Blog

  • An overview of reviews made with MapComplete – 2026 edition

    The yearly overview of made reviews is long overdue, so time for an update.

    First of all, there are nearly 4700 reviews in https://mangrove.reviews nowadays; generated by around 33 pieces of client software:

    Client Count
    Total (33 categories) 4695
    mapcomplete.org (*) 1746
    mangrove.reviews 1188
    Unknown/not reported 688
    localhost 417
    toggenburg.swiss 287
    thurgau-bodensee.ch 92
    ostschweiz.ch 77
    heidiland.com 45
    wengen.swiss 27
    open-reviews.net 21
    Other (23) 107

    (*) The mapcomlete.org domain also includes other domains, e.g. dev.mapcomplete.org and the local-host testing URL

    By theme

    Of course, I’m mainly interested in the reviews by MapComplete. With what theme were they created?

    Map Theme Count
    Total (36 categories) 1728
    https://mapcomplete.org/food 664
    https://mapcomplete.org/shops 232
    https://mapcomplete.org/cafes_and_pubs 224
    https://mapcomplete.org/playgrounds 77
    https://mapcomplete.org/toilets 72
    https://mapcomplete.org/cyclofix 62
    https://mapcomplete.org/hotels 51
    https://mapcomplete.org/pets 47
    https://mapcomplete.org/climbing 36
    https://mapcomplete.org/campersite 34
    Other (26) 229

    In line with the analysis of last year, food, shops and pubs are the biggest three. Playgrounds stays on fourth place. However, toilets has rissen to the 5th place. Hotels – a relatively new theme – has been of to a good start as well.

    By geography

    Just like last year, most of the reviews are in Europe. However, reviews have also appeared in Africa, Japan and Iceland:

    In Europe, Flanders is the most active region. This bias is ’cause MapComplete is developed there and somewhat well-known in Flemish area. At the same time, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, … have gotten somewhat dense as well.

    For those who’d like to get the data I used for this analysis as geojson, you can download this here

  • Lespakket

    Binnen het kader van mijn Masterpratijkproef werkten we een lespakket uit waarin OpenStreetMap (mbv MapComplete) in de les wordt gebruikt. De focus ligt op het in kaart brengen van een inclusieve omgeving.

    Het resulterende lespakket – ontwikkeld voor het 5de en 6de middelbaar (maar vanaf het 3de inzetpaar) – kan hier (gratis) gevonden worden.

    Documenten zijn in verschillende formaten beschikbaar:

    https://pietervdvn.me/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Lesbox.zip

  • An overview of reviews made with MapComplete – 2025 edition

    Two years ago, I did an analysis on the reviews made with mangrove.reviews – you can find this analysis here.

    In this blog, I’ll basically do the same analysis as then, but just with the latest data (as of 28 febr 2025).

    Mangrove.reviews client breakdown
    Total 2175
    mangrove.reviews 834
    mapcomplete.org 798
    toggenburg.swiss 229
    thurgau-bodensee.ch 70
    ostschweiz.ch 55
    heidiland.com 42
    wengen.swiss 27
    open-reviews.net 20
    winterthur.com 15
    beta.localtownguide.com 11
    open-reviews.orderingstack.com 13
    jungfrauregion.swiss 10

    As is visible, about one third of all reviews came from mapcomplete, only a fraction less then mangrove.reviews itself.

    It is also surprising that there are quite a few swiss websites in there.

    Map themes

    The most popular themes to create reviews were:

    1. Food: 271 reviews
    2. Shops: 117 reviews
    3. Cafes and pubs: 84
    4. Playgrounds: 53
    5. Pets: 42
    6. Toerisme vlaanderen (commissioned and hidden theme): 30
    7. Cyclofix: 26
    8. Campersite: 23
    9. Fritures: 21
    10. Personal theme: 21

    No big surprises here, seems like food is by far the most popular theme to give reviews on.

    Language

    From the reviews that had a text, the language breakdown is pretty much in line with the changeset-language statistics.

    1. English: 102
    2. Dutch: 42
    3. German: 37
    4. Russian: 14
    5. French: 12

    Locations

    The MapComplete-reviews are geographically clustered in Europe and the US – not surprisingly where the biggest and well-connected popuplations live.

    However, South America and South-East-asia are starting to popup as well.

    Flanders is overrepresented in Europe. MapComplete is mainly developed there and had a few projects going on there, so there are more reviews.

    Conclusion

    The reviews work and there is a slow but stable growth in the number of them. The results are predictable and, dare I say it, downright boring.

    It must be said that the reviews have gotten a higher visibility in the MapComplete UI, which definitively helped to get more reviews.

    The script to calculate the analysis is here