Asking for donations in the forums

I've recently noticed more and more threads and events of people asking for L$ donations. While I'm all for charitable causes, having worked with Lindens For Life, VERTU, Relay For Life, and raising funds for the Red Cross after Katrina, its only going to be so long before people start scamming. With part of the beauty of Second Life being the relative anonymity we enjoy from our RL identities, does anyone think it might be good to put some restrictions on where donations can be solicited?

Several months ago, a dear friend in SL had their car stolen. We wanted to raise money to help them recover. We didn't post to the forums or do anything publically; one of their friends contacted everyone they knew was friends with the person via IM to solicit donations individually. This is, in my opinion, the way it should be done for individual friends who are in need, virtual or not.

I'd suggest the only organizations that should be able to solicit using official LL communication channels - the forums, events, message of the day - should be those officially affiliated with non-profit organizations. While I feel for people who are in need of money, I believe this leads to a big gray area that at best is panhandling and at worst could be used by scammers to prey on peoples' good hearts and emotions.

Defining "need" is always going to be raised as a question; as we've seen in other threads, the "cost of owning a computer and broadband" is raised. Only 3% of the USA is truly financially independent; that means the other 97% of us all have some problems at some time. I'd hate to see people soliciting for money for others to become something seen on a regular basis in these forums.

Just my two cents! And for the record, I don't think any of the threads I've seen thus far are scams; just providing some food for thought.

Regards,

-Flip

Damn, Flip, and i was about to start a thread asking for donations so i can buy an island, staff it with girls in bikinis, build a doomsday weapon and hold the world to ransom.
The entry bar for becoming a supervillian is just so high.


Seriously though Flip, yes, i agree with every word you just posted.

But I was gonna post a thread asking for baby donations!!!

Not babies, but baby things. In PINK!

But I will be told that I am making it up, so I won't bother. I shall just go buy everything all over again. (I should have kept it after my son was born, but heard a sob story through our church and gave it to her. We were done having kids, or so we thought. Sex is BAD!)<---very important lesson folks, don't forget you were warned.


I don't think that forums are the place to ask for help with things. I saw an auction on ebay awhile back where the person was upfront asking for help paying his debt and asking people to "buy" his debt in whatever increments. I don't know how that turned out, but it was basically the same idea. Post your plea in cyber space and hope that kind hearted people will take pity upon you and help you.

But as we all know, 99.9% of the forum users are cold heartless bastards. And morally bankrupt.(I so love that phrase...it makes me giggle. Like I over-drew my account on morality.)

I bet every single one of us could at one time or another post in here asking for money when we were in a tight spot. As my grandma used to say, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps sweetie."

Dear Friend.

As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe
everyone will die someday. My name is Baba Yamamoto, a merchant in Dubai,
in the U.A.E.I have been diagnosed with Prostate cancer. It has defiled
all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months
to live, according to medical experts.

I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for
anyone (not even myself) but my business. Though I am very rich, I was never
generous, I was always hostile to people and only focused on my business as
that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know
that there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money
in the world.

I believe when God gives me a second chance to come to this world I would
live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that God has
called me, I have willed and given most of my property and assets to my
immediate and extended family members as well as a few close friends.

I want God to be merciful to me and accept my soul so, I have decided to
give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last
good deeds I do on earth. So far, I have distributed money to some charity
organizations in the U.A.E, Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has
deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore. I once asked members
of my family to close one of my accounts and distribute the money which I
have there to charity organization in Bulgaria and Pakistan, they refused
and kept the money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as
they seem not to be contended with what I have left for them.

The last of my money which no one knows of is the huge cash deposit of
twenty two million dollars $22,000,000,that I have with finance/Security
Company abroad. I will want you to help me collect this deposit and
dispatched it to charity organizations.

I have set aside 20% for you for your time and patience.please send a reply
through this email address with your full contact information for more
private and confidential communication.Please reply to my private email
address: (babasucks@stopspam.net)

God be with you.

