[WikiEN-l] London calling, etc.

[Thomas Dalton]

> No, the next best thing would probably have been to ring the police direct
> and point them to the information in the wikipedia, rather than spamming it
> across a list in the *hope* that somebody was in a position to action it.

Phoning a non-local police force (esp. a foreign one) isn't that easy.
I've just spent 5 minutes looking, and couldn't find any way of
contacting the london police in an emergency other than "dial 999". I
guess one could contact their local police and get them to contact the
relevant force, but I'm not sure how well that would work.

> If nothing else, email is subject to various kinds of failures and delays,
> and this isn't something you would want to risk it on.

No means of communication is perfect. What is the alternative?

> As a matter of experience and principle, historically it always seems to be
> a bad idea to encourage things that are off-topic to be included on a list,
> no matter how well meaning it might seen. I have never seen it end well, and
> this one didn't either; no matter how glad we are that everyone is OK, we
> still got punked.

How is someone posting a suicide note to the English Wikipedia
off-topic for a mailing list for discussion about the English
Wikipedia?