An Argument for Wildfire

1Summary

When something matters, Chicago builds. It reversed its river in 1900 to keep the lake it drank from clean. It kept a mile of lakefront open because one of its merchants, Montgomery Ward, held the city to an 1836 survey map that said the ground was public, through four cases at the Illinois Supreme Court. In 1999 it put every non-emergency request behind one phone number. One piece was never built: a way for a neighborhood to ask its city for something together and see what came of it. Wildfire is built to become that piece.

Wildfire is civic infrastructure for Chicago: a public record of what neighborhoods ask their city for, addressed to the office responsible, and what came back. Neighbors post about their own block. Any post can become a poll, a conversation, a gathering, or a petition addressed to the alderperson for the ward, the mayor, or a city department. Petitions are signed under first names, sent with the date and time on them, and answered — or not — on a permanent public page for that seat, with the days counted where anyone can watch.

Its builder’s rule comes from a career in market research: one person saying a thing is an anecdote; a count of people saying it, gathered the same way, is evidence, and evidence is what an institution acts on. Wildfire is the count. It is built on one assumption about people: that they are smart, want to be informed, and act when there is something to act through. Its builder’s claim is that no public in history has been better informed, and that what it lacks is not information but a place where informed people can be counted. Its social surface, Sparks, is a feed of short posts pinned to real places — what is happening on a block, whether neighbors standing there confirm it, and what is being done about it. Everything that results — votes, signatures, results, petitions, answers and silences — is kept on public pages that are never deleted, and shown for the whole city at once on a page called Transparency, open to anyone with or without an account. For the February 2027 election, Election Intelligence puts every candidate for every seat on the same page, in their own words and their own public filings.

Wildfire controls four things and promises only those: how a petition is written, that any signed-in neighbor can send it, the public count of the sixty days after it goes, and the permanent record of the answer or the silence. It does not promise that an official will answer or that anything will change. It refuses the techniques other apps use to hold attention — no points, no streaks, no leaderboards, no outrage feeds, no ads, no sale of data. It takes no party money and endorses nobody; every seat gets the same rules, whoever holds it. A member appears as a first name with their ward on a post and their neighborhood on a petition, and their record is kept under that first name; no surname, no phone number and no address is ever published.

This document says how each part works, with its numbers. It is dated and versioned, and it changes only by public, dated edits. The story of why it exists is in an essay of the same name.

2The problem

Wildfire starts from one claim, made in its builder’s letter: “The problem isn’t that Chicagoans don’t care. The problem is that caring has never been connected to power.”

The usual ways to take part — a 311 ticket, a call to the ward office, three minutes at a microphone, a feedback form — were each built to hear one person at a time. A call does not add to the call a neighbor made last week. The office cannot tell whether it is hearing from one person or from a hundred, so it cannot weigh what it hears, and the hundred cannot see what came of the call. A 311 request leaves a dated record and a number to check its status; a call to the ward office, a comment at a microphone or a form leaves no public record that the ask was made. And none of them keeps a public count — of how many asked for the same thing, or of whether anyone answered.

The gap runs the other way, too. What happens to a street is decided in rooms the street does not hear about, and nothing carries the decision back. When a seat comes up for election, the ballot is a list of names with no public record of what the neighborhood asked for or what the person in the seat did about it. An election is a count with power attached; the count that should come before it — what each block asked, and what came back — has never existed.

A study of neighbors acting together in the Chicago area — Sampson, McAdam, MacIndoe and Weffer-Elizondo, more than four thousand instances between 1970 and 2000 — found that how connected neighbors were to each other did not explain why some communities acted together more than others. The density of nonprofit organizations did: how many things there were for a neighbor to act through. Wildfire is built to be a thing a neighbor acts through: a member turns a post into a petition, neighbors sign it, and any one of them sends it to a named office.

3What Wildfire is

Wildfire is civic infrastructure for Chicago. It is organized around six questions.

