Domain names with curse words in them are a big turn off for me. I'm not going to share this on Facebook, forward this to my friends, etc... even though it's a pretty cool idea.
Other than the domain name, it seems like there's an incentive to post if you want a place identified, but little incentive to identify places. Something like badges ("world traveler", "Canada expert", etc.) or a wall-of-fame could be good incentives.
The problem is that the "fuck" here really has nothing to do with the app. It would add some amount of shock and emphasis to the question ("where is this?") but there is nothing shocking or surprising about the images, so it's just oddly out of place.
I think it's to convey exasperation. Like somebody has been looking all over for info but cant find it, so they finally get fed up and decide to crowd source the answer.
How about having a domain alias that's a bit more polite and, when the site detects that you've come via that domain, tones down the language on the site?
Also, could it use something like TinEye to try and find probable matches with geotags?
I don't generally (fucking :) care about curse words, but I agree it could limit adoption.
They should at least have a secondary url like "wheretfisthis.com" (available; almost grabbed it for them) or wherethefsckisthis.com and censor the titles; same userbase, same pics, just a different presentation.
Also probably would help if they want to do an iOS app.
Edgy is useful too, so they should keep the current branding too.
I registered "upmyownass.com" years ago for a comedy writing site.
Everyone I told about it assumed it was hardcore gay porn.
Mom: "What... what kinds of things do you put on that site?"
Me: "Funny stuff"
Mom: "Oh... like gross-funny?"
Me: "Oh god, no no... funny articles, I write sarcastic articles."
Mom: "We love you no matter what"
Me: <appropriate meme-face here>
Really like the concept, but I think the name will definitely hinder growth. There are plenty of .coms available that perfectly describe the purpose of the app without profanity.
Besides, my company for example filters such words in URLs (and logs any such attempt), so I wouldn't be able to see this site from there with such a name.
As somebody that routinely carries around a netbook with a big "FREE SOFTWARE FUCK YEAH" sticker on it, I feel obligated to say: I completely and totally understand your sentiment but must respectfully disagree with your opinion in an explicit but reasonable fashion.
Domain names with curse words in them are a big turn off for me.
I think that's more of an issue with yourself than it is with the domain name. I would venture to guess that most people on HN are not offended by arbitrary words and would be fine sharing this with their friends.
There's no problem with being offended by swear words, but it's not a problem with the app either.
It's going to limit its spread. I personally don't have a problem with it (though I think it's somewhat immature in this context), but I'm also not going to share it on social networks as I might have otherwise done.
But who are you targeting as your audience? Just HN? Really??
This isn't my project, i hadn't even heard of it until it was posted today.
The comments clearly show that even a portion of HN is offended. And doesn't every single startup want the largest audience possible?
A portion of people are going to be offended at everything. Frankly, if i was starting a company it'd be nice to get rid of the easily offended people right off the bat, as they're the biggest complainers.
And no, you don't want the largest audience. A smaller but loyal audience is going to do a company more good in the long run, and the word 'fuck' helps weed out the non-loyal, easily offended people that aren't going to do a startup any good.
Finally, i used HN as an example. You can use all the people in the first world if you'd like, and i'd still make an educated guess that a tiny portion of them have so thin a skin as to be offended by a word in a domain name.
Being offended by words deemed arbitrarily offensive by society doesn't seem logical to me. I realize that within professional circles this might be an issue, but I can't find a reason within personal circles unless we are talking about when interacting with children. I apologize, but your comment comes off as quite prudish, and I think getting hung up on a name is shortsighted.
From a logical standpoint it still doesn't make any sense. Do the pictures have anything to do with fucking? No, they don't. Is there anything particularly curse-worthy or even startling about them? Nope. They're a bunch of random boring places.
Putting "fuck" in the domain name adds nothing and it makes me less likely to share links with some people who's sensibilities matter to me. My grandmother is one such person. She's one of the few people I'm close to that would really appreciate the functionality of this site, but it's just not the kind of domain name she'd be comfortable going to.
I understand your issue with sharing such a link with your grandmother, and that would have been an issue for me as well (if I had a living grandmother). I respect my grandmother and I would always honor her values because of her accomplishments (esp. b/c I directly benefited from them), but I don't agree with many of the beliefs she held that caused her to take issue with 'curse' words.
Of course not. But are you seriously going to make "people should not be offended by curse words" a principle for which you're willing to sacrifice customers? There are ideals more deserving of your time, I think.
It's not that you're wrong, it's that being right wins you no prizes here.
The word fuck doesn't always refer to fucking, it's a generic adjective that adds emphasis to anything and is common language for a huge part of the population. Most people don't even realize when they curse because words are words. You're being prude!
The taboo around certain words in certain contexts is a consensus that serves a purpose. You can use them and receive certain extra attention, but also lose other people to distraction.
Like others, I have no problem with using this myself, but wouldn't pass it on to a general audience. If I were to do so, I would signal that I am careless and casual with the use of the word 'fuck', when it is too important of a word to devalue so.
If the creator's goal is to limit adoption to a certain audience, the use of 'fuck' is a good idea. If they want wider adoption, it isn't. Both are valid choices.
> The taboo around certain words in certain contexts is a consensus that serves a purpose. You can use them and receive certain extra attention, but also lose other people to distraction.
