

Ghetto Tracker - A rating system to help people avoid the bad parts of town - sharmanaetor
http://ghettotracker.com/

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bendoernberg
Feedback: If your goal was to inspire 100 "what's wrong with tech" articles,
you named this perfectly. I would highly recommend changing the name and
addressing the problematic aspects of red-lining neighborhoods before you get
absolutely hammered by a million bloggers.

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boards2x
Judging by the stock photo here
[http://ghettotracker.com/about.php](http://ghettotracker.com/about.php)
(white familiy, in case it'll change in the future), it's quire clear who
needs to be afraid, and from whom.

I see Compton, California just added. They should simply geotag by ethnicity
and save people the need to subjectively "rate" certain areas?

~~~
mikehotel
You should have tried to hit refresh. The image is sometimes a white family,
sometimes black, and sometimes biracial. Rating areas where people live will
always be sensitive (property values, racial discrimination, etc), we do not
need to manufacture drama.

~~~
boards2x
Does the name change as well, or is it always "Ghetto Tracker", or sometimes
"White Suburban Tracker", "Trailerpark Tracker" etc.?

PS Actually double checked. There was only one photo, and this is why I
mentioned that in my comment.

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veinmelter
There is so much wrong with this, I don't know where to start. All white
people on the about page pic?

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vinautomatic
I just thought of the same idea like this the other day. Then I thought maybe
Waze/Google would buy it out to make better routes on their maps....

Then since I've lived in both the ghetto-est of ghettos in my lifetime and
seen guns drawn at me and etc - it'd be a dream job to drive around and judge
the ghetto-ness of a neighborhood. Even make a reality show out of it.

Great minds think alike.

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nilkn
So maybe some racist white people might rate any area with black or Hispanic
people as unsafe. Hopefully, if the area is actually not bad, some non-racist
black or Hispanic people will rate it as such. The positive and negative
ratings should cancel each other out in such cases.

The areas that end up with negative ratings would have to be rated such by
users of all ethnicities, which more or less rules out too strong a
correlation with race here.

The only problem is if somehow only a single ethnic group, like white people,
uses this.

So, basically, I don't think this is going to be an accurate source of
information here. At the same time, if it were to actually get widespread
usage, I don't think it would be as bad as some people are making it out to
be.

Ultimately, though, why not use something like city-data? The site is ugly as
sin but it has basically all the information you could ever want.

~~~
mc32
Why don't they just use FBI (or local) crime stats?

Not subject to as much subjectivity. Drawback is that it may not be realtime
up to date, but should be good enough.

~~~
superuser2
Crimes are not always reported, especially when they are seen as relatively
minor and commonplace compared to the murders probably also happening that
day.

Locals' informal guidelines to stay out of an area where you "don't belong"
after dark may be so widely heeded that the number of assaults/robberies is
low, but the probability of being mugged or beaten is still high.

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vinautomatic
And really a lot of you are over blowing the issue that there's white people
listed on the page. WHO CARES. What did you first look at that in your racist
attempts to point fingers at a supposed different racist? Grow up.

I've seen 9 square mile cities of nothing but white trash and 1 sq mile cities
that would give even the worst parts Compton or Camden a run for it's money
(and actually is recognized by people in the hood of Compton - I lived in a
different part of LA, check out central falls, RI or west warwick, RI).

And no crime maps are not population density maps, either.

A lot of you obviously haven't lived that many places.

And I don't know why the heck I'm defending this but wow some ignorant lack of
intelligence on the hacker news boards - sorta disappoints me.

~~~
vinautomatic
However, I do not agree with letting the general public rate places...this is
more something people who've lived in quite a different number of environments
should be doing...

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KurtMueller
I went to the about page, which of course featured an all white family.

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achompas
This is so bad.

There's a dot over my neighborhood in Manhattan, just south of Washington
Square. It's red, and says "Park Slope."

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etherealG
not sure this is the best idea. often people's idea of a bad area doesn't
reflect the truth. what about using police data instead?

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astrodust
Murders and robberies are usually an indicator something's amiss. The data
isn't hard to find. ([http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23191897/oakland-
robbery-...](http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_23191897/oakland-robbery-
capital-america)).

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mathiasben
Is this meant to be satire?

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jonhendry
Someone create a site, TechCracker, where you can identify websites and tech
companies staffed and/or run by white bigots.

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grardb
If this is serious, it's disgusting.

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josephjrobison
I've always wanted this, the closest thing we had before were the Trulia Crime
Maps. Thanks!

Feedback: You should show high-crime areas in NY, SF, or LA rather than Moody,
AL

~~~
MasterScrat
Maybe the starting point is random? I reloaded twice and always appear in the
middle of the sea...

~~~
josephjrobison
That's probably it - on second try I was landed in the sea as well

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MasterScrat
It would be good to seed the map with some police data...

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HPLovecraft
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyoJKSPL_I](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEyoJKSPL_I)

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brothmc
haha - they left this line of code in
[http://cl.ly/image/060Q0f132222](http://cl.ly/image/060Q0f132222)

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sharmanaetor
Looks like the creators are on Twitter @GhettoTracker

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ocfx
I rated Compton just in case...

~~~
9999
You mean you arbitrarily placed a dot in the middle of Compton without regard
to what's actually there and whether or not it's actually a dangerous block.

Even if you were to ignore the many problems with the very premise of this
site (the racially and historically charged name first and foremost) the lack
of granularity or verification in reporting would prevent any useful data from
being gathered anyway. As other people have said, if you want to know if an
area is high risk for crime, you have crime maps, if you want to know what the
property values are, you have zillow, if you want to know what the median
income of residents is, there's probably a map for that too.

~~~
superuser2
By the crime maps, the Magnificent Mile is the most dangerous area in Chicago.
Crime maps are, for the most part, population density maps. See:
[http://xkcd.com/1138/](http://xkcd.com/1138/). You need to compare crime
rates to the number of people in the area to get anything meaningful.

By the crime maps, your probability of being robbed at Garfield-Red in the
middle of the night is less than that of being struck by lightning in your
lifetime. No Hyde Park resident will tell you it's a good or even reasonable
idea to be anywhere near it at 11pm. When challenged on the data, they'll
argue that few people are dumb enough to ride it at that hour, and that those
who do get mugged are unlikely to bother with a police report for a crime
which is seen as their own fault and unlikely to ever be solved (or even cared
about) by CPD.

