Introducing Community Votes: Your Power to Shape the Safety Score

In our first post, we shared GlutenFreeMap's mission: to create a map that would finally distinguish between a place that is "suitable" and one that is truly "safe" for coeliacs. A map that gives us peace of mind.

We told you we were launching with more than 10,000 restaurants, each with an initial Safety Level based on its sources: whether it had been verified by a celiac association, whether it was 100% gluten-free, or whether it simply appeared as a "gluten-free option" in a public database.

But we also made a promise: "This is a LIVE project. And we need you."

Today, that promise becomes the most important feature we have released to date. Today, GlutenFreeMap stops being something we do for you, and starts becoming something we build together.

We are proud to introduce... Community Votes!

The New "Safety Score"

Until now, a restaurant's score was fixed — based solely on our initial research. But what happens if a verified restaurant changes ownership and no longer takes care to prevent cross-contamination? Or if that little neighbourhood bar nobody knows about turns out to be a secret haven for coeliacs?

This is where you come in.

From today, every restaurant's score — the "Safety Score" — is made up of two elements:

1. The Base Score: The same as before — our initial rating based on information sources. It is the starting point.
2. The Community Score: That is you! It is the result of all the votes the community leaves for that venue.

The most powerful aspect of this system is that it is dynamic and alive. The more votes a restaurant receives, the greater the weight the community's opinion carries in the final score. A venue with hundreds of user votes will reflect almost 100% the real experience of people who have actually been there, above and beyond its initial base score.

How Your Vote Works (and Why It Matters So Much)

From now on, when you open any restaurant's listing, you will see two simple buttons:

• "Safe" Vote (Thumbs Up): Use this when you have eaten there and can confirm the place is safe for coeliacs — they control cross-contamination, they have protocols in place, etc.
• "Not Safe" Vote (Thumbs Down): Use this when you have had a bad experience, detected cross-contamination, or know with certainty that the place is not safe for a coeliac.

We want to be completely transparent about one important design decision. At GlutenFreeMap, safety is the absolute priority. That is why our system is built on a "better safe than sorry" principle:

A single "Not Safe" vote has a much greater and faster negative impact on the score than a "Safe" vote.

We would far rather err on the side of caution and lower a "questionable" venue's score than risk someone getting contaminated through overconfidence.

The system is also smart: it gives greater weight to recent votes. A restaurant that was a trusted reference three years ago may have changed. The map must reflect today's reality.

The Future: User Profiles and the "Trust Level"

Right now, you can start voting immediately, completely anonymously. We wanted this feature available to everyone as quickly as possible.

But this is only the first step.

We know that the opinion of someone who has been managing coeliac disease for 20 years is not the same as that of someone who (with entirely good intentions) simply follows a gluten-free lifestyle by choice.

Our next major update will be user profiles.

This will not only let you save your favourite restaurants and write detailed reviews — it will be the foundation of our future "Trust System".

The idea is simple: as you participate in the community, leave helpful reviews (especially if you include details about cross-contamination handling!), and other users value your contributions, your personal "Trust Level" will grow.

In the future, a vote from a high-trust user will carry more weight in a restaurant's score than one from a new or anonymous user. We want to reward those who know most and who contribute most to the community.

Your Experience Is Someone Else's Safety

With this update, GlutenFreeMap comes to life. Every vote you leave, every experience you share, makes the map more accurate, more reliable, and above all, safer for everyone.

Your peaceful meal yesterday, thanks to your vote, could be someone else's safe meal tomorrow.

So what are you waiting for?

Open the Map, find the places you know well, and start building the tool we all need.

Thank you for being part of this.