There are more than 40 active Court Houses in NH. While no one likes going to court, if you need to go, you better be able to find it. Currently there is little consistency in how the Courts are named, and many are not mapped (with waze or google places). The problem is if I type “Dover Family Court” into the app, waze wants to bring me 335 miles away.I’m proposing we make an effort to map all of the courts and bring consistency to the naming of these buildings to make it easier for users to find their Courts.
We currently have 1 Federal Court, 1 Bankruptcy Court, and 1 Supreme Court. I think the Federal and Bankruptcy Court naming may be better for a regional discussion, if needed.
We have 11 NH Superior Court houses and 32 NH Circuit Court houses ( a couple of those share locations). The circuit courts are made up of District, Family, and Probate Courts. A full list with names is found here: https://www.courts.state.nh.us/courtlocations/index.htm If you get a notice from the Court it will say something like 1st Circuit - District Division - Lancaster or 1st Circuit - Family Division - Lancaster (there are multiple courts per circuit.)
Currently many of the Circuit Courts are not mapped (including Manchester, Keene, Candia and Jaffery for example). Those that are mapped have varying name, for example: Berlin Circuit Court is currently named the “berlin courthouse health human services;” Conwayis “Conway District Court” with an alternative name of “Third Circuit District Court/and Family Court - Conway.”
I propose that the Superior Courts be named “(County Name) Superior Court.” With the exception of the Hillsborough Courts which need a North and South added at the end. We could consider an alt name of (Town of Location) Superior Court" but I think that may be unnecessary.
For the Circuit Courts: The Formal name would be 1st Circuit - District Division - Lancaster or 1st Circuit - Family Division - Lancaster. That seems long. I propose we use “Lancaster Circuit Court” as the official name, with alternative names of “Lancaster Probate Court” “Lancaster Family Court” and “Lancaster District Court” I updated Concordthis morning to serve as an example.
Is there some reason we wouldn’t want to maintain consistency? I know you mention it seems long but that’s the name. I don’t think there is a character length issue with the app, is there?
@nhmapguy I don’t think the Circuit number isn’t going to mean much to most people, and is going to take up most of the room on the screen when the search results start popping up. My thought was most people would type in the court location and the type of court: district, family, and Lebanon.
I was putting a high value on simplicity and brevity, but I’m open to the full name.
The issue for me is accuracy. That’s the purpose for this process. The names as named by the state were instituted. They use the name in all forms. Making it shorter ‘just because’ is not a good reason in my book. Unless the long name will lead to a bad Waze user experience I suggest the names as named by the state because it’s the most accurate and consistent.
For the federal court do we want:
US District Court District of New Hampshire
United States District Court District of New Hampshire
Regarding not having court in the primary name why would that be a problem? Especially with the prime category and using the alt name with court in the name?
I was originally was going to propose the formal name. However, the problem for the length for me, is we have five “9th Circuit - District Division -(Town)” courts. If I’m searching I want the town to pop up first. With the formal name I think the search results will be harder to use. Unlike NH State Liquor store, where I’m just looking for any store, with the courts I’m looking for a specific store.
I’m happy to see a lively discussion about this topic, which has affected my thinking.
The city is displayed in the app during search (both during autocomplete and “full” search") on its own line. Therefore, I’m not worried about the city being difficult to see at the end of the name (eg. “Superior Super Duper Excellent District Central Court - Effingwoods”
I agree that the full name should match the official name of the court, but think that the word “court” should appear at least once in either the primary name (if in the official name), or in an alternate name. Some users will surely just type “court” in the search box at some point.
If we don’t need to worry about the location being in the title. For the name of the circuit courts we could have the primary name be “NH Circuit Court”. The alternative names would then be 1st Circuit – District Division – Town/1st Circuit – Family Division – Town/1st Circuit – Probate Division – Town as is appropriate.
I think this is supported by the Court’s own website:
The mailing address for the Lancaster Court is:
NH CIRCUIT COURT
1st Circuit – District Division – Lancaster
55 School Street, Suite 201
Lancaster, NH 03584
You could use that argument for the University of New Hampshire, any town or organization with multiple divisions. I think that the name they use that’s on signs ie the 1st Circuit – District Division – Lancaster. Plus Waze doesn’t use mailing addresses. I think it would be okay to have New Hampshire Circuit Court as an alternate or does that matter given the state in the address and Circuit Court in the name of my proposed format. I say keep the name of the third in the name of the court and if it gets clipped it shouldn’t matter as the town name is in the second line for search results.
If we can figure this out, maybe the State would like our suggestions, because there is no consistency on the actual buildings either. I can’t figure out how to post screen shots from street view but the new court in Hampton says Hampton Circuit Court, Concord says Concord District Court, Manchester says Manchester Court House, and Derry says Derry District Court. Hampton is the newest and just opened this year. So I still like either NH Circuit Court or (Town Circuit Court) with the other names as alt names.
I agree the buildings are app over the place. Additionally the name of the building isn’t going to match the court, ie Hampton as the name is for the building vs the court entity. Similar to the federal courthouse has a separate name from Federal District Court name. Maybe messaging their PR person could help. I can do that if that’s okay with people.
