These are answers to many Frequently Asked Questions : The FAQs
- Is this service free?100% free!
- What is the difference between the Location and the Area
- The Location is the entity where a restroom is located. This might be a store, a restaurant, any other business, or a library or other public building.
- The Area might be a plaza, mall, or other collection of similar locations. A Location doesn’t need to be identified with an Area, but we have the concepts when we need them.
- There is sometimes a community restroom in an Area, where there is a “patron-specific” restroom at a Location.
- As a simple example, the Kool Cafe might be located in the West Mall. the restroom in the Cafe is a Location, and the community restroom in the mall is a Location of its own.
- What if something changes and a location puts up a No Public Restroom sign?
- When you see a sign, check it in the review form so that others know.
- What if information in reviews is wrong?
- With many people reviewing the same location a collective understanding of current facts is built and maintained. Old data that is no longer valid becomes invalid.
- A restroom might be clean for weeks, messy for one day, then clean again in all later reviews. It’s important that the location should not get a bad reputation for one “off” day. This is why we ask for continued reviews – things change. We try to identify constent patterns. And we hope that we will gather enough data, for example, where we can suggest that a specific location should be avoided on specific days of the week, even if most of the ratings are good.
- If we tell everyone about the good restrooms, won’t that send a lot of people there that the owners don’t want?That’s a possibility and we’ll try to help manage that with alternative suggestions, guidelines, etc.
- If we tell everyone that a business restroom is dirty, won’t that chase business away from the business?That’s a possibility. Let’s hope the business keeps their restroom clean.
- If there is only one review of a place and it’s bad, then isn’t that a 100% bad review of the location?
- We’re aware of how statistics like that work and we do our best to avoid such things.
- Are there any rules about words and language?
- Let’s be real. We’re talking about crap and doo doo, pee and urination. We choose to be family-friendly here and use terms like toilet rather than shitter. We don’t need to tell someone that we had to piss – it’s adequate to say we needed a restroom. Yes, we just went there to make this point clear. There’s no need to use the awkward language on this site.
- So we strongly request that family-friendly language is used. We do not want this service to get a bad name … because we use bad names.
- We do have tools to change some of these awkward words to something more appropriate. This isn’t a censor or nanny – it’s intended to ensure that text here is suitable for our broad audience.
- Won’t people “game the system” by reporting locations as very good or bad?
- We’re sure that will happen. As noted above, we’re looking for overall consistency. There will always be events.
- Are there any consequences for lying in the reviews?
- Great question! Yes.
- Only members can post reviews. Lying members will be booted and their reviews will be removed from reporting.
- Other consequences are being planned
- How do we know if someone is lying?
- Different details are used to determine the accuracy of the data.
Do you have a question? Visit our Help page and we’ll provide an answer!