Baba Yamamoto

I think post panhandling is a foolish thing to do, but I don't think we need any more rules. It isn't necessary to add another thing to the list of forbidden forum behavior.

I am actually surprised that anyone would think it would work. I'm surprised anyone sends any money to Nigeria, though.

The most I would find acceptable is a panhandling forum that is no reply.

But it is written in their forum rules that advertising, spamming, pyramid schemes, solicitations are forbidden.

A lot of forums and blog sites have this rule, I don't see why moderation can't have zero tolerance to this. It's there to cover the company's ass. Forbidden, to me, reads zero tolerance. I don't get it.

Right you are! Ignore my previous comments. I've been trumped.

Flipper, excellent post. As usual, however, the guidelines don't seem to mean a damn thing. The donations thread that was locked has been unlocked and moved to Notices and Well Wishes. I guess it is now open season for every person who needs money to come to the forums and ask.

I'm glad you said it Flipper. Most recently someone posted a 'plea for donations' just because they had something like $4k debt. Well having just consolidated, my household debt is at $22,840.05. Is this a reason for me to ask people for help because i don't want to get myself deeper in debt with more credit cards? Hell no.

It's no different than begging on the street's of RL - You are still asking strangers for money.

Bleh on beggars. Earn your way in life like the rest of us.

Briana Dawson

Three points on this thread.

1) Restricting Second Life to RL non-profits or registered charities would be, well, highly restrictive. In-world causes, be they connected to RL or not, deserve the same consideration that prospective donors should make in any situation. As always, the reality is buyer or giver beware. In-world regulation would not neccessarily change this.

2) Our SL non-profit, the Milarepa Land Trust put out a call for tier donations a few months ago and we happily added a few great people to our group. How can that be wrong? And how is that so different than business and service postings.

3) It's interesting that there is no discussion of a specific non-profit scam here, yet the forums are periodically full of aggrieved customers claiming that they've been taken by so-and-so's business. Based on incidence, then, does it follow that SL businesses be only "those officially affiliated" with RL business? Of course not.

I do non-profit work in RL, among other things. And it is interesting how non-profits and charities are often held to a much higher level of scrutiny, sometimes by way of attack or lack of knowledge ("Bleh on beggars" said last poster). Surely there must be more pressing concerns in SL than worrying about solitictations and non-profit regulation, especially when there's no particular scam or issue at hand.

I feel like I'm responsible for starting a very bad trend in the forums, and I apologize for that.

Doesn't mean some people aren't wenches, though (hi E, hi B).

Is soliciting for money on the forums bad form? Sure.

Is it ripe for corruption and scamming? You bet.

Does it make the person scummy and vile and a horrible horrible person? I dunno, flip a coin.

We all have our breaking points; some have more resilience and resources than others. Still other people are more creative in finding solutions to their life's problems. We can't expect everyone to just run out and pick up 7 more jobs to make ends meet due to a sudden financial crisis, or whatever. People should work to live, not live to work.

I've always been a donating kind of guy; I give a lot when I can. Granted, it's not often, and it's proportionally not much to what others can pull down, but I feel I give my fair share in charities. Is half of it going to feed some bureaucrat's pocketbook? Maybe. But I'd like to pretend that when I donate to causes, the money goes towards something useful -- well, to what I consider useful. Ya'll might not consider the Child's Play charity useful, for instance.

Bleh, whatever. It's 4 AM and I'm tired.

I think you're speaking from a place, that this thread isn't questioning. Thisis issue at hand and then some. The type of soliciting targeted is the sprouting of threads posted by folks that just want their personal debts paid.

Subliminal tactic. Classy.

Since when has LL been expected to follow their stated "rules" when making things up is so much more "creative"?

Once, a long time ago, Ironchef told me he signed up to be a Live-Help person. (It was brand new then.)

