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Comment by kop316 | Hacker News Reader

If you actually want to view the map: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

The frame link goes to: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b1d1fd9b284e46dcaa4...

Thank you. That website was an abomination. Scrolling to do anything but move the content up should be highly discouraged.

The difference between people who look at data to be informed and people who look at data to feel informed.

The website linked is a news article, not a map.

Yes, and the complaint is that news should be about informing, not about entertaining to make people feel informed [0]. This is more infotainment than information.

[0] This concept implemented at scale by Roger Ailes, founder of Fox news, who famously said "Our viewers don't want be informed, they want to feel informed", which became the motto of the newsroom

One ref among many: https://www.marketplace.org/2017/05/18/roger-ailes-transform...

The article provides useful context about how much the hardiness grades have changed, where, and why; it provides context about what these ratings do and don’t mean; it adds context about other climate changes that aren’t captured in this data; and it frames it with advice about planting, underpinned by a visually interesting data plot, and a tool that allows you to explore that data in a way that makes it personally relevant to you.

Why on earth would you choose an article like this to jump on a hobby horse about infotainment?

I found it only marginally informative, the "interactive" map didn't work as well as I expected, and overall I found it disappointingly info-tainment-ish.

I would not have said anything, but seeing the prior two comment, I responded to add something; sorry you found it disappointing, but my intent was not to "jump on a hobby horse about infotainment".

You probably didn’t scroll down very far then.

Did you already know that these ‘hardiness’ climate zones are only based on mean winter minimum temperature? They say nothing about drought prevalence, peak heat, or the timing, frequency and duration of cold snaps?

If you did, well, sure, this probably wouldn’t have been very informative. But for anyone for whom all that was news, this is pretty good information - and in particular is valuable context over and above just a raw map of the zones.

Yes, I did know that, and I did scroll down to the bottom. Even though it contained some good information, I just thought it was presented in a way that excessively got in the way of actually understanding and using the info, and that the graphic presentation was lame, just A:B with a very constrained and poorly working city-picker box (said enter city, wouldn't work or even give an error message unless you entered only one of the cities they actually had in their list, so should have been presented as a drop-down, not a free-entry box), didn't show the areas where there were differences vs stayed in the same zone, etc. etc. etc.

Just looking at the map doesn't tell you what hardiness zone means or how to apply (and not apply) this knowledge. I would say it makes you feel informed by teaching you a piece of trivia ("I'm in zone 8a") without actually informing you by giving you the tools to use what you've learned.

==without actually informing you by giving you the tools to use what you've learned==

The title of the article doesn't imply that it will teach you how to implement. The title explicitly states it is a map to show you the shift in zones, and it does that very clearly.

i find that opinion somewhat gatekeepy and i disagree with it

It may be gatekeepy but it nailed it; this type of website is an entertainment product, not an actual data product.

That may not be bad but it may not be what you wanted.

Not really. It is a tutorial-class material. What you want when you say 'just give me the map' is a reference-class material.

Anecdotally I learned a lot from this - haven't even been aware of the concept.

This is also gatekeepy. You don't need to be a stats dweeb staring at maps and raw data points to be or become informed.

No, it's an educational product. It is a walkthrough explaining the context and meaning of the map for those poor, ignorant people who don't know everything already. All you have to do to dismiss it forever is click a single button, "explore map", which is always on the top left of the screen.

It’s an educational product. A product where someone looks at masses of data, pulls out the salient points and presents them directly. Why would most people want to go to a site with csv files for weather data in every zip code?

It's a gentle - and to my eyes effective - introduction and overview on a topic many people have heard about but most have probably not really read or considered further. It wasn't just meant to be a "look at old vs. new map" - it had a lot more context and information than that compiled for personal relevance and easy of understanding.

gatekeeping is important some times

Just ask the people of Troy!

Many people absorb information better when it's presented in a more easily consumable format.

Agreed, but I would consider https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/ to be much more easily consumed than the NPR article.

As another said, scrolling to do anything but move content up and down is a miserable experience for some people.

I disagree. I liked the experience. It wasn’t jittery and the content was short enough to be presented in that format.

It also doesn't respect `:prefers-reduced-motion` or `:prefers-color-scheme`.

Even once I got to the end I couldn't actually use the map because the left side of it (with the legend and year-switcher) was off-screen :) best web design A++

It worked for me sewhat after I understood the interaction and was somehow nice UX (I agree that there is better option for immediately better usability) However, I think even considering UX, there are clearly interaction hints missing to encourage the scrolling interaction in the first place. Secondly, it makes it really hard to find information again after reading it once sequentially. A menu type thing would probably fix that as well.

Thank you, that page was chock-full of everything except information.

On a side note, why is it always that maps of phenomena that respect no political boundaries, tend to be cut off at the borders? It's absurd to me, and it happens so often. Even if you're an American, and only care about American Americanism, you'd still benefit from seeing how things play out beyond these arbitrary borderlines.

It's the US Department of Agriculture delineating hardiness zones for the US. It would be more surprising to me if they included Canada and Mexico.

As a jpg: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/system/files/National_Ma...

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