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Turn your 404s into lost children alerts
- codegeek 14y agoAwesome idea and very noble. I wonder however if any users will have objections to this.
- ngokevin 14y agoPerhaps kidnappers.
- mkhalil 14y agoAnd runaways who's parents believe their lost.
- drivingmenuts 14y agoIf it's "for the children" one is not allowed to object or to hold any opinion other than "that's the most excellent idea ever".
- drivingmenuts 14y agoThat was sarcasm, btw. Just in case that point was lost in because this is non-verbal.
- dutchbrit 14y agoReminds me of the default HostGator 404 pages, they had ads and all profits went to charity if not mistaken.
- semenko 14y agoInteresting concept. The actual 404 pages look like: http://notfound-static.fwebservices.be/404/index.html http://notfound-static.fwebservices.be/404/index.html
- anonymouz 14y agoHm, it would help if the placed "Page not found" and the 404-code more prominently. If I came across this on a random website, I think I'd have a hard time realizing that this is supposed to be a 404 error page.
- SirPalmerston 14y agoHere's an example of a live site - http://feber.se/dsf http://feber.se/dsf
- saalweachter 14y agoHuh, that doesn't work for me. I tried both Chrome, Firefox, and Safari on OS X. I don't see any content from notfound.org (ie, their little iframe) in the source of the 404 page at all.
- marshray 14y agoYeah, the page I got was for a guy who was 42 years old. Not exactly the kid on the milk carton.
- graylights 14y agoA 404 should render as a 404 when javascript is turned off. I understand the site itself might require javascript but the 404 should be sacred bare bones.
- sadga 14y agoSeems ridiculous for any website without a very localized userbase.
- alwaysdoit 14y agoYeah, it at least needs IP based localization.
- fletchowns 14y agoNot really, the missing person could turn up pretty much anywhere. Even if it leads to a single success story of somebody being found, I think it would be worth doing.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoWhat if it causes someone in, say, Massachusetts to memorize the face and name of a missing child in, say, California and doing so causes them to forget or concentrate less on some local missing child?
- qq66 14y agoI don't think people have a "missing children" memory buffer like that. I might be wrong though. If anyone has links to articles on human memory segmentation it would probably be interesting.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoProbably not. I'm just saying, the "if only one child is saved!" argument is flawed, and ignores things like opportunity costs.
- vhf 14y agoYou're right, they could turn up anywhere. Problem is, the alerts are shown in Dutch and German on my french-speaking Swiss blog. I don't think my readers, when coming across a 404 while looking for something, will read "Verdwenen op 2-jarige leeftijd" and head straight to google translate to look up what it means.
- seanmccann 14y agoInteresting but provides and awful and confusing user experience. Just 404 and redirect back.
- nathan_long 14y agoWhat happens if the image's URL was mistyped?
- chimeracoder 14y agoI appreciate the noble motives behind this, but programs like the AMBER alert have not proven very effective[1]. Furthermore, abductions by strangers are incredibly rare; most abductions are by people that the child knows well (such as an estranged parent/relative, etc.). These are the cases for which the AMBER alert is most likely to have success, but they're also the cases for which it is the least likely to be necessary (ie, people investigating the case are going to be several steps ahead of a passerby who happens to drive by the billboard). Also, 75% of children who are abducted and murdered are killed within the first three hours, so the shelf life of these alerts is incredibly small. Even smaller for people who are sitting at the computer when they see the alert, not driving on a freeway. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert#Controversy_about_success_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMBER_Alert#Controversy_about_...
- paulhauggis 14y agoIt seems like you are saying that the effort is futile because they won't find them anyway. It doesn't matter of they are "incredibly rare". We are talking about human lives here. If it saves one life, it's worth it.
- zmj 14y agoPlease read this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychology-of-taboo-tradeoff http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=psychology-... > When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular—what psychologist Philip Tetlock refers to as a “taboo tradeoff”—they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange. What’s more, when people receive monetary offers for relinquishing a sacred value, they display a particularly striking irrationality. Not only are people unwilling to compromise sacred values for money—contrary to classic economic theory’s assumption that financial incentives motivate behavior—but the inclusion of money in an offer produces a backfire effect such that people become even less likely to give up their sacred values compared to when an offer does not include money. People consider trading sacred values for money so morally reprehensible that they recoil at such proposals.
- shanselman 14y agoI did this in 2010 and reactions were mixed between "amazing idea" and "this is stupid." http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PutMissingKidsOnYour404PageEntirelyClientSideSolutionWithYQLJQueryAndMSAjax.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PutMissingKidsOnYour404PageEnt...
- thebigshane 14y agoI like your implementation a lot better. It's faster, cleaner, and I (somewhat irrationally) feel better about being able to look across 5 missing faces for a match instead of just one.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoIt's interesting to note that of all of the "missing" kids in your screenshot.. 3 of them were teenage runaways that were found unharmed by people that knew them, and two of them were babies that were killed by their caretakers.
