if you ever look for somebody who's lost

[piranha]

especially during a major disaster such as hurricane katrina, please, do not leave a message such as these ones online: "mike, please call or text me. michelle. luv ya!", or "big cuz ruby, be lookin for U! maw-maw iz worried sick. call us!"

it's pretty interesting, entering data for peoplefinder. my heart goes out to all those people, but i want to shake a lot of them, and tell them that nobody is gonna be able to help them find their loved ones if they give such bad information. chances that the missing person zirself is gonna find that one message on that specific message board are extremely small, and messages like the above don't make it into any central database. nobody can search on them; do you have any idea how many rubys and mikes there are?

i doubt my flist needs instructions, but in case somebody googles this, you should include the following information:

• the full name of the person, including any nicknames under which zie might be known.
  
• zir sex.
  
• zir age.
  
• a short physical description, a link to a photo if you have one.
  
• zir address, at the very least the city and state. the neighbourhood or the street name, if the person's name is common.
  
• whom zie worked for (zie might have been at work when the disaster struck).
  
• other people who might be with zir. but remember, families can get separated during disasters; create a record for each person for whom you're looking.
  
• any information about when and where zie was last seen.
  
• your own name, your home phone / cell phone / pager (with area codes), your email address.

all this data will end up in at least one database; the more precise information you give that is useful for distinguishing your missing person from the many others, the better. hugs and kisses for the missing person are great; just make sure you leave pertinent information first. proofread the information, especially names and phone numbers. proofread them twice. oh, and? don't use ALL CAPS -- it's hard to read.

Comments

Peoplefinder

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I hear you - I remember the tons of false positives when I was helping search survivor records after 9/11. I am going to try to do some data entry on Peoplefinder in my lunch break.

[leiacat.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the ones I did had last names, at least.

My mantra to myself as I data-entered, to convince myself to be patient with people whose informativeness wasn't minimal and spelling was questionable, was "Maybe they have not used computers much. Any information is better than no information."

Can't help but wonder in what circumstances these entries were created, and what the stories behind them are.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

One that really got me from yesterday, almost verbatim: "My mom called from the nursing home, she said the water was rising, I haven't heard from her since Tuesday. Can someone see if she's all right?"

Notice lack of: identification of poster, mother's name, mother's location, address of nursing home, city of nursing home, contact information for poster...

[1ginko.livejournal.com]

I kept envisioning a line of people waiting for their chance to enter something. Some of the entries ran together, some just did not make sense at all. I did managed at least a last name and a phone contact on all the ones I did. It is just heartbreaking to read the entries and think of the lives involved.