I’m not trying to call anyone out; in fact, I think this might apply to 50% of Dopers. But often, I’ll be reading a post, and something will compel me to check where the poster is writing from. Most of the time it’s just to help me flesh out an anecdote in my mind, but sometimes it’s actually relevant to the post itself. I always sigh in disappointment when the location is blank, or something that was once clever.
So, my question is twofold; anybody else, like me, wish that more Dopers would post their real locations? And, for those of you that haven’t, is it a privacy thing? Or something you did your first day here and forgot about?
Blank doesn’t worry me, but going to the trouble of entering something meaningless seems stupid to me. I recall years ago when I used to play at yahoo games no one did it and I used to love sitting down to play backgammon with someone from Alaska, say, and chatting about what was going on there.
It only bugs me when someone’s asking a question about whether some plant or other will grow in his backyard or wants to identfy some gray-brown furry thing she just saw run by.
It doesn’t bother me (and make sense for a lot of people), but if they’re asking or responding to something where location makes a difference they should mention it.
Nope. I like reading whatever’s there, if I think to look. In my own case, I try desperately to remember to include any pertinent information regarding my location whenever necessary. If all else fails though, I encourage people to ask (as I have no problem doing when required). I think those of us who aren’t being completely straightforward, wouldn’t mind regardless.
Considering that the location is one of the few user-selected fields viewable in regular thread browsing, it’s nice to know that people have spent a few seconds to give you at least a hemisphere or continent to work with. A poster’s location is pertinent information in a lot of topics, and having it there in the field saves both time and storage space adding such information to threads about regional pronunciations, customs or what have you.
It does bug me a little, although I find some of the location descriptors humorous. But if I am concerned about somebody finding me with 2.3 million residents I may be just a little paranoid.
Actually, they really should put down their income. So many more questions are impacted by that. Location is only secondary to income.
Okay, just kidding. Neither is that significant unless the question in the OP pertains to that and then people can identify themselves, so no, it doesn’t bother me.