- largehotcoffee 14y agoGood motives, terrible idea.
- jon_kuperman 14y agoWow, things got real quickly. I love the idea but it does seem dark and confusing.
- chrislloyd 14y agoThey certainly arn't shying away from controversy. I got an ad[1] for Madeleine McCann[2]. [1] http://cl.ly/image/1a280E0N3a2I http://cl.ly/image/1a280E0N3a2I [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCa...
- danielweber 14y agoThat first page screams "troll" to me. If not for all the context from this page I would assume it was a mean joke.
- adaml_623 14y agoWell realistically they would be courting extreme controversy if they went on record saying they believed that Madeleine hadn't been abducted.
- zendoo 14y agoThere may be a small % of users hitting the 404 on their smartphones,of which an even miniscule # of users will be in the vicinity. Another alternative is that Foursquare could send a push notification for such alerts,embedded in check-in messages for users in the vicinity.
- jentulman 14y agoI like the concept, but one things that springs to mind is it's a bit ugly and it's not very flexible. I know it needs to stand out, but 'd rather be able to pull the relevant info in from an API and make my own efforts to have it fit in with my own layout and still be obvious.
- rbellio 14y agoI love the philanthropic ideal that this offers but considering how many 404s I see on a daily basis, would probably become depressed by all of the lost children I'd wind up seeing. Your webpage is supposed to be about delivering the content that your audience expects. How many websites do people go to expecting to see lost children?
- anjc 14y agoIs it just me or is there no sample page on the site? I had to go to a participating webpage and find their 404. It's a noble idea, i don't know if 404's are an appropriate place, and i don't know if it'll have any real impact. Noble, though.
- drblast 14y agohttp://notfound.org/lkasjdlkasjdasljk http://notfound.org/lkasjdlkasjdasljk
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- saalweachter 14y agoWere you able to find one? I clicked through to a couple of their "participating websites" (google.com and hilarious.be are listed), generated a 404, and got bupkis. At that point I assumed this was some sort of bizarre joke.
- duskwuff 14y agoTheir list of participating sites is mostly bogus. I think it's generated from their form which prompts users to configure a site -- this would explain the inclusion of some otherwise inexplicable "sites" like http://facebook/ http://facebook/ (yes, no TLD) and http://example.com/ http://example.com/.
- anjc 14y agoLike you did, i just went to random participating ones and tried to get to a random page, e.g. http://www.bonpascher.com/asdfasfsadf http://www.bonpascher.com/asdfasfsadf
- pax 14y agoI can't help but find 'PAGE NOT FOUND, NEITHER IS * *.' construction a bit cynical. It reads a 404 as unfortunate as a missing person.
- fatbat 14y agoSlightly OT but where is the data coming from? Is there a missing child API somewhere?
- bmm6o 14y agoSee related discussion from 3 years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148200 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1148200 And as I said then: I think the intentions behind the idea - trying to do some societal good with your web site - are great. It's just seems odd to me that the way you handle not being able to find what the user wants is by showing them something unrelated that is guaranteed to be not what they were looking for. What is the attraction to doing this on a 404 page, vs say a banner ad (as suggested elsewhere in the thread)?
- pwniekins 14y agoBUT BUT BUT 404 PAGE NOT FOUND IS SORT OF LIEK CHILD NOT FOUND GET IT? huehuehue
- pwniekins 14y agoBUT BUT BUT 404 PAGE NOT FOUND IS SORT OF LIEK CHILD NOT FOUND GET IT? huehuehue
- INTPenis 14y agoI think it's supposed to be unobtrusive. Some sites don't want ads or banners, I don't want them. I honestly do not understand all the criticism this idea is getting here on HN. 404 pages are generally just placeholders or pointers for UA's, they serve no other purpose. Yet they're pimped out more than often for no reason other than fun. If all those pimped out 404 pages instead showed missing children, and if only ONE child was found because of this, it would be worth it. Why the criticism?
- bmm6o 14y agoHow many 404 pages have you seen today? I just looked in my Firefox history, and it appears I didn't see a single 404 page in all of August or September. So first of all, there's the question of whether you would even get any page views. And in general, I think the HN mentality will push back against empty feel-good gestures. If this is an important issue, it deserves to be addressed prominently and in a way that will get results. Will putting a picture of a missing kid on your 404 page get any results? Wouldn't putting a picture of the same kid next to your front door be more effective?
- eranation 14y agoI think it helps more the image of the site owner than the chances of these poor children to be found, (though I don't think it can hurt anything, just don't think it helps much) However hidden GPS tag (in a watch / shoes etc) on my child that only I can use to locate them in the first 3 hours, now that's a solution. Is there anything like this? EDIT: a quick Google search suggests there is, are any of these solutions really work?
- madsravn 14y agoI tried to see if they were doing it themselves. They were. But I don't understand German... 23 years old Liege / Luik Zeer slank. Zwart haar. Donkere ogen. Schoonheidsvlekje op voorhoofd.
