MapRaid is an event in which mappers from all over a community join together to resolve MP’s, UR’s, mass add “Places”, fix connectivity problems and add missing roads in a pre-determined area of the map. Together, the raiders quickly (and vastly) improve the overall condition of their areas' map. At the end of a MapRaid, the leading participants will be presented in the MapRaid Hall of fame.
History
MapRaid was first initiated by the Indonesian community of editors and then beta run with the Filipino community. The result was great in both test areas; providing the local community with a massive decrease of map problems, update requests and pending ‘places’.
The Filipino Community MapRaid lasted one week, and resulted in 226 User Requests answered, 194 Map Problems fixed (leaving zero remaining). Generally, a 1% yearly increase in Connectivity Score is positive for a community of equal size and area. After the week long MapRaid, the Filipino community saw a 2.05% increase in Connectivity Score.
Benefits and Implementation
As shown in the statistics above, MapRaids provide improvements to the editor itself resulting in better search and navigation. Other benefits include increased communication between a community and its manager at Waze HQ, and a focused mentoring platform.
When a community leader(s) and/or member(s) wishes to conduct a MapRaid in a certain area of their country they need to let one of their community's champs know about it, the champ will find a few mappers to participate, decide on a period of time for the raid and inform their Waze HQ Community Manager know about it by filling out the MapRaid Request Form.
Suggestions on how to implement mentoring while conducting a MapRaid can be found below.
Mentoring and MapRaids
The very first MapRaid in Indonesia used a map-segmentation process to organize and implement their local mentoring initiative. As shown below, the local champ divides the MapRaid region into eight areas.
Each segment is assigned with a mentor (meaning an experienced mapper from the community) and a mentee (one, or more, less experienced editors). Communication between mentor/mentee is then managed through individual segment spreadsheets or via e-mail.