I think the "We the People" site is fantastic, but not because I ever had any expectation of action being taken as a result of petition results. That would be naive. The value in the site is not as a means of communicating with our government, but rather as a means of citizens communicating with each other.

Consider that the only other means of determining the positions and desires of your fellow private citizens are seriously flawed. Media organizations are skewed by their political and corporate relationships, and the on-line communities, forums, blogs, etc. suffer from too much bandwidth, as I'll explain.

Elections are low-bandwidth: The propositions are set. All you can do is register your support and in some cases your dissent, or choose not to participate. You don't get to change what is being proposed or shift the discussion in any way. You don't get to submit meta discussion about the flaws of the process itself, you are simply in or out, and your only participation is to register one bit. A one or a zero, true or false, agree or disagree. I'm not saying there are no flaws in this system, as I surely know there are, but the signal to noise ratio is low.

The petitions, while completely powerless to change the actions of our government, amount to a low bandwidth public discussion. Having only the option to support or ignore a given petition cuts through the crap that overwhelms most other venues where people can publicly express their opinion. You can't offer an ad hominem attack or straw man argument, you can't even vote against. The proposal is there in black and white visible to all. It is as it is and you can either register your support and be counted by name, or remain silent.

So, the "We the People" site has inadvertently created a forum for citizens to communicate clearly with each other, not with the government. It says "Here is a list, by name, of all your fellow citizens who feel the same as you do about this one issue."

That can be powerful. We are social animals. A large part of whether or not we voice our individual opinions is how we think our opinion will be received by our peers. In effect, "We the People" is a way to look at the people around you and see how many are looking back and nodding.

Ironically, this is also why petitions to close the site are not needed. The White House has surely realized their error in providing clear evidence of the will of the people being ignored, and just as surely want to make it go away, but they can't close the site while everyone is paying attention. What will happen is that the site will be "De-emphasized", people will lose interest and turn to one of the numerous distractions in the political circus. And then one day, anyone still paying attention will hear a quiet one or two sentence press release. "Due to lack of interest"We the People" has been closed as a cost-saving measure."

TLDR: Of course "We the People" as presented is a farce, but it has power completely unintended by it's creators.