Travel advice no more

December 30, 2009 9:07 AM

Robespierre, a frequent contributor at Fodor's Travel Talk Forums online, suddenly stopped posting to the boards in July of last year. NPR's All Things Considered did an essay on why he stopped and the reactions of his fellow forum posters.

One of Robespierre's obituaries, which garnered almost 200 comments on the Fodor's forum, can be found here. And the Forum's discussion of the NPR piece here.

posted by AwkwardPause (27 comments total)

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Says a lot about the strength of his character that after his diagnosis, he actively encouraged and urged folks on the Fodor's forums to go for early detection tests, including colonoscopies.
posted by zarq at 9:40 AM on December 30, 2009

It's really weird when people one knows online disappear. There are some people in my life like that who just dropped out of my life and I suspect may have died but I'll probably never know. It's something we all have had to figure out for ourselves because there's no precedence for this.
posted by Kattullus at 9:53 AM on December 30, 2009 [3 favorites]

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posted by autoclavicle at 10:13 AM on December 30, 2009

I heard the NPR story last night, and thought they did a really good job of trying to explain online communities to folks who aren't into 'em. One of the better stories along those lines that I've heard.
posted by box at 10:15 AM on December 30, 2009

It's an issue that's compounded by the fact that very few online communities have a procedure for dealing with deceased users. It's just not a design criteria for most of them — yet it almost always becomes an issue. Facebook and Myspace have both made some very public missteps in learning how to deal with dead users' profiles.

On one hand, there's something very wrong, offensive even, with just deleting a user after they die; there's something vaguely Stalinist about it, just wiping them out as if they had never really existed. But at the same time, not doing anything is weird too; it's a bit off-putting to know that someone is dead but to see that their online accounts are still active, like little virtual doppelgängers. And on a more practical level, leaving the accounts of dead users active creates targets for identity thieves and hackers.

I've heard a number of people recommend that if you're active in online communities, that you include a list of usernames/passwords and a request for the executor of your estate to post some sort of message, or inactivate the accounts. But a lot of bulletin boards don't have a good place for the message to go, and finding an administrator can be difficult for someone not familiar with the site. (Massive, poorly-run UBB sites in particular, which are probably the biggest virtual "communities" going.)

It strikes me as a Hard Problem, not in the technical sense, but in the social one. It's not something that I suspect most people who start up bulletin board / community websites really imagine themselves dealing with, but is going to be increasingly common as the Internet ceases to be the domain of mostly young people.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:18 AM on December 30, 2009 [17 favorites]

A travel-talk Thermidorian Reaction that ended the Reign of Terror is how I see it.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:18 AM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

Kattullus is on to something.

Clearly there is a need for several web 2.0 services to fill this niche.

Notification of one's demise sent to one's online communities, automatically, via iBit, the Online Obituary service.

Funeria to host one's online funeral services.

The bits and pieces of one's online persona collected from Flickr and MetaFilter and twitter and World of Warcraft and so on and deposited and cataloged at Deathbook, the honorarium updated over time as the service's worms crawl through the deceased's decaying virtual corpse, grimly digesting all the accumulated errata and depositing it in DB's vast servers, where, perhaps, the accumulation will fertilize the lives and thoughts of future visitors.
posted by notyou at 10:25 AM on December 30, 2009 [5 favorites]

Clearly there is a need for several web 2.0 services to fill this niche.

There's My Death Space.

Also:

.
posted by Lobster Garden at 10:30 AM on December 30, 2009

But at the same time, not doing anything is weird too; it's a bit off-putting to know that someone is dead but to see that their online accounts are still active, like little virtual doppelgängers. And on a more practical level, leaving the accounts of dead users active creates targets for identity thieves and hackers.

Facebook has a feature which suggests you get in touch with people that you haven't interacted with in a while. It can be disturbing to see "You haven't connected with Betty Kulkin recently. Why not send them a note?" when your Aunt Betty died last July. So, a couple of months ago, (in response to user requests, naturally) Facebook introduced a memorial page option. If a request is made by their friends or family, the site will turn a deceased person's page into a memorial where people who knew them can leave notes. The person will also not be added to FB's "social notifications" lists
posted by zarq at 10:31 AM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

Heard this last night in the car, and it made me think about the sort of shadow we cast with our virtual, online lives. I think that's why the MeFi meetups are so cool, and (even though I've yet to participate in one), so worthwhile; they are not just meetup but also "meatups", where we get to see one another in the flesh.

