Embley Wood

A new website has been launched to help find the most scenic area in the UK.

ScenicOrNot seems to use the same system as other successful voting sites like HotOrNot and RateMyPoo where users are shown a random image and asked to rate it out of ten.

This new project is powered by mySociety, the company who are behind projects such as TheyWorkForYou (that puts constituents in touch with their MPs), FixMyStreet (lets people complain about potholes in their roads) and PledgeBank (gets people to work together towards a common goal).

Images are currently being taken from Geograph – a project that sets out to collect photographs covering every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland, but has no ranking system of its own. MySociety director Tom Steinberg realises there are external factors involved in the voting and said: “We encourage people quite strongly to discount any aspect of photographic skill.”

The FAQs on the site also mention that the data gathered will eventually be used for a secret project but Tom also said it would be made open “so that anyone can re-use it and play with it later on”.

The early leaders so far are Hampshire’s Embley Wood and Loch Ossian in the Highlands.