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Milwaukee Police News

milwaukeepolicenews.com

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Re: Milwaukee Police News

#71

Post by brigade »

mbell wrote: post #59
chrischen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the sugarloaf website? If you click on the links on the left the content automatically lines up.

If you scroll the experience is terribly broken and scrolling is a deeply ingrained interaction paradigm for web sites. Its particularly annoying on a mac trackpad due to inertial scroll. Saying "don't scroll, use the buttons" to get a non broken experience is like saying "don't click the big red button" to avoid the server throwing a 500.

Also "don't zoom" - http://i.imgur.com/i3ysB.png

On a slightly-related note, scrolling right/left is remapped to up/down on OP's site. WTF?!?

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#72

Post by jpxxx »

freditup wrote: post #53
jpxxx wrote: post #13

It's militaristic, it's alienating, it's fetishistic, it's hostile, it insidiously portrays class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting, and it panders to the worst in Americans who already endorse the myriad excesses and injustices of an ever-growing quasi-private law and order machine that has ruined the lives of millions. But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.

jpxxxx, how does it "insidiously portray class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting"? And "fetishistic"? I don't know. It's fair to criticize where criticism is due, but aren't you going a little overboard? Seems like they did a pretty nice job on the visuals here in my opinion.

Yes I went full barrel, yes I'm being hyperbolic, no I don't care, and no it's not interesting to me that they did a good job keying their full-bleeds.

"Overboard" is a municipal website that has potent imagery of fully armored police officers pointing semi-automatic weapons at ten mugshots of wretched looking "Most Wanted" minorities. This force-glorifying, hostile, divisive, and stakes-raising imagery is being used to portray and shape the role of police in America. It's not acceptable.

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#73

Post by jpxxx »

stephenlambe wrote: post #64
jpxxx wrote: post #13

It's militaristic, it's alienating, it's fetishistic, it's hostile, it insidiously portrays class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting, and it panders to the worst in Americans who already endorse the myriad excesses and injustices of an ever-growing quasi-private law and order machine that has ruined the lives of millions. But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.

Exactly what part of that website "portrays class and ethnic conflict"?

The part where the two actors are heavily armed police and a box of mugshots of minorities stamped MOST WANTED.

Edit: Also it's worth noting that as of several weeks ago this was a much more elaborate site. It's been significantly toned down since.

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#76

Post by shaggyfrog »

mikeash wrote: post #45
shaggyfrog wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly it is intended for those use cases, because, as grandparent said, the links to find the answers are there, it's just not that easily available. I'm not sure exactly what issue you're taking up here, because grandparent clearly states some very straightforward and common user scenarios that any police website should be expecting to handle, and handle efficiently. This site loads like a dog on my machine. Or pe…

Except it's not the police web site. It's an auxiliary site intended for news. Go search for "Milwaukee police" and see what the #1 hit is and what the official web site is. It's not this one.

"Official" or not, it's a public-facing website for the Milwaukee police force. What it was "intended" for, and how the public is going to see it, are two different perceptions that are clearly not aligned.

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#77

Post by bodyfour »

yesimahuman wrote: post #46
w1ntermute wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew up in Milwaukee, and I agree, it only serves to support the strong division in that city. Can you elaborate on this? Wisconsin has never struck me as a state with a particularly conservative streak.

The division is segregation, not conservatism. That being said, I find Milwaukee to be more conservative than some Wisconsin cities, especially Madison (where I live now).

Of course, Madison is one of the most liberal cities in any state. I've lived in both Madison and Milwaukee. Now I live in San Francisco. I don't think Madison is any less liberal than SF. The big difference is that most of the areas immediately surrounding SF are pretty liberal as well, whereas rural Dane County certainly isn't.

As you and others have said, the segregation there is really shocking. I grew up during the heyday of personalities like Alderman Michael McGee (Sr; I was out of the state before his son was elected) when there was talk of the black areas seceding from the city entirely: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yGcaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o...

The MPD has a rather, uhm, spotty record with the minority community. I don't know the state of that these days, but the militaristic motif of this website definitely seems to hark back to the dark days of the Harold Brier years. Given their history I think they should be more careful about the tone they project.

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#78

Post by [deleted] »

brigade wrote: post #71
mbell wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you scroll the experience is terribly broken and scrolling is a deeply ingrained interaction paradigm for web sites. Its particularly annoying on a mac trackpad due to inertial scroll. Saying "don't scroll, use the buttons" to get a non broken experience is like saying "don't click the big red button" to avoid the server throwing a 500.

Also "don't zoom" - http://i.imgur.com/i3ysB.png On a slightly-related note, scrolling right/left is remapped to up/down on OP's site. WTF?!?

[deleted]

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#79

Post by some1else »

The site beaks the back-button.

The parallax scrolling looks cool, but there's too much momentum, making the desired content scroll out of view.

The visual language is 1984. This sends chills down my spine and I'd never go for an image like that for a public service. Maybe this image is reassuring to the Milwaukee Police Dept, but that shouldn't play a role in designing a "customer-facing" website.

Re: Milwaukee Police News

#80

Post by wrekkuh »

danso wrote: post #8

To be clear, this is NOT the official website, thank God. It is their PR site that was designed pro bono by an ad agency. They still have a standard website, ugly, but with actual information and not just visuals. http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/milwaukee-unveils-worlds-best-...

Indeed. But what would it take for this website to make it to the top of a search engine, above the .gov you've mentioned? Is this subjective to that search engine's algorithm? (that's not a loaded question, as i'm not familiar with how any search engine weighs it's results).

Peter Gnas, office of the chief of Police at the Milwaukee Police Department (who also has an '@milwaukee.gov' e-mail address) is the registrant of milwaukeepolicenews.com

Please see: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/milwaukeepolice...

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