Just posting to say that I support the admin position. I’m perfectly fine with them using a superficial and somewhat arbitrary vetting system to remove the most obvious scams/ludicrous requests. And being sometimes wrong in their evaluation.
Then, obviously, we’re (almost) all adults, and have a number of options :
-Never opening a fund request thread if the concept irritates us.
-Opening them out of curiosity but not feeling like sending money to perfect strangers posting on the internet
-Reading the thread and deciding that the request isn’t worthwhile/isn’t justified/that we don’t like the poster’s screen name and not giving anything.
As for deciding whether or not someone’s sob story is true, I don’t remember who’s who here and certainly don’t remember the details of anyone life story. But I would generally rely on other posters who have a better memory of these things. And yes, being a long-term poster will certainly help your case. So it is.
Regarding posting critical comments about the request, it’s certainly very useful to attract fellow dopers’ attention on some point they might have overlooked or are unaware of. But it seems to me that those criticisms are allowed. In both mentioned cases (the hot bunny and the prosecuted soldier) people have posted criticisms and haven’t been silenced by the mods as far as I can tell.