As I was writing this reply, it occurred to me that I've been participating in online forums for 20 years (The WELL, class of '89 -- woot!), and in that time I've directly interacted with thousands of people, and indirectly with n thousands more. I've only met a few of those folks IRL, and of those, only a couple translated into actual friendships. I think that's a byproduct of the inherent narrow-casting that the internet facilitates, and it's something of a double-edged sword: the very specificity that makes online discussions so worthwhile also obviates the need for small talk. I can immediately swoop in, ask questions about some very specific and technical topics, get the answers I need, and swoop back out again. It can be social, but socialization isn't required. And even though I am considered a tribal elder in my particular sub-genre, I could disappear tomorrow and it might be weeks before anyone asked about my disappearance, and even then, it might be impossible to determine where I had gone, or if I had died, as the links between my virtual and real lives are deliberately vague (although on reflection my MeFi profile is much more revealing than it should be, LOL.)

"O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't! "
posted by mosk at 10:49 AM on December 30, 2009

Kadin2048: It's an issue that's compounded by the fact that very few online communities have a procedure for dealing with deceased users.

As jarring as it was to see for the first time I'm glad that MetaFilter adds a "deceased" note to user profiles of MeFites who've passed away.
posted by Kattullus at 10:54 AM on December 30, 2009 [3 favorites]

Gah. It wouldn't be an honorarium, though, would it? It'd be more like a reliquary.
posted by notyou at 10:57 AM on December 30, 2009

> It strikes me as a Hard Problem, not in the technical sense, but in the social one. It's not something that I suspect most people who start up bulletin board / community websites really imagine themselves dealing with, but is going to be increasingly common as the Internet ceases to be the domain of mostly young people.

Community software frequently offer user status values (active/inactive/suspended/canceled/etc.) which affect the user's access to the site and the account's appearance to other users. For example, a suspended account has past posts visible but the user can't participate conventionally again until the account is reactivated.

This makes me wonder whether BBS, blog, and similar software designers should be working towards a conventional dead status as well.
posted by ardgedee at 11:01 AM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

I remember this happening in a BBS community in the East Bay in like 1994. One of our users just disappeared and I didn't know what happened to him until, months later, I saw a newspaper article about his brave struggle with cancer.
posted by doteatop at 11:02 AM on December 30, 2009

So, a couple of months ago, (in response to user requests, naturally) Facebook introduced a memorial page option.

Yeah, and then it turned out to be a bit too easy to have someone else's page be declared dead. Someone wrote a blog post about one of their friends doing it to them that I can't find right now.
posted by smackfu at 11:17 AM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

Reading this reminded me of when my dad died, in July of 2007. He was fairly active on the internet, and although I was able to get into his two email accounts and let a few people know, I often wondered how many of his online friends would be left wondering what happened to him.

And then I just now googled the his user name (at least, the only one I was aware of, but he was 71 and I don't think he'd been using many aliases) and it returned several results in Yahoo Groups, Amazon reviews, and a couple other places. Really eerie to see even just the previews of posts he had made.
posted by fairywench at 11:22 AM on December 30, 2009

And then I just now googled the his user name

Oops! Obviously, that should read "And then I just now googled his user name".
posted by fairywench at 11:33 AM on December 30, 2009

I lost an online friend this year to cancer. We were both active on a couple of different message boards and had corresponded through email at length. The amount of sadness I felt when I learned of her passing completely caught me off guard. My friend had etsy and ebay stores open and full of merchandise when she died and nobody in her immediate circle knew about them or how to go about closing them or about the extent of her online circle of friends, what message boards she was a regular on and how to notify people she had never met in person and didn't have contact information for, except in her email and IM accounts.

There is definitely an evolving need for a system or service to help deal with these situations.
posted by pluckysparrow at 11:34 AM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

When I used to sysadmin we always left the voice mail box messages of deceased personnel around for awhile so spouse/kids/fam/friends could call and hear their voice.
posted by HyperBlue at 1:19 PM on December 30, 2009 [10 favorites]

Reminds me of the Telephone episode of This American Life. The third act is just the answering machine tape of a man who has died, starting with messages from the doctor's office, and the messages gradually become aware of his passing. (starting about 54:08)
posted by msalt at 1:52 PM on December 30, 2009 [5 favorites]

Sad news. His quote from his profile page is a good summary of the (non-technical) advice he gave, "Attitude doesn't get you what you want; remembering you're a guest does."

Happy travels Robes.
posted by 26.2 at 5:24 PM on December 30, 2009

Clearly there is a need for several web 2.0 services to fill this niche.

It's true. I have asked my spouse to email Matt or Jess in the case of my demise (which in no way seems imminent, but who knows when a meteor will fall from the sky) but she does not participate here, and even thinks much of my time spent here to be sort of unproductive etc. I have no idea whether my wish would be granted. Anyway, a service that you could associate your real and online identities and report something to the community would be great. Who knows whether anyone cares if I disappear, but I know I care about a significant number of current mefites, and have experienced the pain of loss when others have passed, or even just stopped coming around. It is harder when there is just the absence and no further information.
posted by caddis at 5:33 PM on December 30, 2009

It's an issue that's compounded by the fact that very few online communities have a procedure for dealing with deceased users.

