Starting around noon on September 18th, sporadic messages from litigants, judges, and civilians alike began streaming into the chambers and halls of the Mayflower District Court Discord server; the court’s website, used for processing cases, had just unexpectedly gone down. Chief Judge Albert Wellesley announced that the court was working to address the issue, and that in the meantime, the clerk’s office will use Trello to process cases. Some attorneys and court staff, upon hearing this, wallowed in joy; Magistrate Judge Ocazius was reportedly seen running through the corridors of the courthouse, chanting:

“LONG LIVE TRELLO! LONG LIVE TRELLO! DOWN WITH THE CLARK COUNTY SITE! […] DO NOT RENEW THE DOMAIN! DEATH TO THE DOMAIN!”

— Ocazius, Magistrate Judge, Mayflower District Court

But the overall atmosphere in the courthouse was that of confusion and uncertainty.

What Happened

Users who attempted to access the website (https://clarkcounty.site/) faced a webpage owned by NameCheap.com, a domain provider. The landing page alerted visitors that the domain had expired and is no longer active. M-SPAN has confirmed this through an ICANN Lookup, which reported the domain lapsing on the 18th of September—the day of the website going down. The domain is now currently being held in a grace period, which gives the admins a chance to renew their domain; however, they have decided to permanently transfer systems over to Trello.

While it has not been made clear why, it is likely that the administrators of the website purposely let the domain expire. One reason for doing such may be the monetary costs for hosting the domain. On NameCheap.com, it lists clarkcounty.site costing $23.48 per year, which is on the higher-end in terms of price (In comparison, the ro-span.org domain costs $7.48/yr).

The other reason may be demand from litigators and judges to revert back to Trello. In a substantive poll ran by Associate Justice Shah_khaled, a overwhelming 64% of licensed attorneys and judges preferred Trello to the website. The reasons for this preference varies among attorneys. Andysofun, a practicing attorney, echoed one common complaint about “[having] to login to [his] Roblox account every time [he wanted] to use the website.” Chancellor Alex J. Cabot added that the website “[required] too much manual uploading and maintenance.” Ocazius, after being calmed down with a juice box provided by clerical staff, yelled at M-SPAN reporters:

THE COURTS HAD THE BEST SYSTEM WITH TRELLO — EVERYBODY SAID SO, BELIEVE ME. PEOPLE LINED THE STREETS, BEGGING ME ‘OH OCAZ, OCAZ, BRING TRELLO BACK, PLEASE SENOR OCAZ’ — THEN THE ‘GENIUSES’ BUILT A WEBSITE – TOTAL DISASTER, NOBODY COULD USE IT, NOW IT’S DEAD!!! WASTE OF TIME, WASTE OF MONEY!!! BRING BACK TRELLO — THE PEOPLE WANT IT!!! [THE WEBSITE IS FOR LOSERS]!!!

— Ocazius, Magistrate Judge, Mayflower District Court

Proponents of the court’s website, including attorney Brenda Popplewell, Esq., voiced concerns about Trello, claiming it to be “cheap and unreliable” since the platform “[shittisfies] itself [each year by] making every function paid.” Former District Attorney & His Honorable Chancellor Bob78711new added that the website is “easier to use.”

How Court Operations Will Change

Despite the return to Trello, cases are expected to proceed as normal. Litigants wanting to upload files can now do so via the judicialFLOW bot, with more instructions in this announcement. Data from the website has been preserved and will be archived accordingly

“[The courts are still] waiting on final changes from clerkFLOW (created and maintained by acerxtro) to support channel creation from Trello again — but now we have automatic file uploading on judicialFLOW (credits to Nomadity) and automatic notices of appearance (attorneys can now use a command with judicialFLOW to request to appear in a channel, and the judge can just approve/deny it; the bot pins the message in the channel to keep record) — before, clerks had to manually go to the channel to add the person”

— Krabzatonin