I propose adding a requirement to the registration agreement that says a member will not start a thread announcing the death of another member unless they* have received approval from a Moderator or a Site Administrator.
*And by “they”, I mean a live Doper, not the allegedly dead one. Bunch a smart-alecks is wat y’all is… 
We live by the honor system. We’ve had relatives come on and post about a member passing. A.R.Canes daughter did that. There were others that i’m blanking on. Including one that wanted some contact information of people close to the poster that had passed away.
It’s hard enough for someone to find, register, and post to some message board in passing. Not sure SDMB needs to complicate it more than that even though there are drama queens out there that might want to prank the Dope.
Doesn’t need to be in the registration agreement.
Going forward we will want some real life verification. Mostly that what we’ve asked for in the past … and usually we get it.
Not meant as a criticism of those family members who join in order to announce a death: one need not join. One can can e-mail the web admin.
I know that one more rule won’t stop someone intent on trolling/hoaxing, but those who do abide by the rules will know that posting a death announcement without authorization could be a sign that a troll is at work. Dopers could then flag the post for a mod’s attention (similar to how a new member whose first post has a commercial link is quickly flagged as a possible spammer).
I’m not going to the mat for this suggestion, it’s just a thought I hoped might be useful.
The only person who would be announcing my death is the wife. I’ve already given her instructions about notifying the Web admin in the event that something untoward happens to me. She’s already met one mod in person, twickster, so it should not be difficult to confirm it’s no joke.
I’ve actually encouraged Mrs Siam Sam to join up but have yet to persuade her.
Bad policy is made when an organization overreacts to exceptional circumstances and gradually accrete laws that stifle it from within. How many years has the Dope been around? How many fake death announcements have there been?
If there starts to be a rash of them, maybe we should have this discussion but I think we should just leave it for the time being.
This. If we make an already hard time even harder for people who are essentially doing us a favor, we’ll just have fewer death announcements and more posters disappearing without any explanation.
I’m not dead. Updates to follow.
When I die, I doubt you guys will ever know. My wife doesn’t like the boards, and while my younger sister lurks, she’s never bothered to post even when a thread that cries out for her expertise is open. The nearest she’s ever come to posting is emailing an idea for a hypothetical thread.
I’m not sure what problem this solves. I doubt most people read the registration agreement, and even if they do, if someone is unethical enough to post a fake death announcement, they’re probably not overly hung up on either obeying all the Board rules or just lying to the mods as well to get permission to start the announcement thread. “Making a rule against something” is meaningless if the rule can’t be enforced.
And to the extent that we need a rule, I’m pretty sure “don’t be a jerk” pretty unambiguously covers fake death announecments.
I wouldn’t expect the spouse/child/sibling/parent/whatever of a recently passed Doper to even know to ask permission to start the thread. I mean, how many people would even think to check the rules for something covering how to tell people a poster died? So, pretty much, every report of a Doper’s death would end up flagged as “suspicious.”
Or not, as the case may be. :eek:
Has a situation occured that makes this proposed rule necessary or is it, as it seems, simply rules for the sake of having rules?
Yes. I’ve not followed it too closely, but apparently someone signed up last week, said he was someone’s brother and that his poster sister had died. It took a day or two to discover this was a hoax. A recently banned troll is suspected of being the perp.
This should be tattooed on the head of everyone who starts a thread saying “There should be a rule about…”
That should be a rule.
Well, barring an announcement, if I stop posting for more than, say, a month, you’ll know I’m gone. The longest I think I’ve successfully pulled off is a week, but I’m giving myself a little wiggle room.
Some of you may consider it sad, but this board is enough a part of my life that there’s no way I’m not going to remember if I’ve not posted here in a while. And to purposefully not tell you would make me a jerk. I’m pretty sure there are some Doper who would throw a party.
If you were dead you would not remember not posting here.
When I die I’m fairly certain the Internet as we know it will cease to exist. At least as far as I’m concerned.
But people just joining the board (be them trolls or people finding us on Google about to post to a zombie thread) don’t read the rules. They register and post.