'Dead man Switch theory' but for sites

[Larry]

I'm sure if anyone looked up a train and know what a dead man switch is... For those who don't it's a thing they have in certain heavy machinery and trains. The operator is required to push the dead man switch button in a certain time of intervals throughout their shift otherwise the machine will stop working or the train will apply the emergency brakes.

Just like a new growing forum or community, you need to hit that "dead man switch." Basically put, you have to contribute your time or else you will see your community die before it begun. I have seen admins abandon their community and left the moderators in charge and that can get really messy.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was such a button that admins or even moderators had to come back and had to push a link to check in or the forum just closes it self leaving a small note: Admin has been gone for this X amount of days? there would be a button that also pings the admins personal email if people are worried.

 

[Heatman]

To be very honest, this is an interesting theory. The first time I heard about dead man switch concept, it's in situations of bomb threat attack. I never thought it's something that's going to find a way to be applied in forum management.

A question I would like to ask if to what extent would the dead man's switch halt things in the forum? Would the forum be able to come back to full activity after hitting the dead man's switch?

 

[Shawn Gossman]

It would be nice but then again, if an admin needs a feature like that to be active on the forum that they made, then IMO, they don't need to be running a forum.

It takes YOU to make a and maintain a community online.

I get pretty discouraged to use a forum that has inactive administrators. To me, it seems as if they expect me (or other members) to do the work and they're being lazy.

I'll be blunt... Inactive admins are lazy admins.

 

[Larry]

A question I would like to ask if to what extent would the dead man's switch halt things in the forum? Would the forum be able to come back to full activity after hitting the dead man's switch?

I mean...If addon devs want to expand on this idea by all means.

To answer your question though, in my thoughts I would say it would reactivate the forum/site. But if the Admin has medical issues for example or they are gone for a large amount of days for no reason a closed forum message will appear eventually closing the site and there is a clickable link for members only; "Ping Administrator" followed by a "thank you, your concern has been sent to the admin and their emergency contacts. Hopefully we will get back to you!" Another reason is to prevent your forum being unmoderated and spam bots flood your forum while you are out. This dead man switch would also be reset by another trusted Admin if need be. It's essentially an accessibility feature. I'm no Dev I feel it would be a very easy thing to implement.

Something like that. @Shawn Gossman I wouldn't think Lazy admins would need such a tool as I responded above. But if a admin has medical problems or gone for an unusual amount of days is what I am saying. A simple login would probably reset the 'dead man switch.'