The directory search is useless
This post was originally posted in lj_research. From there I was invited from evan to post it here instead, so here it goes.
I went to the directory search, I was looking for users from Botswana, the nation in the south of the African continent. What I got was instead 400 names of people from the States. After some time I reached the conclusion that there must be a place, in the state of Michigan(USA) called Botswana, and those people must be from there. I reached this conclusion noticing how, when they were refering to anything local, it had than name Michigan as the second of 3 words, one time out of two. Yet, if you go to the regional search in lj it claims: 417 users from Botswana! 100 from Congo! ...and so on.
In short the location is really useless at the moment. Could we find a way to improve the function?
Maybe a system based on the IP address? Something that automatically finds out your region, and could be turned off if necessary, BUT you could not write whatever you wanted on it. The first would give some sort of accuracy of information, while the second whould respect the privacy of those who don't want to share this bit of information.
Any comments before I submit an official suggestion?
Pietro
I went to the directory search, I was looking for users from Botswana, the nation in the south of the African continent. What I got was instead 400 names of people from the States. After some time I reached the conclusion that there must be a place, in the state of Michigan(USA) called Botswana, and those people must be from there. I reached this conclusion noticing how, when they were refering to anything local, it had than name Michigan as the second of 3 words, one time out of two. Yet, if you go to the regional search in lj it claims: 417 users from Botswana! 100 from Congo! ...and so on.
In short the location is really useless at the moment. Could we find a way to improve the function?
Maybe a system based on the IP address? Something that automatically finds out your region, and could be turned off if necessary, BUT you could not write whatever you wanted on it. The first would give some sort of accuracy of information, while the second whould respect the privacy of those who don't want to share this bit of information.
Any comments before I submit an official suggestion?
Pietro