Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Apologies for negativity in my post. I did not realize that OP him/herself had made this website and might have been a first effort.

Still, I think my points are valid. Unless this is a personal hobby or tinkering effort, I would advise the OP to invest his/her time on something that is sustainable and not already covered at 10x the expertise by an existing service (in a relatively stable industry, more importantly).

The country content pages contain 6 lines that look like the OP wrote them personally. That is not something that smacks of reliability.

View on HN

What some people call “negativity” is in my opinion concise and honest feedback.

Personally, when I see “show hn” posts, this is a signal that the OP is asking for feedback and often due to time constraints or one’s personal writing style, some folks interpret straight to the point feedback as “negative” when in reality it is generally based on the responder wanting to help.

The problem is that visa policy is so complex, unless you rely on an authoritative source like TIMATIC it's not going to be right, and that's going to cause people to not book trips they would have -- or worse, book, expecting to go, and have to cancel.

For instance, China. It says that for US citizens a visa is required. That's half true.

* There's TWOV (transit without visa)

* Transit Visa On Arrival where if you're connecting to a third country within 24-144 hours depending which city you're visiting you can get a transit visa when you get there that entitles you to visit just the city in which you landed but not leave. [1]

* Hainan has a 30-day visa waiver program if you apply through a travel agency. [2]

* Hainan has a 30-day visa on arrival program. [2]

* Hong Kong and Macau are 90 days visa on arrival.

In this kind of international diplomatic space, accuracy matters more than anything else.

[1] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/free-72hour/

[2] https://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/hainan/visa-free...

Yes, Timatic (usually) doesn't go into that level of detail, though it does some detail AND you need to interpret it.

It will indicate Transit visa details if the country is indicated on the query as the transit country. If it's the destination then it will put the visitor requirements.

I did an example query to Hong Kong as a US citizen and Timatic returned the correct results (that the documentation you have is enough)

OP's website does not even have Hong Kong as a choice in the country/territory list.

You get an idea of how much work is required.

Your points are valid it's just the negativity is classic HN. I think this is partly due to HN design. When all you see is text and not the people writing them it is easy to be negative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com