I suppose I should clarify what I meant in my earlier accusation of parochialism. Picking current threads as examples:
“The Simpsons 6 Jan 2008 (spoilers)” - no problem, it’s an American show, so that’s where it premieres.
“Iowa and New Hampshire are not hotbeds of racism” - I think we’re all intelligent enough to know where these places are
“Fottball Saturation: Or Seriously, What the Fuck?” and “A football rule question” - we all can accept that ‘fottball’ means more than one thing, and I know both me and some other Brits will post soccer-related items without specifically identifying football we’re on about. We all manage to get along in CS with that behaviour.
“Bill O’Reilly crashes barrier, assaults staffer at Obama rally” - fine. US elections are world news.
“Traffic Laws in Parking Lots” - oh dear, here we go, I thought. But whaddya know, the OP clarifies that they’re talking about American laws.
My point is that I don’t expect “In America…” to preface every post. But sometimes it avoids the OP appearing naive or ignorant of a sizeable minority of people here.
It does annoy me slightly. I realize that a large majority of the membership is American, but I really wish people would take a little responsibility for where they live and not make general statements that are really only applicable to the United States.
It obviously doesn’t bother me when people chat about “Obama vs. Hillary” or whatever, but when people make general threads that could apply to anyone but in fact are only directed at people from the US, it irritates me a little bit.
As someone else said, it irritates me much more when people say something to me, give me advice, etc., that assumes I live in the US. My location is clearly stated in the location field and I don’t think there’s any excuse for that. I would hardly give someone advice that assumed they lived in Canada and I think I deserve the equivalent courtesy. Fortunately, this situation almost never happens.
Not annoyed, irked or otherwise bothered. This is, to me, an American-centric board with an international membership. The core topic list is American-based, but there’s enough for folk like me out on the edge of the globe to take part – and after nearly 70 years of American culture filtered into our own here in NZ, plus my own family history’s involvement with the US, I don’t have a problem.
Yes, it does. but it is possible to use the Internet from outside the US. Normal companies would have a .com domain, and organizations a .org domain, and the government would have .gov, and a university would have .edu.
But if you are a foriegner, there are special domain names just for you and your foriegn country. Like “ger” for Germany. Except I think it might be something different in that particular example. Well, who knows why? I guess “ger” was already taken.
There are even tables where you can look up what domains foriegners have to use. It’s just like the real internet, only special.
It’s a board operated by an American newspaper with a largely American readership. I therefore have no compunction about using American phraseology sometimes if it avoids confusion.
I always figured that it was America-centric because of all that and the fact that it was originally based around a newspaper column here in the US. Now that I think about it, I have no idea if the newspaper column is international. Anybody know?
We pulled some stats from Boardreader & Alexa recently and at that point, the board readers were about 60% American, 5% from Canada and 5% from England.
The board has nearly twice the eyeballs as the actual Straight Dope site. So while it is a majority American board, there are enough non-American readers and posters to probably just refer to it as an English Speaking board with America as the default country.
I think the posters from outside the US, put up with us Yanks rather well. I think our worldview is a little weird compared to older countries that are not lands of immigrants. Sometimes I think only Canucks, Aussies and Kiwis can fully understand us. England and most of the world have very deep roots in their culture and usually an older class structure. All the different nationalities that come to America end up influenced by America’s heavy English & German background. Latin America is more the merger of Spanish & native cultures.
We are a strange country. Perhaps we are like a young star athlete that went right from High School to multi-millionaire without the normal intervening maturing process. We’re strong and well off, we have a lot of bravado, we often make rash decisions that older folks look down about and we have a feeling of being invulnerable and if that is struck, we tear out at the world to get back at our would be attackers.
Seems like the UK is trying to be that aging player who survived a similar experience and would like to help the kid out.
Jim (Sorry for the heavy sports metaphor, but I think it works)
(Yes I heard the whooosh go by - wanted to nitpick anyway ).
Yes, there are special country TLDs like .ca for Canada, but you can’t depend on non-US sites using country TLDs. A company I used to work for had a site that ended in .com and it certainly was Canadian. A friend of mine has a .com personal domain because at the time he got it he felt that the contract for the .ca domain he wanted was too onerous.
If I’m not mistaken, .tv is short for Tuvalu (or some such - not sure of the spelling), and I seem to remember seeing .tv sites that certainly look American!
Not exactly “resent”, no. I guess my thought is more usually a Fawlty-esque “Typical!”, especially when the location of the poster matters to the topic of the thread.
Just for the record, there’s a lot of talk in this thread about Americans, and I think you all mean citizens of the country, the United States of America, but I’d like to remind you that all citizens of North and South America are Americans.
As for the question in the OP, yeah, I resent it a little bit, just like I resent getting hosed for shipping when I buy stuff from the US (I expect to pay a little more, but some companies really take advantage), or the way our paperbacks in the store still have the Canadian price as 30% higher than the U.S. price, or the way we’re expected to cash cheques in USD (and we do), but a company in the U.S. would never, ever cash a cheque written in CAD, or the way the U.S. has unapologetically stiffed Canada on our trade agreements, or the way you’ll occasionally get a whiff of disregard from citizens of the U.S. because you’re not in a real country, and your opinions on stuff and the way you do things don’t really count. Yeah, I have a little resentment. Not much, but some.
No, I don’t resent it. I do find it amusing sometimes when someone will start the type of threads mentioned earlier where location does matter and it appears as though the OP doesn’t realize the rest of the world exists, and some of its residents are reading and posting here. I also notice when there are comments about the board leaning to the left when I would suggest from a broader, more global perspective it does not.
Mostly I accept the American bias as a natural consequence of hob-knobbing with a group largely made up of Americans and I’m indifferent to it. Sometimes I adapt my posts to be more understandable to Americans, realising their exposure to my culture is not as great as mine to theirs, and the need to do this doesn’t bother me. There are, however, specific times when it annoys me mildly:
a) When people assume that I’m also in America despite my location clearly showing that I am not. I mean, I could use that space for a naff, pointless joke but I try to keep it as informative as possible… Is it really so much to ask that people glance at the location line before offering advice that wouldn’t apply outside their country?
b) (and this is quite specific) … It happens when lots of Australians are contributing to a discussion and they all keep using the word “whinging”. Rather than thinking “Hmm, they’re all using it so I guess ‘whinging’ must be an Australian word that means something like ‘whining’”, or asking “‘Whinging’? I’m not familiar with this word. What’s it mean?”, someone will instead assume that all the Aussies are incapable of spelling “whining” and point that out. It happens less often here than other places on the internet, but it’s happened here too. “Whinging” is a different word with a similar meaning, and not simply the result of a perpetually uncorrected typo in the Official Australian Educational Manual[sup]NE*[/sup], or an unanticipated effect of the Coriolis Force, or caused by stray kangaroos that leap across our keyboards and remarkably always strike the letter “G” as we reach the middle of the word “whining”. It bothers me because it suggests that the poster believes that we’re not smart enough to know how to spell “whining” correctly. A good many of my fellow countrymen on these board have proven themselves time and again to be extremely intelligent individuals who are unlikely to have such a gap in their knowledge of basic spelling.
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