Collecting Ideas: WonkContact

It started with tragedy: the loss of our dear friend Fukui over at Wonkette. It was sudden, and we were lucky that someone knew to spread the news among the commentariat. But it wasn’t the first time I’ve wondered about what happens when a wonker dies, or needs us and can’t reach us. So on Saturday, July 25th, I posted the following to the morning Tabs, and later in the day on the overnight thread:

With the passing of Gav/Fukui this last week, and my dear wonker Katy/WomanInThePersistence a few months ago, and Walter Wellstone, and so many others over the years, I’ve been thinking that our little snark mob needs some way of passing the news and/or appeals for help when one of us passes or is in dire straights. We were lucky in those cases, because someone reached out to us after these people died (Gav’s wife, Uncle Milburn for Katy, and Walter himself with followup by his wife), but other times it has been a mystery.

Gavin himself provided this because he’d developed contact with so many of us, but with his passing, even that is gone.

I just told my daughter to jump on Wonkette should anything happen to me (she in turn said yes, but that I’m not allowed to die), and we’re lucky when family members or friends let us know when something has happened. But that’s not always the way it goes down.

We need some kind of nexus point: a place where we can reach out if we’re worried because we haven’t seen someone for a while, and a place where family/friends can contact us if needed. I know Rebecca has provided this at times, but seems like we need something more.

Any thoughts on how this could work?

After I posted that, I got a pretty good response, lots of “yeah we should do something!” and some people posted contact info right there in the comments.

I imagine that like me, many people were thinking of the times that because someone had contact for a fellow wonker, we’d done wellness checks. That because some wonkers family members knew how important that community is to the regulars, they reached out when someone passed. And how many wonkers have left us without comment, and we don’t know whether they just needed to switch gears, got pissed, were in crisis, or had died.

It’s the not knowing, right?

The positive response on my post told me that for a core group of us, there’s a need for some type of contact hub. But how to structure this in a safe, secure way, that’s the real question.

This is a work in progress. I’ve personally started collecting the names, numbers, emails and other info about people I’ve personally been in contact with over the years, but that list is just for me. (Lordy, it’s spread over phone contacts, email contacts for two different emails, and a variety of screenshots. Clearly in need of organization!)

Essential Info

What’s the bare minimum of info we’d want to gather? I’m thinking something along the lines of:

who we know you as at Wonkette (username)
your real life name, at least your first name
email and/or phone number
a third party we could contact if needed

Ideally the third party would also know to contact us if needed – via email with one of us, or by posting in the morning tabs thread because that’s such a consistent post, or at minimum emailing Rebecca so she can post in the morning tabs.

And that’s part of the Thing: Trix has a website to run. It shouldn’t be solely on her to spread the news when something happens to the wonketariat.