Mentoring/Resources

General mentoring resources

These resources can be adapted to use in any venue of the mentoring program, either through Formal Mentoring, Informal Mentoring, or On Your Own.

• See the Waze Wiki
  • Basic
    • Waze Map Editor
    • Editing Quick-start Guide
    • Best map editing practice
    • Junction Style Guide
  • Intermediate
    • Road names (USA)
    • Highway naming / USA
    • Segment Length
  • Advanced
    • Smudged City
• Static Tutorials
  • 101: Map Editor Presentation
  • 301: Junction Angles Intro
• Interactive
  • Waze Map Editor (WME) Practice Mode

Informal mentoring resources

On top of all the general resources, the following resources are beneficial to be used outside of a Formal Mentoring relationship. Anyone is free to participate, and make use of these resources. A Mentor may suggest specific items to review, or to use.

• Live Tutorials
  • Webinars USA

Resources for formal mentoring

The following is a list of online resources available for the Formal Mentoring Process.

• Forum discussion is currently in a "Trial" stage and is held on this forum.

Formal Mentoring was pioneered in the USA, therefore some of the basic materials for the USA can be used as general guidelines, unless your country has specific guidelines to overrule them.

• Formal mentoring guidelines

• Formal mentor training

Formal Mentoring Badges

Those that have been accepted as Formal Mentors may have one of three badges that will appear in the Forum and other locations. All are Formal Mentors but with different Rank in the Waze Community.

Formal Mentor	Formal Mentor Local Champ	Formal Mentor Global Champ

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Mentoring is a great way to learn from those with more experience or to pass down your experience to others, but the interaction usually ends up helping everyone and creating a better Waze community for all.

Overview

Mentoring is the process where a more experienced person (the mentor) imparts knowledge and skill to one who is less experienced (the protege, or in the terms of Waze Formal Mentoring programs, the mentee).

Typically a Mentor is much more experienced than a Mentee. In some cases a Mentor may have less general experience, but significant specialty knowledge in one or more topics. For instance, such a Mentor may know a lot about a regional issue, city, or state, or type of road system. There are two main forms of mentoring in Waze; Formal Mentoring, and Informal Mentoring. One is not intended to replace the other, but instead they are designed to coexist. Each form has its' own benefits and disadvantages which will be discussed below.

Formal mentoring

For more details on Formal Mentoring, see Mentoring/Formal.

Formal Mentoring is a structured program, where a specific officially approved Waze Mentor and a Mentee are brought together, with a responsibility to accomplish a specific goal. The goal will be a defined objective, duration, and under a common set of rules, with the purpose to better some aspect of their Waze interaction. The objective may be building a particular skill over time, learning to participate in a certain aspect of the Waze community, learning how a portion of the Waze technology works, or mastering the skills required to increase the Mentees' editing rank.

Formal Mentoring can accelerate advancement of editor rank and/or roles while maintaining quality of editing and Waze Community interaction.

A Formal Mentoring arrangement will define the methods of communication, the frequency, and their intensity, and will include a definable objective, and normally a target date for completion.

Informal mentoring

For more details on Informal Mentoring, see Mentoring/Informal.

Most of the mentoring on Waze takes place informally, without structure. Informal Mentoring goes on all the time when one Wazer asks a question of another and when one Wazer helps another. This happens any time two editors with different experience levels in some aspect of editing get together to help the Mentee better understand that aspect, and how to implement that knowledge.

We encourage you to engage in such interaction regularly and have some ideas for you here. Examples include the Waze Forum, WME Chat, dialog through Private Messages, and much more. Becoming a regular Informal Mentor is a great way to see if you're good at teaching various editing skills, and might be interested in Formal Mentoring.

Informal Mentoring usually either has no goal beyond the immediate issue at hand, or it may be a repeated interaction without an overarching defined goal guiding all of those interactions. Neither party has any formal responsibility to the other.

Mentoring resources

A list of available resources which can be used as part of both Formal, and Informal Mentoring is available at Mentoring/Resources.

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All the Mentoring program pages are linked in the box below. New pages can be added to this list by clicking here.