- madsravn 14y agoI tried to see if they were doing it themselves. They were. But I don't understand Dutch... 23 years old Liege / Luik Zeer slank. Zwart haar. Donkere ogen. Schoonheidsvlekje op voorhoofd.
- athesyn 14y agoIt's dutch. "23 years old. Liege / Luik Zeer slim build. black hair. dark eyes. beauty mark on the forehead."
- thelicx 14y agoThe 404 page of the website doesn't display any children: http://notfound.org/404.html http://notfound.org/404.html
- zachalexander 14y agoFortunately, they have a template email you can send to them: > Copy this e-mail and send it to a friend, your ceo or your company webmaster. > Dear www.notfound.org, > In the European Union alone, thousands of children are still missing. They run away from conflicts at home, are the victims of parental abductions, disappear after having travelled across the EU alone, or are abducted by criminals. But there is a way you can help, namely by installing the Notfound application. By doing this, automatically, a picture of a missing child will be posted on every 404 page of your website. This is how you can help Child Focus spread a maximum number of photos and help all missing children find their way home. > Discover the application on www.notfound.org.
- thelicx 14y agolol I will send them one :D
- muhuk 14y agoThis one does: http://notfound.org/somepagethatdoesntexist http://notfound.org/somepagethatdoesntexist
- moontear 14y agoActually their real 404 page, e.g. http://notfound.org/something.html http://notfound.org/something.html or http://notfound.org/404 http://notfound.org/404 or http://notfound.org/bla.xml http://notfound.org/bla.xml do display children. What you happened to stumble upon was an existing page called 404.html, which of course is a bit funny.
- lathamcity 14y agoHere's what it looks like, so you don't have to put it on your site to find out (grabbed from the iFrame code they provide): http://notfound-static.fwebservices.be/404/index.html?&key=7c1767b30512b6003fd3c2e618a86522 http://notfound-static.fwebservices.be/404/index.html?&a...
- gadders 14y agoFirst example I tried was for a 31 year old man. Strange definition of "child".
- k4gdw 14y agoPersonally, I would think that every little bit of awareness on the topic would be a good thing. In the context of a 404 message, timeliness wouldn't be quite as important as it would be for the AMBER alerts. I would liken it to the missing child photos on the backs of milk cartons. More effective as a public awareness booster than in actually finding missing children.
- pootch 14y agoThe point of any website is to never have a 404 happen in the first place. In which case, I would feel guilty burying a missing child link in a site that would almost never show a 404 error. Might be good for a big site like facebook though. That being said "milk cartoning" is a little controversial, since it was introduced decades ago the results have been near zero.
- pwniekins 14y agoIt's a shame it's so damned ugly.
- aaron695 14y agoTotal junk. Campaigns like this are what's wrong with this world and the acceptance of them in general is troubling. For the 'players' as a draw card to get customers ($), it might bring in a few I guess since the public is easily fooled by theses sort of self serving campaigns that cause more harm than good. But ethically I couldn't do it. If you 'really' want to help kids donate $40 to a 3rd world charity, save a real life and make you 404 professional instead.
- seivan 14y agoHow sad, In the samepl I refreshed like 20 times and every time it was a female. The child Ruth Breton Ortiz came up twice. Also, the language was in either dutch or danish.
- geargrinder 14y agoLooking beyond the merits of this particular use, this is a great idea for creating valuable backlinks to your site. I wonder what Google thinks of backlinks on 404 pages? I suspect it treats them the same as links from other pages. 404s appear when there is a bad link, and Googlebot follows all links, good and bad, so there is quite a potential here for increasing your backlinks if you can get your code on somebody's site. Wordpress plugin, perhaps? :-)
- azio 14y agoGood idea. It can be improved by showing local results based on the visitor location.
- michelleclsun 14y agoIt is great to see such creative initiative of linking these nuisances in technology to a good cause. Would it be possible to link to the location of the browser for the missing children (or adults) in that area?
- Dystopian 14y agoWhat sites are using notforund.org? 127.0.0.1 :-/
- kentbrew 14y agoI had a similar idea, using missing kids and their names on CAPTCHAs. Won the inaugural Hack for Good award at one of Yahoo's internal hack days in 2007 ... sadly, it never shipped: http://kentbrewster.com/captcha-for-good/ http://kentbrewster.com/captcha-for-good/
- muhuk 14y agoIt says github.com is one of the sites helping. But the 404 page is still showing the jedi octocat. Is the force not strong enough with me?
- dutchbrit 14y agoWould be great of they offered an API
- nnq 14y ago...great, I already imagine starting to use this and then feeling guilty that my sites don't give enough 404s :|
- kentwistle 14y agoNeat idea. I got a Madeleine Mccann missing alert straight away.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- danesparza 14y agoIt looks like there is also a 2 year old github project that does something similar: https://github.com/bluesmoon/404kids https://github.com/bluesmoon/404kids