Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

visalist.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 260 posts

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#251

Post by diminoten »

wenc wrote: post #250
diminoten wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouting into the void about the void helps me deal with the void's existence. Honestly, if I were a completely rational actor, I wouldn't comment on HN. Besides, I think you'd find the level of comments on HN to be no better than what's on Reddit or Stack Overflow or Quora or Slashdot or Twitter or Facebook or even Google+.

I think I see where you're coming from. Humans aren't always rational. I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure servic…

The problem with this attitude is that it's, in a word, superior. Superior attitudes are rarely productive.

I dislike very strongly those communities who encourage their members to put themselves above others, and I see that as more harmful than any inherent value the community might provide.

If HN were really superior, people wouldn't have to keep telling me it's so, yet that's all I am told when this topic comes up. Why isn't it self-evident?

A large portion of my time on HN (nearly 10 years, blame XKCD) has been devoted to this topic specifically, and no one has yet shown me the merits of this site to a degree that it outweighs the arrogance its members have shown over and over.

I've very recently started writing my thoughts out more long form, maybe I'll dedicate a post to this topic. Otherwise, I am probably done talking about it, as dang tends to get upset with me when I go on like this.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#252

Post by jarofgreen »

Holybeds wrote: post #238
jarofgreen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it won't. But you could watch for any changes on certain webpages and then flag those webpages to a human for them to check.

Glhf with that. Honestly, relying on any such work flow to find something as critical as visa requirements is insane. At least I wouldn't want to rely on some service which failed to detect that some Russian government page updated their web page and considers the page outdated. The page could still exist while incoming links are removed or similar.

I'm not saying this is perfect or it's all you need, but it's something.

To be honest, as someone who's done crowd sourced projects before this entire project sounds .... very difficult.

If it was my project, I'd have worked on these "crowd sourced" elements from the start, not as a "planning to do" - because I think the only way this will work long term is to get those right. And getting them right will be very difficult to do.

Also, I'd link to source material much more prominently. As a reader, I'm not inclined to trust a random unofficial page on the internet - especially on anything as important as Visas - so providing lots of links I can spent 10 minutes following up on to reassure myself would be great.

Oh, and big timestamps showing when a piece of info was last checked/updated.

To the creator - sorry to be down. Good luck!

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#253

Post by wenc »

diminoten wrote: post #251
wenc wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I see where you're coming from. Humans aren't always rational. I have a different view. I think the quality of a subset of comments here are appreciably better in some respects than many of the sites you listed. Of course there are contrarian, misinformed pseudointellects, but at the same time, one also gets to hear the unvarnished thoughts of lead developers of specific products (e.g. Timescale, Azure servic…

The problem with this attitude is that it's, in a word, superior. Superior attitudes are rarely productive. I dislike very strongly those communities who encourage their members to put themselves above others, and I see that as more harmful than any inherent value the community might provide. If HN were really superior, people wouldn't have to keep telling me it's so, yet that's all I am told when this topic comes up…

I'm not sure I agree, but I too will stop here too except to say that this whole exchange is a bit meta in that it seems to reflect the content and attitudes it is opposing. (I'm not excluding myself from this--I'm equally culpable)

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#254

Post by kkarakk »

twblalock wrote: post #231
1hakr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visalist is free though.

This is one of those cases where making a mistake is a big enough deal that it's worth paying for information that is known to be correct, rather than relying on a free service that may or may not be up to date.

who are the people who will check visalist and go "ok cool, time to leave - where's my passport?"

anyone travelling internationally checks with the embassy first right? or is there some unspoken expectation that americans/europeans live with during travels about visa on arrival that i don't think about in the same way?

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#255

Post by SEJeff »

selimthegrim wrote: post #85
projectramo wrote: post #6

This is a handsome site. For some reason I am quite curious about this kind of thing and keep looking up passports I don’t have for countries I won’t visit. I use Wikipedia which is pretty good. What is missing is all the weird non visitor visas. For instance Canadians might work in the US on a TN visa or Australians can work on the UK for a year if they’re under some age (30? 35?) It’s that sort of thing that would…

There’s also that weird US visa that Australians can get courtesy of Bush 43

It was a quid-pro-quo for them going to Iraq and Afghanistan wars with us. Seems entirely reasonable to give your closest allies a different set of "rules" in exchange for their help.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#257

Post by dewey »

amelius wrote: post #100
dewey wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries usually don't know which passports you have (If you enter for the first time and they don't have some kind of data-sharing agreement) so you'd just enter with the one that's easier not by showing all of yours.

There is no question about other nationalities on the visa application form?

I never got that question and if I would I'd not fill that field out. Nobody's in a position to check that.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#258

Post by st1ck »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #84
_0nac wrote: post #64

Interesting, but how do you keep this up to date? These requirement change constantly and the only reliable source I'm aware of, Timatic (which is what airlines use), is copyrighted and quite tightly locked down. Wikipedia does crowdsource this info fairly effectively though, sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_c...

You do have to be careful and read the fine print. This year, I was turned away at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border (US citizen) because I had read on that Wikipedia page that it was Visa free. In fact, it is only visa free if you arrive via the Minsk airport. Fortunately I was only driving through a tiny part of Belarus on my way to Poland so it was a simple matter of another 30 minutes or so of driving to enter Pol…

This is why you shouldn't rely on Timatic for overland travel. But Belarus border rules are really messy anyway. E.g. you can't go from Belarus to Russia overland, unless you're a citizen of either of them.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#259

Post by st1ck »

Carpetsmoker wrote: post #199
1hakr wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the information is from the official website, infact in the details page you can find link to the offical website. What i'm trying to do here is simplify the visa requirements for everyone.

Over here: https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-requirements/netherland... it says "source: wikipedia", which is hardly "official", and may not be comprehensive. The Wikipedia page is subtly wrong you get a "visa on arrival", not "visa not required". There are some important details left out too; for example one of the conditions for getting the visa is that you have booked flights out of New Zealand. I've heard stor…

TBH in most cases you're formally required to have an onward ticket and a proof of accommodation, even if you can enter visa-free. OTOH in many cases nobody bothers to ask for it.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#260

Post by nzealand »

1hakr wrote: post #150
nzealand wrote: post #137

Small note: New Zealand is not part of Australia, and has eGates not Smart Gates.

Can you point which page are you referring to?

https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-requirements/united-sta...
Post reply on HN