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In the beginning of 2012 I had recently gotten my first smart phone, an iPhone 4, and heard about Waze on the radio. I had a Garmin GPS at the time but it was several years out of date and I didn't want to pay the $80 for the map update. I thought I would give Waze a try and found that my neighborhood had some strange road geometry so I looked into ways to fix it and found that I could edit the map myself. I logged into the editor and was only able to edit a couple of segments, but not the one that I wanted to, so I fixed the ones that I could. A few days later I tried again but was still not able to figure out why I couldn't fix the road that I wanted so I gave up on fixing it. A few months later I used the app again and found it was fixed and continue to sporadically use the app in place of my Garmin - I only had a 400mb data plan so I didn't use it too often.

In 2014 I ended up having some free time in the evenings and decided I wanted to do something "good" to help others rather than play video games or watch TV to pass the time, so I returned to check out Waze and the map editing. I was happy to see the editor I had previously experienced had been updated and was much friendlier to use and I got started looking for things to fix around my home area. It wasn't long until I was found and I started working with another local editor, communicating over forum PM and GHO - before the state GHOs had really been created. This is when I became hooked on the editing and improving the map.

It was about 2 years later when I realized my software engineering background could provide more help to the community, and thus the map, if I could create/update scripts that would help with editing. My first script was the GLR Lock script, which was me taking the lock bookmarklet on the wiki and changing it into a script and enhancing it. This was mainly so I could get used to Javascript again (it had been a few years since I had used it) and because it was a simple project. The next script I worked on was RA Util. I chose this because it was strange to me for one of the "most important" things hammered into editors heads was to not delete segments so the data could be preserved, but there was no other way to move a roundabout than to either do it one node at a time, or delete and recreate. Getting this working and released is what then spurred me to look for more opportunities to improve the tools editors use to edit the map - every tool I can create could have exponentially more of an impact on that map than any edit I do myself.

I am currently mainly focusing along these lines and working on informal mentoring of script developers to do as much as I can to make it easy for them to start out writing scripts for WME. Myself, Carlos Laso, and Glodenox are working with staff on creating an "official" interface between user scripts and the WME front end, using part of one of my and MapOMatic's scripts (WazeWrap) as a starting point, in order to make script writing easier, and help mitigate the chance that WME front end changes break existing scripts.

While my focus has changed over the years from editing, to mentoring, to community tool development & improvement, the end goal has always been to improve the map and help the community. I try to work with the community as much as possible in addition to the scripting work, and have been working with Australia editors as they have a new coordinator that is trying to set up documentation for best practices, wiki guidance, etc..

Waze editing as provided great learning opportunities both technical and personal. I appreciate your consideration and look forward to further opportunities to help the community and Waze.

Milestones

  • First edits: February 2012 - Wasn't able to find an easy way to get in contact with other editors and was frustrated by the editor, so made few edits
  • Began editing again: ~ September 2014
  • First AM granted: May 2015
  • LAM SW Ohio: June 2015 - December 2015
  • Restricted R5 granted: June 2015 - restricted R5 given for I-75 freeway construction maintenance project by Gizmo
  • Unrestricted R5 granted: Oct 2015
  • Ohio State Manager promotion: December 2015 - January 2019
  • Formal Mentor - November 2015 - Present
  • GLR Place Name Harmonization Moderator - Jan 2016 - Present
  • Country Manager promotion - Dec 16, 2016
  • Script Writing Community Coordinator - August, 2018
  • USA Local Champ promotion - March 1, 2018

