Labeling; giving your road the correct road type
While editing the maps, you will notice that some of the roads are not labeled properly. This means, the road type might be wrong (a highway is marked as a street) or that one road has a few road types (a highway is marked as Freeway, highway and primary at different segments).
The importance of proper labeling is in two aspects: 1. When viewing the map, the 'bigger' roads should appear at the far zoom levels. Without proper labels, the 'zoomed out' display can be very confusing. 2. When planning a route, major roads will get priority over smaller roads. For example, 6 miles on the US-101 are better than 6 miles on El Camino Real.
When editing your area and labeling roads, please work with these definitions in mind
Freeway / expressway
Interstate (such as I-90), Major highways with no stops (US 101)
Primary
State Route (major) with minimal stoplights/signs (such as CA-84, CA-92)
Secondary
State Route (minor) with stoplights/signs, Major street highly frequented (such as El Camino Real)
Primary Street
Other streets or BLVD w/ stoplights that are relatively used (such as Middlefield Rd. in Menlo Park or Park blvd. in Oakland)
Street
all other regular streets
Ramps
all highway exits and entrances should be labeled as ramps.
Naming; giving your road the proper name
Highways
All roads in our base maps came with the names as defined in the US TIGER dataset.
However, you might notice a few problems with the original road names:
Some of the names are not the 'common' names (usually, waze will display the 'name' of the hwy while most people know this hwy by its number)
On other examples, the same highway will have a different name on each side (for example, US-101 going North, and Bayshore Fwy going South).
Some roads actually have two 'common' names (for example, the NJ Turnpike is also I-95 and both are relevant names), but currently we can only display one name per road.
For all these issues, we ask that you currently leave the situation as is. We are working on a few fixes, that will automate the proper naming and also allow multiple names for each segments (with a 'Primary' name as the one being displayed, but other names that bring up the same search results).
Exits and ramps
Exits and ramps (on and off the highway) should both be labeled as ramps. The name should be based on what is seen on the exit / entrance sign.
For example, if the exit sign shows a number as well as a street or highway name, the exit ramp should be named 'Exit 24 - Schwarzenegger Road'.
Same goes for entrance ramps, though these won't usually have numbers.
New streets
In some cases, there is no prior name since it is a new road that you just recorded. In this case, make sure to choose the proper road type.