This guide is a Work in Progress
ArchAbaddon's Guide for New US Editors
I think most editors will agree that new editors are a welcome part of the community, and also a chore to educate and clean up after. Personally, I've been schooled by more senior editors, and am already passing down their pointers to editors more junior than I. That being said, I'm making this thread in an effort to place commonly-used references in one easy place for new editors.
Tips for New Editors
Ranks
Curious about how to reach higher map editing ranks? Lots of edits, dear reader. Reaching Rank 3 requires 10K map edits, while reaching Rank 5 requires 100K. There are exceptions, of course, but you'll still have to prove you have exceptional knowledge of map editing and your area to increase your rank. See the Map Editing Rank sub-page for more info.
Locks
I mention Ranks because of Locks. Some road segments will be locked to prevent less-knowledgeable editors from accidentally creating problems with critical road segment (although, sadly, this doesn't stop less-knowledgeable high-ranking editors from fouling things up). This is more common with Interstate and highway segments, but might also apply to surface streets and other segments, especially those used by rush-hour commuters or are otherwise subject to heavy usage.
If you find yourself needing assistance with a section that's locked, you'll want to put in a request on the US Unlock and Update Requests sub-forum. Remember to follow the guidelines for making a request - they're listed at the top of the forums. In this manner, a higher-rank editor can check out your issue and make proper adjustments, or even lower the lock if the section is locked in error.
Grab the Junction, not the Endpoint
If you need to re-align an intersection, there's a big difference between grabbing the endpoint of a street segment and an intersection junction.
- When you have a street segment highlighted, you'll typically see to endpoints labeled A and B.
- When you grab a junction, you click on an intersection without highlighting any street segments beforehand. If you have a street segment selected, use the Escape key or click off of it before grabbing the junction. When you do do, the junction will turn into a bright blue dot.
Grabbing the junction will enable you to drag the adjoining segments with it. This allows easy re-alignment of intersections without destroying the junction arrow settings for the intersection.
Address Markers
One of the most common navigation issues is that the address marker, usually pulled from Google, is in the wrong place or too close to the wrong street. This happens most often with residential addresses, addresses in strip malls, and businesses that are farther from their respective parent streets. These should be fixed in Google Mapmaker (https://www.google.com/mapmaker) before using a Waze address marker. Waze will typically query Google for address and business locations first. Although it's OK to add business as a Place, Google Mapmaker should be the first choice for correcting address and business locations. Residence-type places (houses and domiciles) should NEVER be added on US maps, even though WME supports them (for use in other regions).
Parking Lot Roads
In the past, use of parking lot roads was frugal at best. However, without them, the app may not know how to get to a location with existing streets and give poor navigation at best, routing users to a residential street behind a shopping center, complete navigation on a buys highway, and so forth.
Always use the Best Practices before employing parking lot roads. Only create enough road as necessary to navigate users to the store front, and don't map every single row or aisle. It's best not to overdo parking lot roads, not only to keep the map less cluttered, but also to ensure the navigation with the Waze app isn't confused by too many intersections.
Note that your planned road may intersect with a road that is locked; in this case, you'll need to seek the aid of a senior editor to connect the road to that street, ramp, or highway.
Cul de sacs
Even though most cul de sacs, allow u-turns, u-turns are disabled in WME because they can cause navigation problems with the app. See this sub-page for more info, and DON'T enable u-turns in your cul de sacs.
Places
Places are a new feature to Waze. In their previous incarnation, Landmarks were sporadically used to outline gas stations, public parks, schools, and hospitals - and that was about it. With Places, you're more than welcome to put a Place down for your favorite restaurant, auto garage, bar, etc.
Remember that for Navigation, Google Mapmaker should be your first stop for declaring a place or moving an address marker.
Note that places come in two varieties: Areas and Points. Most places will be Points, but larger Places will be mapped as Areas. Use this chart to determine When to use Area or Point.
Keyboard shortcuts
The Q, W, and I keys will be your best friends for most circumstances.
- Q disables all turns at a junction point
- W enables all turns at a junction point
- I initiates drawing a new road section
Instead of enabling or disabling each turn arrow at a time, it's usually easier to enable or disable all of them, and then toggle the exceptions.
For more keyboard shortcuts, refer to Keyboard shortcuts.
Advanced Editing Tips
WME Addons, Extensions, and Scripts
The Addons, Extensions, and Scripts subforums on the Waze Forums contains a lot of good plugins that can enhance your editing experience. Here are a few of my favorites:
- WME Validator: checks segments and junctions to ensure no errors exist, such as self-termination, missing incoming or outgoing traffic flow, enabled dead-ends, etc.
- UROverview Plus: Helps sort and filter User Reports. Very useful to find URs in which you're involved.
- WME Color Highlights: Used to highlight road segments based on various filters and criteria, such as locks, segment type, etc.
Remember to thank the author of the software in the relative forum thread!
References
Wiki References
- Best map editing practice
- Creating and Editing street segments
- Places
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Your Rank and Points