The Next Step in Waze WIki Evolution

Hey Guys, long time no post. In this issue of the Bi-weekly we'll take about the rise of Wazopedia, the new and improved Waze wiki. We'll also tell you about the new Waze Twitter tool - Unusual Traffic! And in the Waze staff exposed section: adriansinger of LATAM fame.

Wazeopedia Rising

As some of you may have read, the Waze Wiki is getting a pretty significant makeover. Led by a team of Wiki Masters with some restructuring help from Waze Staff, the new Wiki will have improved searchability for all communities, a true Global knowledge-base, and a new look!

Check out the initial design here:

What are some of the big changes?

So glad you asked! Right now we have one Wiki “instance” - meaning all the content for the Waze Wiki is under one URL. That leads to some very frustrating search results…

To address this issue - Waze Staff is working on a restructuring of the way Wikis are accessed on the back-end.

There will be a Global Wiki and Local Community Wikis. Each Wiki will be accessed through it’s own unique URL and will connect to each other through inter-wiki links (similar to how Wikipedia works).

Each community will have their own Wiki and will be able to manage the content as they see fit. The Wiki Masters will oversee the edits for the Global Wiki.

Currently, the Wiki Master group is working on cleaning up the content for the Global Wiki and preparing a list for export. A big part of this is separating the English content to allow the Global articles to apply to a true global audience. Until now, much of the English content has U.S. specific information.

They are also working on removing most of the App-related content from the Wiki and evaluating that content for addition to the Help Center, where appropriate. The decision to do this was made by the Wiki Masters and supported by Waze staff.

Some other pages are getting pretty extensive makeovers - like the awesome Glossary that PesachZ and GizmoGuy just published.

The next step is for local communities to review their content for transfer to their new local Wiki. The Wiki Masters are working on instructions for this and will share with all who are interested in contributing.

For more information, or if you are interested in joining your local Wiki team, contact Wazeopedia@google.com and check out the Wiki Masters Forum - only members can post, but all can view the discussions.

Thanks!

We're Jammin' (on Twitter)

We just launched a cool new service on Twitter - the Waz Unusual Traffic tool. Basically, we're talking about a set of accounts in 50 metros across the world, tweeting about heavy traffic jams and other unusual road conditions.

How does it work? Automatically. Whenever the system recognises traffic conditions that are radically different than the historical data, a tweet is sent. Currently only in English, but we’re planning on launching more languages and more metros in the near future.

Read all about it here, and don't forget to retweet :)