7 ms·

Technorati's Tracy Williams is alive and safe in a local hospital

184 points by wijnglas 15y ago

stevenp 15y ago
Thank God. I'm not used to stories like this having this kind of ending, so this is a welcome sigh of relief. Seeing how her friends and coworkers cared enough to start a massive online campaign to help find her reminded me of the importance of making connections and having people in my life who are looking out for me.
- cpt1138 15y ago
  God had nothing to do with it. Pretty sure of that
Hilyin 15y ago
So what happened?
- Natsu 15y ago
  It's probably better not to ask...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dsr_ 15y ago
  While lots of us are nosy enough to want to know, the answer is that it isn't any of our business. If she wants to say, she will... presumably after she gets out of the hospital.
  - samstave 15y ago
    OMG EVERYBODY HALP!!! MY FRIEND IS MISSING. [everybody attempts to help] OMG EVERYBODY THAN KYOU SO MUCH MY FRIEND IS SAFE!!! [everybody: YAY! Gald to hear it - what happened!] NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS YOU NOSY JERKS! ---- Yeah screw that. People will feel less inclined to assist - because they feel that they are an excluded outsider. If you are not told the outcome/reason for the situation in the first place - you are then further removed from the person/situation in question. Thus, you will have less emotional tie with the situation. Without any emotional tie - you will not help situations like this in the future. The call for help is highly emotional "Our friend, and trusted colleague, who is a great and nice person is missing" -- you feel compassion here, as you would hate togo missing yourself - and you know how great you are as a person. So, you'll assist in this case through empathy. Take that empathy away, and it gets worse for everyone.
    - dsr_ 15y ago
      First, I don't work for Technorati. I didn't call for help but I'm glad the community responded. Second, I have enough empathy and imagination to think about how she might be feeling... and in none of the circumstances I can imagine does anyone owe you, random community member, anything more than the exact "Thank you! She's safe!" you mentioned above. I can get my empathy fix just fine from that.
      - samstave 15y ago
        My point was that this only will work for so long... you make calls to the community for help, people provide that help based on their empathy. If you take away any and all emotional payment for what you receive - people will be desensitized to such requests and will not respond. Classic "boy who called wolf" syndrome
    - mattdeboard 15y ago
      When someone asks for help, you either give it, or you don't. Your aid ought not be contingent on what you get out of it.
      - ars 15y ago
        It shouldn't be. But it is. People want to get "paid" in information.
        scott_s 15y ago
        Yes. And empathetic yet rational beings can then remind themselves that they have no right and no need to have the information, and can quietly let it pass.
        ars 15y ago
        Of course. But they still want it. A nice person would ask, but not press the point. A rare person would not even ask. And some will demand to know.
- akeck 15y ago
  If you are on HN and work at or with said hospital, stay off these threads. Even an inadvertent indirect information slip could be enough to get you fired under HIPAA and other similar statues.
dusing 15y ago
Thats great to hear. A little surprised it took 3 days to find her in a hospital. Hope she is okay.
- leftnode 15y ago
  She may have only just checked in recently.
  - codezero 15y ago
    I wondered myself why it would take so long to find someone in a hospital -- that she checked herself in recently makes a lot of sense.
- CamperBob 15y ago
  Not too surprising, really. Due to privacy laws, asking for information about a hospital patient these days is like asking the NRO for the source code to the latest spy satellite.
blahedo 15y ago
I don't really want to intrude on her life to ask just what happened---it's not any of my business---but I would like to know if, whatever did happen, the technorati/HN/FB/etc publicity helped find/save/help her.
AlexMuir 15y ago
I haven't been able to read this status update (it keeps timing out for some reason), so I'm just going off the title here. * The downside of these hugely public, and permanent, appeals for information on someone is that everyone will want to know every detail of what happened, will discuss it, and dissect it publicly. Imagine a situation where someone in our technology community quietly embarks on a suicide plan, as many people do every day. Once the word has gone out and a public search starts, there is an enormous pressure to go through with it successfully. Knowing that you're going to step back into a shitstorm of thousands of people asking what's happened. Which is going to encircle your name for a long time, if not forever. I'm not saying there's anything to learn from this - it's just something to consider. I am in no way questioning the judgement of friends raising the alarm. It's just that strangers will feel, rightly or wrongly, that having read, and perhaps spread, an appeal that they are entitled to know the details of the outcome. * I have absolutely no idea what's happened in this case.
- mirkules 15y ago
  The headline says it all. Both the Facebook page and the website offer no additional information. I'm glad she's safe.
- dhimes 15y ago
  You are right. I do find myself wondering, even though it's none of my business, and suspecting the "worst" about a woman I don't know. Hopefully, she just went on a bender, had a absolute blast, but it got a little out of control- perhaps resulting in dehydration or something else without too much social stigma.
  - lylejohnson 15y ago
    > Hopefully, she just went on a bender, had a absolute blast, but it got a little out of control- perhaps resulting in dehydration or something else without too much social stigma. As long as we're using the absence of details as a springboard for wild speculation, we should also consider the possibility that she was kidnapped by a pack of wild monkeys.
byoung2 15y ago
From the Facebook comments: Timothy Joseph: Thank God! I'm so happy to hear this! What a great company to have done this. I wonder if my employer would have done this for me. That is an interesting question. If someone where I work (ClearChannel, owner of over 850 radio stations, and dozens of high-profile websites like RushLimbaugh.com and GlennBeck.com) went missing, I wonder what company resources would/could be used to aid in a search effort.
feralchimp 15y ago
So glad to hear this news.
jheriko 15y ago
Its a nice story - when people don't show up for work I think the usual attitude of the employer is to do nothing but blame the employee and penalise them to the maximum extent possible. This is less true in the privileged roles most web people have - but lets say you are 90% of the population who work in manufacturing, service industries etc... Just saying.
solokumba 15y ago
All this banter reminds me of... .../missy.html glad she's safe
cldwalker 15y ago
Not all missing people stories have a happy ending. I have a relative who's been missing since Sept. 16, last seen in Riddle, Oregon. More info at http://findmark.org http://findmark.org. We recently realized that he had his iPad with him. If you have any ideas on how we could use it to find him, I'm all ears.
- eknuth 15y ago
  Sorry to hear that he is still missing. :(
- michaelschade 15y ago
  I assume you've already checked this, but just in case you haven't: is Find My iPad setup? If so, and if you can get access to his Apple account, then you can track it that way.
MichaelApproved 15y ago
Have any of these all points bulletins for a missing person ever worked? I'm not trying to be a smart ass, just curious if this method has been affective in the past.
- nobody3141592 15y ago
  The official ones seem pretty ineffective. A child went missing 300miles from here a month ago, the freeway signs were all announcing an amber alert. But the first thing the police in the next state - less than 10miles from his home - knew about it was when it reached the national news, apparently only federal crimes require contacting neighboring forces.

