Show HN: I built a map where anyone can rename anything

[kafked]

The idea is simple: click any place on the map, propose a name, others vote, or it will be auto-accepted in ~5min. No account needed for fresh locations or name duel - only to challenge already-renamed places or vote to prevent abuse. 40k renames so far, and surprisingly people mostly behave. Some names are genuinely creative and I keep learning random geography facts just by watching the map (did you know someone mapped every single animal in a Taiwan Kaohsiung zoo on OpenStreetMap?)

Non-commercial, just a side project. Stack is SvelteKit, MapLibre, 40GB vector map self-hosted on Cloudflare R2.

Please don't use this for navigation.

[tripgeo]

I did something similar a couple of years ago (map no longer live). I did use the badwords list to try and stop some profanity https://github.com/MauriceButler/badwords. However I was also surprised by how well people mostly behaved and was expecting a lot more vandalism - especially in disputed territories. I like the idea of allowing people to challenge names and voting to prevent abuse. Also - 'Hide NZ' :)

[kafked]

Yeah, same, I was surprised how well people behaved, most were more creative than toxic.

I checked that badwords list too, but it feels outdated and it’s not great for maps: it blocks words like "dick", and there are plenty of official place names and features that contain that substring and more others surprising examples.

These days it's easy to plug in AI-based profanity filter quickly. I'm also not too worried about people making "penis" jokes on the map, the dataset already has plenty of that stuff anyway, word-play is a base for geography naming.

[PopGreene]

It would be nice if we could leave a note explaining why we chose the name we're proposing.