Life Threatening Emergency

You're in SL, You're in Melbourne Australia, and your friend lives in Oklahoma, USA.

You know from past chats that they've been sick, and tonight while talking, they get a
severe pain in the chest. suddenly the conversation ends and the avatar just stands there
till sl does an auto log out.

You panic, what do you do?

Dial Triple-O as we call it? [000 in Australia],
for an unknown in RL person with a secondlife name?

You may be the only company this person has at that time,
you want to help, but what do you do?

Fortunately, friends I am very close to do tell me their real names and addresses
and I tell them... I don't trust this "only use SL names thing" for this very reason.
In an emergency, *if* I can find out, then at least I have a real name.

We need some form of emergency button for dire, urgent help.

And the TOS will need to mention that abuse of the emergency system is an instant ban.

Think this out and do it, please... it may save a real persons life.

It happened to me this evening.
Fortunately they were ok.

Next time I might not be so lucky.

Wolfie!

Much though it's good to be able to help people in need, I don't think this is the proper thing for LL to be doing. First of all, they've clearly got their hands tied with abuse, support, and engineering. Second, I don't think they should be put in the position to decide whether or not my privacy gets violated.

It's certain that they won't be as familiar with your friend as you are. Making an abuse of this system an instant ban is all well and good, but by then, the damage is already done. LL has already called emergency for me, or maybe even given you my real-world information so you can do so... and what if I just had heartburn and then my cat fell off the sofa and I had to go AFK?

I think you've got the right approach and the only workable one. If you care about your friends, share real-world contact information with them. This has to be done on a one-by-one basis, not in some kind of privacy-override capacity on LL's part. It's the only fair way of handling this.

if someone needs an online freind to be able to find out stuff about RL problems/emergencies - then they should give their RL info to that person.

Its no place of LL's to provide such info, or yahoo, or ICQ, or whatever.

This situation is probably 20 years old as an online situaion. So I dont see a pressing need, either.

Reminds me of a similar story I read on the internet years ago.


http://www.flickr.com/photos/pantufla/107431502/

no no no...

Your friend is sick, there is an emergency button on your viewer, it puts you in touch
with an emergency person (linden) via an IM.

The person on the other end is told what is wrong, that person alone has access to your
private details... NOT the caller.

They call a local emergency service for that person.

Yes, they may only have a tummy problem, but it might be worse and by the time
they get to a phone then it may be worse.

It might be practical to have some type of internet database which is a go between
for friends. where people register their online names and any possible illness.

A lot of people on secondlife have serious illnesses, one reason why sl is so appealing
is that people who are in poor shape, can still, more or less go out.

But lets say you do know the other person very well.

I have a friend who's a sim owner, known him for years before sl and he's in the US.
He visited me in Oz and stayed in my house and we went of seeing the sights, it was
great.

So, someone I do know falls over... do I phone 000 here and get them to pass me onto
911 services? will they do that? do I call 911 from Australia using international dialing?

If there's a procedure then 'd like to know what it is, and put it in a notecard in my pub.

Wolfie!

The problem with this is that if Emergency Linden made a mistake, he or she could wind up being held responsible for the consquences for your friend. There is no way LL can risk taking on that kind of responsibility. I don't know any kind of online system that supports anything like this.

I agree. I think if you are close enough to a person in SL that you can disclose personal details and that person lets you know they are having health issued, it's up to the two of you to formulate a plan in such cases.

It is nice that you thought so much of your friend to be worried. I hope he/she is feeling better!

In my first incarnation of my SL persona, I had an adopted mother and a very good friend that had some problems similar to MS or MD (honestly, i forget which it was). The last I heard from this person was that she was feeling very tired and her doctor was talking of checking her into the hospice.

During the three months of time I had with this person, my SL sister and I were always there for her, doing our best to make her final days as full of joy as we could. However, neither of us had ever gotten to the point of getting any RL information past her first name and general location (nearest major city).

Being brought up in a 'secure home' during the times of 'online predators' and 'identity theft', I never, ever give out anything past my first name and nearest major city. I also never ask my online friends to give me more. I _do_ share my ISP email (as opposed to the one I use for general SL email), in case one of us can not use SL for whatever reason - or just decide the game isn't worth the effort anymore...

