Mis-guided advice suggestion

[Darkwood]

Just want to put this out there for a feedback and to the Mod's.

I want to suggest that on the posts anyone submits we have our country of origin or country you are based in, this will clear alot of guess work and wasted posts as well as misguided advice as Electrical reg's, voltages etc vary country to country, given this info we can make a judgement to whether we know enough of the regulations, voltages etc of said country to give the correct advice... as most advice revolves around the uk's 17th edition it sometimes easy to assume but its often forgotten that this sight is often accessed and used from the 4 corners of the world.

What do you think?

 

[Guest123]

I believe we talked about a 'flag' system before.

Not really sure what was decided though. I'll chase it up.

 

[Darkwood]

Cheers Len, i aspire to give good advice but sometimes have to retract it once it becomes evident from O/P's responses that the're posting from an igloo at the north pole (seasonal ref') .... thus your advice dosnt account for the -40 temp's or the fact that their power works off elf dust... i think?

 

[Spudnik]

Great idea chaps, however, we do have a location setting in the users profile which shows up under their avatar etc.

If a member does not fill this in, then its impossible to know.

 

[Darkwood]

Great idea chaps, however, we do have a location setting in the users profile which shows up under their avatar etc.

If a member does not fill this in, then its impossible to know.

Yes already aware of this but just wondered if it could be applied to a post as a criteria for you to be able to post it i.e. at the end of writing its a box with pre-selected countries as a choice then every post would be tagged from country you want your post to be associated with, and regular members can prefix an option in their profile which will omit the need to choose this option everytime... just a thought but not sure how easy to implement?

 

[Admin]

^^^^ That would be a maul and wouldn't get used as well as you might think. But I can make it compulsory for users to enter their location in their profile when registering, and for those that have already registered, it forces them to add it when they next edit their profile or settings. This then ends up in every post they make.

Generally though we're a UK forum. And if people are seeking advice regarding electrical work in other countries they really need to make it clear - if they don't one can only assume they mean the UK as they're on a UK-based forum. And if then later it becomes clear they're in another country - their bad for wasting their time. But the content added by people assuming it was originally about the UK isn't wasted - other people from the UK will read that information at some point.

So, would making entering location compulsory help?

 

[Silly Sausage]

You can usually spot foreign posters reasonably easily.
They often refer to 'Ground' for 'Earth' & 'Hot' for 'Live/Line' for starters...

 

[Mark_Burgess]

So, would making entering location compulsory help?

Yes, so when people ask about a problem, those that live near by can offer help without the dozen repeat request of the op's location.

Even if they just put a county gives us half a chance.