u/SubstantialCost3846

I built Been There:

https://beenthere.review

The premise is simple: Google Maps lets people review businesses and attractions, but there is no obvious place to review Istanbul, Lebanon, Paris or a small hometown as a whole.

Been There gives every named place on the map its own reviews and Reddit-style discussion. Users can rate in half-star increments, say whether they visited, add optional dates, reply to reviews and vote on contributions.

There are no fake reviews, so most of the map is currently empty.

Please roast:

• Is reviewing an entire city or country too vague to be useful?
• Does the site communicate what it does quickly enough?
• Is an empty map/community fatal for the initial experience?
• What would prevent you from posting the first review?
• What obvious moderation or trust problem am I underestimating?
• Does the name “Been There” work?

Be brutal. I’m more interested in finding the flaw in the premise now than politely validating it.

Been There is a browser-based map where people can review countries, cities, towns and other named localities.

Test it here:

https://beenthere.review

No account is required to browse. Google sign-in is required only for reviews, replies and voting.

What I need tested:

• Search accuracy for cities and small towns.
• Whether clicking a map label opens the expected place.
• Whether search and map clicks show the same reviews.
• Google sign-in and review publishing.
• Mobile layout and the draggable review panel.
• Right-to-left map labels.
• General performance on older phones.

If something breaks, please include your device, browser, the place you selected and whether you reached it through search or the map.

I’m also interested in whether the basic premise makes sense: would you review a whole city or country, and what information would you expect such a review to contain?

I’m looking for early users to test Been There, a map-based review platform for entire countries, cities, towns and localities—not individual businesses.

https://beenthere.review

A few things I’d love people to test:

• Search for your hometown and confirm that it opens the correct place.
• Open the same place by clicking its map label and confirm that you see the same reviews.
• Try writing a review using Google sign-in.
• Test the mobile review panel, including dragging it down to close it.

Reviews have half-star ratings, optional visit dates, nested replies, upvotes and downvotes.

The site is still very empty, which is intentional—there are no fabricated reviews or placeholder activity. Honest feedback about confusing interactions, bugs and whether the concept is useful would help a lot.

I kept wondering why we can review individual hotels, restaurants and attractions, but not the places themselves.

So I built Been There: an interactive world map where every named country, city, town and locality can have its own review and discussion page.

You can click a place name directly on the map or find it through search. Reviews support half-star ratings, optional visit dates, replies, upvotes and downvotes. Reading is public; Google sign-in is only required when contributing.

The difficult part was making search results and map labels resolve to the same discussion, even when mapping providers identify the same place differently.

It works on desktop and mobile and can be installed as a web app:

https://beenthere.review

I’d especially appreciate feedback on the core idea, mobile experience and whether you would actually review somewhere as broad as a city or country.