Users should be able to comment on streets

[yesezra]

If viewing a persisted/saved street, users should be able to comment on them.

[mwichary]

That I believe requires a login system, since you’d probably want to be notified if you get comments on your street.

So, issue #2 is related to this too.

[ycombinator]

Copied to codeforamerica/streetmix-be#108 for back-end work.

[mwichary]

@neil21: “Later: I also imagine reddit style commenting and voting, which gets closer to a monetisable model. In Vancouver at least, engineers publish unweildy pdfs of proposed street redesigns http://vancouver.ca/streets-transportation/adanac-bike-lane.aspx and at a recent open house said they'd welcome the ability to get more dynamic public feedback, and explain their design choices. You could sell access to a bureaucrat-friendly public-feedback interface.”

[mwichary]

CC: @louh as food for thought.

[stevevance]

If you login with Twitter, then you have a notification system. Can you gain access to the user's Twitter email address? Or can you just @mention them?

For commenting platform, I prefer Disqus.

[louh]

I have two trains of thought on this:

• We can build our own comment / voting (?) system, which gives us tighter integration with Streetmix, but it'll probably be a lot of behind the scenes work to build something very functional (and that's all time that can be spent working on a streetscape design stuff, rather than a commenting system). I think Disqus might actually be a reasonable trade-off, but I'm not super familiar with their API.
• We can punt the commenting aspect to other platforms. Right now, the idea behind sharing on Twitter and Facebook is so that the communication happens through channels that users are already familiar with. The fact that people are also displaying exported Streetmix images on their blogs also helps to facilitate getting Streetmix on other venues that people are already reading/visiting/commenting on. We could continue to push this angle, to include integration with other platforms like Tumblr, or to platforms specifically designed for civic engagement, like Neighborland or MindMixer.

We have some discussion within our group right now about choosing one of these external platforms as a "standard recipe" for planners to collect feedback through.