I guess what I am trying to say is that
1) Giving out personal information to ANYONE that you do NOT know from your real life can be very hazzardous to your finances or person or both. It doesn't really matter if you have known the person for a week or three years (I have friends from my Earth & Beyond days that know I'm not kidding here).

2) As much as I would have LOVED to have some system like you propose, we cannot ask a company such as LL to run television commercials such as "I've fallen and can't get up'... It's not their duty or responsibility. Plus I would think they would have to have quite a bit of liability insurance to play any part of a lifesaving role.

And, in case you wonder, the aforementioned friend disappeared from our SL lives almost a year ago. We assume she passed away shortly after that.

<3 In Loving Memory of Viscillia Breed <3

Oh, and an FYI: you would probably need to call the overseas (international?) operator, inform them of the situation and ask to be connected to the emergency services in the city your friend lives in - just ask for the emergency number for the local police, they can handle those types of calls.

This from a professor who uses the ABC science forum.

> BTW, here is the answer: SL needs an EMS department. People with
> physical problems can register and you could dial 911 while interacting
> in SL. The meat-world contact data can be stored as part of the avatar's
> representation. The SL EMS could gain access to that and invoke dispatch
> in the meat-world no matter where they physically live.

One final note.

I began using the net in the early 1990s... I have yet to meet anyone who has
caused me any grief in the real world and I have exchanged real world addressed
and phone numbers with a large number of people.

They're not all paedophiles and rapists.

Wolfie!

I've fallen and I can't reach Live Help ...

"At what cost?" is my question.

First:

It would only work for "Verifieds". An unverified resident could falsify their information and claim to be held prisoner in their basement by their estranged spouse who is currently upstairs sharpening knives. Imagine the embarassment when the authorities come breaking down the front door, only to find two people calmly having dinner.... and some anonymous neighbor snickering away.

Griefers are bad enough in SL without empowering them to prank people in RL when they use SL.

Second:

It would be *ABUSED* to the point it would be ineffective. "I'm being griefed in the sandbox! That's what the 911 button is for, no?"


Third:

There are times when that crucial email reaches someone responsive and clever enough to save someone's life. They are rare. I hate to say it, but in the case where someone in their home late at night collapses on their keyboard with profound chest pains... by the time the message could get to the authorities it'd likely be too late anyway.

Assuming they're actually at home in the first place. Maybe they're on a laptop in a hotel on travel?

You can't just call them on the phone and ask them if they're okay, should someone send an ambulance? If they can answer, they could call 911 themselves. If they don't answer, we can't know if they're hurting or just elsewhere, with no remote way of knowing.

No... as warmly meant as this suggestion is... I can't see it as being effective enough to justify the cost in labor, frustration, abuse, etc.

As mentioned above, friends share personal information. Even the most resourceful friends that take the initiative to act wisely in critical situations often fail to save lives.

Adding this service might distract that responsive and resourceful friend from taking more properly effective and immediate action.


(I know this sounds cold and callous... it's not intended to be. In the last 20 years, I have lost several online friends, some abruptly, there's always that "could I have done more" thought...


On a related note.... in a different online world, a 'text mud'-like place, (not SL), a friend of mine passed away suddenly due to 'complications'. Word spread among his friends that he had died... but he was still logged in and responding to people once in a while! (he had several random auto-response macros)

His 'ghost' lingered, in a rather morbid and disturbing way... until someone finally turned off his computer. (nearly a week later.)


Miss Manners has no protocol for what to do in situations like that.

I know of 3 situations where people have faked deaths online =/

Two faked their own, while the third faked the death of his daughter.

I know this is rare - but it is sickenly disturbing.

I still think the best way is to share your rl details with anyone your close enough to need that information.

If someone with your home town and adress hears you say your having a heart attack online - they can call your local Police , etc.

Easier for you and that person to keep it current than Linden Labs.

wouldn't this be a great idea for a resident run service?

a "medical alert" system that you register for, and give the "buttons" to your friends in world? Allowing the person in these dire medical situations, to decide for themselves if they want to trust their RL contact data to a specific entity within world. And then enabling that entity to contact the local medical rescue authorities, if certain conditions are met?

Nice idea - but with all the kids playing games - you can threaten ban and prosecution all you want...it still won't stop them.

This feature will just be abused...

Aside from it being a monsterously bad idea, how could you tell if they were eaten by phone weasels or merely had a SL client crash?

It sounds a lot like poor Schrödinger's cat!