I hadn't a clue what "live help" was, so Ironchef says, "Try it, ask a question."

Well, not really thinking it through, and having absolutely no idea what this enigmatic "live help" thing was, I posed the insightful question,

"CAN I HAV SOME MONAI"

...

I made a hundred and three lindens with that

[Not really sure that the 'donators' want their name mentioned, so I'll keep that part of the story quiet ]

Okay, I just sent you L$420. I'm a sucker for a good cause.

To quote the venerable William Shakespeare:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."
--Hamlet

To put in perspective the notion of "unbearable" personal debt, I (and my husband) currently owe well over $100K on our mortgage alone. However, since our house is worth considerably more than that, it's a debt we shoulder willingly.

And yes, I happen to agree with Flip: certified non-profit charities are the only ones I'd prefer to see soliciting donations on SL general forums.

Everyone give me money. Please?

Guess I'm going to be a voice of some dissent here. I give to good causes a lot because in the past I've been a cause in receipt of other people's goodness. I may someday again be a cause in need--I hope not, but it's possible. I really like the message of "Pay it forward." If you can return a kindness, even if it's not returned to the people who gave you kindness, it makes the world better. I can't give much when I give, but I give what I can and hope it helps.

As for soliciting in forums, I feel more confident that the money I sent to so and so will be used for what they said it will be used for than I do that any money I sent to Red Cross or Hurricane Katrina victims will be used for the victims of the disaster. I know the person I'm giving directly to and trust them more because they are a contributing member of our community in SL. I've heard stories about Katrina refugees being evicted recently from the temporary homes they were given because they weren't able to find jobs or pay rent and disaster relief was only for the rescue, not the continued survival .

I consider Second Life my community. It's a relatively small community where we have a chance to get to know people and learn to trust them. The best way to build and keep community is for everyone to contribute to keeping the good things flowing.

I worked in fundraising for a non-profit for several years. It's hard to do the "ask". Getting kicked while doing the ask makes it all the harder.

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poeitp tpeiut eiptu weiptu weiput wepot wkjg kj gad;jg akjg akj dgaklgj akj da

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Many areas of resident-to-resident interaction are unregulated. Why regulate this one? A small amount of fraud might be eliminated, but at what cost?

w00t! Thank-you Introvert

To complete the results of my experiment, I asked the same question to the IRC channel, which netted me a total of L$0.

So to sumarize:

CAN I HAV SOME MONAI
1) Live Help: L$103
2) Forums: L$421
3) IRC: L$0

Net: L$524

Maybe I can give up on this whole "content" thing!

Conclusion:
As we can readily observer, forums are 4.09 times superior to Live Help, both of which are infinitely better than IRC.

To respond to many points of this thread at once:

(1) Lash, thanks for pointing out that solicititation is already not allowed in the forum policies; I'll quote this part for any new threads I see.

(2) I always had a hunch Baba was a Nigerian prince!

(3) Lordfly, thanks for being so forthright. As I said, I don't think anyone who's posted yet is a scammer, but its a dangerous precedent. I'm glad to see we agree on this!

(4) Tenzin, Gus and Sansarya: The reason it should be restricted here is that the forums are a place run by LL for public discourse. As already pointed out, its against the forum guidelines. In my original post, I already showed (through example) that I have no problem with people doing fundraisers amongst friends in-world, but find it disturbing in the forums.

(5) Cristiano: Hehehe, you're right, but we can keep hoping and trying.

(6) Briana and everyone else: Hehehe, tell me about it; student loans are a bitch and I have a very big mortgage on this new house I just bought!

Good comments all around, folks; I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who had this on their minds.

Regards,

-Flip

What about my point!!?

Oh wait. Aww crap. I forgot to enable my spell checker on it. Nevermind.

I gave afew L$ to a float for new orleans (and bought one picture)

Thats all did on here..I gave through my mother to red cross (whom she works for) in real world.