Gas prices feature: everything you need to know

[maantje76]

There are indeed problems. I also received these kind of messages last week. I did even received even messages 'Your still a babywazer. You can't update prices'

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[maantje76]

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I will re-bump my previous support request with these problems...

[MagicOfLA]

Same here.
None of the 10 petrol stations on my way to work worked.

[mapcat]

Welcome back, Dror!

+1!

This doesn't seem to be happening, at least not around here.

Most update daily around me, but I've also seen some that report last being updated 2 or 3 days ago. I also suspect that some of my updated prices have been changed back. Pretty sure I posted $3.89 at a station after a big jump, and saw it showing $3.69 by "3rd party" in the client later when I passed it again (still $3.89).

[mapcat]

I would like to propose a smaller number of points for just confirming prices already put in. I fear people will just confirm prices of every station they pass, for gaining points.

That's not fair to the person who pulls into the station to add prices, and then sees that someone else got them first.

They're only worth 8 points anyway. Hardly an incentive to cheat.

[mapcat]

If most of the stations in your country sell E85, then maybe you can campaign to get it added. Fuel types were requested when they were first rolling out this feature, and they wanted to limit it to what most stations sold.

[mapcat]

You don't get points for reporting nonexistent cameras, only for confirming or deleting them, which the people reporting them never do. And chit chats haven't earned points for over a year.

Hitting "Yes" to confirm that the prices are correct is easier than typing in four prices, but not so much easier that doing it is only worth a fraction of the points awarded to the first person to report the prices.

Here's what I meant regarding fairness: You and I drive the same route, and you stop at all five gas stations on the way, pause next to the pumps to get every price, and post them. You get 40 points. I come along 30 minutes or three hours later, and do exactly the same thing, except I hit Yes each time after confirming that every price you entered was correct, but I get less than 40 points. Why should I earn less than you did? I did the same amount of work--and the prices are now fresher--so I should get just as much as you did. 40 points might not seem like a lot to either of us now, but if I'm relatively new and 40 points away from the next level, and still waiting at the end of the day, that's disappointing.

And in case anyone thinks I'm arguing so that I can keep earning points for confirming other people's prices, I don't report gas prices unless I'm testing the feature in the beta, so the number of points awarded for any form of gas price reporting is meaningless to me. But fairness means something.

[mapcat]

I'll agree to call it "cheating" if it involves someone posting prices he didn't see himself, or prices that disagree with the sign. Not someone posting correct prices in good faith.

Consider this: if they agreed to your suggestion and made hitting Yes worth 4 points (or whatever), wouldn't the cheater actually have an incentive to make up a wrong price? Posting the correct price would be worth 4, but posting an incorrect one would be worth 8.

Would you also be in favor of changing how editing points are awarded? Right now, someone who spends ten minutes researching the correct street name for a new street gets the same number of points for his edit as someone who deletes a bogus camera.

[mapcat]

Just hitting ok to confirm the prices is much easier than typing new wrong prices. And, blindly typing numbers will probably lead to very odd prices, clearly wrong.

Again, if you reduce the number of points for hitting Yes, someone wanting more points will simply post something that's slightly more or slightly less than the price already posted. They won't blindly type in numbers, because that will be obvious and they will be caught.

There is a difference in the amount of work that goes into changing prices and just confirming. That's clear and could be translated in a difference in points.

As I stated above, Waze doesn't award points based on the amount of work editors do, so why expect it to be any different for posting gas prices? Even driving points work that way: you get fewer points for driving 10 km through city traffic than you do for driving 15 km on an open highway, which requires significantly less work.

Just wait for the first 'user x is confirming all the gas prices in my neighbourhood without actually checking them' thread. It'll come.

Firstly, you can't prove that someone isn't checking prices they post if their prices are correct. Secondly, if someone is caught posting bad prices for points, then that is the time to punish them. Not when they are out doing exactly what someone else did an hour before.

If you're really this concerned about people cheating with gas prices, maybe you ought to stop posting prices so that no one can copy your work anymore. Or focus on some other aspect of Waze you consider more egalitarian.

[mapcat]

Lots of things are bad here. This is just one of them.

I was just wondering what made you think the point structure was worth changing. In your first post you said:

I fear people will just confirm prices of every station they pass, for gaining points.

But in your most recent post you said:

Come on Mapcat, I'm only signalling that the way the gas prices feature works now isn't very safe and reliable. I just want to make sure that the quality of that part of Waze's information is as high as possible, and I see room for improvement.

OK, so then what is the problem with people confirming prices for gaining points? If the prices are correct, great, then that's better quality information (i.e. more recent). If the prices are incorrect, then that's an opportunity to get the name of the person posting bad prices, submit it to Waze, and get them to change their behavior (or PM them yourself). Changing the way prices are entered will not suppress cheating if a cheater is determined to get points.

If you were signalling something else about the feature's safety and reliability, then it was not obvious to me from what you said.

Part of our difference of opinion may stem from me being in a country where the gas price feature is horribly unreliable and hard to use. If someone made up prices, they may be better than the ones I see whenever I think to check. At the same time, since I am in a country with a dedicated gas price app (GasBuddy), maybe I am more aware of what causes problems with gas price reporting, and what doesn't. That app has its own set of problems, but people getting points for confirming what other people posted doesn't seem to be one of them. The way it works, I can post prices for any station within 10 km of my house right now. I don't have to be within sight of its sign. Furthermore, I could get on the GasBuddy web site and post a price for a station in San Francisco, right now, 3000 km away. You could, too. People determined to cheat for points (in this case, post prices they can't possibly know to be correct) have many opportunities. However, this is not a problem for two main reasons: you only get points for 5 prices a day, and there are millions of people posting prices every day. A cheat can only get a tiny bit ahead by doing this, and even if he gets away with it, someone else will probably report prices for the same station within a few hours. The second person then has the opportunity to see that the prices were incorrect, and correct them (and optionally, contact the moderators and complain about the cheater). The community makes it safe.

So if you're concerned about someone making the data less safe in Waze, then I suspect that once price reporting becomes very popular, the problem will be insignificant.