5 ms·

It is a part of that town's identity, and the inconvenience to courier corporations is no good reason why they should give up on that. It's not about individual

It is a part of that town's identity, and the inconvenience to courier corporations is no good reason why they should give up on that. It's not about individual people's identity, it's about the town's identity. This bit of cultural distinctiveness - no need for scare quotes as that's exactly what it is - makes it of historical interest and attractive to tourists.

C1sc0cat 8y ago
Ok so the postal workers deliver to a designated central point an you pick up your own mail :-) I am surprised that Germany of all places doesn't have a centrally planned and enforced addressing scheme like the UK post code or the USA's zip code
- lb1lf 8y ago
  For -ahem- historical reasons, Germans have a healthy skepticism to anything which may let the powers that be know more about them than what is strictly necessary; it is not my impression that this is the case here, my point is merely that Germans on average are quite privacy-conscious. They do have postcodes in Germany, though - the gist of this story was that the lack of street names (identifying houses only by their (not quite sequential) numbers.)) caused delivery services much grief. Basically not enough granularity on the micro level - they know what town you're in, but finding the house you reside in is cumbersome.
  - nwellnhof 8y ago
    > For -ahem- historical reasons, Germans have a healthy skepticism to anything which may let the powers that be know more about them than what is strictly necessary If this was true, Germany surely had abandoned the compulsory resident register (Meldepflicht) introduced by the Nazis.
    - wsy 8y ago
      The data from these local registers is not collected and merged, so there is still enough decentralization in the system to make abuse very difficult.
      - m4lvin 8y ago
        Well, it used to be ... https://netzpolitik.org/2019/trotz-eilantrag-in-karlsruhe-seehofer-schafft-zentrale-datenbank-aller-buerger/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/trotz-eilantrag-in-karlsruhe-se...
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      Or have identity cards and with your religion on to boot!
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    > finding the house you reside in is cumbersome But it isn't. Google Maps, and others, find the locations perfectly. There in fact is not a problem that needs to be solved.
    - lb1lf 8y ago
      It is not cumbersome to deliver a package to one house in this town. It is cumbersome to deliver packages to, say, a hundred houses in this town, where every day, the houses with a scheduled delivery varies. If you are to load up your delivery vehicle efficiently, you need to have some idea as to the order the packages will be delivered in; this is made harder by the lackadaisical numbering and lack of street names.
      - kwhitefoot 8y ago
        > you need to have some idea as to the order the packages will be delivered in No you don't. That's what route planning software is for. Trying to do it in your head is a waste of your time when a computer can do it faster and more reliably.
        lb1lf 8y ago
        ...but presumably route planning software is based around the concept of street names, which is a pretty universal concept? (I have no doubt a computer can solve this issue - but neither do I think logistics companies would create a fuss over this unless it was an actual issue; an educated guess is that this town's approach does not integrate well with whatever route planning software they are using (while not being a large enough market to defend the investment which would need to be made in order to serve it more efficiently - hence, we're stuck at cumbersome...))
        kwhitefoot 8y ago
