[Foundation-l] Contingency plans for Wikimania

Sun Apr 20 20:30:42 UTC 2008

On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Mike Godwin <mgodwin at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>  WP:SOFIXIT
>
>  It seems to me that this is a function that community members could
>  implement themselves, almost certainly better than the Foundation
>  could, especially if a significant number of community members care
>  about it. The Foundation would certainly be happy to coordinate with
>  such a volunteer-driven project.

It's been my experience that Wikimedians are often unwilling (to the
point of disruption) to make public their own names, much less the
names, addresses, and phone numbers of their closest family members.
They'll reluctantly provide them to a trusted authority,
confidentially, if given a good reason (as with Wikimania
registration), but there's no way even I'd post them on an [[Emergency
Contact List]].  I wouldn't be much more confident in a database kept
by RandomWikipedian2048.

We're talking about one more optional field on the Wikimania
registration form, which an organizer can pull up and act on in the
unlikely event of an emergency.  This shouldn't be a big deal.

Austin