Crowdsourced products often fail for one reason: they confuse volume with reliability. Ten noisy reports are not automatically more useful than three high-trust reports from people who were physically close to the station.
That is why FuelMap does not treat every input equally. The product is designed around trust rules instead of raw count alone.
The three rules that matter most
First, recency matters. A station report from the last ten minutes is often more useful than one from forty-five minutes ago. Second, proximity matters. If someone is not actually close to the station, their input should not outweigh someone who is. Third, agreement matters. If the evidence conflicts, the product should show uncertainty instead of pretending the answer is clean.
These rules make a simple map interface far more honest. They also make the product feel better in practice because users can understand why one station looks more promising than another.
Why honesty creates a better UX
People do not expect perfect certainty in a volatile fuel situation. What they do expect is that the product does not overstate confidence. Showing conflict or low-confidence states is not a weakness. It is part of what makes the product credible.
FuelMap is intentionally opinionated here. If the signal is mixed, the UI should say so clearly. That helps people make better decisions and protects long-term trust in the map.