7 ms·

That's a good reason for why the city shouldn't arbitrarily change its official definitions of neighborhood boundaries without also changing budget allocations.

That's a good reason for why the city shouldn't arbitrarily change its official definitions of neighborhood boundaries without also changing budget allocations. Why shouldn't everyone else define neighborhoods however they feel is most useful to them?

Retric 8y ago
Who else should make that decision? Agents will arbitrarily change maps basted on what their current listing are and would happily change them daily. Longer term there is little point changing place names as changing demographics will eventually adjust the meaning of these names even if no lines move on a map.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Nobody/Everybody, if people start calling a region by a name it makes sense to record the usage and put it on the map. Sure, it probably makes perfections and planners twitch but it makes maps more useful.
  - extralego 8y ago
    I notice a lot of Americans love referring to Canada as “Canadia”. I can’t make a bit of sense out of it, but by your logic we should update the maps already.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      That's how we do it for Japan and Germany.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    I'd live with that plan, so long as the people with personal profit motives don't automatically end up with way more voice that local residents.
dickbasedregex 8y ago
Why shouldn't everyone else pronounce and spell things however they feel is nicest? Because chaos.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  People already do that and it works fine.
  - bigiain 8y ago
    For some things. Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign. Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you need to follow the norms and common uses of words, and spell them and use grammar that other people agree on. (Neighborhood names might well be closer to "poetry" than "reserved words in a computer language", but if we then become beholden to commission-driven real estate agents to define our local nomenclature from a purely personal profit seeking motivation - I think I'd rather have some anonymous city bureaucrat responsible for drawing the lines and choosing the labels...)
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      In most of the USA outside of San Francisco, authoritarianism is frowned upon. In China and SF, the government is more free to tell people how to speak and live. It's a cultural difference.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      My compiler doesn't allow me to make up spelling in my code, but my friends are fine with me making up alternate spelling when I text them. Not everything is computer code or legal documents. The names that bureaucrats or real estate agents give to neighborhoods has never mattered to me. Why do you think we have to be beholden to it? My point is that you're free to call your neighborhood whatever you want. I'm sure you're capable of figuring out which name is appropriate to use depending on the context of your conversation.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
extralego 8y ago
Why shouldn’t I be able to change your username to “daveFNfuck”? How many people will need to start calling you “daveFNfuck” before HN mods should change your username to “daveFNfuck”?
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  You can't change my username, but you don't have to refer to me by my official username. Furthermore, it's ok that my government ID doesn't say daveFNbuck even though I'm using it as my name here. There are almost no situations where people refer to me by the name in my government records, and that's fine. Those records still work for their intended purpose and there's no need to update them to match my nicknames or aliases.
  - gt_ 8y ago
    > You can’t change my username. But what if they could? The issue here isn’t that Google got the name wrong, but that they actively chose a new one and could change it to the new one because the public depends on a private entity’s map system and that private entity is able to manipulate the representation in their own private interest. >If< I didn’t like you and I were able to change your name on every non-public record to “Fucking Idiot” (Job applications, Facebook, Twitter, GMail, etc.), maybe you wouldn’t mind that. Or maybe you would mind it and I convinced you to not mind it by explaining how it wouldn’t effect your government records. (I doubt the residents in question mind the name “The East Cut” either, but they already had one and preferred it. In many of these name changes, the effects can mean rapid mass development, raised rents and evictions, etc.) For you, this name change would mean at least a lot of explaining how this obnoxious poster on Hacker News was trying to make some disparate point but it has nothing to do with your qualification for the job, getting your account banned from Social media sites. You could start a new one but you’d lose all your posts and followers. At the end of the day, you should probably have been able to stop me, but you couldn’t.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      If Google were doing something malicious that caused real and important harm, I'd probably agree with you that what they were doing was wrong. I don't see the harm here, and I don't see malice. They weren't doing this capriciously, they were doing this at the behest of a nonprofit created by the community.

