A VOIP server (I have a Ventrilo account from my old Warcraft Raid Team we could use, but.....) would work. I think the problem is that would tend to be intermittent or noisy and there would be people who wouldn't be able to participate because of bandwith. For example, I keep my iPhone nailed to this thread and occasionally hit "reload" so if I'm mowing the lawn I could drop everything and run inside and log on.... Or not.
Some thoughts:
- Let's call it "The Rat Signal" for the sake of argument.
- The Rat Signal should work for people who are in-game as well as people who are hanging out in the forums or washing the dishes or whatever. I like the idea of someone running and logging in. Or not.
- The Rat Signal should be low bandwidth but fast propagation. No need for a lot of chatter (on that channel) just "RAT SIGNAL, System, CMDRname" and a reply or two "ON IT"
- The Rat Signal might sometimes require something special, e.g. CMDR Anuranium's
very nice Anaconda or extra urgency or something (someone getting camped? who knows... let's leave room for flexibility) so we could potentially do "RAT SIGNAL: breaking news, need 36ly jump range" or "RAT SIGNAL: has 34 sec of air left"
- The Rat Signal should be a fast push, so that the back and forth is minimized. We want Rats to be able to believe that when someone says "got it" they can go back to whatever they were doing, but that during the interval where nobody has said "got it" the rescue is up for grabs. Using the thread like we are doing is a "pull" technology that is slow: rats have to edit/post/reload to see what's new. We need a fast notification that ripples out and people can respond to instantly if they want to.
- Probably should also have a "rescue accomplished" message
- ED's in-game grouping/messaging system is too unwieldy to have a way that one of us (or even a designated few Rat-coordinators) could message all friend CMDRs logged in.
What I'd recommend that could be done easily enough:
- I own a web server/site that has a mailing list server set up already. I could easily set up a list server for
RAT-SIGNAL@ranum.com and anyone could subscribe or unsubscribe. That would require no set-up and management and people (like me!) could subscribe their smart-phone email address and get the signals to their phone wherever they are, with about a 1-2 second lag. That's "push" and that's fast. It's not as fast as us all being on a vent channel but it works wherever I am.
- Advantage: Pushing via email to a smart phone means I can program a ringtone for the Rat Signal "Incoming priority message" and that's super badass coolness right there, baked in for free.
- Advantage: I can direct a copy to a historical archive via the list software as well, so anyone who wants to review the threads via web, can
- Disadvantage: requires sharing an email address
- Disadvantage can be overcome by: I can create forwarder email addresses in my domain if anyone wants to keep their email address secret; I will know but nobody else will.
- Disadvantage: Rats who are not available still get the messages
- Advantage: If you want to, you can unsubscribe or resubscribe (i.e. if you are taking a week vacation) and immediately join or exit the flow
- Advantage: there is no individual in the center of everything, who would act as a delay in the loop
- Advantage: requires no additional IT infrastructure (I could have it working by monday!) We could see how it works and be up and running in no time
Advantage: Email as a push messaging bus is very easy to redirect into other channels, e.g.: text to speech, sms, rss, etc.
We would need to establish a simple protocol. That would not be very hard; I imagine it would look like:
1) Post to RAT-SIGNAL with the name of the CMDR that needs help and their location
2) Anyone who is jumping on the case replies ASAP
3) Once someone has said they are on the case (collisions/races OK) then everyone assumes that it's being taken care of by whoever responded
4) Whoever took the case posts SUCCESS, FAILURE, or HELP NEEDED (Re-RAT-SIGNAL!) and closes the case
5) Any additional discussion takes place in the thread here.
Edit: An additional thing that would be cool would be if we had a simple way of describing the rescuee's approximate vector. The system name is useful but I know that (for example) right now I am 1000ly north west of Sol, 500ly up. If we came up with a standard nomenclature for that, we could post the rat-signal with something more useful than just the system, i.e: "
RAT SIGNAL CMDR Helpless SKAUDE AA-A H722 12kly northwest down 1kly" I could immediately tell you that I am 8000ly away, without even having to log in. Someone who raised the Rat Signal would have to be logged in and be able to give the description of the system location onto the channel as soon as possible.
Edit: an additional idea I have been thinking of is that I am going to send all the registered Rats an in-game friend request. That way I can periodically produce a Rat-Map. The problem is that we are not all on at the same time. I think it would be hysterically cool if some day, a few months from now, all the rats that can try to log in during the same 1-hr window so I can screenshot the galaxy map with a plot of Rat locations. Just for fun. I don't think this has any actual value in-game. My opinion is that ED's in-game communications are not weildy enough to use them for rat-signalling. (does not address AFK, someone in mid-jump, and management of friend lists is a nightmare)
Thoughts?
then jump. I scan the newbie forum for "emergency issues" but is there even a better way?
