The New Jersey portion of MegaMapRaid is for editors who have recently signed up to edit the map. We wanted to give you a dedicated area where
- there would not be a lot of other editors who could grab all the changes before you had a chance to learn what you could do
- was unfinished enough to give you a chance to try out a lot of basic skills
- would be monitored by mentors (more senior editors who have committed to helping you out for this specific effort)
- would not have too many "locked" roads that Level 1 and Level 2 editors would not have immediate access to
The new editors have been placed into five editing teams, numbered 51-55. Each has its own area in the more rural areas of New Jersey.
When you get your editing area, you are ready to edit immediately, but there are a few things that you know about first. It will take about 15 minutes to read this document. It is time well spent. You do not need to memorize it. Just read it once, try to remember the seven basic concepts mentioned below without necessarily remembering the details, and then refer back here when you need to remember those details.
WME Chat
Summary: We use Slack for communication, but we rely on two features of the built-in WME chat for seeing other editors nearby or jumping to an editor to provide assistance. You need to set it once then forget it. Skip the rest of this section for now.
In the lower right hand corner of the editing window is a small chat icon (cartoon speech bubble). During normal editing, this provides a chat window for map editing collaboration and questions. It also allows editors to quickly jump to each others' location on the map, and see that they are present.
We will not use the chat function of WME chat during the raid> That would overwhelm WME chat. Instead, we use Slack. But we will still use the non-chat functions of WME chat: jump to editor, and see each other congregating at one spot. To enable that, please make sure you are visible in the WME chat window.
How to:
- Go to your slack channel
- Click on the map link next to the channel name at the top of the window
- Wait for the WME (Waze Map Editor) window to finish loading
- If WME chat is closed, click its icon to open it (a word bubble on the lower right)
- In the heading of the WME Chat, it should say United States, and next to that, it should say "Visible" or "Invisible"
- If it says Invisible, click Invisible and change to Visible
- Click the small "collapse bar" in the upper right corner of the chat window to close the chat window
- That's it. No need to touch WME Chat for the remainder of MegaMapRaid. When the Raid is over, you might find it useful during your regular editing
- In the upper right corner of the WME window is the Layers menu icon (a stack of diagonal papers)
- Click the Layers menu
- Look for Live Users toward the bottom
- Make sure Live Users is turned on so you can see other editors (hard hats) who are in the same part of the map as you are editing
Google StreetView
How to use use the Google StreetView built into the map editor, and a warning about using any other source for information. Skip the rest of this section for now.
Sometimes abbreviated SV or GSV, Google StreetView is built into the Waze Map Editor, WME. Please do not use Google Maps natively to access StreetView to do analysis or gather data. Also do not use any other privately-owned mapping system to gather. If you do so, you open up Waze to lawsuits. Waze one time had to dump an entire country's maps, including much hard work by editors, due to incorrect use of licensed map data.
To access GSV within WME:
- You should usually zoom to level 6, 7, or 8. The zoom slider should be in the top half, but not close to the top; Waze has 11 zoom levels from 0 (view from space) to 10 (fairly close up, but Satellite imagery sometimes not available).
- Find the blue ball below the zoom slider
- Drag it toward a road or intersection. The ball will be red while you drag it, or when it is on top of a spot with no known StreetView imagery nearby
- Hover (no movement) without letting go for a second to make sure the ball has turned blue
- Release the mouse button
- The window will split, with StreetView appearing on the right
- Use the X in the upper left of the StreetView image to close it
- Moving around
- The StreetView interface is very much like the old Google Maps native StreetView before the redesign a year or two ago
- Click on the white arrows to move forward, backward, or to a different path at a fork or turn
- Drag any part of the image to spin it 360 degrees (turn without moving from the spot you are viewing from)
- If you click anywhere in StreetView, you can also use the keyboard arrows to move around, otherwise, the arrows will move the Waze map on the left instead
- Zoom using your mouse wheel or the slider on the right of StretView
- You can quickly move to a different location by dragging the StreetView ball on the left to a different spot
Red roads
Red roads are roaads lacking naming information. They're ugly and bad. Here's how to avoid maing them and how to fix someone else's mistake. Skip the rest of this section for now.
All roads must have a city and name, or they must have city and street name marked withe the "None" checkbox. If you create a segment road without supplying city and street, the road will be colored red. If you create a road, or see a road created by someone else that was left red, you must fix it.