Retric 8y ago

Who else should make that decision? Agents will arbitrarily change maps basted on what their current listing are and would happily change them daily. Longer term there is little point changing place names as changing demographics will eventually adjust the meaning of these names even if no lines move on a map.

Spivak 8y ago
Nobody/Everybody, if people start calling a region by a name it makes sense to record the usage and put it on the map. Sure, it probably makes perfections and planners twitch but it makes maps more useful.
- extralego 8y ago
  I notice a lot of Americans love referring to Canada as “Canadia”. I can’t make a bit of sense out of it, but by your logic we should update the maps already.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    That's how we do it for Japan and Germany.
- bigiain 8y ago
  I'd live with that plan, so long as the people with personal profit motives don't automatically end up with way more voice that local residents.

dickbasedregex 8y ago

Why shouldn't everyone else pronounce and spell things however they feel is nicest? Because chaos.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
People already do that and it works fine.
- bigiain 8y ago
  For some things. Your compiler isn't going to care about your opinion of the prettiest way to spell "print". Your lawyer is going to have strong opinions about how you spell you name and address on the contract you're about to sign. Sure, if you're writing poetry, you get to choose everything. If you need what you write to be as close to unambiguously understood as possible to other people (or machines) - then you need to follow the norms and common uses of words, and spell them and use grammar that other people agree on. (Neighborhood names might well be closer to "poetry" than "reserved words in a computer language", but if we then become beholden to commission-driven real estate agents to define our local nomenclature from a purely personal profit seeking motivation - I think I'd rather have some anonymous city bureaucrat responsible for drawing the lines and choosing the labels...)
  - fjsolwmv 8y ago
    In most of the USA outside of San Francisco, authoritarianism is frowned upon. In China and SF, the government is more free to tell people how to speak and live. It's a cultural difference.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    My compiler doesn't allow me to make up spelling in my code, but my friends are fine with me making up alternate spelling when I text them. Not everything is computer code or legal documents. The names that bureaucrats or real estate agents give to neighborhoods has never mattered to me. Why do you think we have to be beholden to it? My point is that you're free to call your neighborhood whatever you want. I'm sure you're capable of figuring out which name is appropriate to use depending on the context of your conversation.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

extralego 8y ago

Why shouldn’t I be able to change your username to “daveFNfuck”? How many people will need to start calling you “daveFNfuck” before HN mods should change your username to “daveFNfuck”?

daveFNbuck 8y ago
You can't change my username, but you don't have to refer to me by my official username. Furthermore, it's ok that my government ID doesn't say daveFNbuck even though I'm using it as my name here. There are almost no situations where people refer to me by the name in my government records, and that's fine. Those records still work for their intended purpose and there's no need to update them to match my nicknames or aliases.
- gt_ 8y ago
  > You can’t change my username. But what if they could? The issue here isn’t that Google got the name wrong, but that they actively chose a new one and could change it to the new one because the public depends on a private entity’s map system and that private entity is able to manipulate the representation in their own private interest. >If< I didn’t like you and I were able to change your name on every non-public record to “Fucking Idiot” (Job applications, Facebook, Twitter, GMail, etc.), maybe you wouldn’t mind that. Or maybe you would mind it and I convinced you to not mind it by explaining how it wouldn’t effect your government records. (I doubt the residents in question mind the name “The East Cut” either, but they already had one and preferred it. In many of these name changes, the effects can mean rapid mass development, raised rents and evictions, etc.) For you, this name change would mean at least a lot of explaining how this obnoxious poster on Hacker News was trying to make some disparate point but it has nothing to do with your qualification for the job, getting your account banned from Social media sites. You could start a new one but you’d lose all your posts and followers. At the end of the day, you should probably have been able to stop me, but you couldn’t.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    If Google were doing something malicious that caused real and important harm, I'd probably agree with you that what they were doing was wrong. I don't see the harm here, and I don't see malice. They weren't doing this capriciously, they were doing this at the behest of a nonprofit created by the community.