Hi Eric,ERIC wrote:Throwing an idea at the wall for stickiness here, but would an interactive trip calendar help? The link would only be to a user profile. Someone would have to be a serious stalker (not saying we don't have at least one of those amongst us here) to track a user account to a real person and thus their home address, etc.
A good idea to run with and firm up some details for. As I input above, would prefer being vague about specific dates and locations. All we really need to communicate to other members is that we are likely to be in a particular zone during an approximate period. Otherwise it invites notice of criminals especially for those of us living in urban environments. For savvy Internet users it takes little effort to locate where people live through public records readily for sale by web advertizing data purveyors.
Thus as an example about mid July, member XYZ may log on your calendar, they may be up in the Bishop Creek basins in late August, while actually having a reserved wilderness permit on August 22 out of Sabrina for 5 days. Also member ABC has a reserved permit out of North Lake for August 19 for 7 days and logs that on the calendar as also Bishop Creek late August. The two will notice they will be in that local zone about the same time and can then PM each other on details. If member ABC is a well known HST member while XYZ has posted little if any and is suspicious, ABC can decide how little or much to communicate. If on the other hand both members are well known, they can exchange details with PM's and would find they are both exiting trails the same day and thus might set up a group lunch down in Bishop before both drive home.
Using a vague period like late August, Any criminal looking at the calendar is neither going to know exactly what dates a person may be gone or for how long and consider the available information rather worthless.