184 points by wijnglas 15y ago

Thank God. I'm not used to stories like this having this kind of ending, so this is a welcome sigh of relief. Seeing how her friends and coworkers cared enough to start a massive online campaign to help find her reminded me of the importance of making connections and having people in my life who are looking out for me.

cpt1138 15y ago
God had nothing to do with it. Pretty sure of that

Hilyin 15y ago

So what happened?

Natsu 15y ago
It's probably better not to ask...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dsr_ 15y ago
While lots of us are nosy enough to want to know, the answer is that it isn't any of our business. If she wants to say, she will... presumably after she gets out of the hospital.
- samstave 15y ago
  OMG EVERYBODY HALP!!! MY FRIEND IS MISSING. [everybody attempts to help] OMG EVERYBODY THAN KYOU SO MUCH MY FRIEND IS SAFE!!! [everybody: YAY! Gald to hear it - what happened!] NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS YOU NOSY JERKS! ---- Yeah screw that. People will feel less inclined to assist - because they feel that they are an excluded outsider. If you are not told the outcome/reason for the situation in the first place - you are then further removed from the person/situation in question. Thus, you will have less emotional tie with the situation. Without any emotional tie - you will not help situations like this in the future. The call for help is highly emotional "Our friend, and trusted colleague, who is a great and nice person is missing" -- you feel compassion here, as you would hate togo missing yourself - and you know how great you are as a person. So, you'll assist in this case through empathy. Take that empathy away, and it gets worse for everyone.
  - dsr_ 15y ago
    First, I don't work for Technorati. I didn't call for help but I'm glad the community responded. Second, I have enough empathy and imagination to think about how she might be feeling... and in none of the circumstances I can imagine does anyone owe you, random community member, anything more than the exact "Thank you! She's safe!" you mentioned above. I can get my empathy fix just fine from that.
    - samstave 15y ago
      My point was that this only will work for so long... you make calls to the community for help, people provide that help based on their empathy. If you take away any and all emotional payment for what you receive - people will be desensitized to such requests and will not respond. Classic "boy who called wolf" syndrome
  - mattdeboard 15y ago
    When someone asks for help, you either give it, or you don't. Your aid ought not be contingent on what you get out of it.
    - ars 15y ago
      It shouldn't be. But it is. People want to get "paid" in information.
      - scott_s 15y ago
        Yes. And empathetic yet rational beings can then remind themselves that they have no right and no need to have the information, and can quietly let it pass.
        ars 15y ago
        Of course. But they still want it. A nice person would ask, but not press the point. A rare person would not even ask. And some will demand to know.
akeck 15y ago
If you are on HN and work at or with said hospital, stay off these threads. Even an inadvertent indirect information slip could be enough to get you fired under HIPAA and other similar statues.

