If even ONE SINGLE CHILD is found and returned back into the loving arms of a parent due to a repurposed 404 page, the initiative is a great success.
Don't you think?
Don't you think?
Want more initiative? Hey, let's stick missing kid stickers on the rear window of cars. Or what if every Friday, instead of going out for lunch, everyone in the country donates 5 or 10 dollars to save starving kids. Or what if grocery stores had a basket next to each checkout, and you buy extra food while shopping, then place it in there to be donated? These ideas are a dime a dozen, and this 404 concept is one of the worst I've seen.
In short, everyone needs to draw the line somewhere. If someone isn't interested in changing their 404 pages, don't send the guilt trip party, because there are a million ways you could be doing more in your life. Everyone chooses to help to a different degree.
When I notice the 'missing kids' thing on the weekly coupons that show up in my mailbox, as often as not it's some kid that disappeared 10, 15, 25 years ago. That's sad, of course, but as a practical matter it's making things worse.
To be honest, I can't remember the last "missing child" face I saw. If I visited Reddit today and saw a face of a kid in my state that was missing, I'd be more likely to pick them out. This program isn't getting forced by anyone but claiming it would do worse than "no good" is ignorant.
To be honest, I can't remember the last "missing child" face I saw.
That may be because you have subconsciously stopped looking.
Let me put it this way: Let's say it take 500 hours to find a child without someone calling in and 5 hours to investigate a claim.
If the website method has a success rate of 1% or less the time needed to investigate the claims outweighs the time it would take to find the child without the 404 pages at all.
I don't have any numbers for this but surely that is one scenario where this could cause more harm than good.
Um, obviously. The point is that the cost is just about nothing, especially if your current 404 is an apache default or a joke page. Nobody is suggesting some type of moral obligation, but if a repurposed 404 does bring a missing child home, the cost was clearly worth it.
including potentially more effective ways of rescuing kidnapped children, could be done instead.
It's a goddamn 404 page; it's use does not preclude any other methods of recovering kidnap victims.
No, that is incorrect.
The program would be regarded as successful if it rescued one child at any cost.
It is possible that there are more effective ways, but the existence of those possibilities does not preclude a less effective way of being successful.
Additionally, it seems unlikely that any other "more effective" way would be precluded by this method so it is inaccurate to measure the effectiveness of this method vs other methods ("could be done instead") - it would almost certainly be done in addition to other things.
Finally, on a personal note I believe attempting to argue that returning a kidnapped child to their parents may NOT be regarded as a success because of the "cost of the initiative" is morally indefensible.
But surely this isn't the case or each of us would personally have to dedicate all of our own time and money to finding every missing child, correct? Why aren't you using your salary to run ads on Facebook with the faces of missing children? It might work...
No.
"Success" in this case is defined by reuniting a parent with a child. Using monetary conditions to weigh that is immoral IMHO.
However, there is no implication that anyone should spend their money in this (or any other) way. Indeed, I don't believe that there is any moral imperative to implement this on their website. That is a personal decision and is best left to the person making it.
You're saying that any and all possible attempts at finding / returning a child would have zero costs associated, or that whatever the negative cost is irrelevant and should be disregarded. Imagine the government shifts a massive amount of spending towards finding missing children, and suspends the 4th amendment, hires a massive army of investigators and searches door to door to find missing children. Of course this is an exaggerated scenario but it's at least arguable that the negative costs associated with this plan could outweigh the benefits, and that this would be morally undesirable. I don't think there is ever a scenario where costs can be completely ignored / discounted to obtain any amount of beneficial outcome. If you agree with my point in the extreme case, but not in the original scenario, then the disagreement is one of degree not principle. i.e. "well it depends on the costs.." Exactly.
I am saying that given that the prior condition of successfully reuniting a child with their parent then saying it was not successful because it cost too much is putting a price on the child's life. That is morally repugnant in this circumstance.
Success Definition One: Success occurs when the child is returned. This is a binary outcome and you're right to say that if the child is returned then it simply is a success under this definition and nothing can change that.
Success Definition Two: The scheme works and is practical. This is a qualitative outcome which does require comparing apples to oranges (or as you emotively put it; "putting a price on a child's life"). If Bill Gates offered 12 billion dollars for the return of a child, no questions asked, no law enforcement involved, it might work very well indeed, but cannot be called a success under this definition.
With regard to the 'prior condition', I would still argue that if the scenario under Two above occurred, and worked, I would still call it a failure under definition two and a success under definition one.
And honestly, definition two is the more interesting one to try to produce a solution for.
Agree.
Better than nothing? Ok, yes. Better than a company giving people an opportunity to monetize their 404 traffic (people do this obviously) and then taking those earnings (even if nominal) and putting it toward a cause to help children (or anything "worthy") even better.