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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

First of all, facebook is going to contact you shortly because you are infringing on their trademark. They are quite vigilant about this.

Secondly, it would have been a bit more interesting to actually post the results, and not just the site.

Thirdly, why would people living in urban areas be less literate than people from rural areas? Usually, people from urban areas are better educated than people from rural areas.

Fourthly, if you are targeting people who cannot read well, why is there so much (pretty high-level comprehension level) text on your pages?

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facebook is going to contact you shortly because you are infringing on their trademark

I don't see how that can be. Trademark isn't like copyright and patent law. The latter are intended to protect the owner of the IP. But trademark was is different: it's intended to protect the consumer.

Thus, one may be found to violate tm law if they're creating confusion in the mind of the consumer, leading or allowing them to believe that they're using Facebook (or buying a real iPod, etc).

If Mr. Markham's site simply provides help for users trying to figure out Facebook's site, while making it clear that it is not, itself, Facebook (and he does say, at the top of the page in a red font, "this is a fan site and is in no way associated with facebook"), then he's got no problem.

It's not against the law to employ someone else's trademark. It's obviously legal to say that your product is "compatible with Microsoft Windows", and it's perfectly fine to publish a book "Adobe Photoshop for Dummies". This site is analogous to that.

> Thirdly, why would people living in urban areas be less literate than people from rural areas? Usually, people from urban areas are better educated than people from rural areas.

Hmmmm .... Certainly the high end (in education) of the population will be better educated in urban areas. And I imagine that will make the average better for urban areas.

On the other hand, virtually everyone living in a rural area is going to be an independent businessperson, in some sense, thus establishing a minimum baseline requirement for literacy. In a city, one can be a cog in a huge machine, leaving the reading for someone else.

So while I would expect the literacy highs to be higher in a city, I would also expect the lows to be lower.

But what about some data? I did a few quick searches, but urban vs. rural literacy data for the U.S. seems to be a bit hard to come by. I did find this map showing illiteracy rates for Texas.

http://www-tcall.tamu.edu/docs/09illitmap.html

The main trend the map shows, is for illiteracy to increase to the south & west. However, there is a big blob of illiteracy around Houston. On the other hand, there is not really any significant blob for the Dallas area. Go figure.

More data would be appreciated, if anyone can find it.

On the other hand, virtually everyone living in a rural area is going to be an independent businessperson, in some sense, thus establishing a minimum baseline requirement for literacy.

As someone who grew up in a rural area, I can assure you that this is false. As in urban areas, most people in rural areas work for someone else.

Alas, another beautiful theory ruined by ugly fact.

Thanks for the comment, Max. These are really good questions that I didn't address in the article, so I'm going to answer them. After that I'm out of here. I've learned that if you post an article with a title like "What kind of idiot do you think I am, anyway?" people will be very happy to tell you :)

1) Facebook is always welcome to contact me. Happy to help them try to provide login help to the audience I've selected.

2) I don't have results yet, but I promise to post everything you could possibly want to know about the site in a few months. At the slow rate of traffic the site is getting, it's going to take a while to come to any useful conclusions.

3) I don't know. I was going to make an extended metaphor and never really finished it. I was trying to say that the average Facebooker isn't a college kid or programmer any more. They're, well, average. I'll make the change in the edits. This was something I thought about in the shower and just pushed it out there. Wrote the whole thing in 15 minutes without any rewrites, which is unusual for me. Very sorry for the poor quality.

4) Now this question is an awesome one. Riddle me this, batman, how do you use a text-based search engine to provide assistance to people who can't read? If you have no text, the search engine doesn't know what it's looking at. If you have lots of text, people can't use it. If you hide the text, well, search engines don't like that, either.

This was an initial stab. I'd like to try this again with another topic area, but I'm stumped with the problem you bring up. Perhaps a totally video-based site with extensive transcripts? It's worth exploring. You could even do the navigation in video format.

I screwed this site up royally by personally writing the text. I should have asked a elementary school kid to do it. Live and learn.

Re #4, there's a spectrum of reading and comprehension ability - it's not just that some people can read and others can't. That may simplify your problem: you can still provide instructions in text form which are useful for your target audience.

Government departments here in the UK have guidelines, I believe, about what reading level the language used in official forms should target. If you're interested, here are a few links: http://www.nao.org.uk/whats_new/0203/02031145.aspx?alreadyse... http://www.idea.gov.uk/idk/core/page.do?pageId=1536729 http://www.cipd.co.uk/housestyle/plainenglish.htm

I'd be curious to see your stats on hn-books as well - it always seemed to me like the "right" solution for a HN bookshelf would somehow involve contributions to the EFF, or equiv.

> First of all, facebook is going to contact you shortly because you are infringing on their trademark.

Lawsuits those days... The insanity of them goes so beyond imagination, people are starting to think it's even forbidden to mention Facebook®™ without Their Majestic Permission. OH WAIT--

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