Missing Children Listings Replacing 404 Pages

[T-hug]

What a great idea. We never had the missing kids on milk cartons here like America I guess this is the modern version of that.
Even if it helps to find one kid it will be worth it.

 

[gifi4]

Great idea but, it just looks so unprofessional that I'd look at it and just go, "hmm, annoying adds" and just close it..

 

[ferofax]

The only problem though is... people like me, we don't hit that many 404's. It's very rare that I do.

It's alright. People that rarely hit a 404 tend to rarely go outside anyways, so they probably wouldn't have seen a missing kid anyways. /loljk

On the off-chance that somebody did wander to a 404 and got to scrutinize the listing, what are the chances of them actually knowing enough to be helpful? Looks like a shot in the dark for me. A very noble cause, but a shot in the dark nevertheless.

 

[Rydian]

If this comes to the US I might take part, assuming it's just some script I pop in.

I am still a tiny bit ticked off at various ISPs and DNS providers when they redirect a failed lookup (or sometimes just for fun) to ads or a search page.

This. If the server has an error, I wanna' see it. I don't want an invisible URL-changing redirect.

Really? With it being so accessible and installation being hassle free, I assumed the majority of internet users would be utilizing AD blockers.

Almost a quarter of people online are still using IE, even.

 

[Gahars]

...How didn't we think of this earlier?

This is seriously a great idea, and I would love to see it adopted in more places.

 

[The Catboy]

I really hope to see this spread to more places!

 

[BORTZ]

Kinda weird. But if 404 pages start to incorporate missing children in your area, that would be even more helpful.

 

[DinohScene]

Great initiative.

Hopefully a lot of missing people will turn up.

 

[Satangel]

Very nice indeed. A good invention and it's no wonder the EU invented this. They really put some effort in their people here.

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm not going to make myself very popular, but so be it...

I'm not fond of the idea.

Please lemme explain.


First off, there's the localization problem. There's usually no point in showing Europeans missing American children or vice versa (I'll get to the exceptions). Or even above...say...a 300km radius of the previous home (and that depends on how populated the area is). That means that it's not just that webmasters should just slap some 'missing' pictures on their site...they will have to allow the NotFound project to check the location of the 404-ing person and use that to show a local picture on their website (well, okay, not exactly website, but...you know what I mean). Fun...those surfers who block their location are out of the loop (well...unless they don't mind getting a picture of someone missing on the other end of the globe).

Since it's only really useful on large sites, that means it'll be an extra security/reputation issue. I can already hear wannabe hackers making bets on whether they can get a lolcat picture on a 404-page of a major site. It'll be out of control of the webmaster of that site...but he will get the flak for it nonetheless (been there, done that, didn't like the T-shirt).

Not counting that...just how successful was that whole "photo on milk carbon" thing anyway? My bet: not very. I sometimes see pictures of missing people in the train station, and I can tell you this: I wouldn't recognize the person if he or she was standing directly next to it with a big purple arrow above. The reason: I don't expect to see that guy. Honestly...that beggar I pass on the street could be Bill Gates or Reggie Fils-Aime (when not in fancy suit, obviously), or no matter who. They're out of my field of attention. On my way to work and back, I can wade through entire hordes of people and not see anyone. And I'm not the only one: we all do it. And with good reason: in any urban area, the chances of actually seeing that someone is about as close as winning the lottery.

But...it could still help, right? Sorry...wrong. I bet that from all those missing children, the police gets at least a dozen calls from people who are cocksure they've seen that person...and who are plain wrong. This sort of search creates a lot of work for a lot of people (mainly police and detectives) that results in little to nothing.

