With any new project it can be hard at times to communicate how and why something can and will be useful. Tonight I had the pleasure of reading two articles written by authors who seemed to grasp how SeeClickFix can empower citizens, support governments and help bring all interested parties to the table. Both articles, I think, came out of our recent upswing in San Francisco buzz following on the heels of our Chronicle article.

The first was from a local neighborhood advocacy site www.RinconHillSF.org.

The general idea is that if you see a non-emergency issue in Rincon Hill or another neighborhood, you can go to SeeClickFix to open a ticket describing the issue and what can be done to resolve it, and then take responsibility by watching an area and solving the problem or passing it on to someone who can, such as a city official. Instead of just being spectators and shaking your head in disgust at this and that while walking around the neighborhood, you can make a difference. You can step up to the plate to try to get the issue resolved rather than continuing to allow it to go ignored. (full article)

This echos my own experience of being a clicker. After several weeks of reporting issues and seeing them fixed, I've noticed that I'm now more likely to pick up small pieces of litter to keep things clean. I really feel like I have more of a stake in my own city now.

The second article was written up by Thrilllist SF. They point out in their own humorous style the success we have had in bringing more then just governments to the table.

SCF also hassles private industry into monitoring the footprint it leaves on the cityscape, as when AT&T used it to relocate and wipe down huge eyesore cable boxes -- proving that not even multinational telecommunications giants are Above the Law. (full article)

I'm really enjoying that people see our site as a place and a way to create more good in the world. Keep it up guys. I'm stoked, thank you.
-Kam

We got some good press yesterday on the San Francisco Chronicles website, sfgate.com, from Editor Phil Bronstein.
Phil is the creator of Chronicle Watch, the "analog predecessor" to seeclickfix. Chronicle Watch has people write in their issues and the chronicle exposes them with a photo of the person responsible for fixing the issue. According to Phil, they've had a lot of success.
Here's the article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=47&entry_id=29155

This from SideClick Mark:
The dangerous potholes in front of Romeo's appear to have been patched.

A number of similar problems that I have reported on seeclickfix
(www.seeclickfix.com) over the past few months have also been very
quickly addressed by the city.

Check out the past two or three posts on the SeeClickFix blog for
other reviews of how this has worked recently:
http://seeclickfix.blogspot.com/

Now, if only some of those faded crosswalks would get restriped!

Anyhow, I again would like to encourage everyone here to report
problems at this website, especially those related to road conditions
or traffic safety. When you report an issue, notices are sent out to
many people across the city. This seems much more effective than
trying to call 10 or 20 different people, which previously seemed to
be the only good approach for getting things done.

If you see something and report it, you are potentially saving one of
your neighbors from a nasty fall or a broken ankle (speaking as
someone who has stepped or ridden into "invisible" potholes at night).
Also, if you are concerned about a particular issue, keep in mind
that you can search "clickets" by keyword.

So please speak up! And pass this along to your contacts in each neighborhood.

This is from Jason Stockman, a SeeClickFix user, in an email dated 8.07.08:
As of yesterday, I had reported three problems, and two of them had already been fixed. I even got an email from Rob Smuts saying that he was on top of it (regarding the potholes on York St just south of Chapel). This is the kind of thing that validates one's efforts as a citizen, and that's very cool. It's also a great way to multiply the eyes of a few city inspectors into the eyes of potentially every city resident.

The second reason has to do with some stuff I've been reading, including a book called "Emergence" by Stephen Johnson, who gave a talk at Yale a few years back. Johnson argues that there are three types of systems, simple deterministic systems (brick falling from window ledge), systems of disorganized complexity (gas particles in a room), and systems of organized complexity (cities, ant colonies, brains, markets). (Incidentally, I'm now reading Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter, which also touches on organized complexity). Johnson talks about bottom-up organization and feedback in cities, ant-hills, brains, and in Internet communities like Slashdot, where posts are reviewed by community members and the most popular ones trickle up to the top. He stresses the importance of distributed processing over centralized authority in shaping the character of a system. There is clearly a role for some concentrated power, for a City Hall. But what most defines a neighborhood, a city, and even a whole nation are the myriad interactions between individuals within it. In an ant hill, each individual abides by very simple rules (follow pheremone trails left by other ants), but very complex behavior emerges from the ensemble of all the ants interacting with each other (the Queen has very little impact on the actual dynamics of the colony). Humans follow somewhat more complicated "rules" at the individual level, but exceedingly complex emergent behavior pops out just as it does for an anthill. Johnson says that free markets breed vibrancy and diversity because they allow individuals to freely interact, as contrasted with the stagnation and bleakness of so-called "command" or "planned" economies from the Communist world (this is debatable, but it's an interesting point nonetheless).

I think seeclickfix is a way to help bring about emergent behavior in a city. It addresses the built environment using the distributed intelligence of many individuals. The individual "signal" left by a person who sees a storm drain overflowing is "amplified" by feedback from others who see the same problem and agree that it is urgent. In this way, information bubbles up and commands attention at a higher level, eventually prompting action by City Hall, or other actors.

I don't know. Maybe this analogy is a bit of a stretch. But I appreciate Seeclickfix and I hope it spreads to other cities like a rabid meme.

A clicker was having trouble getting an unresponsive landlord to maintain their property. The issue has been open on SeeClickFix for weeks and then finally: a closed issue.
How was the problem solved?
An unlikely solution is declared in the comments section of the closed issue:

"vastly improved since unknown neighborhood activist reportedly swept trash and deposited it in front off store entrance after-hours several days in a row. Seems to have made an impact"

We're always excited to see community members taking action themselves to fix issues.

On a similar note: Friends of East Rock Park closed an issue about a broken park bench with the comment:
"The bench is fixed and lookin' good thanks to Friends of East Rock Park and some seriously hard working volunteers."

Nice work guys!