My city had a very vanilla, but very useful mobile app for submitting problems like missed trash pickup or dead traffic lights.
replySomeone apparently decided it needed to be "more modern", making it nearly unusable for quick reports like traffic light problems while I was stopped at the light. Every page was a separate request to a server, slow JS, etc.
They've since improved the flow and performance, but it still asks me for contact information before I can submit it. Fortunately they haven't started server-side validations yet, so I can still submit bogus info.
Just let me tell you your traffic light is out! Why is this so hard?
ah yeah pretty common and pretty annoying.. either they had to avoid false issues or maybe there was a regulation forcing the use of a more beefy system (or maybe someone thought it's "better" to use the latest shiny thing)
replyThey likely provide plain email you could write to instead.
replyThat is true, that said reporting is not the same (imo) as having a global map of problems and proposals to fix some of them. To me it's a lot more engaging (again, imo) as you see the distance to a goal.
replyLocal authorities might not be happy with civilians painting curbs, fixing potholes, installing road signs. Or I'm not sure what kind of problem we're talking about.
replyFair point, I wasn't thinking about making everybody a civil engineer but you can clean some walkway, fix a simple bolt, a bench. that sort of thing.
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