quoting_mungo
Well-Known Member
The current system FA has in place for marking an account as deceased, as I recall /understand, essentially amounts to “link to an obituary,” which then obviously will have to be verified to be the obituary of the account holder and not some random other person. (I didn’t do this much if at all when I was on staff, so I don’t know what this identity verification would entail, even if it were exactly the same now as five years ago.) Given that many furries go to lengths to not tie their legal names to their furry identities, this seems like it could become a stumbling block.
Thus my suggestion: a user would be able to designate one or a small number (like, maybe up to three) of other users as “emergency contacts” or “trusted auxiliaries.” These would possibly have to be re-approved at some interval (sort of like Twitter or Telegram or Amazon might ask you on login “is this still your phone number/email/foo?”), to make sure the person is still in a position of trust, since, well, people having falling outs happens.
The primary purpose of this would be to have some sort of proxy to be able to in some limited capacity communicate with staff on the user’s behalf when the user is unable to. Most obvious case would be “yes, John Smith of Townsville, Nevada is RedFox, and this is his obituary.” Another use case that I know sadly comes up once in a great while is to alert staff to harassment if the account holder is incarcerated or, say, involuntarily committed (or otherwise incommunicado - I believe a long time ago there was one artist who was prohibited from accessing the Internet while on probation or something like that). Even if FA still chooses not to handle third-party reports in most contexts, the shouts and comments left on profiles after (as an example) an arrest or a criminal conviction can be extreme, and having an established system in place for a close friend or family member to say “hey, RedFox is in jail and people are leaving abusive shouts, could you please address them and disable shouts on their page?” would IMO be a good thing.
Like… it would give me some peace of mind to know that should anything happen to me, my husband and boyfriend would be able to report this to staff without jumping through too many hoops. (They still might, in my case, given that FAIK (name change after marriage and I don’t remember how exactly we handled that) Dragoneer knows my legal name through NDA etc. paperwork, but it being contingent on my volunteer history means it’s not an option for most fandom people.)
Thus my suggestion: a user would be able to designate one or a small number (like, maybe up to three) of other users as “emergency contacts” or “trusted auxiliaries.” These would possibly have to be re-approved at some interval (sort of like Twitter or Telegram or Amazon might ask you on login “is this still your phone number/email/foo?”), to make sure the person is still in a position of trust, since, well, people having falling outs happens.
The primary purpose of this would be to have some sort of proxy to be able to in some limited capacity communicate with staff on the user’s behalf when the user is unable to. Most obvious case would be “yes, John Smith of Townsville, Nevada is RedFox, and this is his obituary.” Another use case that I know sadly comes up once in a great while is to alert staff to harassment if the account holder is incarcerated or, say, involuntarily committed (or otherwise incommunicado - I believe a long time ago there was one artist who was prohibited from accessing the Internet while on probation or something like that). Even if FA still chooses not to handle third-party reports in most contexts, the shouts and comments left on profiles after (as an example) an arrest or a criminal conviction can be extreme, and having an established system in place for a close friend or family member to say “hey, RedFox is in jail and people are leaving abusive shouts, could you please address them and disable shouts on their page?” would IMO be a good thing.
Like… it would give me some peace of mind to know that should anything happen to me, my husband and boyfriend would be able to report this to staff without jumping through too many hoops. (They still might, in my case, given that FAIK (name change after marriage and I don’t remember how exactly we handled that) Dragoneer knows my legal name through NDA etc. paperwork, but it being contingent on my volunteer history means it’s not an option for most fandom people.)
