Decision 4: Keep the existing page addresses, or tidy them?

The question

Topic overview pages live at a mix of addresses inherited from Drupal. Some are under /topics-all/, some under /municipal-operations-support/, some at the top level. We can keep them exactly as they are, or move everything to a consistent pattern that mirrors the tree, with redirects from the old addresses.

What exists today

draft/topics-all/town-meeting/ · draft/topics-all/property-taxes/ · draft/public-records/ · draft/municipal-operations-support/grants-and-funding/ · draft/loss-control/vosha-compliance/ — five topic pages, four address patterns.
All of these addresses are published on livevlct.org today and are linked from newsletters, other towns' sites and search engines.
The tree has its own clean names (finance-taxes, property-taxes, tax-appeals) that could form addresses like /topics/finance-taxes/property-taxes/.
Any page that is moved needs a redirect from the old address, and every redirect has to be re-applied if the migration is re-run before launch.

Options

Option A — Keep every address as it is for launch our recommendation

No redirects to write, test or lose.
Inbound links keep working with no effort.
Addresses stay inconsistent, which readers rarely notice and search engines do not care about.
Can be tidied later; the redirects can be generated from the tree at that point.

Option B — Move to /topics/// now, with redirects

Consistent, guessable addresses.
About 30 redirects to write and verify before launch, plus more for the pages' attachments.
Adds risk to the launch for a benefit readers will not see.

What changes

Option A changes nothing. Option B changes every topic page's address and adds a redirect layer to the launch checklist. Reversible? A is trivially reversible (it is the status quo). B is reversible only with a second set of redirects.

What we need from you

Option A: keep addresses for launch, tidy later if ever (recommended)
Option B: move now

If we hear nothing before the next build, we go with the recommendation: addresses stay as they are. Reply to Kalman by email, or comment on the linked issue.

Related: plan document TOPICS-PLAN.md §4 Q4; the redirect register is REDIRECTS.md in the migration repository.

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