For the record... we have a process at MetaFilter, though we only implemented it maybe this year, or last. Deceased users [that we know of, obviously] have a special setting which basically closes their userpage to changes, and changes their status to "deceased" We can then add a note to their userpage with a link to a MeTa thread or obit or something. You can see this on Anita Rowland's user page. She died about two years ago. We went back and forth about whether we should preserve their user pages or maybe blank them out somehow and opted for a pretty unobtrusive choice. One of my saddest days on MetaFilter was going through the ten users' pages who we knew were deceased and seeting their status to "deceased" and re-reading all the old MeTa/MeFi threads.

Of course in a community this large I'm sure there are members who have died who we don't even know about and I encourage people to let us know just so we can keep track, be accurate, that sort of thing.
posted by jessamyn at 5:37 PM on December 30, 2009 [6 favorites]

It's the letting know part which is difficult. You guys have a very good process once that happens.
posted by caddis at 5:45 PM on December 30, 2009

I found out an acquaintance of mine died this year through mutual friends posting farewells to his Facebook page. He was young and in a terrible car accident. I wasn't close to him, but they were and his FB page is still up and people still occasionally post to his wall, saying they miss him and wishing he was around for this event or for that.

Facebook should really do something about deceased users, though - I've been gently advised once or twice to "reconnect with" this deceased friend through FB's annoying sidebar messages trying to keep everyone connected. That's a bit unsettling/annoying.
posted by crossoverman at 6:26 PM on December 30, 2009

I heard the NPR story last night, and thought they did a really good job of trying to explain online communities to folks who aren't into 'em. One of the better stories along those lines that I've heard.

I had the same reaction, and of course thought of MeFi and was glad to see this post appear. One disappointment I had with the story was that the reporter didn't broaden the topic by reaching out to admins of other forums to ask how this issue is dealt with across various user communities. As others have noted, it happens, and there are enough large-userbase comment-and-participation-based sites that it seems like something a lot of people would be able to comment on usefully. If you weren't active online already, the story might sort of lead you to think that the Fodor's forums were rare in their degree of user interaction, or that user Robespierre was extremely unusual in his knowledge or helpfulness. In fact I think the story was an excellent example of a sort of issue and a type of person found in many communities across the net.

Online communities aren't that different from offline ones, and the question of memorializing and when/where/how to share the news of a member's decease is not easy in the working world, in the voluntary association world, in the church world, or any other world either. The difference is that when dealing with the aftermath, survivors generally have thought about the meatspace communities first and foremost. We are definitely entering a time when, as someone we know dies, we'll need to ask "What online communities would want to know?" as well as "What lodges/clubs/alumni associations/pickup sports leagues/weekly happy hour buddies/poker night pals etc would want to know?" This gets complicated by the fact that it's so much easier for people to be members of online communities clandestinely (or at least not loudly) than it is to be a member of a meatspace community without someone you know IRL being privy to it. Someone sitting at the computer just looks like someone sitting at the computer - it's hard to tell "where" they are if they haven't trusted you with that information. For instance, I know my mom is active on some musican-related and travel-related boards but I don't really know what they are, or even what her username is there. I wouldn't know how to notify.

Most of us have heard the advice that we should set up a file that gives all our info in case of sudden illness/death. I suppose it would be very wise to add to that file a listing of communities in which we're active and the ways in which that community could be notified.

I didn't know of MeFi's system and it sounds beautifully like MeFi: respectful, simple, transparent, and straightforward, leaving the record intact.
posted by Miko at 7:02 PM on December 30, 2009 [1 favorite]

I'm not that active on MetaFilter (oh, but I love you, though) so I don't think anyone would necessarily notice my absence here, but this is something I've thought about. It's not that I plan on dying anytime soon, no, but I do hope that if something happens, my friends and family would know enough to find a way to notify my mostly-online friends of what happened. (I tend to stay logged in on my personal computers, so it wouldn't be that hard to do, if they'd think to do it.)

Of course, there has also been some weirdness when coworkers have died at my workplace, so I guess even in the real world, there isn't always a good way of informing people in place.

I am glad NPR ran this story (I heard it last night, although I missed the very beginning of it). I think it's something we all need to consider -- it's not just leaving messages to random people out in space ... those messages do go to real people -- but the infrastructure isn't quite there yet. It will need to be, though, as online communication becomes more and more commonplace.

But to Robespierre and the people he left behind, I leave a .
posted by darksong at 8:44 PM on December 30, 2009