• What is happening near me right now? Sparks: the feed of posts, each pinned to a real place, ordered by place and time. Section 6.
• What are we working out together? Weigh in: one page listing every poll, conversation and petition that is still open, grouped by kind, the newest neighbor’s act first.
• What did we ask, and what came back? The record: one page for every seat, holding every petition sent to it and every answer, with the days counted. Section 7.
• Who has to answer a petition? The office it is addressed to — the alderperson for the ward, the mayor, or a city department — each under the same rules and the same count of days. The fifty alderpersons and the mayor are the seats: each has a page of record and the neighbors’ grade.
• What has the whole city asked, and what came back? Transparency: the wall of proof — every result, every petition, a short summary of every conversation, the number of members, and what is active now — open to anyone. Section 8.
• Who is asking for the seat, and what have they put on the record? Election Intelligence: every candidate for every race on the ballot, on the same page, in their own words and their own public filings. Section 10.

A member also has a page of their own, You: everything they have posted, signed, voted on and started, and the neighbors they brought in, in one place. And the city has a page of its own, Chicago: how many neighbors posted today, once enough have; the open ask closest to its floor; the week’s deliveries and answers; and the alderperson who answers for where the member lives.

Any post can be turned into a poll, a conversation, a gathering, a Fireside or a petition; a conversation can be turned into a poll or a petition, and a poll into a petition — each drafted from the words of the one before it.

4The design principles

Seven rules shaped every part of Wildfire. Each one is checkable in what is built.

1. Every action takes a few minutes on a phone. Posting is one sentence. Starting a poll, a conversation, a petition, a gathering or a Fireside is one press and an edit, because the co-organizer drafts it from words already written.
2. Everything is pinned to a real place. A post belongs to a block and a ward before it belongs to anything else. A petition goes to the office responsible for that place.
3. No feed decides what matters. Sparks is ordered by place and time. Nothing is promoted; what rises is a count anyone can see — how many neighbors posted, confirmed, or signed.
4. Votes, signatures, results and answers are kept, and never deleted. They go on pages that are public. Corrections are added in the open; nothing is rewritten.
5. Every petition goes to a named office. Not to “the city”: to the office responsible for it — the alderperson for the ward, the mayor, or a city department — and if the seat changes hands, the petition goes to whoever holds it on the day it is sent.
6. The answer and the silence are both recorded. A public count of days runs from the day a petition is sent. An answer goes on the record with its date; sixty days without one goes on the record too.
7. Officials and candidates never hold accounts. An official appears only as the office a petition is addressed to and as the author of an answer written through the single-use link that came with it. A candidate appears only as the author of their own answers to the neighbors’ questionnaire and as the subject of their own public filings. Every seat gets the same rules.

And the member: a first name and a place, never a surname. No roster of who was in a room. A member’s phone number and data are never sold or shared. No points, no streaks, no outrage feeds.

5From a post to an answer

A post. A member writes a sentence, adds a photo, or both, about a thing on a street — a dark streetlight, a flooded viaduct, a corner where drivers run the stop sign. It is pinned to that spot and to a channel, stamped with the time, and posted under the member’s first name and ward. Wildfire calls a post a Spark. Neighbors reply to it, confirm they have seen the same thing, or star it by pressing Spark this post. A post stays in the feed for fourteen days.

A button. Every post carries the button Your move. Pressing it opens the co-organizer, the drafting tool inside Wildfire — software, not a person — which writes, from the post’s own words and photo, a first draft of one of five things: a poll, a conversation, a petition, a gathering, or a Fireside. The member edits every line, then presses Build it.

A poll or a conversation. A poll has two to ten options, for the ward or the whole city, open for seven days; the results stay sealed until you have voted. A conversation is an open thread anyone can read and reply to, and the post it grew out of carries a line saying so. Both carry a second button, Take it further. One person presses it, and the co-organizer drafts a petition out of what is already there.

A petition. It is addressed to the office responsible for it — the alderperson for the ward, the mayor, or a city department; if the seat changes hands, the petition goes to whoever holds it on the day it is sent. Neighbors sign with a first name and a neighborhood, never a surname; a person with no account signs with a first name and a ZIP code. Every petition has a floor: 25 signatures, or 50 for one addressed to the whole city.

Delivery. Once the floor is reached, any signed-in neighbor can send it. It goes by email, and the date and time of sending are printed on the petition’s public page. From that day the page counts the days: Day 1 of 60, Day 2 of 60.

The record. The email carries a single-use link that lets the office answer in public, and the right to answer does not expire. If the office answers, the answer goes on the public page for that seat. If sixty days pass and nothing comes, the page records the silence with the date. Neither is ever deleted.

