Collaboration and communication among Waze map editors (from beginners to advanced editors) is an important part of improving the map. There are multiple forms of real-time communication available for this purpose.
Waze Map Editor Chat
Waze Map Editor (WME) has a built-in chat feature that allows for communication with other editors who are currently using WME and have set themselves to visible in the chat window. Because this feature is built into WME, its use is appealing. However because of the lack of available features and difficulty of monitoring, Discord is the preferred chat platform for editors in the USA.
Discord
Discord is a chat platform that is available in both desktop and mobile formats and is the main form of communication used among US Waze map editors. Although the US and Australia have adopted Discord as their main real-time chat platform, this preference does vary by country. Within a Discord server, multiple channels exist that can serve different purposes. These channels vary from server to server and any questions on them should be posed in the server that is joined.
Discord Server List
- Global & MapRaid
- Waze USA
- Great Lakes Region (GLR)
- Mid Atlantic Region (MAR)
- New England Region (NER)
- Northeast Region (NOR)
- Northwest Region (NWR)
- Plains Region (PLN)
- South Atlantic Region (SAT)
- South Central Region (SCR)
- Southeast Region (SER)
- Southwest Region (SWR)
- Territories (ATR)
- Scripts
- Virtual Emergency Operations Center (VEOC)
- Australia
An automated chat bot exists for use in each of the Discord servers. Please refer to the CommunityBot page for a reference of its capabilities.
Waze Forum
The Waze Forum is a good source of information and a good place to pose map editing questions. When appropriate, finding your region and state's section of the forum can provide the best local guidance. In addition, Private Messages (PMs) can be sent to a particular forum user in lieu of posting publicly. After signing in, at the top left a new message indicator shows how many unread private messages are available. Clicking this will bring up the private inbox, where messages can be read and sent.
Google Hangouts (GHO)
Most of the US community switched from Google Hangouts to Discord in 2017. For those who can not access the Discord platform, please reach out to a State Manager and/or the (Assistant) Regional Coordinator in your region for alternate access to Discord through Google Hangouts.
Slack
Most of the US community switched from Slack to Discord in 2017. Slack is still used in other parts of the world but within the US it has largely been replaced by the Discord platform. An international Waze Slack channel exists at http://wazeinternational.slack.com - the usage of this channel varies by country and is not extensively used by the US.