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)?
I 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?
How 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?
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)?