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I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) as expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• The accepted answer now means "Thank #$&^, someone guessed what nation I'm from!" not anything to do with validity to a specific situation. Suddenly generic questions have nation-specific accepted answers. What's up with that?
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about". Double god help me if my nation falls on page two or three and I have to search multiple pages!
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.

I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) are expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• The accepted answer now means "Thank #$&^, someone guessed what nation I'm from!" not anything to do with validity to a specific situation. Suddenly generic questions have nation-specific accepted answers. What's up with that?
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about". Double god help me if my nation falls on page two or three and I have to search multiple pages!
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.

I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) as expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about". Double god help me if my nation falls on page two or three and I have to search multiple pages!
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.

I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) as expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• The accepted answer now means "Thank #$&^, someone guessed what nation I'm from!" not anything to do with validity to a specific situation. Suddenly generic questions have nation-specific accepted answers. What's up with that?
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about". Double god help me if my nation falls on page two or three and I have to search multiple pages!
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.

I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) as expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about"
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.

I'd just like to explicitly speak out against localizing answers. I think the responsibility explicitly falls on to the question in these cases.

Why not do it in answers?

• 99% of answers might be wrong for the asker if we just throw answers by location at every question
• We're assuming, not reading what the problem is - that's a big enough reason to close the question. You can never know if your solution is right if you don't actually know the problem.
• Each and every question on the site could have dozens of only slightly different answers explicitly for each nation, possibly multiplied by different solutions per nation.
• It's suddenly valid to post the exact same answer with a different country "tag" just because what works for this answer in the US also applies in Canada.
• Suddenly the people being the most generous (answerers) as expected to do more work for the asker for no good reason. That's just rude.
• Votes are now slanted by nation; "Hey, this advice for the US sounds legit but I have no idea what these other 10 answers are about". Double god help me if my nation falls on page two or three and I have to search multiple pages!
• I have to resort to Ctrl-F to find the answer pertaining to a nation I care about (and god help me if I search USA instead of "U.S." or "United States" or "America" etc.)

Making answers localized is a nightmare. Imagine if programming problems on Stack Overflow were all language agnostic and we played a guessing game of languages trying to explain every possible way to iterate 1. That doesn't help anyone except the exceedingly rare person who isn't actually interested in practical advice, just a list (a Bad Thing) of all ways to do something.

When localization matters, the burden falls on the question.