It’d be really great to not have to translate from Fahrenheit and the imperial system too.

I always used to state both on Reddit. It’d be nice if people could think about doing that too…you know, given how many more people use Celsius/metric. No shade ❤️ it just gets annoying that it’s the default.

Great post. I absolutely agree, this was always a bit weird on reddit. I have seen people getting flamed on PC building subreddits for considering components that were expensive in the US (but where relatively cheaper here in the EU).

It would be great if we can really keep Lemmy a global community!

Careful with names of places, especially abbreviation. By CA, do you mean Canada or California? Is IN India or Indiana? Is SD an SD card? UK is an university now? And so on. I personally think abbreviation should default to countries or global organizations, if anything - such as UK, EU, UN.

Last year, or the year before, I was on a private Discord server. Some new user just logged in, and I asked them "Where are you from?", and they replied "I'm from Cali." I thought to myself "Wonderful, a Colombian dude whom I can speak in Spanish with", until some other user asked "How is the weather in Los Angeles?". Dude, to me Cali is not California, but a Colombian town.

This is written by a Spanish user.

I wish people would learn and use the ISO 3166 codes for their area. For example, US-DC, GB-LND, AU-ACT, etc. Unambiguous, easy to look up, short to write, etc. Just takes a super quick search. I know it'll never happen, but standards are great!

I 100% agree! As someone from the US I always disliked that even subs which were supposed to be global would default to being US subs unless the poster specified. I too love the idea of a global community and I think that assuming where someone is from kind of takes away from that.

As a non-American I really appreciate this

I agree. I may be guilty of it, being from the u.s. and all, but I try to make effort to add detail for global community when it comes to location-based topics.

It's crazy how big u.s. is, it can't help but default, plus we're largely idiots here lmao.

Ask me to convert 1 foot to millimeters...ain't happening without a chart lol. Damn public education system!!!!

I'm gonna make a conscious effort everyone.

As long as we can avoid the following incredibly common and incredibly frustrating exchange:

Person 1: here is how a thing works

Person 2: you're totally wrong, it doesn't work like that at all

Person 1: yes it does, here's an example

Person 2: no it doesn't, here's a personal anecdote

Person 1: I'm at a loss to explain your weird anecdote because that's really not how it's supposed to work at all

Person 2: that's how it always works for me, you must be dumb

Person 1: look, here's the proof from the people who invented the thing

Person 2: oh, well they don't do it like that in my country.

Typically, person 1 is from a large country that, in the context of the broader discussion, it can reasonably be assumed they were referring to that country. Like in a thread about Tesla, talking about laws of the road, for example. It's a totally reasonable assumption to make that the context is the US. Tesla is a US company, most Teslas are sold in the US, etc. Person 2 is from Italy or something. I can understand why person 1 would just assume they're both talking about the US, though it would be better to clarify. I cannot fathom why person 2 would assume they're both talking about Italy.

Or say, in a thread about the growth of Chinese megacities, there's a sub-conversation about marketplaces. Person 1 is talking about China. Perfectly reasonable, that's the context of the thread. Might be better to clarify but it's still perfectly reasonable to assume the context is China. But person 2 is for some crazy reason assuming the context is South Africa, or can't fathom that other places have different styles of marketplace vendors than South Africa.

The only thing I can imagine is that person 2 is like 13 years old and has no concept of life outside of wherever they grew up.

Some of these comments are ironic or trolling lmao.

English is used as an in-between language for many people. Other countries that exist also use English still exist. Australians can use lemmy. Canadians can use lemmy. People in the UK can use lemmy. So on, and so on.

Imo, those comments say more about the person who is upset. Variety is good, and communication is good. Assumptions lead to a lack of information, and that can make you look really silly. I'm not going to read CA on a Canadian instance and immediately think of California. An Australian reading on an Australian instance probably won't assume that WA refers to Washington. Clarification is important, and someone asking for it really shouldn't be all that offensive. The world is a big place, people.

I thought the same thing today lol
Some /m/worldnews thread and the topics was 'Texas installs panic buttons for classrooms'...yeah nice 'world'news. I guess when your whole world is the US

There are about 450 million people who speak English as their primary language. About 300 million of them are American.

If you're communicating with a stranger in English and you don't know they're nationality, the odds are heavily in favor of them being American. Like it or not, we're the default.

I'm from the US, and I understand the frustration. But something to keep in mind is that reddit was built in the US, so the first users of the site were also from the US. Hence the original subreddits defaulting to the US.

At the same time, I propose that the fediverse doesn't turn into an "America Bad" circle jerk like it turned in to on reddit.

Well, the Americans also seems to have to specify their jurisdiction because each state has its own laws (not to mention no standardized law enforcement).