Projects

  • Started a Place Harmonization tracking sheet for Ohio/GLR before the PNH project was public/released. Once the PNH project was made public, volunteered to be the moderator for the GLR.
  • Member of the GLR Standards group.
  • Ohio Speed Limit implementation
    • With the help of the tools Terry developed, generated maps for tracking speed limit implementation
    • Ohio editors were not excited about SL implementation and the overwhelming number of segments that would need work.  I jumped in and gave a helping hand to show SMs aren't immune to having to do that hard work, too!  Set speed limits on > 50k segments throughout Ohio, inspiring lower ranks to join in the effort and eventually brought us from a low of 36th place to 4th in scored completion, from the Waze speed limit sheet
  • Address/Place Routing Clarification - Many question regarding how Waze routes to address and business came up in the Ohio GHOs.  From experience working with URs, making GMM changes and a lot of testing I attempted to https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=261&t=163927#p1241393 write up an explanation on how this works so fellow editors could use this knowledge when working URs.
  • Enhanced doctorkb's AM polygon map to allow: 1) drawing the polygons (rectangle and freeform) 2) drawing inserted WKT strings 3) update all formats (waze/standard/wkt) when the polygons are adjusted 4) search with autocomplete capabilities.  wazer.tech/map-plot.php
  • Created the Waze Scripts Discord server for a consolidated location for script discussion/help and providing a chat environment for scripters to be able to work together and share knowledge 
  • Along with MapOMatic started the WazeDev github group for group access to developed/future scripts so they can all be maintained by anyone in the group should anyone need help or go inactive.  have guidelines in place so no one in the group can access the other scripts to modify without the original author's approval while they are still active in Waze.
  • WazeDev scripting primer (https://github.com/WazeDev/WazeDev.github.io/wiki) - created a tutorial for helping editors interested in scripting to learn how to start writing scripts, which covers how to bootstrap the script (how to wait to start until the correct WME elements are loaded), creating a tab (using WazeWrap), loading/saving script settings, and interfacing with some WME objects.  WazeDev wiki also hosts a reference sheet with examples of how to use some of the objects/events (where to find and how to use some of the objects/events available are not obvious nor easy to find) - https://github.com/WazeDev/WazeDev.github.io/wiki/Waze-object-references
  • CommunityBot - worked with TerryPurdue to get a working copy of the Discord Wazebot on a server so it is under the control of the community rather than one person.  Actively developed the bot over the course of a week to get it working on a new server and add functionality.  Have continued developing for the bot adding new features and improving existing features.
  • Co-moderator of US Magic settings with Xanderb
  • Created bots to pull closure information from state resources and post in Discord channels for Ohio and Michigan.
  • Informally mentoring editors that have started creating their own scripts
  • Hosting a server for wazedev.com. This server also provides functionality necessary for the Chat Add-on script to work (taken over by the WazeDev group). This server will also be used in a project under development to allow saving script settings to a server so they can be used on all computer an editor uses

Script Work (non-exhaustive list)

  • GLR Lock (released to GLR SMs only) - script to lock on-screen segments to state/region lock standards. Currently implemented to known/published state & region standards.
  • WazeWrap - A base library for WME script writers.  Was released early in order to help script writers recover from major WME changes, by implementing dummyd2's fix. WazeWrap gave scripters a 1 line change to get their scripts up and running again (these changes are now obsolete due to Waze fixing the hooks scripts use to interact with Waze actions).  WazeWrap now includes many other enhancements such as easy tab creation, adding a checkbox in the layer switcher, easy keyboard shortcut creation - and all of these support switching in/out of the various WME modes. Other features include a script update interface, event subscription encapsulation to include automatic error catching (to mitigate WME changes killing all scripts when one has an issue), soon an alert interface. Working with staff to get some of WazeWrap implemented natively in WME to provide an "official" script interface.
  • Place Interface Enhancements - Numerous improvements to the Place interface (side panel), showing Place names on the map, customizable new Place menu, & many other features.  Staff borrowed some of the more popular features from PIE and incorporated them directly into WME.
  • RA Util - Providing basic utility for RA adjustment without the need to delete & recreate
  • Wazebar - Providing a way to keep up with new forum posts from within WME
  • True Segment Length - Providing the actual segment length for selected segments - WME rounds the meters value to the nearest meter in the data provided to WME for display
  • Waze Editor Profile Enhancements - Fixes for editor profile bugs including the incorrect forum count loading, provides a button to copy managed area WKTs, see statistics for recent edits and change the server used for displaying recent edits and managed areas on the map
  • Open Other Maps - provides links to open other maps from WME and open WME from other maps. Also provides a way to overlay Google MyMaps maps into WME.
  • WME Magic - Teamed with dbcm to create the validator replacement with settings available per country, refinable down to the state level.  No longer a part of the development for this project due to not agreeing on how it is run. Still working as a moderator.
  • CityShifter (private release to Carlos only) - written to help Carlos Laso; Carlos found several cities where the segments were shifted off the aerials by several meters - not enough for Waze to correct this on their end. This script allows him to shift all segments on-screen, by a configurable amount, and get them lined up with aerials.
  • PL Cleaner Firefox/Chrome Extension - extension that removes the layers setting from a PL that is being opened (so opening a PL does not change your current layer settings) and inserts the missing "/" which causes older scripts to break.
  • Wazeopedia Enhancements - Fixes the anchor link following so the page is moved to the correct location (which is thrown off by the 60 pixel fixed waze banner at the top of the screen).
  • WME Enhanced Search - Enhances the WME search box by allowing you to paste or drag-and-drop URLs, segment IDs, Place IDs, mapComment IDs, etc. into the search box and it be automatically parsed to move to the location specified in the URL and select any objects that may exist (if it is a WME PL)
  • Other - Have helped get many scripts fixed after WME updates have broken them.
    • NameNorm
    • ClosestSegment (now deprecated - functionality incorporated into WME PIE)
    • HN Tool - have my own fork with script enhancements.  One of the enhancements allows changing all on-screen HNs.  Ex:  Michigan has several cities where the HN was imported incorrectly - it was missing the leading digit (5430 instead of 15430).  The new feature allows the street to be edited and add 10,000 to the existing HNs to get the correct result.  This has saved hours of work so far. (Script retired after WME updates broke and HN Navpoints script released) - now deprecated due to another script coming out that replaces most of this functionality while providing more information
    • WME Me - have my own fork which incorporates the new editor icons
    • WME Simple Permalink (Have since moved this to the WazeDev group and maintain it)
    • WME Show Alt Names
    • WME Route Speeds (Have moved this to the WazeDev group and maintain it with MapOMatic and tonetestertm)
    • WME Extras - limited release script at champ level, have gotten it working again after WME updates have broken.  Removed functionality that is no longer necessary and have added some additional features. Hosted in a private repository to restrict access