        The maps know where every house is so the software simply has to route to those coordinates. We know it works because Google Maps and all the others I tried do it already. So all that is needed is to get the coordinates for each address, ask the api for the time between each possible pair of locations plug it in to your favourite travelling salesman solver and start driving. This is hardly a difficult task, especially as pretty much all of it is already done by various companies already. For instance https://www.mapquest.com/routeplanner https://www.mapquest.com/routeplanner. It only covers the US but it doesn't look as though there would be any difficulty extending it to other countries. And this one, https://planner.myrouteonline.com/route-planner/1752/# https://planner.myrouteonline.com/route-planner/1752/#, works perfectly in Hilgermissen and has no trouble finding the houses and finding the optimal route.
  - magduf 8y ago
    >They do have postcodes in Germany, though - the gist of this story was that the lack of street names (identifying houses only by their (not quite sequential) numbers.)) caused delivery services much grief. A see a simple solution to the problem: pass a national law that towns can be like this if they want, but if they don't adopt the national addressing system, then delivery services (and companies sending goods that way) are completely free of all liability if anyone in that town complains about packages being late, mis-delivered, or not delivered at all. People in the town won't be able to pursue the delivery company or the merchant for the money they spent on the package which never arrived. With a law like that in place, the town would probably very quickly change their addressing system.
- protomyth 8y ago
  > Ok so the postal workers deliver to a designated central point an you pick up your own mail :-) Welcome to a lot of reservations in the US. It always ticked me off when some company would say "we don't ship to PO Boxes" since that's all we had. Even all the 911 stuff didn't change that. I ended up getting folks to ship UPS and putting "House 311 Behind the School" for my address. Probably why UPS is used so much and FedEx seams to hate us to the point of rudeness.
nmeofthestate 8y ago
" the inconvenience to courier corporations is no good reason why they should give up on that." This is an inconvenience to themselves - the courier is just providing them with a service that is impaired by the addressing system. It is by definition a good reason why they should replace the error-prone system. Let me ask you - in your job, if someone suggests a change that will improve how things work, would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it.
- gbear605 8y ago
  Jobs are different from towns. The people living here aren’t optimizing for efficiency.
- kortilla 8y ago
  Allowing people to eat more than one or two types of meals is also a massive inconvenience. Society would be much more efficient if we all just got our weekly bag of rice and beans. Painting and other art forms are also huge inconveniences. They are neither edible nor do they provide shelter. Definitely don’t forget letting people speak their native languages. The incredible economic friction of language barriers has cost the world billions in duplicated efforts.
- twic 8y ago
  > Let me ask you - in your job, if someone suggests a change that will improve how things work, would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it. So, you're already rewriting everything in Rust, then?
- monadgonad 8y ago
  > would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it. Complete false equivalence. If you think the identity of a business is anything like as important as someone's home, then I'm just sorry for you.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
What inconvenience? There are fewer than 2000 people there. Each address can easily be associated with latitude and longitude in a public database. Such databases already exist for ordinary street addresses, for instance https://www.latlong.net/ https://www.latlong.net/ which works perfectly for own address in Norway. Why would this not work in Hilgermissen? Anyway maps.google.com works even better so how does any courier company get to the wrong address?
PunchTornado 8y ago
couriers should stop delivering to the town or ask for more money for deliveries. I don't see the problem.
kwhitefoot 8y ago
It isn't even an inconvenience to the couriers. Google Maps, etc., find the houses by number perfectly well.

