61–70 of 152 posts
[1]: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_sheldrick_a_precise_three_wo...
It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a state/province (and even faithfully produce a list of all our provinces). We indeed have them but locals ignore them entirely, city, street, number and postal code are all we, and domestic companies, use.
1. https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
The first time that I went on vacation to Africa I was mindblown. The concept of city, town or even village broke down for me; one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road. Addresses were hardly a thing, people just knew where each one lived, so you had to ask for 'xyz house'. I don't want to sound PC but this is the kind of reasons why more diversity…
> one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single road You were in America actually...
It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a state/province (and even faithfully produce a list of all our provinces). We indeed have them but locals ignore them entirely, city, street, number and postal code are all we, and domestic companies, use.
Same here in Greece, all the post office needs is your street name and postcode. Not even city (the postcode defines that uniquely, same as everywhere else). I don't know why forms get hung up on those.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically it's the same in the US. Street number, name, and zip code is all you need, but even the US postal service recommends keeping the city and state for redundancy. It sometimes leads to funny situations if you live near city boundaries where you can get mail sent TO multiple different cities that are all your address.
Yeah. A friend of mine lives in both Long Island City and Sunnyside and Queens. If you get the zip code and the street right, it all works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Technically it's the same in the US. Street number, name, and zip code is all you need, but even the US postal service recommends keeping the city and state for redundancy. It sometimes leads to funny situations if you live near city boundaries where you can get mail sent TO multiple different cities that are all your address.
Yeah. A friend of mine lives in both Long Island City and Sunnyside and Queens. If you get the zip code and the street right, it all works.
A friend of mine who distributes consumer goods in Congo (yes, the whole of Congo) through an online shop explained that a phone call is an essential part of the delivery process - even more important than the address because it is how the actual delivery location is negotiated. Of course, this is only a problem for valuable items (one wouldn't trust postal employees with that) - regular mail in Africa ends in a PO b…
In France (don’t know how it works elsewhere) shops can be a shipping point. It creates a network for transporters and it’s a must have for any online shop. If the transporter ships directly to your home, you have to be here when he comes (and in France you never really know...). If you haven’t bought large furniture or fridge or whatever, it’s simpler to go to a shop, it’s open on a wide range of hours. For the shop…
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That's not just in America, part of Europe can qualify too. Except that they might have addresses.
> Except that they might have addresses. This reminds me of how when the German zip codes were unified in the 1990s, they forgot about one district. > Although the Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald is officially uninhabitated, two people inhabit and operate the Tillyschanze restaurant, next to the observation tower of the same name above the city of Hann. Münden, located in Lower Saxony. The border between the states of Hesse…
This triggers a more general hot button for me. Computers should be there to help,people, not the other way around. The rigidity of street addresses is relatively new (within living memory)and was designed to accommodate a technological gap (paper maps, basically, and emergency services). It’s more humane to let people specify things like addresses the way they want (my grandmother refused to kowtow to the imposition…
This isn't really a matter of computers helping or not helping people. The issue is with the delivery service. They need some reliable way to find the right destination.
> I can only tell you that I live in Kanyanya, a Kampala suburb. If you need my exact home, then I’ll either have to send you a GPS location via apps like Whatsapp, Telegram, Google Maps or engage you in a long phone conversation in which I’ll try to describe landmarks, building and trees leading to my house. But street address, zip code? Hell No.
And says that despite that, the web forms ask for nonsensical data. The right thing is for the delivery location validator to take GPS, phone number, list of landmarks, etc, canonicalize it as best it can, and send that info to the delivery company. Not try to fit the delivery info into some Procrustean form.