Google Maps seems to have the monopoly on data when it comes to user reviews (and ratings) of places/locations, at least as far as I’ve seen (I live and travel mostly in Europe). There are lots of efforts to have maps and navigation services from other providers (e.g. Apple Maps and OpenStreetMap with all of its different clients/apps) and I really prefer some of them to the relatively slow Google Maps. But one of the main reasons I still use Google Maps is for the crowd-sourced reviews and user photos, e.g. to see restaurant’s insides and menus before going there. Why is there no more open alternative platform to host this kind of information? Were/are there any attempts that just didn’t get any traction yet? Curious if some peeps in the mapping community know more about this.<p>Slightly relaxed toot: https://mastodon.social/@herrherrmann/109507042998753454<p>Edit: There does seem to be Open Place Reviews (https://openplacereviews.org/), but it’s using a blockchain to “avoid scalability issues”. So, still wondering if there are other projects with more sensible technology choices!
<a href="https://mangrove.reviews/" rel="nofollow">https://mangrove.reviews/</a> comes to mind.<p>Several <a href="https://mapcomplete.osm.be" rel="nofollow">https://mapcomplete.osm.be</a> themes make use of it.
I imagine curation/moderation would be a major expense of hosting reviews; are there open projects which have tackled these issues?<p>(OpenStreetMap seems to be doing OK, but there are <i>far</i> greater incentives to spam restaurant reviews than map tiles)