Why do you have to pick a State?

Jeez...don't start me on this one....

The other day I was trying to get info' on a old Black & Decker product and the site insisted I log in...but would only accept USA or Canada as countries!!! How parochial is that??

So I ended up saying USA and then had to make up a bogus phone number. Eventually I managed to get to the point where I could contact them...you can imagine the helpful comments I posted

Del

....and I guess they were unpublishable too.

Hi Del.

The other when I was filling out a government form It asked me my nationality, you had to choose from 4 from the UK alone, one was Welsh, the next was Scottish and the third said Northern Irish, the fourth was white British? I wrote English, and the form was promptly sent back to me with a small not saying that I could not quote my nationality as English!!!

So I promptly sent them the form back with a copy of my birth certicate pointing out that Stratford on Avon was in England, therefore I must be English. They had to accept the form in the end.

This sort of thing makes me see red.

Spencer.

how dare they!

In both USA and England the simplest request for information requires reams of irrelevant data - presumably to justify large numbers of database fields to justify the cost of the software package. Even in the UK It seems we have reached such a pass that we are not allowed to say England in case it offends some one. Which actually is an insult to sensibilities of the other non-English residents of the country. As I was born in England of Canadian & Bermudian parents with English, Scots and Welsh grandparents I don't have an issue with 'English' It is usually all in the mind(?) of some petty pre-pubescent official who dreams up these illegal interpretations of non- existent rules.

In Bristol, England the municipal authority wanted to know if a lady querying waste bin emptying dates was asked for her ethnicity and if she was heterosexual or a lesbian. One can only ask why, database field filling again or prurient interest?

most times you really don't have to pick the state with your pointer.............if you just tab to the field and then type the first letter of the state, it will toggle thru the states alphabetically each time you type the letter............

Hi Guest.

You should try going to a travel agants these days to book a flight?

For the first time in my life I went to a travel agents to book a flight to Norway, I was promptly given a 53 question questionair. They asked for the most rediculous questions. The one was what my sexual orientation, I wrote "None of your business", this was not accepted so I went home and booked via the internet!

Spencer.

Hey Del,

I had a similar incident. When I put in my state and phone number it was rejected because I now live in a different state than my phone number reflects.

Chazl

Hi Chazl.

Don't worry we have the same problem here in England.

I live in a small town called Sedgley, for administration it comes under the Metrpolitan burough of Dudley, my phone number is that of Wolverhampton, and my local hospital comes under a different county altogether.

So you see, total idiocy rules!

Spencer.

Probably several reasons. One would be consistency and correctness of spelling (you've probably noticed spelling and context errors in a lot of information that is entered manually from a keyboard. In the first sentence of your question, for example, the a should be an obvious answer and in the last sentence, to should be too and there are two t's in inputting).

For a similar reason, the zip code cannot be automatically linked to a state or area because numbers are also frequently transposed and, in the U.S., zip codes can be entered as either 5 or 9 digits in many web site forms.

Many web site personal information forms are also designed for international use and, finally, when they sell the personal information to others, they want to supply complete, correct full addresses and contact information.

The U.S. post office uses a two letter code for each state such as IN for Indiana. The reason you have to pick from a list is largely due to the following states:

Massachusetts
Maine
Maryland
Minnesota
Missouri
Michigan

Although

Arizona
Alaska
Alabama
Arkansas

don't help either.

"One would be consistency and correctness of spelling "

LezzSee,

It's OK to be inconsistent with your name, your email, your city, your credit card, your phone number, your zip code, BUT the spelling of the state name is sacred.

Makes sense to whom?

As said it is done for consistency and other,

The way they are doing it is to allocate a number to each state. When You select the third state from the top you may actually select a 3. Only the 3 is saved in the form or database.

This method is also very useful for translations. The 3 saved can easily be represented as an understandable name or word in any language.

True, and I have seen some sites do this (very few), but there are three fundamental reasons they do not do this:

First, the programmer must write a complete data base for matching every zip code to every state. This is probably an order of magnitude more effort than a simple data entry for state.

Second, once written it must be maintained periodically to keep it current.

Third, the extra complexity of the program makes it much harder to test and adds even more development costs.

The extra effort to build a data base with search capabilities, test it completely, and the cost of periodic maintenance makes it a no-brainer; let the customer enter the state and be done with it.

In the late 1970's I was forced to use the method.

Storage space was scarce (had to run a big database on 2 x 275k tapes) and also had to cater for a multi language user interface.

Today with Tera bytes available I keep on using it - we now have 9 official languages and old habits die hard.

There are several forms I have filled out that allowed me to enter the first letter of the state, then would let me arrow down to my state. Many of the drop down selections let you proceed in that manner.

because they all use the same code in the web page design, (and don't realize how infuriating it is to non-americans)

Most of the ones I have used allow me to hit the first letter of the state continuously and it will scroll through the states that begin with that letter. I am from Michigan so normally I will hit "M" four times and Michigan is highlighted.

