Yesterday’s first look at We the People was cut short since the site was experiencing performance or maintenance issues. Today, it’s back online again. Time to continue our review.
First, a few screenshots:
More first impressions:
- Petition detail pages use infinite scrolling to expose list of people who have signed the petition (infinite scrolling allows users to browse through content without clicking on pagination links, they just continue to scroll to the bottom of the page)
- Unique short URLs for each petition (e.g. http://wh.gov/gba opens the “Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline” petition)
- Sharing via social media is highly encouraged (currently offering Facebook and Twitter as the two very popular options)
- Ability to flag petitions as inappropriate (a common and necessary tool to help enforce the ground rules)
- Clear, 4-step process for creating new petitions, including plenty of tips (e.g. for creating good petition headlines, good descriptions)
- Step 2 shows petitions “similar to yours” (in order to help avoid duplication)
As of a few moments ago, fourteen petitions have been submitted, garnering a little over 50,000 signatures total.
As adoption increases and we see the first official responses, there will be a lot more to look into over the coming days and weeks. Being somewhat familiar with e-petition offerings in other countries (namely, Germany and the UK), though, I must say that so far the site looks really solid all around.
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