Re: RFC: Add profile field "emergency contact" or such like as

[cavac]

To me, it makes sense to have an "emergency contact" field (only visible to site admins) that a user can fill in. I don't think the field should have special semantics ("email address"), some people like me don't read their emails on a perfectly regular basis.

In this day and age, an emergency contact might also be a phone number or even, say, a link to their social media site that permits private messaging. I mean, after all, if the person you are trying to contact would look into their email accounts, there's already a good chance that they would have seen emails sent to whatever address they used on PAUSE or similar.

Plus, an "emergency contact" sort of implies that this could be an emergency that needs to be dealt with as-soon-as-possible. In my mind at least, that could include things like "PM has a very big security problem, it's all hands on deck for gods, site admins and pmdevs". I'm not sure Email has the right reaction time for this sort of thing.

As for dealing with long absence (possible illness or death) of a monk, at least for me it's more likely that some family member or friend would take over my phone to deal with things than it would be for them to find a way to access my email accounts (which run on my own server, shielded by strong passwords). On the other hand, cell phone providers usually have procedures available to take over a dead relatives phone number (call forwarding, etc).

[jdporter]

I don't think the field should have special semantics ("email address") ...

I quite agree. The instructions for the field would be very open-ended. It could even include brief instructions, multiple avenues to try, etc.

"emergency contact" sort of implies that this could be an emergency that needs to be dealt with as-soon-as-possible

I've been putting "emergency contact" in quotes because I don't actually envision an actual emergency use case, like "this monk is going into anaphylactic shock". What this data element shares with an actual emergency contact is that it could be someone other than yourself we should contact, in the event that you seem to have fallen off the face of the earth.

"PM has a very big security problem, it's all hands on deck for gods, site admins and pmdevs"

Well, the gods would be leading that, and they already have each other's contact info outside of PerlMonks.

As for dealing with long absence . . .

Obviously, we can't assume that your next of kin will log into your PerlMonks account and let us know what's happened.

[bliako]

Obviously, we can't assume that your next of kin will log into your PerlMonks account and let us know what's happened.

Perhaps the next-of-kin can even volunteer to take absent Monk's place and continue the divine work? Jokingly...

[LanX]

I see 4 types of monks here
• regulars who were extremely careful to hide their identity, I remember a "what happened to BUK" thread, and those won't share any emergency contact.
• regulars which keep their identity confident inside a small group of other regulars, they can be contacted via said group if there is a similar thread.
• regulars with open or (semi) open identity like me, they are easily googled.
• non-regulars, well who would care to know
Bottom line, if someone really wants others to know "what happened", he'll already have social contact to others here.

Or is anyone here belonging to a 5th group, wanting to explain their case?

Update

I mean yeah, we can add a secret textarea in settings or in edit-profile to fill in an emergency contact. I just doubt the investment will pay off 🤷🏻‍♂️

[cavac]

Perhaps the next-of-kin can even volunteer to take absent Monk's place and continue the divine work?

Oh no! Most of my family thinks that WhatsApp is the best chat app for your privacy and security problems don't happen because they run Windows. Giving them write access to my source code (or to that of the monastery) would be an astonishingly bad move, second only to inviting Kim Jong Un to run your workers union.

I mean, i love my family and i'm perfectly fine if you want to do this experiment. Just make doubly sure i *really* have passed of before you start, i want to be safely on the other side of the (barred) pearly gates before the fit hits the shan...