I don't think we should send ANYTHING in as a lead or a tip if we haven't thoroughly gone over it here. The doenetwork shot in your post looks nothing like Lyle and I don't understand why you would send it in as a possibility?!
Websleuths is gaining in reputation as a legitimate site to work with LE and we need to be careful we do not innundate any office with unneccessary things. They simply will not put any stock into what we do send them in the future which could be pertinent to the case.
On other threads, we try to have specific person stay in contact with LE, but we work on the tips together to come to a consensus before we send them in. This way LE doesn't have 20 people from this site to respond to and we can narrow down leads beforehand which they have to sift through. LE has been appreciative and has responded well to WS.
Let's work together to find the Identity of Lyle and let's maintain a good working relationship with the detective in charge of his case.
Also, it isn't at all good to take ideas or results of searches from other forums. They developed their own and consider it their "work". (This is the reason Out was given a 7 day suspension from another site.) They want to protect their members which we should respect. If we work hard on a case and people take our theories it might cause real problems. WSers, imo, want to be held to a higher standard to gain respect from other sites, as well as LE and other agencies.
I may be the odd man out here, but I have a problem with this.
There has never been a time in history when everyone has agreed on everything. There are a lot of people here that spend hours going through UID's (me included) who don't always agree with everyone, or have everyone else agree with them. We all have different minds, and those minds perceive things differently. Where one person sees an uncanny resemblence, another may just say "nah" and move on to the next missing person.
There is also the issue that there are some people that have worked together on here for a long time, and others who are newer to the field. There may be three or four people working on one lead in particular. They've searched certain missing persons and unidentified sites and have their regular bookmarks. Then, along comes someone that went outside the norm and found something that is completely unrelated to who those three or four people are currently working on. Their ideas kind of get lost in the shuffle because they aren't on the same wavelength. Doesn't mean that they couldn't be right, doesn't mean that they couldn't be wrong. Just a differing opinion.
I hope that made sense. I haven't had enough coffee this morning.
I'm not calling "clique" or anything, I swear. What makes this place great is that we all have a contribution to make. LE is trained well. They've got these cases out there because they are at an impasse themselves. So they get ten e-mails on a case. . . doesn't mean that they'll follow them all up. They always have information that the public doesn't get. They can rule those out that are definitely not their person and work with the rest. We may be good sleuths, but we aren't LE. It should be their decision what they work with our links, ideas and comparisions, not ours.
This is all meant within reason, of course. To send them the UID's from the entire Eastern Seaboard is ridiculous. . . to send them a tip that so and so was last seen in a relevant state and the descriptions matches. . . that's a lead for them. Let them choose whether it needs to be worked on.
I hope I haven't offended anyone. . . was not my intention.
