HN suggested I repost this, since last time it didn’t get much attention (cool feature!).
Here is the description I wrote last time:
Hi, Pinball Map is a hobby project we've been doing in our spare time for the past 10 years. It's currently listing 7,291 locations and 24,918 machines. Code is on github[1][2], and we have an API that is used by various folks.
Web Stack = ruby on rails, heroku, tile server on aws. App = React Native (launched the redeveloped app last June).
We took a relatively slow-growth approach for the first 9 years: we added "regions" one at a time for places where people demonstrated a strong desire to update the data, and a volunteeer administrator could oversee it (in fact, we originally intended for this to just be a map of pinball machines in Portland, Oregon, but people kept asking us to expand to their areas). This gave us a pretty strong userbase and a reputation for having clean, up-to-date data. Each regional map was a distinct, silo'd map. Lately we've de-emphasized this model in favor of a single map that covers the whole world.
For the first 7 years, all map updates were made anonymously. But after two instances of abuse, we implemented a user system. We now have about 9,000 registered users. The map gets around 3,000-5,000 edits per month, including 100-200 new locations.
Search experience on the web could use some updating. The app is where it's at right now. We spent the past 14 months on its design/development, and we think it came out well. Throughout the 10 years, the majority of our users use the app rather than the website (but we don't have great analytics).
We have no ads, no analytics aside from the free new relic stuff that comes with heroku, and no business model.
The website seems very North America centric. So much so that I thought it was North America only. Elsewhere ITT you mentioned Japan though.
Have you considered making the site more global friendly? Also, on mobile at least when I go to look at the map I expected to be able to see all machines in the whole world but instead it only tells me there are no machines within 50 miles of me and won’t show me any machines at all.
The brief history of the site is that for the first 8 years or so it contained many separate maps, each for a distinct region. These regions were comprised of places where people had contacted us and said they wanted a map, and that they would manage the data for. It just happens that almost all of those regions were in North America.
So, we let the users decide what the map would show.
Additionally, we had a pact with findapinball.com that we’d stay out of Europe. We recently backed out of that because we merged all the regions together and wanted to allow people to submit locations anywhere.
We don’t really have the resources to load data for the whole world. But the code is available, and if you want to figure out a way to cluster data at that scale...!
Also, I agree that the website search experience needs improvement. Try the mobile app! We recently redesigned it, and it’s easier to browse the world.
hey, I love seeing the code on Github, but could you clarify the licensing? Your website says it's open source, but I don't see licenses in either of the repositories linked here. (May I recommend the AGPL? :D )
A few people have requested this recently. Thanks!
We don’t want to include comments in that history. I don’t think that would add much. We already show a comment history for each machine (which goes away once that machine is removed).
Maybe my non-native English showing, but I expected the location field to take e.g. a city name (and otherwise be named "venue"?)
For the search term I put in it found some results in the US and some in Europe, and thus centered the map over the atlantic, without zooming out far enough to see any land or the markers
Oh yes, it says "Wedgehead" right now. That's the name of a real location. Sometimes we cycle out that placeholder to say a different name of a cool new venue.
FYI: Wedgehead is a venue in Portland, Oregon. The business's name is a reference to a specific style of electro-mechanical pinball machine that was around in the '60s and '70s. The shape of the backbox was sort of a wedge. Wedgeheads were always (as far as I know) single player machines, and were generally made by Gottlieb and Chicago Coin. See the machine that is second to the right here: https://i1.pinside.com/5/c2/5c2420372fb8beda178cbbef6e605a0b...
Anyway, we're changing "Location" to say "Venue", and will push the change soon. It is a wise suggestion!
Here is the description I wrote last time:
Hi, Pinball Map is a hobby project we've been doing in our spare time for the past 10 years. It's currently listing 7,291 locations and 24,918 machines. Code is on github[1][2], and we have an API that is used by various folks.
Web Stack = ruby on rails, heroku, tile server on aws. App = React Native (launched the redeveloped app last June).
We took a relatively slow-growth approach for the first 9 years: we added "regions" one at a time for places where people demonstrated a strong desire to update the data, and a volunteeer administrator could oversee it (in fact, we originally intended for this to just be a map of pinball machines in Portland, Oregon, but people kept asking us to expand to their areas). This gave us a pretty strong userbase and a reputation for having clean, up-to-date data. Each regional map was a distinct, silo'd map. Lately we've de-emphasized this model in favor of a single map that covers the whole world.
For the first 7 years, all map updates were made anonymously. But after two instances of abuse, we implemented a user system. We now have about 9,000 registered users. The map gets around 3,000-5,000 edits per month, including 100-200 new locations.
Search experience on the web could use some updating. The app is where it's at right now. We spent the past 14 months on its design/development, and we think it came out well. Throughout the 10 years, the majority of our users use the app rather than the website (but we don't have great analytics).
We have no ads, no analytics aside from the free new relic stuff that comes with heroku, and no business model.
[1] https://github.com/scottwainstock/pbm/ [2] https://github.com/bpoore/pbm-react