There’s really no need to apologize, Jodi . . . just try to be more careful in the future. 
Extending my previous remarks that giving to the deserving is not charity, it is also my opinion that giving in exchange for gratitude is not charity.
So what do you call repeated giving in exchange for repeated ungratitude?
Because I call it not learning from your mistakes.
pan
I call that casting pearls to swine.
And remind me – that’s not a good thing to do, yes?
It certainly is a very wasteful thing, and yes, therefore bad. But what I meant before was expecting gratitude in the sense that a debt has been paid — because if a debt was owed, then the exchange was not giving but selling.
But that’s not really what’s happening here, so far as I can see. It’s been made clear that we’re not talking about one isolated incident. We’re talking about a pattern of taking without even an acknowledgement that the taking is occurring and with an expectation that the taking will continue.
So it’s the very definition of what you subsequently (and rightly) referred to as casting pearls before swine and a very wasteful thing.
pan
To me, Bildo’s posting in that thread smacks more vindictive than helping. If you wanted to, you should have started a second thread saying why giving to moochers is a bad idea, and like your previous piut thread, not name any names, and send MM an e-mail saying that it was about him. If it was good enough for the original incident, why not do it for the second incident also?
Okay, Pan, thanks.
Billdo’s intent was to let people know of MM’s manner. How would that be done without mentioning his name?
The reason for the original thread seemed to be to rant about someone who had mooched from several people at a friendly gathering. This gathering was not presented as being Dope-related, IIRC. Billdo did not mention MM’s name because off-board behavior, in his estimation, should not be brought on-board.
So why did he mention MM’s name this time around? Because he felt it was background information that would be useful to anyone who might want to help MM out. Yes, it’s purely subjective and is the result of his (and, perhaps, others’) experience, but it could still be useful in its own way.
If I see that someone on here needs help in some way, my first instinct is to help. If I do not know the person (i.e., from their posts), however, I must rely on the experiences of others if such experiences exist. I would very much like to know about a negative experience someone had with someone who now needs help, because knowing might persuade me to rethink my aid. At the same time, I would not take these negative experiences as absolute gospel, because I am getting the information secondhand (and I might not have acted the same way had I been there, generally speaking). These experiences, bad or good, should be taken as anecdotal evidence, nothing more.
Of course, if several people report the same basic experience, then I grant that experience more weight (unless, of course, all of the people strike me as particularly vindictive creeps). It’s really the best way to make a judgment call.
Tuba has mentioned that she posted simply as a poster and Billdo agrees. However, the fact that she is an Admin makes it so that nothing she posts is ever simply as a regular poster. Sorry, but that’s how it is. Yes, everyone is human and all that but she holds a high title and in order for people to respect it when it is necessary, we must all hold it in some sort of respect at all times.
Therefore, I think swift action to prevent the super-generous Dopers on the board from laying down their reputations and hospitality to this guy was completely necessary. Had a random Doper started the thread then yes, perhaps an email to them might have sufficed. However, because it was started by an Admin, people may have assumed everything was completely on the up-and-up and well-researched and jumped in headfirst to help in any way they could. Based on the experiences some people have had with the subject of the goodwill, that could have had some bad consequences.
Swift action to call people’s attention to an issue that hadn’t been presented with the OP was entirely necessary in this case–people’s personal and business reputations were potentially at stake. It needed to be done right there–not placed in the Pit where it might not be seen.
Exactly the same way he started the other thread. he managed to make his point to MM about his mooching ways. Why did he feel the need to go and do it again?
OK, MM mooched some beers and a hamburger and fries. I’ll grant you that was out of line. but is it really a crime so evil that when he fucks up bigtime that people can’t point him in the direction he needs to get back on track? There are vague allusions to other incstances, but if they are so bad why not make the case for MM’s alleged abuses of charity with those instead of beers, burgers and fries.
bildo is entirely entitled to his opinion of MM, and I trust his word. I just feel this was the wrong time to express it. If people wanted to help MM, it is their choice to do so. Charity shouldn’t come with preconditions attached. If someone I knew and had bad experiences with made a stupid decision with their lives, and it resulted in them being stranded in a foreign country, I’d either help them out to get back on their feet, or not actively try to dissuade people from helping out.
If I saw the thread and saw that one person who wasn’t aware of the moochers previous history was seriously about to inconvenience themselves, I’d let them know the history privately and allow them to make the decision themselves. I certainly wouldn’t be the third poster or so into the thread before anyone has made the choice to help and actively dissuaded people from helping.
I don’t think Tuba was asking for donations or anything, more like job and accomodation leads. Not that I really agree with charity cases being presented on the boards in the first place, but that’s a different issue entirely.
And we’re supposed to know who this “one person” might be…how, exactly? We don’t know how many people will read a thread and act on it without posting. The only way to reach such a person is to post to the thread itself.
Look, folks, one of the consequences of being in a community is that the community gets to know your behavior, and based on that, give you what we fondly know as a “reputation.” People are *not/i] entitled to have that reputation kept private, or quasi-private, particularly when the reputation is based on public acts. (Of course, people who get a good reputation don’t generally have to care about this point.)
Oh man. Sorry. I saw your followup post and misread it. 
That was my point as well, Twisty.
Who on this message board has done so? Has anyone? Did someone who helped MM out before suddenly forget what happened? No - that didn’t happen, and your analogy is completely inapt. If *you * made a mistake, learn from it. One Doper’s mistake does not collectively apply to the other 10,000 Dopers. In no way does Billdo’s example paint the entire picture - in fact, it paints only negative things that skews the message unfairly towards the negative.
Because apparently MM didn’t get the point - he received a polite E-mail from OxyMoron, not to mention at least a couple other people, and never responded, even with an “I was a jerk, I’m sorry.”
The concern that I had was that attributing it to a “feeling” is not much of an explanation (although as indicated by Billdo’s subsequent post, sufficient for him), whereas TVeblen’s explanation was more helpful, although neither specifically addressed the issue of whether anything said in the MPSIMS thread was inappropriate for that forum. On the one hand, there is the general statement of “kicking a man while he’s down” and Cajun Man’s noting with approval Shayna’s suggestion that Billdo should have emailed TubaDiva instead, from which one can infer that things said in that thread were inappropriate for MPSIMS, while on the other hand, there are Cajun Man’s statement that it was a general warning based on his feeling and TVeblen’s reference to “general housekeeping”, which I understand as saying that nothing in particular that was said in the MPSIMS thread was inappropriate, but that even so, both the content and tone of the thread bore the risk of moving into BBQ Pit territory.
Like I said in the MPSIMS thread, nobody here should come under any criticism (except possibly MM himself). If help, financiial or in kind, is being solicited for someone, all the relevant facts, including character testimonials and past community history, ought to be laid out so that potential donors can make informed decisions.
I also think people should lay off Tuba. Her position as Admin doesn’t mean that she can’t post as a member, and her request for aid does not, IMO, carry any more weight than do the past requests for aid that were started by regular posters. It’s not as if she has any coercive power–what’s she going to do, ban you for not ponying up?
Cajun Man[ gave a fair notice–not a warning–that the thread should not become a dogpile, so he also should not be criticised for his posts.
As for MM, I’m sure that he has come away from this a chastened person who will be more mindful in future how he treats others and how important a reputation is. I may not be any kind of a theist, but I do believe that anyone can be forgiven and rehabilitated if they sincerely repent and seek to do penance.