The document discusses the history and scaling of a UK government petition website. It describes three iterations of the website launched in 2006, 2011, and 2015. The first petition signed 1.8 million people against a vehicle tracking policy. The second saw over 327,000 sign a petition about lowering smear test age. The third was developed on the existing codebase and redesigned to be hosted on AWS. The aftermath section describes traffic to the site growing rapidly on Fridays and Saturdays after a national referendum.

1. Scaling Rails in the aftermath
of a national referendum

2. History of the
petition website

4. Launched in November 2006

5. “We the undersigned petition the
Prime Minister to Scrap the planned vehicle
tracking and road pricing policy”
signed by 1,803,367

6. https://github.com/mysociety/petitions

8. Launched in July 2011

9. “SOPHIES CHOICE, smear test lowered to 16”
signed by 327,877 people

10. https://github.com/alphagov/e-petitions/tree/99852d4

12. Launched in July 2015

13. Developed on existing codebase

14. Service redesign

15. Hosted on AWS

24. Friday, 7.52am

26. Friday, 8.00am

28. Friday, 8.24am

40. Saturday, 10.38am

48. Sunday

53. Aftermath

60. Postfix

62. Summary

63. Questions