I see posts on here all the time asking for help with legal, workplace, housing, or consumer rights issues, but the original poster leaves out where they live.
Since Lemmy is a global platform, an answer that is 100% accurate in the US might be totally wrong or useless in Canada, the UK, or the EU, or even between different US states. Something like tenant rights or consumer laws (like optometrist prescription rules) changes completely depending on jurisdiction. Without knowing where someone is, commenters either give bad advice based on their own country’s laws or waste time asking “Where are you located?” before they can even answer.
Obviously, privacy matters, and no one should feel forced to give away their exact city or dox themselves. Stating just a country, state, or province keeps you anonymous while giving people enough context to actually help.
Should communities encourage or require basic location tags for advice posts, or is there a better way to handle this?
I would be opposed to requiring it. I think that even an example from another state or country might have useful bearing on how things work elsewhere.
I mean, end of the day, if you’re going to go out and ask anonymous people on a forum legal questions, I think that it’s safe to say that it might be a useful starting point for further investigation, possibly involving talking to a lawyer. But I wouldn’t go do something with major risk based just on what they say. I don’t think that it’s going to be really practical to change that.