map yourself. How to connect is described in Communication.
The current active community is a mix of Turkish and international editors. Please contact one of the CMs for further info.
| Community of Turkey | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Editor | Area | Role | |
| CM | country |
| |
(to be elaborated)
Communication
How can I contact Waze? Where can I find more information? Where can I post my questions? Currently, the Country Managers (CM) are responsible for Waze in Turkey. Please contact them for questions or assistance.
Turkey has a page on Facebook. The page is used mainly to inform anyone who is interested.
Forum
The forum of your own country is a good starting point for finding more information. You can read the latest information, learn from questions of other editors or ask a question yourself. Login to the Turkish form using your standard Waze login and password you use in the app and the editor. In the forum you can also make use of Private Messages (PM). This is a kind of inbox, like your e-mail. When you receive a PM, you will also receive a message to your regular e-mail to inform you of the new message. How you can handle your PM's is described here.
Chat
While you are editing, you can directly request help in WME chat. It shows you the level of the editor you are talking to. Please keep in mind that most editors are willing to help, but not all of them have the technical knowledge or editing experience to give you the best answer. Because the built-in chat does not always work as desired, we also have Google Hangouts© en Slack©. Most editors, especially the higher level ones, have an account on both Hangouts and Slack.
Hangouts
Waze Turkey is on Hangouts. To use Hangouts, you need a Google account. There is an extension in Chrome, an app for your smart phone or tablet, or you can use your browser. In Hangouts, you can chat in groups or privately. If you want to join Waze Turkey on Hangouts, send your gmail-address to one of the CMs.
Slack
Because of the disadvantages of Hangouts, Slack is now a commonly used communication platform. In Slack there are several Channels for several subjects and locations, and you can send Direct Messages (DM) as well. Files and pictures can be shared, and you can make list of what to do or read. In Slack, it is also easy to set various notification rules for browser as well as mobile. There is a Turkish channel in the international Slack, where you can also meet other Wazers from around the world. Request access by filling in this form and check Waze International.
Wiki
A lot of information is available in the Wiki. There are global pages with information applicable to all regions in the World. There are local pages as well. Turkey just started with this Wiki page. Because we have many tourists helping update our maps, this page is available in English too. At the bottom of each Wiki page, the last update is shown. If this is more than half a year ago, please take into consideration that the information might be outdated.
Editing
As the community is starting to grow, we now start to provide some guidelines for editors. We all try to help each other and learn from each other. We hope to be able to help you too.
Quick-start guide
Base Map Editing
At many places in Turkey, a basemap was imported while the Satellite View was not aligned well. Therefore, the roads are often out-of-line very much.
pic example
As from April 2015, Satellite View seems to be up-to-date mostly. You can check the GPS tracks if you are in doubt, but keep in mind that the GPS data is not always very well recorded, as the signal is not always strong enough. In addition, GPS traces only show when there is some recent amount of data.
If you start correcting the base map, try to re-align the roads as much as possible and avoid deleting segments. This will keep the data that is assigned to the area (saved with the segments) intact. To start re-aligning, find a spot where you have enough room to drag the junction nodes (link) to the junction they probably belong to. Subsequently, align the roads itself to the areal view using the geometry nodes.
Also, the turns are often restricted (red arrows) with soft restrictions (link). This would be alright if there is no editing activity, as soft turns adapt to the driving behavior. However, if Waze is not used intensively (like in many locations in Turkey yet), driving directions that people don’t use will be inhibited and become unroutable. If you start working on an area, make sure you have checked all the junctions. A handy tool to use is to switch between ... Shift Z (explain/link)
please prevent deleting as much as possible (link)
How to start
First of all, start improving your home area. You know best how you best drive in you area. Ask the community on how things can be handled if Waze acts differently than you would think. If you are satisfied with your home area, check the connecting roads from your town to the nearest towns and, subsequently, to Major Highways and Freeways (links). This is also the moment to consider applying for Area Management (link).
Roads
Road types
- The main roads in a city or village should at least be set to primary.
- If segments will be used for through-going traffic or for longer distances connecting districts or towns, they should at least be mH (minor Highway)
- Main interconnecting roads should be MH (major Highway)
(add something about road numbers?)
Always make sure a road is at least connected to a same level of road type or higher.
Thus, Waze should be able to route from primary to primary (or higher), from minor to minor (or higher), from major to major (or higher), and from Freeway to Freeway. Another way of explaining this, is that you should be able to continuously drive on the same type of segments for the routing engine to use that road type in the calculations.