How to:
- Find the city name. If you don't know it, check nearby roads in each compass direction. If they are consistent, it should be safe to use this city name.
- Find the road name. You can use Google Street View within WME to find a street sign, or consult a public domain source, such as city-provided maps ("GIS" - Geographic Information Systems). If there is no name available, you may treat it as unnamed.
- Click the road segment to select it
- In the properties tab to the left, find the EDIT link near the top and click it
- Type in the city name. Waze will auto-fill with names used on nearby roads as soon as you type the first letter or two
- Type the street name if you have it, or click the NONE box if you don't. Make sure to use Capitalization on the first letter of each word.
- Before clicking anywhere else, click the APPLY button below the street name. If you click anywhere else, your change may be lost
- Click the save icon on the upper right of the window (Diskette image), between the road icon and the undo (counterclockwise) button
Note that freeways, ramps, Parking Lot Roads (PLR) and small "connector" road segments have special naming requirements, so consult a senior editor before assigning names to them.
Permalink
A useful tool - send a helpful editor a link so that they can see the map exactly as you see it, then asnwer you r question, help you out, etc. Skip the rest of this section for now.
An important tool in collaboration is the Permalink, or "PL". It is a web address (URL) to open the Waze Map Editor (WME) to the same view that you currently see. It includes the correct zoom level, the correct pan (position on the map), which segments you have highlighted, and which information (layers) to display.
You will need a Permalink to request a senior editor to unlock a locked road so you can fix it or a road connected to it. You can also use it just to focus the other editor on the map question you are asking, or to ask him or her to do a fix for you.
How to:
- Make the map look on screen the way you want it
- zoomed in tightly enough to focus attention to the problem
- not so zoomed in that important stuff is off screen, or to make it hard to understand what is going on nearby if relevant
- positioned correctly to keep the important road segments on screen and preferably in the center
- bear in mind that other editors may have a different size or shape screen or different resolution, so they may see somewhat more or less than you see
- Select the important stuff
- select the segment, junction, or "place" (points of interest, landmarks) of concern
- if there is more than one road segment affected, select the others, by holding down the control key to add more segments (without the control key, the last segment selected becomes the only segment selected, and you lose the previous selection)
- note that you can only select multipe segments... if you select a junction or a place, only one can be selected and you can't combine the selection with other types of things
- Look for the Permalink icon in the lower rght; it ooks like two links in a chain
- Hover the mouse over the link without clicking
- With the mouse pointing to the PL icon, press Control-C or (or Command-C on MacOS)
The Permalink is now in your clipboard, and you can paste it in Slack or the forums
Parking lot roads
Summary: The dos and donts of PLRs (segments whose road type is "parking lot road"). Inexperienced editors often make mistakes with these. Skip the rest of this section for now.
Called PLR for short, these are not part of the public road network, but they are connectd to it. They are important for several reasons:
- If a destination is off the public thoroughfare, Waze may route the driver to the wrong location on a nearby road that is inaccessible to the destination; PLRs allow Waze to pinpoint the destination marker to the PLR and figure out how to route to the PLR properly
- Waze notices traffic speeds, for creating fastest routes and finding traffic jams. If a user is in a parking lot next to a real road, and is moving slowly through the parking lot, Waze may mistakenly think that traffic on the public road is moving slow. A PLR provides Waze with the alternate road to consider for the driver location, and not "pollute" the real road's speed with parking lot traffic.
- Waze knows that PLRs are not regular roads. If we need to put in a road that Waze should not use for routing traffic (except as the start or destination location), a PLR alerts Waze to keep away. For example, if a store has a parking lot with entrances on the "front" and "back" roads, using a regular street in the parking lot would cause Waze to use the lot as a shortcut, which is illegal or unwanted by property owners. The PLR road segment type tells Waze to avoid that, while still allowing a trip to start or end in the parking lot.
How to:
- For small lots, usually a single PLR segment suffices, with one end being the entrance and the other being the exit. For technical reasons, you should split this PLR into two pieces.
