

Ask HN: Please review our web app - TellMyPolitician.com - mileszs
http://tellmypolitician.com

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sundarurfriend
(Mostly reviewing the site design here, because that concerned me the most.)

* What resolution are you designing for? I'm at a measly 1024X768 and still there's a _lot_ of screen real estate wasted.

* The logo at the top is quite dull - and the 'Be Heard' is near invisible. I think reading that tag line makes your site much more appealing, so make sure viewers see it.

* Much of the text there reads like full of weasel words. "Makes your content more powerful" sounds like utter marketing bullshit, which most people are tired of.

* The backdrop 'curtain' is beautiful. Good work there.

* Make it more obvious that the app is aimed at web publishers; the 'your readers' in the first paragraph hints at that, but it can be made more obvious.

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dhimes
I really like the site layout and colors. One thing: your css relies on
Verdana; you should have a backup set of fonts, the last in the series being
sans serif (something like font-family:Verdana,Arial,Luxi Sans,sans-serif;).

Cambria is pretty and popular now (vista font), but it is broke on my fedora
10 box. It doesn't get skipped, it displays badly.

I think the site is a cool idea. Do you intend to sell ads?

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profgubler
I work with mileszs on TellMyPolitician. We are trying to get feedback on how
to better present this to publishers to entice them to place our button on
their site. We eventually want to have our tool added to the likes of addthis
and sharethis as well.

We would also love to here your opinion on the tool and how to make it better
for users who are trying to contact their politician. Please let us know what
you think. We are grateful for any feedback you have.

We originally submitted this to the apps for america contest with sunlight
labs. We didn't do as well as we hoped, partly we feel, because we didn't do a
very good job showing where our real value lies, which is as a button on news
sites. We hoped our new design will better emphasis that goal.

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dbul
I can see how this will result in politicians being flooded with a lot of
emotionally-driven comments and rants and therefore be less productive than
some coordinated effort which has a backbone of reasoning.

So you may want to consider a way to create something like _I just watched
this video, I would like to hear more about the issues than this one video
presented to me_ and then contact their rep.

~~~
profgubler
I hear where you are coming from. That is partly why we included multiple ways
to contact their politician, as well as only allow people to search for their
politician by location instead of by name. We want to help out actual
constituents, because that is who politicians are most likely to listen to.

There are several tools out there that people use that let people create a
form letter on a site and then send that to their politician. The problem with
these systems, is that they aren't real people contacting their politicians,
they are mass emails, that flood politicians in boxes. Hopefully, our tool
will help real constituents contact their representatives with real concerns.

We know right now we won't totally eliminate that problem, but are open to
suggestions about how to eliminate them.

Thank you for your input.

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halo
This reminds me of a UK site called WriteToThem.com
(<http://www.writetothem.com>), formerly FaxYourMP.com, which provides an
interface to contact your local MP automatically, either via e-mail or fax.

The people behind it later went on to form mySociety
(<http://www.mysociety.org/projects/>) and sites such as TheyWorkForYou
(<http://www.mysociety.org/projects/theyworkforyou/>), the official Government
Petitions website (<http://www.mysociety.org/projects/no10-petitions-
website/>), among others.

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utefan001
TellMyPoliticianViaHandWrittenLetter.com would be more effective in my
experience. Politicians might not feel guilty ignoring an
email/e-communication, but a hand written letter, personally stamped is harder
to ignore. A state of Maryland politician in a town hall meeting I went to
made this point clear during our towns last NIMBY fight.

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adunsmoor
If I think about the pain points from the perspective of the person supporting
whatever issue they are writing about a few ideas spring to mind.

If you could take your app one step further and actually connect the reader to
their representative that would be great! Getting people to follow through is
the toughest part when asking for this type of action. (I seem to recall a
click to call service being reviewed here on HN a while back that could broker
a two way connection like this.)

It would also be great to know how effective an article/person/web site/etc.
was at getting people to contact their representatives. This information can
be really important to smaller - grass roots - efforts.

An example: www.letcongressknowaboutlyme.com The site creator is trying to
collect information via email.

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beaker
I installed the plugin for wordpress, but it seems like the links it generates
are redirecting incorrectly. Try
[http://www.tellmypolitician.com/search/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.g...](http://www.tellmypolitician.com/search/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com)
\- for me it redirects to
[http://tellmypolitician.comsearch/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google...](http://tellmypolitician.comsearch/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com)

~~~
profgubler
Thank you for pointing that out. If you send a request through the site, we
can let you know when we have it fixed. Or email me at info at
tellmypolitician dot com

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sachmanb
Number of times I have contacted my politician since becoming of voting age: 4

Number of times I felt it did anything: 0

Number of times that I received a response which gave me the impression that
at most, i gave them additional marketing information - how many people
disagree with what's going on: 4

The last letter I sent, which was about Net Neutrality, went into a lot of
detail on how their ideas for how to curb child pornography online would do
nothing to actually deter it, how easily it is to get around their idea, how
people involved in those markets make it around and aren't averse to using a
little more tech, and how their ideas do threaten what does work on the net -
it's openness. I made an item by item list of the perceived benefits of their
change and why they won't work.

