Talk:Missing person

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[edit] Remove line

unless anybody has evidence that the vast majority of missing persons are female, I'm going to remove that line - it doesn't seem to be true in my own experience, plus if you want to be politically incorrect and stereotypical, for every woman missing due to domestic violence, there's a man missing due to a drug deal gone wrong.


  • there are statistics of missing persons generated monthly and they DO show many more females missing. Your own experience is not factual. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.190.252 (talk) 04:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] American statistics

The article claims that over a million people are reported missing each year. I assume this means a million on the US. This should be made clear, one way or the other.

[edit] Photo

Rather than having a photo of a missing statue in this article, why not post a photo of a real missing person? Maybe it might help lead to that person being found. - Brian Kendig 16:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I've removed that image. It doesn't really serve any need or add any value to the article other than an attempt at a joke. -- Longhair 16:52, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Porchlight weblinks

I removed most of the recently added "Porchlight X" links (one for each continent, major countries, etc), as the forums they linked to were all related and apparently relatievly new (spring 2006). If someone wants to excise the remaining entry or make a case for further inclusion, that'd be okay too. -- nae'blis 19:16, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I am the owner of the porchlight message boards and websites. I am not sure who added them here, but I am really disappointed to see them removed. Although Porchlight itself is relatively young, I have been involved in the missing persons cause for over 27 years. Porchlight has over 80 thousand posts on the main board alone. We are quite real. Please reconsider this decision. It was very disconcerting to find we had been blacklisted.

[edit] Disappearance by paranormal phenomena

There are some reports of people that disappeared by paranormal phenomena, which are not similiar like UFOs. In some cases it is reported that the person was just away in others the sighting of mysterious clouds moving on the ground, which captured the person are reported. Which cases are known? Which of them are best proofed? See e.g. on [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]

This article need to very sensitive to such people as would search for this article, and it should not wander into alarmist inference, or junk science such as above. Fringe theorists wishing to push this kind of POV spam are advised to take their crap elsewhere. The vast majority of people reported as missing turn up within 48 hours, and UFO or 'mysterious clouds' stuff should be kept to UFO or 'mysterious clouds' pages, and not ones where real people with missing loved ones might visit to see what probability holds. Coil00 23:43, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Do you have any proof that it is something OTHER than paranormal phenomena that accounts for some missing persons? I think it is clearly within bounds to have citations that link a portion of missing persons to 'paranormal phenomenea' if such verifible cites exist.

[edit] Closure / Monument

I have changed the following text:

"On May 26, 2002, a monument to missing persons was unveiled in County Kilkenny, Ireland by President Mary McAleese. At the time it was the first monument of its kind in the world. [2]"

to

"On May 26 2002, a monument to missing persons was unveiled in County Kilkenny, Ireland by President Mary McAleese. It was the first monument of its kind in the world. [2]"

Presumably if the monument was the first of it's kind when unveiled, it will always remain the first of it's kind.

I have also re-titled the section "Monument" as I could not understand why "Closure" was an appropriate title. ColourSarge 10:51, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Application of Biometric Recognition Techniques

Not that I would wish to break Wikipedia's veracious "No Original Research" policy. However, it seems that Biometric techniques (spotting, for example, the faces of missing persons within a crowd) can be used in order to provide assurance (to the police at least) of the fact that a particular missing person is still alive. Such "facial recognition in a crowd" technology is already used in many situations (mostly to track criminals). Given that criminals are usually defined as missing in some sense (they are, afterall, on the run from the police often) - could it not be said that biometrics have found application to the tracking down of missing persons?

ConfusciousSays (talk) 05:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)