On 10/2/07, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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.
Let's say I was the one who found the note. I personally have no idea
how to phone the London police for an urgent matter from Kansas, USA.
By the time I Googled some sort of instructions on how to do so, a
timely e-mail to the list could already have prompted someone else to
do so and the police would have already been on their way.
The odds of an e-mail failure or delay which would have prevented my
plea for assistance from being disseminated are quite small; similar
in fact to the odds of me locating appropriate instructions including
a number one can dial from overseas, working my way through the
bureaucracy of an unfamiliar governmental organization to the
appropriate party to help me, and convincing them of the urgency of
the matter, all in a timely fashion.
The important part was that the person who sent the request for
assistance did so at all, rather than allowing the matter to go
unreported under the assumption it was a hoax.
--Darkwind