And it gets worse. Think about it: why does a child goes missing in the first place? Many reasons. Let's take things from the least to the most likely of them:
* child rapist/murderer/scum. They exist. But even just looking among missing children, these are the least likely cause. But even then: it's not as if you're "just" going to find them by a picture. Gruesome as the details may be, spreading a picture around isn't going to actually help.
* child lost its way home. Sooner or later, he or she will either find back the home, and if nothing else the police.
* the child's running away from home. Okay...and why does the child does this in the first place? Like it or not, but teens WILL revolt against their parents at some point. They'll run off, do some stupid things teen do (to those above 25: we were young too, right?), find out they're not as mature as they thought they were and return home. Hopefully not pregnant in an anti-abortus state.
* abduction by one of the parents. Marriage and splitting up is a wonderful thing, isn't it? You suddenly have to split up everything. And while chainsaws aren't allowed, the real life result sometimes isn't THAT less frightening. I've heard more than one tale where desperate parents had almost no other option but to abduct their own child because the former other half was a bitch or bastard about it.
Even more fun if different countries are involved: the child is glad of the long vacation (erm...at the start, at least) and plain out trusts the abductor. Probably for good reason.

Taken all combined...aside from the murderer option...I really don't want to get involved. I have known a few people who ran away when they were kids, and they're both more mature than the average people I know (probably exactly because of that). I've also known people who lived in...how to say it in English? ...empty houses...dens? Whatever the name...they were BY FAR more free in who they were than the average Joe.

I don't want to sound like an old fart preaching from "1984", but c'mon...have you guys never thought that those people on the pictures could very well be somewhere where they WANTED to be?


That's also the final reason why I disagree on the idea: it makes the world look like an insecure place. It's as if the whole world is somehow "wrong" because a child is not where he or she is supposed to be: constantly supervised by parents and getting worked at school to fit in that model that can withstand the ratrace of a boring routine in a world that holds no secrets.

 

[ProtoKun7]

It is a pretty good idea. I got a page saying: "Page not found, just like how XX has not been found". I'm not sure someone who is 34 years old counts as a child, but whatever.

That page stole my joke.

Kinda weird. But if 404 pages start to incorporate missing children in your area, that would be even more helpful.

Find missing girls in your area!

That...sounds creepier than it's supposed to.

 

[emigre]

Would this include fifteen year old girls who go to France with their maths teacher?

 

[Sicklyboy]

Is this going to be formatted similar to an ad? If so, even fewer people are going to see these missing children. I believe this is a great idea regardless.

It's not formatted like an ad (or any known one, at least) so AdBlock Plus doesn't block it (yet, at least). However, it's an embedded frame from their website, so since it's an external resource, things like NoScript do block it initially.

If this comes to the US I might take part, assuming it's just some script I pop in.
[...]

You have two options on their site, you either download their 404.html page and a .htaccess with the ErrorDirectory line changed (just replace the current one in your .htaccess), or an embeddable iframe to put into any page. I chose the latter.

[snip]

I'm only going to comment on the localization part - the idea, the way I see it at least, is that regardless of the websites location (mine for example is USA owned, ran, and hosted, all by me) people from around the entire world can see it. The missing child has their bio printed in he major language from their country/area of origin, and it covers (to my understanding) all of Europe. I've seen pages in German and English so far.

If one was to be made to cover the USA or North America, I would change my 404 from the discussed one to that, because that's more "at home" for me. I agree, the chance of this actually helping someone be found are very, very slim. If it can help though, I see absolutely no problem with it. If it doesn't ever help, well, shit, I lost maybe 5 minutes of my time creating a new page and telling Drupal to change the 404 redirect to that.

 

[Issac]

I got a "missing child" on that 404 page.. The date underneath the picture? what is that? Date of Birth, or date of dissaperance? Because this "child" was born 1988 in that case, and then it said he was 42 years old. (damn, didn't know I was 43).
OR, has he been missing for 24 years?

 

[Janthran]

The only website where 404s are noticed commonly is 4chan, and I really don't think it's a good idea to post missing children on there.

 

[Skelletonike]

I've noticed that there's something wrong with the ages, their birthdays and ages don't match, like, there's this girl that's the same age (since her birthday is 1991), but her displayed age is 29... Something's pretty weird with it, maybe they put the server a few years up in time?

 

[Fishaman P]

Error 404: Child not found

 

[pasc]

nice idea. 404s are wasted anyways, what better idea than use it for this ?

 

[Hyro-Sama]

The Error 404 jokes about missing children aren't funny at all. Grow up.

 

[Walker D]

Turning a dead end page intro a helping hand

smart move Europe