Welcome to the Waze Wiki FAQ. This FAQ is user-maintained and designed to supplement the official and technical FAQs:.
What is Cartouche?
Cartouche is the name of the map editor. You can access it through: http://www.waze.com/cartouche (Northern America users) http://world.waze.com/cartouche (International/other users)
What is Dashboard?
Dashboard is the name of your personal information console. You can find various information about your Waze account here, including most recent driven routes. You can access it through: http://www.waze.com/dashboard (Northern America users) http://world.waze.com/dashboard (International/other users)
What are my routes?
Routes are journeys that you have driven with the Waze client running. While you drive Waze monitors your journey (recording details like location, time & speed) and transfers this information to the servers. This data is used to validate the existing mapping (roads, turns etc) and to learn average journey times. Other Waze users and Area Managers can also view the anonymous GPS tracks of many users when editing the map in Cartouche. This helps with map accuracy.
When do my routes show up in the Dashboard?
Updates of the dashboard takes place daily, so you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up.
What happens when I drive on an unknown (unmapped) road?
If you simply drive on an unknown road, Waze simply records your route information as usual, but will not create them with as new roads in Cartouche or Livemap.
You can help to build the maps by adding unknown roads. Simply switch on road building mode in your Waze client and it will record the route as a series of new road segments adding junctions (also known as nodes) where it detects your turns. When Waze detects that you are back on a known road, road building mode is automatically paused.
Please turn off road building mode when it is not needed as it can lead to duplicate roads being recorded due to the existing maps being slightly inaccurate or due to GPS errors on your client. Remember that the Waze client is dependant on having a good GPS fix for accurate recording. Also the Waze client might falsely record new roads if it hasn't been able to download the map tiles for your location due to poor cellular phone coverage etc.
Updates of the Cartouche map are made based on your recording, but you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up.
I recorded new roads in the client - what now?
Your newly recorded roads will not appear in Livemap until they have been edited in Cartouche. Livemap will show small arrows if you zoom right in to indicate that it knows of an street/road with no name. The Cartouche update will need to be done by either you or the appropriate Area Manager, or another user who has also driven close to this road previously.
Please log into Cartouche and edit the details of the road you recorded. You can set the road category, it's name, city and direction(s). You should also check it's connectivity to other roads to allow Waze to use it correctly for routing.
This is an important part of Wazing as it helps our community build the maps for eveyone to use.
When do my roads show up in the Livemap?
Your newly recorded roads will not appear in Livemap until they have been edited in Cartouche. This will need to be done by either you or the appropriate Area Manager.
Generation of the Livemap takes place daily, so you have to wait at least 24-48h before changes show up after the changes have been made in Cartouche.
When do my roads show up in the client application?
Tiles on the client are cached, and only refreshed when one of the following three conditions is met:
* You are showing a specific location on the map from the address search. * You are navigating to or through the tile. * The tile is over one week old.
Note that they always need to be propagated to the livemap first, before showing on the client.
What webbrowser do you recommend for editing roads?
Support for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is limited due to various bugs associated with use of IE and Cartouche. Therefore, it is recommended that another browser be used for editing such as: Safari Firefox Chrome
Why do I get to see traffic reports hundreds of miles away in the client?
The traffic reports on the client show the nearest 20 reports. Sometimes, when there are not many wazers in your area, you'll see traffic reports from a areas that are farther away. Waze only actively shows you the traffic reports within a certain radius of your location (using a pop-up), so if you are not interested in seeing reports from farther away, do not click the traffic report button.
What is a locked road in Cartouche?
In the road attributes in Cartouche you have the option to set a road to 'Locked'. Waze will then no longer make any assumptions about the directionality of the road. This is useful for locking the directionality of one-way roads, so they won't be changed to two-way when somebody drives in the opposite direction (or by GPS drift). It is also useful to lock roads which are driven in one direction more often than the other. In short: when you are absolutely sure about the directionality of a road, it is recommended to set it to locked. Locking roads will also block users lower in rank from editing the segment.
Why are aerials not available or are low resolution?
Due to Waze's business model (which keeps the product free to us users) they are limited in what sources they can use for aerial maps. Normally this means using free sources which will of course be of lower resolution or availability then aerials available from commercial sources. If you know of a source that the licensing appears to be free for commercial use and in particular has no strings on derivative use, then email that source to alpha@waze.com and they will look into it, and see if it will work.