I believe that in the past there have been “where are we?” threads used to try to locate other LWers, and possibly also a map. These things need constant maintenance as people move, disappear, etc. And they do not get this maintenance. So they’re only useful for a few months at a time, at a guess.
I’ve been thinking that a solution might be for people to enter their location and email address in a webapp, and once a month they get an email asking them to confirm that they’re still there. They can either stay in the same place or remove themselves with a single click, I’m not sure what the default should be if they ignore. Or they can update to a new location.
I have more thoughts on this, but any feedback on the idea?
Another possible solution would be an official LW map based on the locations in our profiles, possibly ignoring inactive accounts. This would require integration, which might make it harder than a standalone app; in particular, I might make the standalone app but the inconvenience of setting up to work on the reddit codebase makes me unlikely to make an integrated one.
Again, I have more thoughts but would appreciate yours first.
The better way of doing this would be to allow people to fill out their location in their profile and then the website could just display all the users who posted in the last x amount of time. The emails would be annoying. Could you imagine if you got a monthly email from every site that had information about you? shiver
allow people to fill out their location in their profile and then the website could just display all the users who posted in the last x amount of time
This is probably a reasonable official solution with an opt-out (possibly the recent email-me-about-nearby-meetups option could double as that), but I don’t know how comfortable people would be with an outside app aggregating that information.
Could you imagine if you got a monthly email from every site that had information about you?
I think that if I got a monthly email from every site that a) had information about me, and b) I expressly authorised to send me a monthly email asking if that information was still correct, that would not be too bad. Most sites satifsying (a) would fail (b). The only exceptions I can think of offhand are things like this, and dating sites.
I believe that in the past there have been “where are we?” threads used to try to locate other LWers, and possibly also a map. These things need constant maintenance as people move, disappear, etc. And they do not get this maintenance. So they’re only useful for a few months at a time, at a guess.
I’ve been thinking that a solution might be for people to enter their location and email address in a webapp, and once a month they get an email asking them to confirm that they’re still there. They can either stay in the same place or remove themselves with a single click, I’m not sure what the default should be if they ignore. Or they can update to a new location.
I have more thoughts on this, but any feedback on the idea?
Another possible solution would be an official LW map based on the locations in our profiles, possibly ignoring inactive accounts. This would require integration, which might make it harder than a standalone app; in particular, I might make the standalone app but the inconvenience of setting up to work on the reddit codebase makes me unlikely to make an integrated one.
Again, I have more thoughts but would appreciate yours first.
The better way of doing this would be to allow people to fill out their location in their profile and then the website could just display all the users who posted in the last x amount of time. The emails would be annoying. Could you imagine if you got a monthly email from every site that had information about you? shiver
This is probably a reasonable official solution with an opt-out (possibly the recent email-me-about-nearby-meetups option could double as that), but I don’t know how comfortable people would be with an outside app aggregating that information.
I think that if I got a monthly email from every site that a) had information about me, and b) I expressly authorised to send me a monthly email asking if that information was still correct, that would not be too bad. Most sites satifsying (a) would fail (b). The only exceptions I can think of offhand are things like this, and dating sites.