Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is 5 Blocks Out?

5 Blocks Out is a community of people who love their neighbourhoods. We make it fun and easy for friends, neighbours, and parents to share helpful tips on local living.

For more info on this, see the tour and our story .

How does voting work?

Anywhere you see the vote image shown below you can cast your vote on a destination. Voting helps you keep track of places you like, and also lets your friends and other people get insight into your opinions.

What does the award ribbon mean?

This symbol represents a 'Local Hero'. Local Heroes are places that make living in a neighbourhood great. You are limited to 10 Local Hero votes.If you hit your limit, the next time you vote on a Local Hero we'll ask you to remove an existing vote. You can also visit any place you've already voted on and click 'remove my vote' within the voting form.

What does the duck symbol mean?

The happy little duck represents a 'kid-friendly' vote. 'Kid-friendly' means kids are welcome, and the place is enjoyable for both kids and parents.

What does a 'green' vote mean?

'Green' means a place has environmentally sound practices, products and/or services.

What does a 'recommended' vote mean?

Recommending a place means you like it and would encourage other people to visit.

Can I vote more than once? Should I?

Yes, and yes! You can vote as many times as you want on a given destination. You should vote whenever your opinion of a destination changes, so that other people know you've changed your mind. Your vote only counts once... whatever you voted most recently is what we'll record.

How much can I trust the votes?

We do several things to make votes trustworthy. For starters, we require that you be logged in before voting. We also limit each person to one vote per destination. Additionally we aggregate votes in the 'Voted by the People' summary, so that you can see at a glance what people in general think about a destination, and the 'voice' of each person is given equal weight.

How to make a suggestion

You can make a suggestion or share feedback with us on the feedback page. You can reach the feedback page via the 'Send Feedback' link in the Help menu and on the side of most pages.

How to report problems or bugs

You can report a problem with 5 Blocks Out in general on the feedback page. You can reach the feedback page via the 'Send Feedback' link in the Help menu and on the side of most pages. To report a problem with a particular piece of content on the site, such as incorrect information, spam, or offensive content, click the flag next to the problem content.

A place has closed or moved

If you notice that a place listed on 5 Blocks Out has closed or moved to a new address, please let us know by clicking on the flag next to the place's address.

Some pages seem slow

Please let us know if you spot something that seems slow. We work continually on performance improvements, but you may spot a problem that we don't know about.

Support for Internet Explorer 6

Like many other sites on the web, we've decided to drop support for Internet Explorer 6. Here's why: (1) Keeping 5 Blocks Out compatible with the many quirks of IE6 has proven to be extremely expensive for us in terms of development time. (2) IE6 accounts for less than 10% of the people who've ever visited 5 Blocks Out. (3) Newer versions of IE are now available which work much better.

What can you do about it? You can try using 5 Blocks Out with IE6, but it may be a struggle. You'll notice that some parts of the site don't work properly, or don't work at all. Instead we recommend upgrading to a new version of IE or using a different modern web browser like Firefox, Safari, or Chrome.

To read more about why this and many other sites are dropping IE6 support, check out the Quirksmode browser upgrade page.

Do you plan to support other cities?

Our plan for the near term is to focus most of our attention on a set of 'pilot' neighbourhoods within Toronto, and learn from the feedback within those neighbourhoods to be sure we're building something people really love. Over time we'll expand to cover more geographies, with the goal of eventually covering the whole city. If you'd like to see us cover a new area, be it in Toronto or elsewhere, please let us know by sending feedback.