dusing 15y ago

Thats great to hear. A little surprised it took 3 days to find her in a hospital. Hope she is okay.

leftnode 15y ago
She may have only just checked in recently.
- codezero 15y ago
  I wondered myself why it would take so long to find someone in a hospital -- that she checked herself in recently makes a lot of sense.
CamperBob 15y ago
Not too surprising, really. Due to privacy laws, asking for information about a hospital patient these days is like asking the NRO for the source code to the latest spy satellite.

blahedo 15y ago

I don't really want to intrude on her life to ask just what happened---it's not any of my business---but I would like to know if, whatever did happen, the technorati/HN/FB/etc publicity helped find/save/help her.

AlexMuir 15y ago

I haven't been able to read this status update (it keeps timing out for some reason), so I'm just going off the title here. * The downside of these hugely public, and permanent, appeals for information on someone is that everyone will want to know every detail of what happened, will discuss it, and dissect it publicly. Imagine a situation where someone in our technology community quietly embarks on a suicide plan, as many people do every day. Once the word has gone out and a public search starts, there is an enormous pressure to go through with it successfully. Knowing that you're going to step back into a shitstorm of thousands of people asking what's happened. Which is going to encircle your name for a long time, if not forever. I'm not saying there's anything to learn from this - it's just something to consider. I am in no way questioning the judgement of friends raising the alarm. It's just that strangers will feel, rightly or wrongly, that having read, and perhaps spread, an appeal that they are entitled to know the details of the outcome. * I have absolutely no idea what's happened in this case.

mirkules 15y ago
The headline says it all. Both the Facebook page and the website offer no additional information. I'm glad she's safe.
dhimes 15y ago
You are right. I do find myself wondering, even though it's none of my business, and suspecting the "worst" about a woman I don't know. Hopefully, she just went on a bender, had a absolute blast, but it got a little out of control- perhaps resulting in dehydration or something else without too much social stigma.
- lylejohnson 15y ago
  > Hopefully, she just went on a bender, had a absolute blast, but it got a little out of control- perhaps resulting in dehydration or something else without too much social stigma. As long as we're using the absence of details as a springboard for wild speculation, we should also consider the possibility that she was kidnapped by a pack of wild monkeys.

byoung2 15y ago

From the Facebook comments: Timothy Joseph: Thank God! I'm so happy to hear this! What a great company to have done this. I wonder if my employer would have done this for me. That is an interesting question. If someone where I work (ClearChannel, owner of over 850 radio stations, and dozens of high-profile websites like RushLimbaugh.com and GlennBeck.com) went missing, I wonder what company resources would/could be used to aid in a search effort.

feralchimp 15y ago

So glad to hear this news.

jheriko 15y ago

Its a nice story - when people don't show up for work I think the usual attitude of the employer is to do nothing but blame the employee and penalise them to the maximum extent possible. This is less true in the privileged roles most web people have - but lets say you are 90% of the population who work in manufacturing, service industries etc... Just saying.

solokumba 15y ago

All this banter reminds me of... .../missy.html glad she's safe

cldwalker 15y ago

Not all missing people stories have a happy ending. I have a relative who's been missing since Sept. 16, last seen in Riddle, Oregon. More info at http://findmark.org http://findmark.org. We recently realized that he had his iPad with him. If you have any ideas on how we could use it to find him, I'm all ears.

eknuth 15y ago
Sorry to hear that he is still missing. :(
michaelschade 15y ago
I assume you've already checked this, but just in case you haven't: is Find My iPad setup? If so, and if you can get access to his Apple account, then you can track it that way.

MichaelApproved 15y ago

Have any of these all points bulletins for a missing person ever worked? I'm not trying to be a smart ass, just curious if this method has been affective in the past.

nobody3141592 15y ago
The official ones seem pretty ineffective. A child went missing 300miles from here a month ago, the freeway signs were all announcing an amber alert. But the first thing the police in the next state - less than 10miles from his home - knew about it was when it reached the national news, apparently only federal crimes require contacting neighboring forces.