Wildfire cannot make anyone answer. What it controls is how a petition is written, that any signed-in neighbor can send it, the count of days after it goes, and the record of what came back. Every promise in this document is one of those four things.

6Sparks

Sparks is Wildfire’s social surface, and it is built the other way around from the feeds people know. Those feeds tell you what is trending somewhere. Sparks tells you what is happening on your block, whether neighbors standing there confirm it, and what is being done about it.

A post is pinned to a place. A Spark is a sentence, a photo, or both, pinned to a real place and a channel, stamped with the time, under a first name and ward. It cannot be posted from nowhere.

The feed is ordered by place and time. A member chooses what they see: one block, up to three blocks they have pinned, their ward, or all of Chicago. A separate view shows only the photos and video. Nothing is promoted and nothing is ranked for the reader; a post is where it is because of where and when it was posted. What rises is a count anyone can see.

Neighbors confirm. A neighbor can reply to a post, confirm that they have seen the same thing, or star it by pressing Spark this post. Confirmation is a fact about the street, not a reaction to the poster.

Every post is a door. Every Spark carries Your move. One press and the co-organizer drafts a poll, a conversation, a petition, a gathering or a Fireside from the post’s own words and photo. The feed is where an ask begins, not where it ends.

Catching. When five neighbors post about the same thing within six hours, Wildfire groups the posts as one fixed record, with the time and the posts that made it, on a public page of what is catching fire across the city. The page draws all fifty wards; the wards a catch has reached are lit. It is open to anyone to read.

The block remembers. A post leaves the feed after fourteen days. It stays, permanently, on the page of the block it was pinned to, with everything else ever posted there and what became of it. A post that caught also stays in the fixed record.

Three languages. A post written in English, Spanish or Chinese is shown to every member in that member’s language, with the original one tap away.

A live room shows. When a Fireside is burning, its flame shows in the top bar; a tap opens the room’s last lines without joining it.

What Sparks refuses. No feed that decides for you: what makes a post rise is a number anyone can check — how many neighbors posted or confirmed, on which block, and when. No follower counts as status. No direct messages: everything is on the record, and a private channel is a harassment surface. No fear register: it is a feed of a city’s blocks, not a police scanner. No paid verification. No ads in the feed.

7The record

Wildfire keeps a record of what neighbors formally asked for, when it was sent, how long the answer took, and where no answer came. There is one page for every ward and one for the mayor. A seat’s page shows how many petitions were sent to it, how many were answered, how many days an answer took on average, what is on its way, and every petition and every answer in order. The rules are the same for every seat, whoever holds it.

Two more records sit beside the seats. Every block has its own page that keeps everything ever posted about it. And when five neighbors post about the same thing within six hours, Wildfire groups the posts together as one fixed record, with the time and the posts that made it, on the public page of what is catching fire across the city.

The record is fact. Beside it, kept apart on purpose, is one opinion: each month a neighbor may give their alderperson one grade, A to F. The grade is published only once twenty-five neighbors have given one, and it is restated every month. The record above it never changes; the grade is what neighbors make of it.

8The transparency surfaces

The record is kept seat by seat. Around it, Wildfire keeps a family of public pages so that anyone — with or without an account — can see what the city asked and what came back.

Transparency — the wall of proof. One page for all fifty wards and the mayor together. It shows the result of every poll. It shows every petition — who it was addressed to, when it was sent, whether it was answered and on which day, or that sixty days passed without an answer. It shows a short summary of every conversation. It shows how many members Wildfire has. And it shows what is active right now: the polls still open, the petitions still gathering names, the gatherings still waiting for enough people to commit, the Firesides open right now. Beneath the wall runs a ledger, day by day: every petition delivered, every answer, and every Fireside that closed, each with its date. Above it, the fifty-one seats at a glance.

The record, seat by seat. One page per ward and one for the mayor, as in section 7.

Every block’s page. Everything ever posted about that block, and what became of it.

What is catching fire. The fixed record of every catch, with the fifty wards drawn and the reached ones lit.

Insights. A weekly civic-data paper: what the record shows for the week, with the numbers each finding came from and the method printed beneath it. It keeps one rule for anything beyond the neighbors’ own record: the city’s public record — what its officials decided, and what they filed — is printed beside the neighborhood’s only with its source cited, or not at all.

Chicago — the city’s page. How many neighbors posted today, once enough have; the open ask closest to its floor; the week’s deliveries and answers; and the alderperson who answers for where you live.

