[WikiEN-l] London calling, etc.

[George Herbert]

On 10/2/07, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/10/2007, Avi <avi.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: RIPEMD160
> >
> > Agreed. I cannot access IRC from behind my corporate firewall in
> > the US, and the London Metro police does not allow urgent crime
> > reports to be sent via e-mail, so the next best thing was to hit
> > this list, which, based on the near-constant drama feeds (As the
> > Wiki turns, the Young and the Adminless, General Arbcom, etc. 8-
> > ) ) demonstrates that it's monitored rather well.
>
>
> 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.
>
> I understand that it may have generated more "drama" than
> > necessary, but, even if one person is reached in time over the
> > next 50 years and 6000 hoaxes, it will still be worth it.
>
>
> I fundamentally disagree that this list should be misused for real-time
> actions such as this.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> - --Avi
> >
>
> --
> -Ian Woollard
>
> We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. If we lived in a perfectly
> imperfect world things would be a lot better.
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About six months ago, I was dealing with a similar incident with a kid
in Chicago.

I spent two hours trying to get Chicago PD to take an out of town
emergency report; They normally only take local "911" emergency calls.
 A city dispatch center operator couldn't figure out anyone who would
accept the report there.  They finally told me to give it to my local
PD who would send Chicago PD a notification electronically.  I think
Danny at the Foundation office also got it in that way ahead of me.

"Call the police directly" is fine, if that works, if that's possible.
 Apparently it is not always possible.

Asking here or elsewhere on foundation or project lists or wiki or IRC
for help in such a real life possible emergency is entirely
appropriate, and we should not discourage anyone from doing so.

The rate of events like this is low, and even if it weren't, it's important.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com