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Comment by nvivo | Hacker News Reader

Of course I'm not saying single multiline textbox for every app out there. That would be crazy. :-)

But I'm always surprised how many sites ask for information that will never be used for anything, and assume things like the lenght or characters valid in zip codes or phone numbers.

I heard these days on "There is no such thing as a fish" podcast there is a country somewhere where the post office locates places by directions given by the sender! And that is officially accepted! Crazy world, try validating that. :-)

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So, what's the proper way to deal with this then?

Ask a series of questions and adapt the follow up to the questions depending on the answer given.

Starting out with 'select your country' and then expand from there, the more you know the more you can narrow down the remainder of the input.

That would be a nice little widget to be able to throw onto a form 'world accurate address input fields'.

And for some localities it will indeed display a freeform text field, but for localities where there is more structure it could supply that structure and make certain bits mandatory.

Picking an arbitrary starting point like 'country' still has problems. I'm in Jersey Channel Islands, which isn't a country at all (much like Vatican City & other territories).

We are British but not part of the UK nor members of the EU. We're served by the British Royal Mail system and use UK-style postcodes, but sometimes when I input my address I must chose a country, so pick UK, which triggers UK VAT on my order. We're exempt from UK VAT so dealing with this is frustrating. Some retailers do waive it when I raise the point but I have to remember every time.

Total edge case I know, but I hope it demonstrates that even picking a really broad starting point like 'country' can still fail sometimes.

Sorry I'd this comes off as tangential:

What kind of internet service do you have where you live (speed wise) ?

I've always considered island life, but poor internet service has put me off.

Jersey is a tax haven (40% of the economy is evading tax), lying 20km from France and 160km from Britain, so there's no reason the internet access has to be bad.

http://www.jtglobal.com/Jersey/Personal/Broadband/Products/H... — it's a bit expensive, and has a usage cap, but that seems more to do with the lack of competition than it being an island.

> (40% of the economy is evading tax)

Citation needed. You are welcome to pay maximum taxes where you live if you like, but jurisdictions with lower tax rates keep the pressure on governments to deliver a good return on investment to their citizens. When I moved from San Diego to Dallas after the dotcom bust I slashed my taxes which was great (no income tax in TX). This wasn't tax evasion, it was common sense. San Diego was no longer a good investment.

Also, you totally missed the Gigabit fiber-optic broadband plans[0]. I have a 1GB unlimited plan from their competitor for £55/month[1]. Standard fair use clause applies but I've never been throttled and I use massive amounts of data every month.

[0] http://www.jtglobal.com/Jersey/Personal/JT-Fibre/Fibre-Tarif... [1] https://web.sure.com/jersey/internet/home-internet/unlimited...

Sorry I didn't spot your comment sooner.

I have an unlimited Gigabit fibre to the home connection here at home, and I pay £60/month for it. My 'high score' so far was 1.4TB transferred one month but typical use is 600GB or so.

We are in a pretty unique situation here with a government minister betting big on switching our entire island's copper telephone lines over to fiber optics, part subsidised with taxpayer funds.

If you are fortunate enough to have piles of cash you can gain residency here through a special programme for attracting inward investment http://www.locatejersey.com/HighValueResidency/Pages/Jerseyf...

Nice spot! Sounds like the problem is with the automatic attachment of the VAT to the UK though, not the address system per-se.

That place could be Dubai, as that was how addresses were handled as of a few years ago. In such a quickly developing city, the typical street naming process cannot keep up.

I'm in Italy and, years ago, it happened to me to sens postcards with directions from a know landmark to the building (because I didn't have real addresses of some friends with me). Postcard always arrived (ie: third palace going west from FAMOUS_HOSPITAL_MAIN_ENTRANCE, City, Italy).

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