On 02/10/2007, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
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".
Given the spectacular size of the Wikipedia project, we can be assured that people of all kinds will join us and this situation will inevitably happen again. As a consequence, we should have a mechanism in place to deal with it. However, as Durova writes,
These situations are beyond Wikipedia's scope, period. Hand them over to the professionals who have training and experience and access to social services.
Exactly. The absolute limit of our involvement should be to pass such a situation on to the relevant persons, which may often be a local police force. So the chain looks like this:
User -> Wikipedia -> [mechanism] -> local professionals.
This mailing list has demonstrated a wide geographical distribution and a low response time, faster even on occasion than the IRC channel (and more reliable in terms of reach). However, as a publically-archived resource[1], it may not be suitable for responding to difficult personal incidents. I'd like to suggest therefore that we set up a private "alerts" mailing list, with the following rules:
1) Membership by application to list moderators. 2) No rubbernecking. Those who subscribe are volunteering to actively monitor the list and, in reported cases, attempt to contact local authorities. 3) No discussion, /except/ in response to a reported incident, /specifically/ for the purpose of locating appropriate help. 4) No Samaritans. List users /must not/ attempt to personally help those reported in incidents.
There should be a private list of volunteers' locations and contact numbers.
I know this seems like a lot of work, but the list would be virtually invisible 99% of the time, but it will prove its worth in the 1% when it happens again (and it will; this is the second suicide note I've seen on Wikipedia in the last year).
Thoughts, flames?
[1] Blocking search engines from the official list archive has evidently not prevented someone from subscribing it to a third-party archiving service, so bear that in mind if you're discussing sensitive topics: http://www.nabble.com/English-Wikipedia-f14021.html