[EAS] EAS and WEA usage during the protests/riots/civil unrest

[Dave Kline]

IMHO, you struck upon two of the biggest problems with alerting.
1. Poorly trained alert originators.
2. Difficulty in decoding alerts to spoken language.

Both result in an increased tune-out factor. You either tune out the current one that is in progress, or the next one because you've shut off WEA alerts, or changed the station on the receiver.
If they can't get these two right, we may be better off without any of it.

I don't know what can be done about how alerts are decoded to speech, except to don't do it until we can do it right.
It's come a long way since the days of "Perfect Paul" but it doesn't seem to quite be there yet. At least not across multiple platforms.

Training for alert originators is largely influenced by the "give a rats butt" factor.
We don't seem to give training much thought until we have to use the system.
Being concerned about alert training at the time an alert needs to be issued, or worse after, is something akin to having the cart and the horse, but not knowing the prescribed order involved. Should I close the barn door now?
Everyone wants to be able to do alerts, but few seem willing to put in even a minimal effort to do it in an effective manner and for the right reason.

Except to get you to tune somewhere else to find out what's really going on (assuming the person cares) a broken alert is worse than no alert at all. The whole point of alerting should be to provide a shout out to let the population of a specific area know that something is happening, or just about to happen, that might mess up your day. And if it can't tell you, in just a few words what you need to do, it should tell you to tune in somewhere else that can.
We seem to be obsessed with our list of the types of alerts we can issue. But we also seem to have lost track of the idea that an alert should be an attention grabber, sent for the right reason. Not just more noise in your ear whenever we want, just because we can.

Is it that we are relying too much on the software and not enough on common sense with a little training? IDK.
When software does everything, will there even be much point in alerting the wetware?

On Mon, Jul 6, 2020 at 1:18 PM Dave Turnmire <EASsbeList at cableone.net> wrote:
>On 6/10/2020 7:25 AM, Dave Kline wrote:
>> All of this has now lead me to conclude that the alert I saw on Saturday afternoon, had actually come in on Friday evening,

>Don't WEA alerts have an event duration or expiration time such as EAS
>does?  I ran into an experience recently when traveling to another area
>of our state.  I received MULTIPLE Amber alert messages... but they had
>been sent WEEKS before!  I understand how one can get alerts when
>driving into an area that alerts were targeted for, or after turning on
>a phone that had been off.  But when one gets alerts that are irrelevant
>to ANYONE... because the event involved is in the distant past...
>something seems off.

>Is this a case of an originator failing to specify the duration? Which
>in my mind, would also imply poor software design if they were allowed
>to do that?  Or is it a case of a problem with the cell service or the
>phone itself?

>Also, my phone was attempting to read the text to me... but having
>trouble because the text clearly wasn't written with TTS in mind. Some
>of the abbreviations weren't even readily understood by humans.  I
>realize that a 90 character limit (at least on many phones), poses
>challenges, but an unrecognizable alert doesn't help anyone...

>Dave

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Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
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