[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Indeed, that's part of the mission! I'm still educating myself in terms of veganism (being vegan for 2 years so far) while building this, so it takes some time to make it good, but I'm genuinely impressed with how far I could get so far and I have no intentions to slow down and your comment is very encouraging to keep pushing it forward :)

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

No valid reason tbh. I just forgot about it while building and now have tons of things to work on (also aside from the project). Will make sure to open the repo for contributions asap and notify everyone in the app that it's possible now. Thanks for highlighting it :)

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Thanks for flagging those! I will add a "leave feedback form" in app. But I surely accept all feedback/corrections/suggestions at hello@plantspak.com and there is a contact form on the web platform as well.

And i will fix those UI issues asap :)

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

thanks and great question! I run automated scripts every week now and it looks back ~9 days, not 7 - a deliberate overlap buffer so nothing that changed between runs slips through, but for now it's not automatic - it produces the report for me to work on. I'm considering automating it at some point.

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago

I have a plan for a dedicated F-Droid version of the app. And hope to launch it during the summer still (hope the new google approach to apps will fail as well). It's a little more tricky for me personally as this is my first-ever production-grade mobile app, so it takes some time to figure out the details. For example, push notifications will not work, for better or worse and I'd like people to get notifications when there is a new vegan spot in their city + I use Expo (this felt like the best path initially) which will not work well for F-droid builds.

So it will take some time - but I will open source it and move to F-Droid and hopefully other catalogs as well.

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

There are more details on web version, probably still not enough. I did not want to make the place page to crowded with more "technical" data. But I will reconsider it moving on. You may also help me verify the places by markign them in app or on web or suggesting exact changes on web :) thanks

63
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by plantspack@lemmy.world to c/vegan@lemmy.world

I've been building a vegan places directory (shared in this post) and enough people asked for an app that it's finally live on iOS and Android. It's a small independent project run by 2 people. If you've used HappyCow it lives in that world, but the focus is a bit different:

  • Vegan-oriented, not vegetarian. A place with no vegan options doesn't get listed, and 100% vegan spots are flagged separately from mostly-vegan, vegan-friendly, and "only 1-2 vegan options" - so you know before you go.
  • Free, no ads, nobody can pay to rank higher. Businesses can claim and manage their own page for free.
  • Open and community-correctable: much of the data is OpenStreetMap + other open sources, so if a spot's missing you can add it, and if something's mislabelled or mis-categorised you can help me fix it from its page in one tap.
  • It's more than a map - there are free vegan tools in there too (barcode scanner, menu/ingredients scanner, and more).

Honest about the state: it's still growing, some cities are thin, and since a lot of the data comes from OSM/open sources the quality isn't perfect yet.

Looking forward to your feedback and criticism - be brutal.

Get the PlantsPack App (iOS & Android)

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Thanks! This is exactly why I'm looking for a feedback. These are real errors from an automated OSM import that got hallucinated descriptions. We've corrected them:

  • Joella's Hot Chicken โ†’ now removed "Hot chicken" (unless it's vegan replacement) - has no place on the platform, especially if it's a chain. Even if it has a vegan option (I'm preparing a "last chance" filter so that person may see the chains, maybe if there is no other option around).
  • Jasmine Thai โ†’ now "Vegan-Friendly" (not 100% vegan)
  • 10th Street Diner โ†’ upgraded to "100% Vegan" where it belongs

You're right that the AI classifier made embarrassing mistakes on these. We have a community correction system (tap any place -> "Suggest Correction" -> you can change the vegan level), and we're running a bulk re-classification pass to catch more of these. Also I've added the "Actually 100% vegan" button to the list of available verifications.

Overall I'm improving the scraping and enrichment scripts on daily bases thanks to reports like this. I'm quite sceptical about current data state, so reports like this are extremely helpful! Appreciate it!

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

You're 100% right, and thank you for this - OpenStreetMap is our primary data source, so the fact that your contributions aren't showing up is genuinely a bug on our end, not a philosophy difference.

What happened: our last Sweden import was stale, and worse - many OSM places that lack an addr:city tag ended up with no city assigned on our side, so they disappeared from the city page entirely. A place you tagged perfectly in OSM would be in our database but invisible.

We're running a fresh re-import for Sweden right now with reverse geocoding to fix exactly that gap. Your mapped places should start appearing soon.

And yes - fully agree on OSM as the foundation. Free, open, community-verified, no pay-to-play listings. It's exactly the spirit we want PlantsPack to embody.