Mentoring

Have completed formal mentoring for several editors and have aided in mentoring of editors outside of GLR.

  • RonRover - started at R2, mentored to R4, achieved R5 and SW OH LAM. Was going to be OH SM before health issues caused him to scale back editing. No longer with us.
  • Kartografer - started at R1, mentored to R4.  Now R5 OH SM
  • MrNicGuy - aided with R4 topic mentoring
  • Bill473 - Joint mentored R3 to R4
  • gunnargsd - Joint mentored R4 to R5. Now an OH SM
  • ldriveskier - Mentored R2-R4, now R5 WV SM

Meetup Attendance

  • GLR Meetup - Indianapolis, IN (2016-4-16)
  • SAT Meetup - Charlotte, NC (2016-11-12)
  • GLR Meetup - Indianapolis, IN (2017-08-26)
  • NA Mega Meetup - San Francisco, CA (2018-03-03)
  • SAT Meetup - Hilton Head, SC (2018-06-17)
  • NA Mega Meetup - Los Angeles, CA (2019-02-08)

Mapraid Participation

VEOC

Have helped in many VEOC events when time has permitted, unfortunately due to family and work I have not had time to provide more than minor help.

Wazume BBCode 

[b]Milestones[/b]
[list][*]First edits: February 2012 - Wasn't able to find an easy way to get in contact with other editors and was frustrated by the editor, so made few edits
[*]Began editing again: ~ September 2014
[*]First AM granted: May 2015
[*]LAM SW Ohio: June 2015 - December 2015
[*]Restricted R5 granted: June 2015 - restricted R5 given for a freeway construction maintenance project by Gizmo
[*]Unrestricted R5 granted: Oct 2015
[*]Ohio State Manager promotion: December 2015 - Present
[*]Formal Mentor - November 2015 - Present
[*]GLR Place Name Harmonization Moderator - Jan 2016 - Present
[*]Country Manager promotion - Dec 16, 2016
[*]Scripter's Hall Coordinator - August, 2018
[*]USA Local Champ promotion - March 1, 2018[/list]

