Waze - Editor Community Blog: WME - Upgrade That Road With a Click!

WME - Upgrade That Road With a Click!

Routing is at the heart of Waze, and we have some interesting news about how you'll get the power to improve it. Also, a new state manager role has been added to the community hierarchy, and we had a great meetup in lovely Malaysia.

Oh, and our localization team is now on Twitter!

And last but not least - Chile's meb001 in the spotlight!

WME - How Important is that Road?

Routing in Waze is affected by road type. The routing algorithm will always prefer major roads to minor ones, which usually makes sense - but not always. In some cases roads that are "officially" minor ones make more sense than their major counterparts.

To address that we will be adding a new feature to the editor, and have started testing it in WME beta this week. We're giving you, the editors, the ability to indicate a road's importance, and affect the routing mechanism. Editors level 4 and up will be able to increase or decrease the priority of every drivable segment - both old and new. This should let you affect routing and make it more efficient in your neck of the woods.

State Managers Rule

The US community have implemented a new role - State Manager - an initiative led by orbitc. The goal is to add a function that will be somewhere between area manager and local champ.

Since the US is HUGE, local champs sometimes handle several states and other roles, and don't always have time to focus on a specific state. This leads to area managers and editors not always having someone to turn to with state-related questions.

So, the new State Manager role is designed to address that and have a specific editor - usually a champ - take responsibility and help editors in the state with all questions and issues. It is an editing-community hybrid role, and so far it seems to be going great.

Malaysia Meetup

On August 31st, Malaysia's independence day - Hari Merdeka - 28 talented editors, 26 from Malaysia, one from the Philippines and one from Indonesia. gathered in Kuala Lumpur for a meetup - the first one in this lovely country.

All together now

After everyone got their swag the two Waze staff members presented some info. Many questions were asked, and the participants discussed the local community's growth. The editors attending had some great ideas for improvements.

The Philippines coordinator presented their mentoring program, and the Indonesian champ showed the hard copy book his team created about Waze. The guys also announced SEA - the South East Asia team, consisting of coordinators from all three countries.

There was much mingling and many presents given, and it was fun and helpful all around.

Twitter is Localized!

The Localization team is excited to announce the launch of the Waze Localization Twitter page! Make sure to follow @WazeLocalized to find out everything and anything that is Waze Localization! Read the blog post on the Waze blog to find out all about the new page!

Wazer Spotlight:

Storm catcher!

meb001 Chilean local and global champ and coordinator

What do you do when not editing maps?

I teach Math in the Antofagasta British school, in my vacations I become a storm chaser, I travel all around Bolivia and Argentina to capture storm photos (using Waze, of course)

Which car do you drive?

My baby is a Nissan X-trail-i

How long have you been a Wazer?

I have been a wazer since 2010, on that year, the map of my country was completely deleted and we had to build it from scratch. Chilean map is the result of several months editing, 12 hours a day.

How did you get hooked on Waze?

It all started when I downloaded the Waze app to my smartphone and noticed that my city had no maps yet. I said to myself: ¨What the heck is wrong with this app? ¨It seemed useless, until I realised that everybody could modify the map and you could see the results on the smartphone. One day I navigated from my house to work and the route had almost 100 kilometres. Afterwards, I added streets from my city and the route decreased to only 2 kilometres It was exactly the same route. That was awesome for me, because I felt like I have a lot to map in my city, my region, my country and finally my continent.

What's your favorite part about the community?

My favorite part is that I have met many kind, friendly and nice people, whom I now consider friends. Besides we all have a mission to keep the most updated maps, I have learned about working together and the distant people from my country (enhket and houstonmg) and other countries (robindlc, Calandraca Jose, scarlogarcia, antigerme), and of course Adrian, who has always tried to support me in all the crazy things that come to mind here in Chile.

(Jose, sorry, your username is a Little bit complicated :)

...And the worst part.

Keeping the map updated is hard work, because the number of editors in Chile is small. Usually a few editors are responsible for conducting editions in various sectors, and it would be better if more people in our country were participating. We tried recruiting new editors, but we have not been successful.

What's the funniest Waze story that happened to you?

Actually I have no funny story to tell, I can only say that several times I found it very funny how Waze tells me the arrival times and is surprisingly accurate. I once made a journey of 1,380 kilometers and I reached my destination exactly at the time calculated by Waze.

What's your best Waze tip for newcomers?

Just trust in what Waze says, Waze's accuracy is amazing and we are working to make the experience even better

What do you listen to when driving your car (aside from the Waze app messages, of course)?

Fast mood: "Show me how to live" by Audioslave

Sad mood: "Dernière Danse" by Indile

Happy mood: "No leaf clover"by Metallica