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I recently made this post:
I’ve been thinking about how to affect this issue in the most reasonable way, and I was wondering if it’s possible/desirable to make it mandatory that a location of some kind be entered into a user’s profile. Ideally it would just be a State/Province and country. There would have to be a way to explain the purpose of it being required, like a mini-EULA or a paragraph that pops up or something because people would be offended if they had to specify that without explanation. Even if it only applied to new users, it would help. There are so many service and repair questions asked by someone with 2 posts and a blank profile, and they could be talking about a car from anywhere in the world.
I don’t know if this is possible to do with this forum software, or if you would be in favor of doing if it was. I have no idea how important this is on the overall radar, I’ve just been thinking about the issue and came up with something that would probably work if it was made to happen. Thanks again Eric for providing this place. Whatever you think, It’s all good. Cheers, man,
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Ill talk to Eric about this i do not thing i could make it mandatory i would have to check but even if we did make it so people could still lie on it sighting privacy.
I would totally expect some people to lie about it. The need for some kind explanation mechanism is to prevent that as best as possible. If executed properly, nobody who is actually here looking for help would want to lie about it, knowing how important it is to the process. Maybe even say “we’d like you to fill in your State/Province and country here, but you can write whatever you want, even if you’re only comfortable writing ‘xxx'”. It would still make the issue of location known to each user in a way that the only thing forced upon them is that they think about the issue for a few seconds. It would be a bad idea to try to force users actually fill in a real location (like with a pull down menu). Alienation is a tough line to walk, and nobody comes here to feel alienated. I think the majority of users would understand the reasoning and be fine with it.
Country alone would be sufficient. I respect privacy. I agree with Fopeano that in a forum with international members, we need to know what country someone is from at the very least. When “Unknown” shows up on their profile, well that just makes it harder for us to help them. Usually I can tell who’s from Australia though for some strange reason even if they don’t mention it lol.
There is never a shortage of these examples, but the following post really reminded me of this problem. I always want to help people, but this kind of thing makes it frustrating. If the OP was forced to have a location specified, the post would not seem so inherently flawed. I say ‘seem’ instead of ‘be’ because if there was a location filled in, I would have no way of knowing that the OP was too (insert adjective) to volunteer information so critical to answering their question. I’d much rather just plain help someone than have to jump a hurdle first that the one asking for help puts in my way. Metaphorically, what I’m suggesting is the equivalent of not providing them that hurdle in the first place.
[quote=”Fopeano” post=129072]There is never a shortage of these examples, but the following post really reminded me of this problem. I always want to help people, but this kind of thing makes it frustrating. If the OP was forced to have a location specified, the post would not seem so inherently flawed. I say ‘seem’ instead of ‘be’ because if there was a location filled in, I would have no way of knowing that the OP was too (insert adjective) to volunteer information so critical to answering their question. I’d much rather just plain help someone that have to jump a hurdle to do so that the one asking for help puts in my way. Metaphorically, what I’m suggesting is the equivalent of not providing them that hurdle in the first place.
http://www.ericthecarguy.com/kunena/8-Service-and-Repair-Questions-Answered-Here/56662-car-mods#129070%5B/quote%5D It’s almost like we need some posting guidelines here. What I’ve noticed is some people don’t even say what vehicle they have..no model year no mileage nothing. A post should include:
1. Vehicle Make/Model/Mileage
2. Topic/Issue
3. If not in the USA we need to know the country of origin if not in the posters profile, it needs to be in the post itself. We can’t help very well if we don’t know the country the poster is from.We’ve struggled with these issues from the beginning. The solution is not so easy apparently. We’ll keep working at it though.
Members have tryed to help. http://www.ericthecarguy.com/kunena/8-Service-and-Repair-Questions-Answered-Here/26489-a-primer-for-those-wanting-to-fix-their-car-with-internet-advice
Guy made excellent points in that sticky.
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