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Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

notfound.org

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Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#161

Post by codeodor »

davedx wrote: post #143
chimeracoder wrote: post #13

I 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…

Billboard?? Over here (in the Netherlands), we have a text message / radio broadcast / digital road sign alert that's put out within hours of the child being reported stolen. > Also, 75% of children who are abducted and murdered are killed within the first three hours This is exactly why it's a very fast, responsive system (here).

The parent post mentions "billboard" but it is a digital road sign (at least the ones I've seen). It's on a pole higher up so people can see it easily, similar to how many billboards are done.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#162

Post by SatvikBeri »

thalecress wrote: post #121
jcampbell1 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have completely botched this example. This example is useful to explain why airbags increase collisions . Putting a spear in cars would not make cars safer.

I don't understand your objection. Do you see a meaningful distinction between "cars are safer" and "cars are driven more safely"?

There is a major difference. The number of traffic accidents did not change significantly from 1990 to 2009, but the number of deaths from traffic accidents dropped 23%[1]. This is most likely due to cars being built in a way so that their passengers are more likely to survive accidents.

[1]: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1103.p...

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#165

Post by brh_jr »

sliverstorm wrote: post #41
paulhauggis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you are saying that the effort is futile because they won't find them anyway. It doesn't matter of they are "incredibly rare". We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it.

We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it. Ah, one of my favorite arguments. The good 'ol, "there is no price which is too high to save a life (period, full-stop)". Do you actually believe that? Really? Or am I just reading you wrong here?

It would be of massive costs to change your 404, so those missing kids could suck it.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#166

Post by bmm6o »

INTPenis wrote: post #138
bmm6o wrote: post #66

See 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 O…

How many 404 pages have you seen today? I just looked in my Firefox history, and it appears I didn't see a single 404 page in all of August or September. So first of all, there's the question of whether you would even get any page views.

And in general, I think the HN mentality will push back against empty feel-good gestures. If this is an important issue, it deserves to be addressed prominently and in a way that will get results. Will putting a picture of a missing kid on your 404 page get any results? Wouldn't putting a picture of the same kid next to your front door be more effective?

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#167

Post by watty »

anigbrowl wrote: post #133
autophil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you claiming that over saturation is worse than zero saturation?

To be honest, I can't remember the last "missing child" face I saw. If I visited Reddit today and saw a face of a kid in my state that was missing, I'd be more likely to pick them out. This program isn't getting forced by anyone but claiming it would do worse than "no good" is ignorant.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#168

Post by mnicole »

trotsky wrote: post #159
mnicole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this makes me a terrible person or someone with a bad photographic memory, but I literally cannot recall any missing person's face that I've seen on a billboard, a website, a milk carton, etc. even if I saw them daily. Worse, the more sites that adopt this concept, the less likely I am to remember those faces and - out of how plain awful and sad it is it is - the less likely I am to even want to spend time look…

To clarify: The idea isn't that you'll remember a picture, but rather that you might recognize a child you already know.

I just think it is a slippery slope where the ratio of false leads to legitimate tips weighs too heavily on the former for this to be practical and not threatening to real families when someone wants to play the hero. I'd be interested in seeing statistics about the percentage of abductees that are allowed to be seen in public without any sort of cosmetic alterations or other such obscurations, particularly in the first few months/years. Perhaps their captors are more lazy about that than I'd assume.

Re: Turn your 404s into lost children alerts

#169

Post by anjc »

saalweachter wrote: post #72
anjc wrote: post #46

Is it just me or is there no sample page on the site? I had to go to a participating webpage and find their 404. It's a noble idea, i don't know if 404's are an appropriate place, and i don't know if it'll have any real impact. Noble, though.

Were you able to find one? I clicked through to a couple of their "participating websites" (google.com and hilarious.be are listed), generated a 404, and got bupkis. At that point I assumed this was some sort of bizarre joke.

Like you did, i just went to random participating ones and tried to get to a random page, e.g.

http://www.bonpascher.com/asdfasfsadf

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