More than a name and an email

The standard details

Under Fields to collect on the create page you find all of these: First name, Last name, City, Country, Street address, Postal code, State, Email address, Phone number and Comment. A Drawn signature is on the same list: signatories can draw it with a finger or a mouse, and it appears only in your PDF download, never publicly.

Each field has a switch for collecting it and a Required box for making it compulsory, and they can be dragged into the order you want. A preview of the signature form, beside the list, shows the result while you work.

Your own questions

The Add a custom field button adds a question of your own. You get three, and the button disappears once all three are in use. Each row of the list holds:

• the question itself, typed into the Field label box, up to 50 characters, which is what the signatory reads;
• a Required box, left empty for an optional question;
• a Hidden box: "Only you see the answers; they are not shown on the signatures page."

A hidden answer is still yours: you see it on your own petition and it comes along when you download the signatures. New questions start out hidden.

How this differs from many petition platforms

Many petition platforms let you collect a fixed set of details and nothing more. Name, email address, postcode, perhaps a comment. Whatever your petition actually needs to prove, you get the same form as everybody else.

The problem shows up at the end, when the signatures are handed over. If the decision-maker only counts the people inside their own area, or only the members of an organization, a list without that information cannot answer the question, and you cannot go back and ask 2,000 people afterwards.

Who this helps, with an example

A petition to keep a village school open is delivered to the municipal education committee. The committee cares about one thing: how many of the signatories live in the school's catchment area. A plain name-and-email list cannot say.

So the author marks City required, adds a question of her own, "Which school does your child attend?", leaves it optional and keeps it hidden from the public signatures page, since it concerns children. When she downloads the signatures as an Excel file, the answers are a column she can sort by, and the committee gets a number it cannot wave away.

Other good uses

• A workplace petition asks for the department, so the result can be shown per unit.
• A petition to a member of parliament asks for the constituency.
• A residents' association asks for the street name.
• A professional appeal asks for the title or field, so the signature list carries its weight.

Write the question so the answers are usable: short, one fact per question, and the same form of answer from everyone.

Limits and good to know

Three questions of your own is the maximum, and a question label can be 50 characters long. The answers are free text. A longer form always collects fewer signatures, which is why the create page advises requiring only what you need, and why every field can be left optional.

Ask only for details you have a reason to hold. Everything you collect appears in the petition's privacy policy and is covered by the retention period you chose, and the signatory decides for each purpose whether their data may be used for it.

Without a required first and last name your petition is not shown in the petition lists, because signatures without names cannot be verified. The petition still works through its own link and can be found in search.