This means we need to sometimes make small roads mH, for the possibility of calculating long distance routing. Please discuss with the local champs if anything is unclear.
Dirt roads
Dirt roads are, contrary to what is seems like, only those roads that need a 4x4 to drive on. Non-paved roads that are drivable for normal cars (and there are many in Turkey) should be typed normal “street”.
In Turkey, dirt roads are often applied for rivers when dried up. People use those to drive, so we need to map them. To enable dirt roads in routing, you need to specify that in the settings in the client.
Roundabouts
Be careful with roundabouts. In Turkey, many roundabouts should NOT be drawn as a roundabout, to avoid confusing instructions. If there is a roundabout on the road, you will always get instructions like: "On the roundabout, take the 3rd exit" or, "On the roundabout, go left" depending on the way of drawing (link to explanation).
Always ask yourself, what kind of instruction will you hear or see in the app? Do that for every road into every direction. In the picture, if you are at segment 3, and want to go to segment 5, you would now get "On the roundabout, take the 2nd exit". That is not conform the actual situation for the driver, who just drives straight. In this case, a roundabout would thus yield confusing instructions.
Some alternative solutions for such junctions are the following:
-
Solution to the example
-
Simplified junction, for smaller roads. This still yields the right instructions
-
Looks like a roundabout, but acts like a normal junction.
-
Alway make sure the corners yield the right instructions
If you have any doubt, please ask a senior editor or local champ for advise.
Road naming
We are depending on local editors for the naming of the roads. As far as we are aware, there are no allowed sources available that we could use as a reference. If you don't know the name of the road, check the None boxes after the streetname in the edit menu.
Abbreviations
We use the Turkish national standards for abbreviations of the roads, according to TDK. Most used abbreviations for WME will be:
| road | abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Sokak | Sok |
| Cadde | Cad |
| Kavsak | Kvş |
| Mahalle | Mah |
| Bulvar | Blv |
| Yolu | Yolu |
| Çevreyolu | Çvy |
| Otoban | Otoban |
Speed Limits
Although speed limits are not shown in the app yet, they can be entered via WME. Standard speed limits in Turkey are:
| Road Type | default speed |
|---|---|
| Freeway | 120 |
| Rural road, double lane | 100 |
| Rural road, single two-way lane | 90 |
| Urban road | 50 |
(source: http://www.kgm.gov.tr/Sayfalar/KGM/SiteTr/Trafik/HizSinirlari.aspx)
Please be aware that areas or parts of roads can have different limits. We need local editors to confirm these.
User Requests (URs)
Many areas are still not maintained, and we have some very old User Requests open. As the map currently is not in very good shape, the URs signals where we have to work. Also, it provides a possibility to get into contact with our users. To answer the User Requests, we have prepared some standard responses; the doc is linked in the Turkish Slack channel too, to easily find it back.
Here is a first guideline for response times, based on the current situation:
for recent URs (<1 month):
- Start with thanking the reporter for reporting the issue.
- If the report is clear and you can solve the issue directly, please do and explain to the reporter what you have done. The reporter receives a message of your comment, and will feel valued for his/her addition. In addition, other editors can learn from your solution and it can help solving other issues in the neighborhood. You can close the UR as solved (standard response).
- When the issue is not clear, ask the reporter politely for more information (standard response).
- If the reporter doesn´t respond to your question within 7 days, you may send a reminder message. It often happens the reporters do respond only after a reminder (standard response).
- When the reporter also does not respond to your reminder within another 2 weeks, you can close the UR as "Not identified", with a comment in the conversation why you closed it (standard response). Meanwhile, there is some time to improve the area, and for the mapupdates to come live.
For reports between 1 and 6 months old, use your best judgement as to how to handle them. You may follow the guidelines above, and use the standard response asking for more info, that includes an excuse for responding late. Again, always try to improve the area before closing the UR.
For older reports (half a year or more), our main focus is to inform the reporter that we are working on the map and they can help if they want (see default response for very old URs). Allow at least two weeks before closing. In addition, before you close the report, try to figure out what the problem was. Always improve the area before you close the UR. Use the "Closing an UR after no feedback" text from the standard responses.
Elaborate information on URs can be read in the general Wiki page on Update Requests. Be aware, that if guidelines differ from what is written above, the Turkish guidelines precede.