The fact that you've personally mapped most of the town is the kind of local knowledge no scraper can replicate. If anything still looks off after the sync (should finish by tomorrow morning and I will get back to you about the exact data-import results for your town), you can also add/edit (your listings) directly on plantspack.com - goes live immediately.

Also your input made our scraping so much better, that I aim to improve a global coverage by the end of the day tomorrow using new logic, so if you may confirm that the coverage looks better and if something is still wrong - that will move the needle even more. Huge thanks! ๐Ÿ™

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Ouch, three fair hits in one go. Thanks ๐Ÿ˜…

City score - is a caching setting difference in different components. Fixing it now, it'll match everywhere in an hour.

Bojangles is embarrassing. It shouldn't be on PlantsPack at all - we should not list chain restaurants on the platform. It came in through an old import and I missed it. Cleaning it up today, along with the other fast-food chains that slipped through.

On top of that, defaulting to alphabetical is a dumb thing as well - agreed - I'm switching the default to fully-vegan places first, then highest-rated (not too many ratings yet), then alphabetical. Alphabetical stays as an option.

Fragmentation is real and I think about it a lot. The case for PlantsPack: HappyCow reviews sit in moderation for weeks, listings go stale, and venue owners pay to manage their page (which creates a commercial incentive that affects what gets featured). We have no ads, no chains, no pay-to-play, and I can add or fix something the community flags the same day.

On mirroring to/from HappyCow - love the spirit, but they don't have a public API and their ToS prohibits scraping, so it's not on the table for now (also I'm not confident about all those 250k places, to be honest. and our fully vegan directory is getting closer to theirs every day). If they ever opened ActivityPub support, I'd federate in a heartbeat, but for now - I can't find a valid reason to do that, even so it's technically possible.

General goal isn't to replace HappyCow but to be faster, cleaner, more engaging and community-responsive where HappyCow may have structural reasons to be slow. Both can coexist.

Again - thanks for the feedback. I've just started exploring the fediverse and your take on its spirit send me to an exciting journey!

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

Fixed, a little overworked today ๐Ÿ˜… Thanks for pointing that out.

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Really glad the overall directory quality is good enough, thanks for confimration :) Just added the button to the bottom of the list -> that's a great UX improvement (does not look perfect yet but is on the very bottom of the City page already, will improve tomorrow).

Looking forward to your contributions and welcome to the pack!

[-] plantspack@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I'm really happy that our directory for your city was good enough and super happy that the place addition process was easy and straight forward. Thanks for contribution! I'm adding C+ and C- (and B+, B- ratings) to the system - this will improve the visibility for sure, let's see where your city ends up.

I will work on a better distinction for vegan-friendly places, so that it's more clear... current idea is to differentiate the places with dedicated vegan menu sections from those that have 1-3 vegan options, but long term idea is for community to rank those places lower, so that they still may be an optional snack-stop, but not promoted and celebrated as more vegan-friendly places.

Also adding the changes to UI to highlight that name fields are optional during sign up -> very reasonable point. PlantsPack is also GDPR compliant and we commit to not use any users data anywhere.

Thanks again and welcome to the pack! :)

52
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by plantspack@lemmy.world to c/vegan@lemmy.world

Hey folks - spent the last few months building PlantsPack, an independent vegan discovery platform. No investors, no ads, no tracking beyond what's needed.

The thing I actually want feedback on is the city scoring system rather than "check out my site." Every city with โ‰ฅ5 vegan / vegan-friendly places gets a letter grade Aโ€“F based on four dimensions:

  • Accessibility - places per capita (adjusted for city size)
  • Choice - how many distinct cuisines / categories are represented
  • Variety - mix across restaurants, shops, stays
  • Quality - review ratings + verification status

The goal is to answer "where should I travel / move to next?" at a glance, and to make it visible which cities desperately need more contributors.

Current coverage: ~37K places across 177 countries, mostly Europe + N. America + SE Asia. A lot of cities still score D/F because nobody's added the places yet - that's a data problem, not a "these cities are terrible" problem, and I'm trying to be honest about that in the UI.

What I'd love this community's take on:

  • Does your city show up? Does the grade feel right vs. your lived experience?
  • Is the fully-vegan vs. vegan-friendly split a useful distinction, or do you want more granularity (e.g., "has vegan options but the staff sigh when you ask")?
  • What would make this more useful than HappyCow or Google Maps for you? (I'm not pretending to be better on coverage - but I am looking for more pain points to fix)

Happy to answer anything about the tech, the methodology, or the data. Source code is closed for now but the data model is open to discussion.

https://www.plantspack.com/

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