On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
I noticed that thread on AN/I and thought perhaps people were being too dismissive. We should follow the lead of the folks who are professional in these areas and not take the decision upon ourselves, i.e. report what we can and allow police/school administrators to decide whether a particular threat is credible. A quick e-mail to school administration that a threat was posted using a school IP/against a particular school takes little time and prevents a news article saying "Wikipedia ignored threat, 27 died."
A random Wikipedian will likely be reasonably smart and capable of contacting people, even if they can't reasonably be expected to be skilled in what to do in such an issue.
But - contacting the police and/or school authorities is a good idea, because they're highly skilled in dealing with such things (one would hope).
(Also, it helps the Foundation if you let them know too - who you are, who you contacted - in case of the precise "who could have helped with this?" scenario you outline.)
- d.