Chazl

Because it fils in a database so they are controlling the vocabulary.

Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the uses of predefined, authorised terms that have been preselected by the designer of the controlled vocabulary as opposed to natural language vocabularies where there is no restriction on the vocabulary that can be used.

You might find the concept of controlled vocabulary to be what the computer geeks knew but weren't admitting.

milo

Here's why (considering your identity):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PitCY31uZGI

All in good fun!

If there was no menu, I'd be typing Kalifornia and expect the website to understand. I have it easy with the menu though.. Tab, C, Enter.

It always helps to limit the user input in any program. It limits your test-cases to a minimum during qualification. I agree it is actually more work for the users to have to worry about the cursor keys and the mouse while it is definitely much faster to keep typing.

But the whole thing is moot or will be so soon anyway. Most interfaces these days are able to figure out state and city from zipcode. Should work for all countries if implemented correctly.

What bugs me is the forms which ask for a city: don't any programmers live in towns or villages (hamlets?)!

And as Bluestone pointed out I'm not much of an English major and use the wrong words sometimes to get my point across. Such as "to" or " two" instead of too. Most people don't even notice since they still get the gist of the message.

But if I'm old enough to be typing info into a data base I should know how to type my address even without thinking about it. I happen to live in Missouri and there are lots of M states in the U.S. So when I type M the whole list of Ms show up. But when I type the O for MO, as I'm likely to do since my mind automatically wants to put my whole address in, then the list for O shows up. So even if I'm not paying close attention to the screen I may end up putting in the wrong state. Or if I do notice the list I'm liable to accidentally pick one of the other M states.

My other info I can even have my computer fill in automatically as I hit the keys for each input, though I find this annoying TWO and tend to ignore it, but not the state.

And as far as the comment about only allowing a city and not a village or town. I also live in whats technically a village but just use it as a city's name and never had any problems with it. Though I have had a few automatically correct my info by the zip code I entered this doesn't happen very often.

Then there are the sites that insist you confirm your email address by making you type it twice. Well lets see if I'm going to lie about it on the first line then what makes you think I won't on the second?

As I see it, the commonplace use of pull down lists for state lists is mostly a case of monkey see, monkey do by site page designers. Plus/But, it promotes consistency and serves to ensure against inputs of incorrect zip codes for similarly coded states; for example Arkansas, Alaska, Arizona, Alabama... Usually though, I find that, even with the pull downs, typing in the first letter will usually bring up my state, California, which is also the first on the list begining with C. If it were, say, Connecticutt, then I could (still) type the C and then tap the down arrow a few times to bring up the correct state--no mouse needed. Same with other lists that you might also find to be irksome. BTW, what would be even better would be if you could just repeatedly type the initial letter of a state and each would come up in succession--the same way you can tap a letter repeatedly to find a file in the My documents directory in windows. Only one key to tap, instead of two different keys.

Hope this will help.

As I recall it, many years ago, when the Internet was still new, somone came up with the drop-down menu list of state and country names as a convenience - 'twas supposed to make things easier for the users, and also offer a measure of consistency (correct spelling as in Conetticutt, commonality of usage as in United Arab Emirates, etc.).

It was a wire-head "gee whiz look what we can do with THIS" effect, and it got copied everywhere. Now, it's a standard feature, even though generally unpopular, to judge by these responses. But what website will dare to volunteer to be the first to break with what has become essentially a tradition?

This is one of those egg head responses so hold on folks it might just make sense:

the reason you have to pick a state is because of the laws governing the particular screen you are filling out hence: the gentle person who was trying to contact Black and Decker, when the state field is populated all the laws governing that request for a part or repair is populated at the recipients end of the server. say Perhaps it is not legal in some states to do repairs on a patiented product thus the end server sends out a notice to the customer requesting the part -that it is not legal or if it is legal a notice will be sent saying untimately they are not responsible if you screw the product up and shock yourself to death: they assume no liability. Each state is diffrent as well as each country and it is impossable in the information age to know all the laws and bylaws of each individual state, simply the computer dose the thing for us.

Clever. But I wonder is there's a law against making it up as you go? I think this one lays its own egg.

Hello Folks:

I am responding to you as you were the last one to post. I hope pthers read as well.

What a big deal? When you are filling out two miles long papaer work called questionaire, what is the difference does in make if you choose or write the state. I have no problem and never had as I never or at least very seldom fill out any thing on the internet and if I ever do, I just select it. (Although I wondered why can't I write along with other things) Any way, with you all learned one discussing about it, I now understand but have no problem with this.

Now I have a message for all of you. Once a question is asked and the person who posts the question, should come back and thank all the people who participated in the discussion and close the topic. The thread goes on and on and I am quite sure the person who asked does not read it all ( I may be wrong and tender my aplogies). The thread should come to an end after it is answered and the people can go on to the new one.

This is my suggestion and my opinion, Any one can say that there are always three opinions. Yours, mine and the correct opinion.

Have a good day, Y'all.

Thanks Tex. Why is your rose not yellow?