[b]Projects[/b]
[list][*]Started a Place Harmonization tracking sheet for Ohio/GLR before the PNH project was public/released. Once the PNH project was made public, volunteered to be the moderator for the GLR.
[*]Member of the GLR Standards group.
[*]Ohio Speed Limit implementation
[list][*]With the help of the tools Terry developed, generated maps for tracking speed limit implementation
[*]Ohio editors were not excited about SL implementation and the overwhelming number of segments that would need work.  I jumped in and gave a helping hand to show SMs aren't immune to having to do that hard work, too!  Set speed limits on > 50k segments throughout Ohio, inspiring lower ranks to join in the effort and eventually brought us from a low of 36th place to 4th in scored completion, from the Waze speed limit sheet.[/list]
[*]Address/Place Routing Clarification - Many question regarding how Waze routes to address and business came up in the Ohio GHOs.  From experience working with URs, making GMM changes and a lot of testing I attempted to [url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=261&t=163927#p1241393]write up an explanation[/url] on how this works so fellow editors could use this knowledge when working URs.
[*]Enhanced doctorkb's AM polygon map to allow: 1) drawing the polygons (rectangle and freeform) 2) drawing inserted WKT strings 3) update all formats (waze/standard/wkt) when the polygons are adjusted 4) search with autocomplete capabilities.  wazer.tech/map-plot.php
[*] Created the Waze Scripts Discord server for a consolidated location for script discussion/help and providing a chat environment for scripters to be able to work together and share knowledge 
[*] Along with MapOMatic started the WazeDev github group for group access to developed/future scripts so they can all be maintained by anyone in the group should anyone need help or go inactive.  have guidelines in place so no one in the group can access the other scripts to modify without the original author's approval while they are still active in Waze.
[*] WazeDev scripting primer (https://github.com/WazeDev/WazeDev.github.io/wiki) - created a tutorial for helping editors interested in scripting to learn how to start writing scripts, which covers how to bootstrap the script (how to wait to start until the correct WME elements are loaded), creating a tab (using WazeWrap), loading/saving script settings, and interfacing with some WME objects.  WazeDev wiki also hosts a reference sheet with examples of how to use some of the objects/events (where to find and how to use some of the objects/events available are not obvious nor easy to find) - https://github.com/WazeDev/WazeDev.github.io/wiki/Waze-object-references
[*] CommunityBot - worked with TerryPurdue to get a working copy of the Discord Wazebot on a server so it is under the control of the community rather than one person.  Actively developed the bot over the course of a week to get it working on a new server and add functionality.  Have continued developing for the bot adding new features and improving existing features.
[*] Co-moderator of US Magic settings with Xanderb
[*] Created bots to pull closure information from state resources and post in Discord channels for Ohio and Michigan.
[*] Informally mentoring editors that have started creating their own scripts
[*] Hosting a server for wazedev.com. This server also provides functionality necessary for the Chat Add-on script to work (taken over by the WazeDev group). This server will also be used in a project under development to allow saving script settings to a server so they can be used on all computer an editor uses
[*]Scripting (non-exhaustive list)
[list][*]GLR Lock (released to GLR SMs only) - script to lock on-screen segments to state/region lock standards. Currently implemented to known/published state & region standards.
[*]WazeWrap - A base library for WME script writers.  [s]Was released early in order to help script writers recover from major WME changes, by implementing dummyd2's fix. WazeWrap gave scripters a 1 line change to get their scripts up and running again[/s] (these changes are now obsolete due to Waze fixing the hooks scripts use to interact with Waze actions).  WazeWrap now includes many other enhancements such as easy tab creation, adding a checkbox in the layer switcher, easy keyboard shortcut creation - and all of these support switching in/out of the various WME modes. Other features include a script update interface, event subscription encapsulation to include automatic error catching (to mitigate WME changes killing all scripts when one has an issue), soon an alert interface. Working with staff to get some of WazeWrap implemented natively in WME to provide an "official" script interface.
[*]Place Interface Enhancements - Numerous improvements to the Place interface (side panel), showing Place names on the map, customizable new Place menu, & many other features.  Staff borrowed some of the more popular features from PIE and incorporated them directly into WME.
[*]RA Util - Providing basic utility for RA adjustment without the need to delete & recreate
[*]Wazebar - Providing a way to keep up with new forum posts from WME
[*]True Segment Length - Providing the actual segment length for selected segments - WME rounds the meters value to the nearest meter in the data provided to WME for display
[*]Waze Editor Profile Enhancements - Fixes for editor profile bugs including the incorrect forum count loading, provides a button to copy managed area WKTs, see statistics for recent edits and change the server used for displaying recent edits and managed areas on the map
[*]Open Other Maps - provides links to open other maps from WME and open WME from other maps. Also provides a way to overlay Google MyMaps maps into WME.
[*]WME Magic - Teamed with dbcm to create the validator replacement with settings available per country, refinable down to the state level.  No longer a part of the development for this project due to not agreeing on how it is run. Still working as a moderator.
[*]CityShifter (private release to Carlos only) - written to help Carlos Laso; Carlos found several cities where the segments were shifted off the aerials by several meters - not enough for Waze to correct this on their end. This script allows him to shift all segments on-screen, by a configurable amount, and get them lined up with aerials.
[*]PL Cleaner Firefox/Chrome Extension - extension that removes the layers setting from a PL that is being opened (so opening a PL does not change your current layer settings) and inserts the missing "/" which causes older scripts to break.
[*] Wazeopedia Enhancements - Fixes the anchor link following so the page is moved to the correct location (which is thrown off by the 60 pixel fixed waze banner at the top of the screen).
[*] WME Enhanced Search - Enhances the WME search box by allowing you to paste or drag-and-drop URLs, segment IDs, Place IDs, mapComment IDs, etc. into the search box and it be automatically parsed to move to the location specified in the URL and select any objects that may exist (if it is a WME PL)
[*]Other - Have helped get many scripts fixed after WME updates have broken them.
[list][*]NameNorm
[*]ClosestSegment (now deprecated - functionality incorporated into WME PIE)
[*]HN Tool - have my own fork with script enhancements.  One of the enhancements allows changing all on-screen HNs.  Ex:  Michigan has several cities where the HN was imported incorrectly - it was missing the leading digit (5430 instead of 15430).  The new feature allows the street to be edited and add 10,000 to the existing HNs to get the correct result.  This has saved hours of work so far. (Script retired after WME updates broke and HN Navpoints script released) - now deprecated due to another script coming out that replaces most of this functionality while providing more information
[*]WME Me - have my own fork which incorporates the new editor icons
[*]WME Simple Permalink (Have since moved this to the WazeDev group and maintain it)
[*]WME Show Alt Names
[*]WME Route Speeds (Have moved this to the WazeDev group and maintain it with MapOMatic and tonetestertm)
[*] WME Extras - limited release script at champ level, have gotten it working again after WME updates have broken.  Removed functionality that is no longer necessary and have added some additional features. Hosted in a private repository to restrict access[/list][/list][/list]

