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No matter how many times I try to update my "Mailing Address" field on my careers.SO profile to my address in "York", complete with my postcode (in York!), upon pressing save it automagically updates to "London Borough of Camden", which is no where close.

The existing reports say that these mistakes are down to Yahoo! returning the wrong results, however, when I query Yahoo! directly, I get York back as the first result, and Camden is no-where in sight.

Furthermore:

  1. You are altering my input silently, without asking me to. Here's what Amazon does, and it's ohhhhh-so-better and less intrusive:

    enter image description here

  2. This field is my mailing address; should you even be attempting to correct this? Asking Royal Mail to deliver any letters from potential employers to a city other than the one I entered is wrong. I know my address better than you, or Yahoo!, kthx.

  3. Asking a potential employer to send a letter to the wrong city is a mistake on my application, which makes me look an idiot, which is maybe why I'm so incensed over this.

Improve this question
6
  • I'm scared to actually enter my post code now.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 12:53
  • 8
    Yes. This feature should suggest, not decide for me. =)
    – J. Steen
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 13:12
  • 10
    Might it be indicating it's time to move?
    – Bart
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 13:16
  • 6
    @Bart: I'd rather relocate for a job, not to relocate so I can find a job :P.
    – Matt
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 13:26
  • 9
    It's like an inch away; geez.
    – Dave Newton
    Commented Feb 3, 2013 at 16:11
  • 3
    This is the most intelligent, well written rant I've ever seen.
    – Adam Rackis
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 17:03

1 Answer 1

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10

This should be resolved, would you try it again?

You’ll love the explanation: the geocode would fail with “city, postal, country” but not with “city postal country”. In other words, the geocode service was choking on commas.

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5
  • 3
    Has the process been improved so the user can override the system suggestion, or have you just fixed this particular failure with the commas?
    – Graham Borland
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 16:39
  • We’ve fixed the issue with the commas. We’re not inclined to add more complexity to the UI.
    – Matt Sherman Staff
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 16:47
  • 21
    @MattSherman: Thanks; I can confirm that this now updates to "York", but I still don't think my Mailing Address should be touched by careers.SE. I appreciate the need for you to geolocate me to show jobs near me, and I'm fine with it stealing my input from my mailing address to do this; but the result of this geolocate should not be written back to my mailing address.
    – Matt
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 16:52
  • No maps provider gets the actual name of my street correct...thankfully it is Street vs Avenue. +1 for fixing, -1 for "correcting" something that doesn't need correction.
    – user7116
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 18:08
  • 4
    We don’t overwrite the street part of the address; we do overwrite the city, state & country with the results of the geocode. This is due to people entering things like “NYC” and other shortcuts. We’ve found that this minimizes error cases, but it can go in either direction: making them better or making them worse. In our experience, it makes it better the vast majority of the time. When we encounter bugs, well, they’re bugs and it does the wrong thing, as in this case. We’re sorry for that. Employers are not given your street address, location is determined only at city resolution.
    – Matt Sherman Staff
    Commented Feb 4, 2013 at 21:04

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