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Revision as of 05:22, 24 February 2020 by Ituajr (talk | contribs) (Added (not) mapping parking lot roads.)

Permission to use external road closure information

Subject: Using public announcements of road closures
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2019 19:16:37 +1030
From: ituajr@xxxx.xxx
To: Dana Pienica <dpanica@xxxx.xxx>

Dana,

Severe flooding in Townsville has caused editors to again raise the question of using Government announcements of road closures as the basis for applying road closures in Waze. Most of those Government websites have copyright notices on them, and I have again advised editors that the Wiki on External Sources says they must not use external copyright information when updating the map. Some editors are frustrated by this limitation. Can we get Waze permission to use Government announcements of road closures when editing the Waze map?

Examples of the sites in question:

AJ

Subject: Re: Using public announcements of road closures
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2019 17:28:16 +0200
From: Dana Pienica <dpanica@xxxx.xxx>
To: ituajr@xxxx.xxx

Hey AJ,

As I understand it, and according to legal advice here, road closures are public information (anybody can go to a road and validate the closure themselves). The websites are just making it easier for us to get the data.

Hope this helps!

Best, Dana

Mapping parking lot roads

The reason why we don't map every lane in a parking lot is:

  • the individual lanes in most parking lots do not have signed names/numbers
  • at slow speeds, Waze turn instructions are delivered about 50 metres before the intersection
  • individual lanes an a parking lot are about 17 metres apart, meaning that the driver can't be sure which lane to turn into
  • the GPS accuracy in our phones is not sufficient to determine which lane a driver is in

These four factors combined mean that lane-by-lane navigation in a parking lots isn't going to be very successful. If adding every lane doesn't improve usability, the second goal of Waze map editing (simplicity) comes into force. So, we don't map every lane in parking lots.