Deprecate Supreme Court Citation Visualizations

[mlissner]

More than ever, we need to focus on what we can do exceptionally well. I think it's time to deprecate citation visualizations.

Here's why:

1. We haven't upgraded them in years.
2. In 2024, there were 25 published visualizations created by 16 users, totaling 2675 views.
3. The champion of this project was @Colinstarger, but he hasn't created a viz for exactly two years as of today.
4. We haven't been adding the needed SCOTUS short names or citations to make these good for several years, with no complaints.
5. We're redesigning the site and it's one less thing to redesign if we drop it first.

Here's how:

1. I'm reaching out to Colin to make sure he's OK.

2. Contact the folks that created visualizations in the last two years to apologize and let them know they won't be able to create new ones.

3. Keep the existing visualizations. They're static, and there's no need to delete them. Some are embedded in other websites.

4. Remove the link from the Case Law drop down.

5. Redirect the viz homepage

6. Close all viz-related bugs.

7. Rip out the viz created code and dependencies.

8. Remove these pages:

   • https://www.courtlistener.com/visualizations/scotus-mapper/new/
   • https://www.courtlistener.com/visualizations/gallery/
   • https://www.courtlistener.com/visualizations/scotus-mapper/ --> This can redirect to an FAQ that provides a short explanation of them.

9. Remove them from the homepage.

10. Find other places they exist and adapt.

11. Add a little banner on the top of each visualization saying that the project is archived.

And I think that's it? What else?

[mlissner]

OK, turns out there's still demand for this, so it's not a full deprecation, but:

• We'll remove the front end code as above, with redirections. No more HTML related to visualizations, except perhaps an FAQ saying they're deprecated or something like that.
• We'll maintain the visualization API, and make sure it works for creating new ones.
• We'll maintain the embedding webpage, so that visualizations can be embedded.

The final result will be an API folks can use to create visualizations, some documentation for it, and the ability to embed them into other webpages.