["MikeS" <dm561 at torfree.net>] Indeed. Until and unless you make it our business, such as by posting on the list about it. Unless you are also Steven Landon (and maybe even then - see below), or unless you've pulled such a stunt in the past and I've lost track of it, I don't see why _you_ are getting bent out of shape over this. Nor should it, because it's not aimed at you...unless you are also Steven Landon, of course. Possibly even then; see below. Hm, actually, given the stance you take in your email, I think maybe it _is_ aimed at you. Not that you care, as you said. If Goodwill's policy as described upthread is accurate, I don't see it as that much of a stretch. Of course, it may not be accurate, or even if it is the poster may not have known about it (I'm speaking theoretically here). But the response from someone who actually cares about the hobby instead of about yanking others' emotional chains would have been more along the lines of "oh $#!+, is that what they do? Then...", or perhaps "actually, I asked them and the real policy here is...". That's not what I'm seeing here. Actually, what I saw from Steven Landon looked reasonable. The remark about Goodwill came from a message I did not see directly, and the quote was taken out of context enough I don't know how fair the reaction was. I _have_ seen such `offers' in the past, though, and they are what I was writing about, whether or not my remarks apply to anything recent. In general, I think we do. But "if you want to rescue it I'm going to make sure it costs you, even though I get nothing for it if you don't", well, if/when that happens, I have trouble finding a term for it any weaker than `emotional blackmail'. Again, whether that's relevant depends on whether that was the paradigm, which as I said above is uncertain from my point of view. If that were the actual motivation behind the offer, we'd be seeing "free for pickup from $PLACE", not "$X and you pick it up, or it gets trashed". Which is what I often see, and it was pretty close to what I saw from Steven Landon. If you think my remarks are relevant to you, I can only infer that you've made `offers' along those lines.... Lots of things lose value when they're out in the middle of Michigan; it's an inconvenient enough place for me, for example, that I wouldn't go there to pick a $100 banknote up off the ground. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B