You. A member’s own page, and the card a neighbor opens by tapping their name on a post: their receipts. What they signed and where it went — which seat, and which day of the sixty it stands on; what they started and what it became; how many times they voted; and the neighbors they brought in, by first name, with a line naming who brought them in. Wildfire calls this a member’s proof of fire, and it is a record, not a score: no level, no rank, no streak, and no number printed to impress. A neighbor’s own acts never print on the card of the person who brought them in.

What none of these pages show is anyone’s phone number or surname, who was in a room, or the text of a room’s messages. They show what the city asked and what came back. They never show a number printed to impress: the public numbers are the record’s own — results, dates, floors, the count of days, the count of members, and a member’s own receipts.

9The toolkit

A member finds the tools in five places: Sparks (the posts), Chicago (the city’s page), Create (the co-organizer, at the centre of the dock), Weigh in (every poll, conversation and petition still open) and You (their own record). Transparency, the record, the block pages, the catching-fire page and Election Intelligence are open to everyone.

The co-organizer. A member says in one sentence what needs to happen, and the co-organizer drafts one of five things from that sentence — or from a post’s own words and photo. The member edits every line, then builds it. It never posts on its own and never speaks to an official.

Polls. Two to ten options; the ward or the whole city; open for seven days; the result sealed until you have voted.

Conversations. An open thread. Its title is the starter’s own words. It is translated in place. Any member can report a reply, and a reported reply is hidden.

Petitions. As in section 5: addressed to the office responsible for it — the alderperson for the ward, the mayor, or a city department; signed with a first name and a neighborhood, or, with no account, a first name and a ZIP; a floor of 25 signatures, 50 citywide; sent by any signed-in neighbor; by email, with the date and time; sixty days counted in public; the answer or the silence kept on the seat’s page.

Gatherings. A time and a place to meet. It has no date until enough people say they will come: the page shows how many more are needed, and when the number is reached the date locks and everyone who pressed I’m in — if it happens gets a text message. A person with no account can say they will come.

Firesides. A live text room at its own link. Anyone with the link comes in with a first name; no account. Inside: the host’s polls of two to four options, one pinned announcement with an optional countdown, a neighbor’s message pinned by the host, nine reactions, replies, and a live count of people present. There is no roster, no voice, no video, and no recording, and Wildfire sends no invitations to a room — a person shares the link. Messages delete after seventy-two hours. When the room closes, its page stays as a public record of the highest count of people present, the number of messages, each poll’s final count, the announcements and pins in order, and the host’s closing line — and holds no message text and no name. The first room a member hosts opens only after the builder approves it by text message.

Posters. Wildfire makes a printable poster for a poll, a conversation or a petition, and a pamphlet for a gathering, each with its own code inside the QR; the member prints it and puts it up. Someone who scans the code lands on that poll, conversation, petition or gathering. Four more posters recruit — they carry no civic unit, only a door in. Wildfire records which poster was scanned, which scans led to an action, and which led to somebody joining — by poster, never by person.

Blocks. Every block has a page that keeps everything ever posted about it. A member pins up to three blocks and can read the feed for those alone.

Three languages. Everything a member writes is shown to every other member in that member’s language — English, Spanish or Chinese — with the original one tap away. The word Fireside stays English in all three.

Joining. A phone number and a ZIP code, a texted code, and a first name: about twenty seconds. From then on a member’s first name and ward go on the record with everything they post.

10Election Intelligence

In February 2027 Chicago votes for its mayor, its clerk and its treasurer, and for all fifty alderpersons, on one day. Election Intelligence is the record’s answer to a ballot that is only a list of names, and it is open to anyone, with or without an account.

Every race, every candidate, the same page. For each race on the ballot — citywide, and ward by ward — Wildfire lists who is running, and gives every candidate an identical page: their name, the seat they are asking for, and whether they hold it now.

Their own words. A candidate’s positions on the issues are taken from what the candidate has said in public. Every candidate in a race gets the same questionnaire; the answers are published as given, word for word, and a candidate who has not answered by the deadline is listed as not having answered. That is a fact on the record, not a judgment.

Their own filings. Campaign money is public record. Each candidate’s page carries what they have filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections — the total raised, the largest contributors, the share from small donors — with the source and the date it was retrieved printed on the page.

