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codeforamerica / civic-tech-patterns

common patterns and anti-patterns for civic tech and civic apps
http://codeforamerica.github.io/civic-tech-patterns
BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License
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Add anti-pattern: .io, .ly, .biz (making domain name choices unintentionally) #33

Open daguar opened 10 years ago

daguar commented 10 years ago

Add new design anti-pattern: .io, .ly, .biz: making domain name choices unintentionally

bensheldon commented 10 years ago

I remember @mapmeld saying that even having a github.io discouraged non-technical people from visiting the page because they assumed it would be technical or not relevant to them.

daguar commented 10 years ago

Yeah, and what's more, domains are so cheap. Buying multiple domains and A/B testing your outreach would be an even better version of this.

migurski commented 10 years ago

FWIW, A/B testing only works when you have the traffic to support significant results. Like, tens of thousands of samples at minimum.

fgregg commented 10 years ago

If you testing for an effect worth caring about, you can use a much, much smaller sample (on the order of 100).

http://statistics.uchicago.edu/~s220e/Lect/lec14.pdf

On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 5:21 PM, migurski notifications@github.com wrote:

FWIW, A/B testing only works when you have the traffic to support significant results. Like, tens of thousands of samples at minimum.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/codeforamerica/civic-tech-patterns/pull/33#issuecomment-36471499 .

773.888.2718 2231 N. Monticello Ave Chicago, IL 60647

mapmeld commented 10 years ago

To confirm @bensheldon's memory - we did stumble on this issue where our message "our code is open on GitHub" got through, but our city contacts didn't expect our links to go to an actual site. This was before they moved to the .io so it wasn't the TLD.

When I was working for City of Boston, we would test the sites on GitHub Pages then move them to city servers and domains before launch. Not everyone in civic tech can tag onto the site for their city or organization, but the fellows should insist on it for static sites.

jalbertbowden commented 10 years ago

i do agree that there's a certain group oblivious to new tld's, and it is very kind and courteous to cater to everyone, however the cfa styleguide, from last year, dropped "www.", which really surprised me. along the same lines of this discussion, although they have extreme difference(s), kind of sounds like the same thing to me. man difference between the two being that someone not in the know could continue to add "www" to every url ever, and still get where they want to go. i say use every .tld you can, if it helps you get to the next level. there are more tld's coming out soon, and even more after that. once everything gets its own uri, and/or we have a code literate population, doubt .tld's will matter as much as they do know. just my two cents.

georgiamoon commented 10 years ago

It'd be good to include information about geographic TLDs. There's been lots of discussion of models on how to leverage this for neighborhoods and government infrastructure here on the .NYC community organization site: http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/