[b]Mentoring[/b]
Have completed formal mentoring for several editors and have aided in mentoring of editors outside of GLR.
[list]
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/RonRover]RonRover[/url](Formal) - started at R2, mentored to R4, now R5 SW OH LAM
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/kartografer]kartografer[/url](Formal) - started at R1, mentored to R4.  Now R5 OH SM
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/MrNicGuy]MrNicGuy[/url](Informal) - aided with R4 topic mentoring
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/bill473]Bill473[/url](Informal) - Joint mentored R3 to R4
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/gunnargsd]gunnargsd[/url] - Joint mentored R4 to R5
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/user/editor/ldriveskier]ldriveskier[/url]  Mentored R2-R4, now R5 WV SM.[/list]

[b]Meetup Attendance[/b]
GLR Meetup - Indianapolis, IN (2016-4-16)
SAT Meetup - Charlotte, NC (2016-11-12)
GLR Meetup - Indianapolis, IN (2017-08-26)
NA Champ Meetup - San Francisco, CA (2018-03-03)
SAT Meetup - Hilton Head, SC (2018-06-17)
NA Mega Meetup - Los Angeles, CA (2019-02-08)

[b]Mapraid Participation[/b]
[list][*]Los Angeles, CA (2014-12)
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1449&t=145734]Ohio training mapraids (2015)[/url]
[list][*]Particpated in informal mentoring of the map raid participants
[*]Helped with the planning and organization of the raids[/list]
[*]Participated as a mentor in both the Ohio training map raids
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1449&t=138553]Houston, TX (2015-01)[/url]
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1449&t=145202]Dallas, TX (2015-02)[/url]
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1449&t=137461]Mega Map Raid (Louisiana area) (2015-03)[/url]
[*]Boston, MA (2015-07)
[*][url=https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1449&t=146471]Philadelphia, PA (2015-07)[/url]
[*]Rhode Island (2016-03) - mostly mentoring[/list]
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