Sure, and in this case, good riddance to them. Anyone who avoids sharing this app because of the word fuck has zero sense of humor and isn't the target audience. Anyone who critiques it for the word fuck, isn't the fucking target audience. There is nothing wrong with the word fuck in non fucking formal circumstances, even to a general audience. There are times not to use the word fuck; this isn't fucking one of them.
You view the word 'fuck' as common; I view it as special. I respect it too much to wear it out promoting a photo-location-discussion-service. Perhaps someday you will love the word 'fuck' like others do! But for now, you're treating her like a trashy throwaway whore.
It is common, so common most people use it many many times daily. She's not a princess to be put on a pedestal and brought out on special occasions. In fact, it's the opposite, she's to be hidden on special occasion's when you're fancying it up, and there's nothing fancy about a photo location service that would require censoring common language.
There are generally legitimate reasons for various words to be regarded as crude or offensive. Often enough that is the very intention behind a word. Not being offended by them, or at least claiming so, is not a mark of enlightenment. Nor is being offended by them something for which to be shamed.
I'm with the OP, domains with foul language don't hit my sharing feeds and I'm not likely to make it a habit of frequenting the site.
I'm with the OP, domains with foul language don't hit my sharing feeds and I'm not likely to make it a habit of frequenting the site.
While that may be true for you, my point is that I believe that to be a shortsighted view. It will almost certainly reduce your chances of finding some interesting material. Maybe the trade-off doesn't matter to you, and I certainly can appreciate that, but a trade-off is being made.
I guess my point was that the response appears emotional (as can be seen from the mentioning of sensitivity; sensitivity is emotional in nature by definition, I believe). and not logical. When I was about 11 years old in the 80s, my brother and I invented words to use as our own 'bad' words with similar phonetics to popular 'bad' words because our father had such an issue with our usage of such vocabulary.
While nostalgic at this point, it seems like a waste of time to spend any effort on such a thing in retrospect.
My comment does say something about me, but part of the problem is not just what I think, but what I predict my friends would think. I would not share something on Facebook if I expected it to offend 20-30% of my friends.
It would be a very good idea to specify the width and height attributes of the image elements in the markup of the overview pages. All the cropped images have the same dimensions, but width and height have not been set. Some pictures take a lot of time to load right now or are unavailable. The browser does not know the size of the image in advance, so the layout looks somewhat broken and keeps moving when new pictures are finally downloaded. Maybe there are many visitors on this site at the moment, I have seen some "Service is unavailable" errors.
One of the recent "hot" topics in computer vision is solving this problem automatically. It was started, I think, by the IM2GPS [1] paper, and has since been taken up by many different groups.
As you might imagine, it's a very challenging problem, and at very best people seem to be getting around 30% accuracy, on easier-than-normal datasets.
Automatization was the first thing I thought about when I saw this site.
Good to have some reference about some research about exactly this topic.
I also thought about http://images.google.com/ (where you can also search by image now). Some people told in some of the comments that they had success by just using that.
I have to agree with the criticisms of the gratuitous swearing. I swear like a sailor in person (and keep trying to tell my foul-mouthed younger son to get a better roll model than me) but I try hard most of the time to keep my online stuff "PG 13-ish". In my mind, the F word doesn't meet that standard.
Interesting expansion of the "view from your window" series that Andrew Sullivan does. I think it would be cool to see where previous users have guessed on a google map.
I have a hard time understanding its purpose. I am guessing that it is meant for people to upload pictures for which they want to find out the location?
I might as well point out that whether because of "fuck" or in spite of it, this website has made it to the front page.
I'd wager the commenters lobbing posts at this page in defense of their dainty sensibilities are representatives of the vocal minority. Also, they are probably advocates of profanity filters and, given free reign in a community, will murder natural discourse.
The copyright notice blocks the links to the rest of the site for me (Latest Chrome, Mac 10.6):
http://i.imgur.com/XU41V.png
I'm surprised no one else reported this, so it might be a trickier bug.
It takes for them to manually verify that it has been located
"We check every comment and do research on the suggested places. If your suggestion or pin is correct we'll mark the spot as located! Remember: We are a small team, it could take some time to check all your comments and pins. Please be patient :)" http://wherethefuckisthis.com/wtf_main/faq
Really cool - for some reason attaching geolocation to abstract pictures make them seem so much more real and interesting. Seems to be cracking a little under HN traffic?
But not having some form of geolocation can also add some mystery to a picture, making it more interesting in another way. But I like the idea to ask people via the internet where a certain photo was made. I have sometimes wondered where some interesting looking location, that I have seen on a photo, can be found. One problem with an internet community based solution could be copyright, if people are allowed to submit arbitrary scans of copyrighted material for identification.
Some pages were unavailable for me, server timeout error.
I've had quite a good time browsing Google Maps with the photo layer turned on, while looking at remote places with which I am familiar (mostly the Colorado River and Rio Grande, but also Caribbean islands). But it would be nice to be able to pull in more 3rd party data like these photos within the maps interface.
Other than the domain name, it seems like there's an incentive to post if you want a place identified, but little incentive to identify places. Something like badges ("world traveler", "Canada expert", etc.) or a wall-of-fame could be good incentives.