Core Principles

• Evidence over opinion: edits are grounded in verifiable local facts.

• Versioned trust: every accepted change keeps provenance and review visibility.

• Contributor dignity: clear rules, transparent moderation, and fair payout paths.

• Local stewardship: each region remains accountable to its residents and context.

• Public utility first: map quality beats engagement tricks, ad noise, and dark patterns.

Federated Regional Direction

MapLocal is designed to evolve into interoperable regional instances without losing trust portability.

• Regional instances can run with local governance and moderation teams.

• Shared protocol contracts keep records and trust signals interoperable.

• Cross-region verification can propagate with reviewer provenance.

• Policy defaults can vary locally while core safety baselines remain network-wide.

• Data portability supports export/import between regional operators.