Side by side. Any two or more candidates in a race can be read on one page, position by position, filing by filing.

The neighbors’ rating. Beside the record is one opinion, the neighbors’ rating: a member may give a candidate one to five stars, one rating per member, and the page shows the average and the number of neighbors behind it. It is kept apart from the record, exactly as the grade of an alderperson is, and it is the opinion of the neighbors who gave it, not Wildfire’s.

What it is not. Wildfire endorses nobody and hosts no candidate’s account. A candidate never posts; they appear as the author of their own answers, given through a link, exactly as an officeholder appears as the author of an answer to a petition. Every candidate in a race is treated identically, whatever their party, and the same rules that govern a seat’s record govern the page of everyone asking for it.

11The refusals

Wildfire does not use the techniques other apps use to hold attention. Each refusal below can be checked in what is built.

• No points, no streaks, no leaderboards, no outrage feeds.
• No score on a member. A member’s page is their receipts — what they signed, started and voted on, and who they brought in — never a level, a rank or a streak.
• No feed that decides for you. Sparks is ordered by place and time; what rises is a count anyone can see.
• No ads. A member’s phone number and data are never sold, to anyone.
• No party. Every seat gets the same rules. Every candidate in a race gets the same page.
• No fake urgency and no manufactured crowds. When it is quiet, the page says so.
• No rosters. A room shows how many people are present, never who.
• No direct messages. Everything is on the record.
• No fear register. A feed of a city’s blocks, not a police scanner.
• No paid verification. A member is verified by a phone number, and nothing about that is for sale.
• No record of who was in a room. Reactions are never stored against a person, room messages delete after seventy-two hours, and somebody watching a room from outside never learns who is typing.
• No deletion from the record. Votes, signatures, results, petitions, answers and silences are never removed; the record only grows, and corrections are added in the open.
• No counts printed to impress. The public numbers are the record’s own — results, dates, floors, the count of days, the count of members on the wall of proof, and a member’s own receipts. The navigation never carries a number.

12How neutrality is built

Wildfire’s neutrality is a property of the machinery. Officials hold no accounts and never post. They appear in exactly two ways: as the addressee of a petition, and as the author of an answer given through the link that comes with it. Every seat gets the same sending, the same sixty days, the same right to answer, and the same record, whoever holds it. Wildfire takes no party money, endorses nobody, and works for no candidate.

Candidates hold no accounts either. They appear as the authors of their own answers to the neighbors’ questionnaire, and as the subjects of their own public filings. Every candidate in a race gets the same page, the same questions, and the same deadline.

Only a petition asks a question, so only an unanswered petition counts against an official on the record. A poll or a conversation an official ignores counts against nobody. Only the questionnaire asks a candidate a question, so only an unanswered questionnaire is noted against a candidate.

Opinion is kept beside the record and never mixed into it: the neighbors’ grade of an alderperson — one per neighbor per month, A to F, published only at twenty-five graders, restated monthly — and the neighbors’ rating of a candidate, one to five stars, one per member, shown as an average with the count of neighbors behind it. The record beside them is fact and never changes.

Three written policies govern this, published at wildfire.city. Their substance is one sentence each:

• No endorsements. Wildfire endorses no candidate, party, or campaign, ever, and none may use its tools or its data.
• Equal access. Every seat, and every candidate for a seat, is treated identically — the same sending, the same count of days, the same right to answer, the same page, the same record — regardless of party or person.
• Data ethics. A member’s data is never sold and never shared with a campaign, a party or a candidate; what is public is the record and Transparency, and nothing else about a member is published.

If this document and a published policy ever disagree, the policy is the one that counts.

13What Wildfire promises, and what it does not

Wildfire promises what it controls: that a petition at its floor can be sent by any signed-in neighbor, with the date and time on it; that the sixty days are counted where anyone can watch; that the answer, or the silence, stays on that seat’s public page and is never deleted; and that every result, every petition and every answer is on the wall of proof for anyone to read. It does not promise that officials will answer, that anything will change, or that any number will grow. The record will show which of those happened.

14Who runs it, and how this document changes

Wildfire is built and run by one person. Every promise in this document is kept, for now, by that one person’s word — so the document is kept the way Wildfire keeps a seat’s record: it changes only by dated, public edits, and the version record below lists every change.

Wildfire is at wildfire.city.

— Sergio Patiño · Chicago