Simon ([personal profile] swaldman) wrote in [site community profile] dw_suggestions2013-04-02 08:20 am

Set default country according to IP

Title:
Set default country according to IP

Area:
Shop

Summary:
When making purchases in the shop, it would be nifty if your country could be defaulted to a best guess based on IP.

Description:
It would be a minor convenience feature, and might involve quite a lot of work/hassle/complexity... but I thought I'd throw it out there in case somebody says "oh, that'd be easy actually" :-)

Drawbacks: Slowdown as the lookup is done; don't know whether this would be significant. Maybe there are some situations in which people would be offended by an incorrect guess?

Poll #13460 Set default country according to IP
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46


This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
6 (13.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
23 (50.0%)

(I have no opinion)
16 (34.8%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

matgb: Artwork of 19th century upper class anarchist, text: MatGB (Default)

[personal profile] matgb 2013-05-19 12:41 pm (UTC)(link)
At least Virginia and Maryland are close to each other, my old dial up ISP used to always put me the other side of the country-I knew why, but it was daft.

However...

Geolocation is something that some people are freaked out by, but it's something you as the site are basically doing anyway, if you're on the shop page you're on a site schemed page ergo analytics are on. It's just aggregate data.

If we don't like to encourage privacy by obscurity, why intentionally pretend to people we can't work out where they are just to make them feel a bit better? For those of us in a non-US country, this would be a simple improvement with few drawbacks (obvs, US resident international travellers would then need to click something they don't currently but I'm guessing that's a smaller proportion than non-US residents).

I, personally, am not that bothered, especially if the suggestion to add the UK to the top of the list is implemented, but the argument against of "it's a bit creepy" is basically the same as "if I pretend it's not happening I don't know about it", which isn't good practice for users that are concerned about this stuff.
kyrielle: painterly drawing of a white woman with large dark-blue-framed glasses, hazel eyes, brown hair, and a suspicious lack of blemishes (Default)

[personal profile] kyrielle 2013-05-19 01:23 pm (UTC)(link)
I have no opinion either way, but there are also a decent group of people (using firewalls/bouncers to access sites their country might not allow, or to anonymize themselves) for whom this would always be wrong. I have no idea if any of them use Dreamwidth or are voting here, though.
aedifica: Me with my hair as it is in 2020: long, with blue tips (Default)

[personal profile] aedifica 2013-05-20 08:33 pm (UTC)(link)
If we don't like to encourage privacy by obscurity, why intentionally pretend to people we can't work out where they are just to make them feel a bit better?

Because we want people to give Dreamwidth money, and not get freaked out by privacy concerns while they're on the payment page about to do so. :-)