C1sc0cat 8y ago

Ok so the postal workers deliver to a designated central point an you pick up your own mail :-) I am surprised that Germany of all places doesn't have a centrally planned and enforced addressing scheme like the UK post code or the USA's zip code

lb1lf 8y ago
For -ahem- historical reasons, Germans have a healthy skepticism to anything which may let the powers that be know more about them than what is strictly necessary; it is not my impression that this is the case here, my point is merely that Germans on average are quite privacy-conscious. They do have postcodes in Germany, though - the gist of this story was that the lack of street names (identifying houses only by their (not quite sequential) numbers.)) caused delivery services much grief. Basically not enough granularity on the micro level - they know what town you're in, but finding the house you reside in is cumbersome.
- nwellnhof 8y ago
  > For -ahem- historical reasons, Germans have a healthy skepticism to anything which may let the powers that be know more about them than what is strictly necessary If this was true, Germany surely had abandoned the compulsory resident register (Meldepflicht) introduced by the Nazis.
  - wsy 8y ago
    The data from these local registers is not collected and merged, so there is still enough decentralization in the system to make abuse very difficult.
    - m4lvin 8y ago
      Well, it used to be ... https://netzpolitik.org/2019/trotz-eilantrag-in-karlsruhe-seehofer-schafft-zentrale-datenbank-aller-buerger/ https://netzpolitik.org/2019/trotz-eilantrag-in-karlsruhe-se...
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Or have identity cards and with your religion on to boot!
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  > finding the house you reside in is cumbersome But it isn't. Google Maps, and others, find the locations perfectly. There in fact is not a problem that needs to be solved.
  - lb1lf 8y ago
    It is not cumbersome to deliver a package to one house in this town. It is cumbersome to deliver packages to, say, a hundred houses in this town, where every day, the houses with a scheduled delivery varies. If you are to load up your delivery vehicle efficiently, you need to have some idea as to the order the packages will be delivered in; this is made harder by the lackadaisical numbering and lack of street names.
    - kwhitefoot 8y ago
      > you need to have some idea as to the order the packages will be delivered in No you don't. That's what route planning software is for. Trying to do it in your head is a waste of your time when a computer can do it faster and more reliably.
      - lb1lf 8y ago
        ...but presumably route planning software is based around the concept of street names, which is a pretty universal concept? (I have no doubt a computer can solve this issue - but neither do I think logistics companies would create a fuss over this unless it was an actual issue; an educated guess is that this town's approach does not integrate well with whatever route planning software they are using (while not being a large enough market to defend the investment which would need to be made in order to serve it more efficiently - hence, we're stuck at cumbersome...))
        kwhitefoot 8y ago
        The maps know where every house is so the software simply has to route to those coordinates. We know it works because Google Maps and all the others I tried do it already. So all that is needed is to get the coordinates for each address, ask the api for the time between each possible pair of locations plug it in to your favourite travelling salesman solver and start driving. This is hardly a difficult task, especially as pretty much all of it is already done by various companies already. For instance https://www.mapquest.com/routeplanner https://www.mapquest.com/routeplanner. It only covers the US but it doesn't look as though there would be any difficulty extending it to other countries. And this one, https://planner.myrouteonline.com/route-planner/1752/# https://planner.myrouteonline.com/route-planner/1752/#, works perfectly in Hilgermissen and has no trouble finding the houses and finding the optimal route.
- magduf 8y ago
  >They do have postcodes in Germany, though - the gist of this story was that the lack of street names (identifying houses only by their (not quite sequential) numbers.)) caused delivery services much grief. A see a simple solution to the problem: pass a national law that towns can be like this if they want, but if they don't adopt the national addressing system, then delivery services (and companies sending goods that way) are completely free of all liability if anyone in that town complains about packages being late, mis-delivered, or not delivered at all. People in the town won't be able to pursue the delivery company or the merchant for the money they spent on the package which never arrived. With a law like that in place, the town would probably very quickly change their addressing system.
protomyth 8y ago
> Ok so the postal workers deliver to a designated central point an you pick up your own mail :-) Welcome to a lot of reservations in the US. It always ticked me off when some company would say "we don't ship to PO Boxes" since that's all we had. Even all the 911 stuff didn't change that. I ended up getting folks to ship UPS and putting "House 311 Behind the School" for my address. Probably why UPS is used so much and FedEx seams to hate us to the point of rudeness.

nmeofthestate 8y ago

" the inconvenience to courier corporations is no good reason why they should give up on that." This is an inconvenience to themselves - the courier is just providing them with a service that is impaired by the addressing system. It is by definition a good reason why they should replace the error-prone system. Let me ask you - in your job, if someone suggests a change that will improve how things work, would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it.

gbear605 8y ago
Jobs are different from towns. The people living here aren’t optimizing for efficiency.
kortilla 8y ago
Allowing people to eat more than one or two types of meals is also a massive inconvenience. Society would be much more efficient if we all just got our weekly bag of rice and beans. Painting and other art forms are also huge inconveniences. They are neither edible nor do they provide shelter. Definitely don’t forget letting people speak their native languages. The incredible economic friction of language barriers has cost the world billions in duplicated efforts.
twic 8y ago
> Let me ask you - in your job, if someone suggests a change that will improve how things work, would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it. So, you're already rewriting everything in Rust, then?
monadgonad 8y ago
> would you be against it because the bad way of doing things is party of the business's identity? It's nonsense, really isn't it. Complete false equivalence. If you think the identity of a business is anything like as important as someone's home, then I'm just sorry for you.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

What inconvenience? There are fewer than 2000 people there. Each address can easily be associated with latitude and longitude in a public database. Such databases already exist for ordinary street addresses, for instance https://www.latlong.net/ https://www.latlong.net/ which works perfectly for own address in Norway. Why would this not work in Hilgermissen? Anyway maps.google.com works even better so how does any courier company get to the wrong address?

PunchTornado 8y ago

couriers should stop delivering to the town or ask for more money for deliveries. I don't see the problem.

kwhitefoot 8y ago

It isn't even an inconvenience to the couriers. Google Maps, etc., find the houses by number perfectly well.