04 · 26
It happens every time. When someone runs for political office, they snatch the name of their district along with a version of their name in the URL. There isn't really anything wrong with this practice, but for a resident trying to find consistent information on a Chicago ward, finding the digital home of that ward can be difficult.
Ideally, an alderman should change the name of their 'running for office' site and converts it to a more conventional domain name post election.
VoteforMe.com to MyWard.com
Something with easy-to-find SEO, enabling residents to find information quickly. If the alderman would like to make the ward name unique to the name of the alderman, I propose a URL redirect.
>The city of Chicago creates consistent naming conventions for all 50 wards.
>Websites of those wards whose names are outside of that convention will get forwarded to the standard city managed URL.
>New and current residents who move from neighborhood to neighborhood have a seamless way of connecting with ward news.
The
U.S. House of Representatives does this. The name of each representative becomes part of a subdomain. When a new person is elected to office, we citizens only need to change the last name of the subdomain and connect with our
rep.
I've spent many nights searching for the websites of the wards I've lived in, along with those wards I was looking to move into. Perhaps a little standardization can make all of our neighborhoods easier to find.
