Free the map!

FAQ

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Where does the data come from?+
The site is very slow on my device, why?+
📌

TL;DR

The site is very data-heavy and is currently running on servers that are in the free tiers.

When you open the site it loads a fully interactive map which will always take some time.

Then if you click on a place, it needs to load:
  • Crime data: most of the time it's cached, but every x hours it (or the eu-wide baseline for comparisons) needs to be recalculated. A new baseline calculation needs to take every piece of crime statistics in Europe into calculation.
  • Public transport: same as crime data
  • Multiple database queries: food prices, tipping statistics, pictures, historical weather all need to be requested.
  • External data requests: current weather, historical weather (if a place is opened for the first time), flight prices, accommodation prices, currency conversions if you're logged in, crime, public transport and food data is compared to your own country as well.

If a place is opened the very first time, everything starts from scratch and the site has to put together every piece of data (e.g. coordinates, airport name, historical weather, etc).

It doesn't mean there's no work to optimize things and I'll definitely spend considerable time on that in the future.

How do I contribute?+

Click any place on the map (or use the search), then pick a stat and vote or leave a comment, upload a photo. You'll need an account for this.

Is this AI slop?+

Nope.

I'm a professional Software Engineer and have been working on the site for around a year. I have used AI in creating the site, but the majority of it is human built. Some of the code is ai generated, though always reviewed by me. It's mainly very simple code, unit tests, or duplicates of human written code with slight modifications.

What did I use AI for?

  • Not emojis, I've loved to use them even before AI arrived
  • Brainstorming (e.g. architectural decisions) & debugging
  • View-only admin dashboard
  • Most of the icons are ai generated (I plan to replace them later)
  • Drafting data-heavy calculations/operations
  • Design: not 1-on-1 copies, but as an inspiration and second opinion

Then why is the site slow?

Please check the corresponding FAQ item.

🚨

If you have more questions about this

Please don't forget that I'm a single person working on Free The Map in my spare time. There will be issues, inefficiencies, bad designs, etc, that doesn't mean it's ai generated or that there's some great malicious plot behind it.
What does the crime score mean?+

It's a weighted index across crime categories built from official European statistics (Eurostat) and community votes. A score of 50 is the EU average, so lower is safer than average and higher is worse. Public transport works the same way, except higher is better and a city's score can be capped when there's missing data.

Why is a place missing or wrong?+

Places come from WikiData & Protomaps:

  • If a place is missing from WikiData, it also won't show up on Free The Map.
  • Protomaps is based on OpenStreetMap, but Free The Map isn't a 1:1 replica of the OSM places.

If a place is missing place send us a Feedback.

What happens to my data?+

You can download everything that the site holds about you: profile, comments, votes, photos, lists, etc from Settings. Analytics are cookieless and never tied to you personally.