I had a similar idea, using missing kids and their names on CAPTCHAs. Won the inaugural Hack for Good award at one of Yahoo's internal hack days in 2007 ... sadly, it never shipped:
Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
131–140 of 173 posts
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your parent is not arguing that kidnappings by non-strangers are insignificant; rather, that public service announcements about such kidnapping are unproductive. Whether this is actually the case, I have no idea.
And your parent was providing an example where public service announcements about such kidnappings could have been productive.
A mother quitting her job for five years finding her son randomly is not providing an example about productive public service announcements.
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#133I appreciate the noble motives behind this, but programs like the AMBER alert have not proven very effective[1]. Furthermore, abductions by strangers are incredibly rare; most abductions are by people that the child knows well (such as an estranged parent/relative, etc.). These are the cases for which the AMBER alert is most likely to have success, but they're also the cases for which it is the least likely to be nec…
If even ONE SINGLE CHILD is found and returned back into the loving arms of a parent due to a repurposed 404 page, the initiative is a great success. Don't you think?
No, I don't. This kind of argument is commonly advanced, but it neglects the opportunity cost of over-saturation causing people not to pay attention or care. This is the lesson of the fable about the boy who cried wolf. Noise ends up swamping the signal.
When I notice the 'missing kids' thing on the weekly coupons that show up in my mailbox, as often as not it's some kid that disappeared 10, 15, 25 years ago. That's sad, of course, but as a practical matter it's making things worse.
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#134It says github.com is one of the sites helping. But the 404 page is still showing the jedi octocat. Is the force not strong enough with me?
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#135The 404 page of the website doesn't display any children: http://notfound.org/404.html
This one does: http://notfound.org/somepagethatdoesntexist
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the cost (price) of this solution really so high though?
If you're a parent of a kidnapped child who you lost most hope of finding, what effect would seeing this on each and every 404 have? My guess is "not that great", to say the least. If it's really that much ineffective as some are arguing, I think the costs to our mental health far outweigh the benefits.
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Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? No. "Success" in this case is defined by reuniting a parent with a child. Using monetary conditions to weigh that is immoral IMHO. However, there is no implication that anyone should spend their money in this (or any other) way. Indeed, I don't believe that there is any…
attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible. You're saying that any and all possible attempts at finding / returning a child would have zero costs associated, or that whatever the negative cost is irrelevant and should be disregarded. Imagine the government shifts a massive amount of spending tow…
I'm saying that if your "exaggerated scenario" reunited a child with their parents it would be a success. I'm not arguing that something like that should be done, nor am I arguing that cost effectiveness cannot be considered.
I am saying that given that the prior condition of successfully reuniting a child with their parent then saying it was not successful because it cost too much is putting a price on the child's life. That is morally repugnant in this circumstance.
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#138See related discussion from 3 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148200 And as I said then: I think the intentions behind the idea - trying to do some societal good with your web site - are great. It's just seems odd to me that the way you handle not being able to find what the user wants is by showing them something unrelated that is guaranteed to be not what they were looking for. What is the attractio…
I think it's supposed to be unobtrusive. Some sites don't want ads or banners, I don't want them.
I honestly do not understand all the criticism this idea is getting here on HN. 404 pages are generally just placeholders or pointers for UA's, they serve no other purpose. Yet they're pimped out more than often for no reason other than fun.
If all those pimped out 404 pages instead showed missing children, and if only ONE child was found because of this, it would be worth it. Why the criticism?
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#139Would be great of they offered an API
Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
#140Awesome idea and very noble. I wonder however if any users will have objections to this.
Reminds me of the default HostGator 404 pages, they had ads and all profits went to charity if not mistaken.