I received a generic response that my representative is working hard to get
rid of child pornography on the net, and how this measure will help to do so,
listing a number of the reasons that I had argued against while providing
nothing more.

Conclusion: writing to politicians is as useful as writing to the mob with
policy ideas.

~~~
Tangurena
I'd like to recommend that you consider doing something I did last year. I ran
for office. Something that I think less than 1 in 1000 Americans do at any
time during their entire life.

It was a small office, and at the state level. I collected (all by myself) the
signatures needed to get on the ballot. The entire campaign came out of my
pocket (I spent less than $200 and took no contributions from anyone).

My campaign slogan turned into _no, you can't have a pony_ because of all the
demands that everyone made.

That generic response is because very few politicians have the time to even
read the addresses on every letter they get. And the way our country has
reponded is (and the response is in my opinion the absolutely wrong one) to
create the lobbying industry. By throwing money at the politicians, they're
getting the access that you should have gotten as a constituent.

I learned one heck of a lot of stuff. About me. About the press. About
politics. About all the ways one can screw stuff up. About how little that the
majority of people care about things. It wasn't at all like _Mr Smith Goes To
Washington_.

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tdedecko
The search functionality needs to be on the homepage, so I can immediately see
the benefits of your product.

Also, I think you should be marketing the search functionality and not the
button. Make it easy to find a politician's information and then make it easy
to contact them and you will find more people will use your button.

~~~
profgubler
There are many sites out there that will get you a politicians contact
information. We want to be an alternative that a site like Huffington post,
Townhall, CNNPolitics, and others can use to on their site so that their
readers don't have to search on another site. It helps publishers out by
keeping readers on their page longer, hopefully.

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HeyLaughingBoy
You should look into what happened with GovWorks.com and try to avoid their
mistakes. Research should be easy: there was even a movie made about them.

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fredBuddemeyer
getting people to traverse pages and fill out forms is tough. however there
are so many politically relevant comments generated on the web yet they arent
directed to politicians. tapping into this existing content production would
be a great goal and integration would be the mantra to get you there. a button
is not deep enough and doesnt meet the expectations of a modern web user.

~~~
profgubler
As a modern web user, what are your expectations? How do you see a tool like
this working. Thank you for your input.

~~~
JoshuaK531
I think simplicity for the user is important, but whats even more important is
simplicity for the representative. Ultimately all change rests in their hands,
and if your solution makes their lives and jobs more complicated, they're
liable to ignore it.

Imagine getting 1000 passionate emails on a topic that have nothing to do with
your job, or demanding we do something about clean air when you've already
supported every clean air bill that's gone through your office. By increasing
the noise they have to deal with, you make it even harder for real issues to
get through to them. Focus on designing this solution around how it would be
beneficial to the reps, and how they could better understand whats important
to their constituents so they can get reelected.

Heres some quick ideas on how to possibly accomplish this:

1) Let people click a button if a story or issue is important to them and
allowing them to add comments. As a rep, seeing 1000 emails is overwhelming,
but having a control panel that can easily show you how many people care about
different issues is helpful. It could sort the different stories / issues by
activity, and you could read comments if it looked like a lot of people cared
about it so you could get a better idea of what the sentiment was.

2) Somehow show what the stance of your rep is on that issue. Theres no reason
to blast them with comments if they're already supporting the issue.

In summation: If you make something that the reps want to use, then people
will gravitate towards it so they can get their voice heard, but if you make
something that they don't like, then it doesn't matter how great your users
think it is. If it doesn't lead to change, they'll eventually stop using it.

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Tangurena
A recommendation: consider state legislators as well. Perhaps in your next
revision?

I only saw the 2 senators and 1 representative in DC. I didn't see any of my
congresscritters in Denver (I live in Colorado).

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taylor
What do you think of www.govit.com/email_congress

A little bit nicer flow.

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lleger
This is really cool. I just used it on my site.

