People only struggle because of a self-centered view that everything is supposed to be for them, and things that aren't for them are a weird exception. A reasonable person will realize that the fact that they don't understand any of what it's talking about means they're not the target audience, and move on (or poke around out of curiosity).
It's just basic communications skills, and honestly decency, to describe what a thing is and who it's for.
Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing? Which this site provides no way of doing. That's the problem. Why choose to be inaccessible like that, when it's so easy to add a couple of works and links?
> or poke around out of curiosity
You mean like by following links that are supplied? Because that's my complaint: there are no links.
> it's self-centered to want to communicate well?
>
> It's just basic communications skills, and honestly decency, to describe what a thing is and who it's for
What is the main country where dying pubs is such a big subject?
For f**ks sake I am not from UK yet it is easy to understand what it is all about from context and language. And I wasn't even aware of that tax change.
> What is the main country where dying pubs is such a big subject?
How should I know? That's the point. It might as easily be Ireland for all I know. Or maybe pubs are dying in Boston or something?
> For f*ks sake I am not from UK yet it is easy to understand what it is all about from context and language.
I'm happy you're so smart. Not all of us are so lucky, I guess.
> Pure US arrogance.
Who said anything about the US? You know there are people from a lot of other countries who speak English too? If your concern is arrogance, it seems like it's your own that perhaps needs to be dialed back a little.
Suggesting that communication can be clearer isn't a form of arrogance. To the contrary, it's something that comes out of empathy, identifying how communication could help more readers/listeners.
If they're not American, then following their own logic they probably shouldn't be heavily implying that they are. It's misleading. They should give context in each and every comment so that we know.
It's self-centered to want others to communicate well to you when they aren't attempting to communicate with you in the first place.
You want to learn about the thing? You have the entire internet at your fingertips. Click search bar, type "pub rates," boom, thousands of news stories.
If you want to know what's going on, put in the bare minimum effort to find out. If you don't care then ignore it and move on.
> It's self-centered to want others to communicate well to you when they aren't attempting to communicate with you in the first place.
For private communication, of course.
For public communication? On a .com? It's simple politeness, courtesy, and respect. It's about not wasting other people's time unnecessarily. It's just decency. I'm amazed that you can be arguing against basic decency and respect here.
Basic decency and respect is either ignoring it or putting in the three seconds of effort it takes to understand it, instead of complaining to someone who isn't even attempting to talk to you.
Are you the sort of person who goes up to people in public and asks what they're talking about? Because that's what you're doing. Except you aren't even asking, you're just saying "if you're going to talk in public then you need to explain your topic so everyone can understand it."
Your time isn't being wasted. It doesn't take any more time to think "I don't know what this is talking about, oh well" than it does to think "this mentions England and Wales, I guess it's about some local issue there." Unless you're so self-centered that the very idea of a web site's purpose not being immediately comprehensible to you personally is such an affront that you have to put in time to complain about it.
This is just about elementary communication skills.
You're arguing that obfuscation is somehow a good thing. How does that make any sense?
When people communicate clearly, it makes the world a better place. People understand each other more easily. They don't have to waste as much time figuring things out. It's the golden rule, treating others the way you'd like to be treated.
If you don't understand that, I genuinely don't know what to tell you.
You're on a web site with a vague title and a bunch of random links, and zero explanation on the front page for what it's all about. Do you also complain about that?
This is not obfuscation, this is aiming at a particular audience that you aren't a part of. This web site doesn't need an introduction so that people browsing from Kazakhstan can understand what it's about, any more than a calculus lecture needs to start with basic arithmetic to cover attendees with no math background.
You're doing the internet equivalent of yelling at people to speak English when they're having a conversation in another language. It's as uncouth here as it is there.
Right! Which is why you should give that context when you create something for public consumption. Get it now?
> You're on a web site with a vague title and a bunch of random links, and zero explanation on the front page for what it's all about. Do you also complain about that?
Yes actually. HN has a terrible design for new visitors. Why would I defend that? HN is known for a lot of things, but its design is not one of them.
> You're doing the internet equivalent of yelling at people to speak English when they're having a conversation in another language. It's as uncouth here as it is there.
No, I'm doing the internet equivalent of criticizing where someone is giving a public lecture but refuses to give it a sufficiently meaningful title so people know whether or not they want to attend it.
This is a public website meant for public consumption. Not some private communication I'm trying to butt into.
You seem to be trying to defend some kind of gatekeeping-through-obscurity, where new potentially interested visitors ought to be made confused and have to "work" to figure things out. Why would anyone do that intentionally, or defend that? It's just rude and thoughtless.
You're acting as though you're being kept out, because you expect everything you see to cater to you. You're not being kept out, you're just not being explicitly invited in.
"...meant for public consumption." Which public? Not one which includes you! But you insist that you must be part of the group it's meant for.
> Maybe someone who isn't the target audience still wants to learn about the thing
This is fair enough, but they don't make it too hard -- there's an About page, where the first line mentions England and Wales and the rest of the page makes it clear that the issue is about rate increases. Googling something like "england pub rate increases" will get you the rest of the way if you're interested.
(I think us non-Americans sometimes go a bit far with the whole "finally you're tasting some of your own medicine, Yanks!" thing, and I'm sorry some people are being aggressive. But I don't think this site is as opaque as you're suggesting, nor that it makes any more assumptions about its audience than lots of US-based sites do. They're targeting locals, and I think it's fine for a home page to start talking to its intended audience immediately rather than wasting space on an introduction for outsiders.)
International shipping is an entirely different subject. You can assume that .com is American unless otherwise indicated, and that you'll need to check shipping policies. Just like as an American, when I go to a .co.uk ecommerce site, I have to check whether they ship to the US.
And the web by a Brit working in Switzerland. It all runs on Chinese hardware with software written by people (and their dogs) from every nation on earth.
The point, if there is one, is buried in the details.
> Because the internet was invented in America so it's the only country where a country suffix was never used from the start of its popularity.
I expect some countries like the UK and Australia to use something like `co.uk`. I expect many countries to use their own top-level domain. I do not assume that some `.com` website is American.
Is “the only” based on experience? How many websites from how many countries have you come across?
> I'm not saying this is good or bad or justified or not, just saying what the conventions are.
Do people associate `.com` with “company”? Or just “regular website”? Are people even stopped from making a `.com` if they don’t have a “company”?
> I do not assume that some `.com` website is American.
If it's clearly local to somewhere (news, shopping, etc.) as opposed to global or a webapp or something, and doesn't say it's specific to any other country, then yes people generally assume it's American.
Because when sites are intended for audiences in other countries, they usually use a country-specific TLD. Which, for historical reasons, never became a convention in the US since it's where the Internet was invented.
If you haven't noticed that this is a clear pattern, I don't know what to tell you.
If it is a business, people expect the .com is the global/international/headquarters address, not an us specific one per se. Some will have other country codes mostly to avoid phishing but some only redirect it to a subpath on the com website to handle regionalities/languages.
Random examples of foreign brands/companys in completely different industries: https://www.nestle.com is the "global" address of Nestle, a Swiss company. Mitsubushi, a japanes company uses https://www.mitsubishi.com with a /ja subpath to handle japanese language. The FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association which was founded in Paris, France and is know headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, uses fifa.com as its main domain despite having several regional office accross the globe but none in the US.