- For larger lots, map the following:
- lanes that are close to a public road and parallel that road (within about 50 feet / 15 meters) - avoids the speed pollution mentioned above
- any lanes immediately in front of "destinations" (store front or other business entrance)
- any main lanes to enter or exit the lot or get from the entrance to the storefront lanes and vice versa
- connect to the public road and set turns (see Turn restrictons below)
- use directionality (one way) where appropriate
- city and street name:
- see Red roads above
- use the local city name if you are certain, or enable NONE if not
- for street name, always use the NONE checkbox; do not name after the store, business, shopping center, or any other name
Turn restrictions
Summary: How to tell Waze whether a driver can move from one piece of road to another or not. If you don't read this, your new roads will probably not work. Skip the rest of this section for now.
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Note: For our purposes, a turn is any movement from one segment to another in the map. Obviously, this includes regular right and left turns. But iy includes other things as well, including:
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When you connect one road to another, by default, Waze does not allow any turns into or out of the new connection. You must set the turns correctly.
In addition, whenever you analyze an intersection for correctness, try to assess whether all turns are allowed, or only some of them. You can use Google Street View within the editor window to verify any one-way or no-turn signs (see StreetView above for How-to)
How to:
- Select any single segment
- At both ends, arrows will appear for each connection
- Red arrows mean a turn is restricted, green arrows mean it is permitted
- Click a red arrow to make it green or a green arrow to make it red, then click the save icon in the toolbar (diskette image between the road button and the counterclockwise undo button)
- Note that there are advanced turn restrictions that you should not set or change without assistance. An advanced restriction appears as a yellow arrow. If you accidentally open up the advanced restrictions, you will see a window appear that says "Time based restrictions" in its title. Click CANCEL immediately!
- If the arrows are too close together to work with, try zooming in. If they are still too close, press the S key on your keyboard to "Spread" them apart.
- Rarely, you will come across an unconfirmed turn. Do not worry about them or what they are. The only effect you may notice is that it will take two clicks to change between red and green instead of one click.
Locks
Summary: Locks protect the map from vandalism and from beginner mistakes - but they can frustrate you when they stop you from doing what you need to. How to request help to get that frustration eliminated. Skip the rest of this section for now.
We all make mistakes, and newer editors are more likely to make mistakes, sometimes without knowing it. And believe it or not, we sometimes get vandals who "make mistakes" on purpose and ruin the map.
To protect against bigger mistakes, we lock some roads and places. The more sensitive the road (either due to the amount of traffic it carries or due to the tricky map editing required to make it work right), the more important the lock.
Editors have ranks ranging from 1 (beginner) to 6 (a few senor editors who typically manage entire countries). Small, uncomplicated roads will be unlocked, so even beginners can change them. Freeways will be typically locked so only Level 5 editors can change them. Other roads will usually be somewhere in between.
If you can't change a road, it probably means one of two things:
- it is locked
- or, it is out of your editing area (and we know you were patient waiting for your group editing area to open to you, thank you for that)
You can see the lock by selecting a segment and looking at the Lock property on the left side of the window. If you need to change that segment, get a Permalink, and ask in your group Slack channel for someone to unlock it. Make sure you paste the Permalink (PL) and that you specify the lock level, so that other editors will know whether they are capable of unlocking t. Sometimes, on a sensitive road, the senior editor will not unlock it for you, but will explain why, and may apply the fix directly; your alert about the needed change was still valuable!
Places (points of interest, landmarks) also have locks, and you can get a Permalink to them and request them to be unlocked, too.
If nobody responds, you can look for an active editor outside your Slack channel at that rank or higher, and direct message the editor asking for help. You can also try the Slack mmr-nj channel, or the -General channel.
If all else fails, you can use the Unlock Forum to request an unlock. Using the forum is beyond the scope of this guide, but you can ask almost any editor at 3 or above about, and even some level 2 editors know a lot about the Unlock Forum.
One special note about locking and turns: Whenever you have a turn, you have a junction of two or more segments. The turns are part of the junction, not part of the road turning from or turning to. The junction also has a lock, but the lock level is invisible. The lock level is derived from all the segments connected to the junction. Whichever segment has the highest lock level, that same lock level is applied to the junction.
Because of this, asking for unlocks for turns takes a little thought. You can't just make sure the two segments involved in the turn are unlocked. You have to make sure every segment connected to the junction is unlocked. You need to include all these segments in your Permalink. It can be a bit ironic -- if you have an regular right angle intersection, and you are only dealing with the two "north-south" segments that are unlocked, you may need a Permalink to the two "east-west" segments that are locked, in order to set your turn up.
Go!
That's enough, get started editing now!