GovSide 12+

Promising

Overall a little glitchy but promising. I mainly engage with the “discourse” section because I’m interested in the more nitty gritty discussions. There’s not a ton of engagement yet but it is promising.

If the code for this were open source, I would contribute.

Can we get a built-in feedback button? There are a few bugs I’d like to report, e.g. in discourse, if the main comment of the thread is long and there are no other comments on the thread, the “show more” button doesn’t work so it’s impossible to read the full comment.

There are also a few features I’d like to request:
1. Easy access to a copy of the community guidelines we were shown at the start of the app, so I can reference them before posting or if I think a comment might violate those guidelines.
2. More info about the “sponsored legislation”: even if this opens a google window, that would be super helpful.
3. Some way to request more info on a comment? The point of this app seems to be to encourage thought-out discussion (as opposed to “I hate this person because their clothes are green”) and I’ve seen some comments where I wish the user would post a source—there’s so much misinformation nowadays that it’s hard to take someone at their word without a source. (Also yes I know I can just comment and ask for a source, I mean it would be nice if this feature was built into our community since it seems like it might get some use.)
4. A feature to explain why I am “flagging” another comment. I have flagged 2 comments because they were “I hate this person because their clothes are green” types of comments, which I think violates community guidelines (but I don’t know because I can’t review them, re:1). I don’t think the posts should be removed, I just would like the user to explain their thinking instead of making declarations.

Why no bill info?

I’m expected to swipe on bills or reps that have bills in their profiles yet would have to google them all separately???

That’s not the easy o was expecting it would basically mean a bill a day. Also even the names of the bills can be misleading so I think there should be a pop up or page where it can simply explain it. I am not a lawyer or a lawmaker but a simple citizen interested in helping democracy.

Please add this, so far I’m only able to swipe left on a couple things since I isn’t don’t know what many stand for or what the political beliefs are of the reps.

Also the birth chart wheel is very sticky o almost put the wrong date this could spell disaster for your app please fix that immediately or people will start accounts and get locked out and be unable or unwilling to set it up a second time and your app will die like our democracy has.

I’ve rated you 3 stars for ease of use but Lilly won’t use you much or for long if I can’t easily find out what they people stand for/ vote on/ what bills actually mean

Thank you

Developer Response ,

Hi gingerplants!

Thanks so much for downloading our app and trying us out! Currently the information you’re looking for is accessible by clicking on the card itself, you’ll be able to see an official or candidates bio, sponsored legislation, who their donors are and even recent stock trades! As for bills if you click on them you’ll be able to see a summary, 5 bullet points, who sponsored them and even how likely your representatives are to vote for or against it as well as the full bill as needed. We are pushing a new version to address the birth wheel as well so stay up to date and we’ll have this up in a jiffy! Appreciate your support and thank you for the feedback!

Great concept(!) but not helpful

We love the concept of swiping right/left to connect politics and policy to the zeitgeist of how we interact with information online, but swiping right/left on candidates doesn’t elucidate anything more in our political discourse. Swiping L/R on Jim Jordan / AOC doesn’t make me more informed (that’s likely a mental sorting I’ve already done), and esoteric policy questions–even for the highly politically engaged–is difficult to assess unless those policies/bills are explained in plain speak (and that an option to ‘abstain’ is provided). Keep going though with user research and fixing the general bugs - the world needs things like this.