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freelawproject / foresight

Where we discuss and prioritize new features
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Allow users to sponsor / track PACER cases #68

Open rlfordon opened 4 years ago

rlfordon commented 4 years ago

Set up a docket tracking/alert feature that, when automatically run, charges the user's PACER account for an update. Preferably with settings that control both frequency of update and how far back you want to go when you update (to avoid having to download the entire docket every time you check for updates)

mlissner commented 4 years ago

Interesting. Since we have docket alerts, I think how I'd see this working would be as a feature to sponsor a case, effectively. You decide how often and what you wanted updated, and then the data is in the system to send alerts (via the usual alert mechanisms).

Lots of tricky bits here though:

  1. How do we charge for this? Daily would get annoying since we'd send you receipts all the time. Maybe weekly charges?

  2. What kinds of settings do we offer? Some options:

    • Frequency: How often do we check for new stuff?
    • Time of day: Could we set up a time of day configuration? Maybe we offer a 2D grid of checkboxes, with days of the week on the X axis and times of day on the Y axis and let people check the times they want. Like doodle?
    • Public recognition: Do we offer to show who's sponsoring it?
    • PDFs: Do we offer to download documents as we get updates?
    • Docket options: Parties? Terminated parties? Related cases? Could you schedule parties for weekly and the rest of the docket for hourly?
    • Sweeps: Do we do any kind of automated sweep of the docket where we get everything?

  3. Split sponsorships. Could we set up a system where people can split the sponsorship of a docket? For example, if somebody is sponsoring weekly updates, and you want faster, you can check more boxes in the 2D array of dates/times when it gets checked, and you can split the cost of other ones. Could be neat, and could lead to gamification ("You volunteered to help download more cases than 90% of users.") I like that this could be a nice differentiator too.

  4. Do we offer to download PDFs for people as part of this? Maybe this is a simple way to begin this feature.

There's a LOT to think about here.

mlissner commented 4 years ago

A couple more thoughts while talking about this feature:

  1. If you do some kind of split sponsorship, is there an opportunity to reward first-movers? For example, maybe if you sponsor it later, you pay slightly more or else you get the alerts slightly later. So, first person pays whatever it takes to track the case. The next person can evenly split that (and get the alerts an hour after the first person), or they can split it 60%/40% and get them at the same time.

  2. Generally, how do we disincentivize free riding? If I sponsor it, it's not fair to me that you get alerts based on my money. Maybe you get them slower as above? Maybe you have to chip in something, and that's all it'd take to make you split it? Maybe the alert emails you get remind you over and over that somebody else is paying for them on your behalf.