It's interesting how just a few people in any community can ruin it for everybody else. Look at how a relatively small number of spammers have managed to almost completely cripple email - nowadays I can't even count on my messages getting through, spam filters are so strict. Similarly, hospitality for tourists can get ruined for everybody by the moochers and leaches who are only interested in taking. What we need is some kind of online reputation management system, you might think. But even that would get gamed - remember eBay, where they tried this, and what people started to do was threaten you with negative feedback if you criticised their service... it seems that humans will find ways to game any system. I'm relatively socially liberal, but I completely recognize that more liberal areas and towns tend to attract people who are only interested in mooching off the system. It's a tough nut to crack - on the one hand you want to help people who are really in need, but on the other hand when you institute a system to do that, almost immediately you'll get other people trying to take advantage of that. Here in Eureka CA there are so many "homeless" people around town bugging you for spare change. It's frankly annoying, and reminds me of NYC, where I was effectively trained by the homeless there to avoid eye contact, since if they ever caught your eye then they would immediately try to exploit that by striking up a conversation (which would inevitably always lead to the sob story and appeal for money). Like I said, I'm socially liberal and want to help people out, but what to do about these people? There really are those in need, but when I was on the subway in New York going to work, every morning the same guy would come down the cars telling people that he had just been kicked out of his apartment and hadn't eaten for 3 days etc etc. For six months he had just been kicked out of his apartment. And I volunteered in the soup kitchens (with New York Cares) and I knew it was pretty much impossible to go without eating for 3 days in that town. There were places to go to get a free meal if nothing else. These "homeless" were simply exploiting people's better nature.

I've not listed myself on the Warm Showers or hospitality on crazyguyonabike currently, in part because of all the weird "homeless" people here in Eureka, and also because there are just so many people who come down the Pacific Coast, I fear a constant stream of moochers looking for a free meal and place to stay. It's better when you're off the beaten track, you're more likely to see "real" tourers, but there are just too many people around here who appear to have made mooching a lifestyle choice rather than an emergency measure.

Whenever I see a perfectly healthy young person standing around begging for money, I have to ask myself why and how they came to be here. Drugs? Mental illness? Simple desire to "drop out"? Laziness? That's probably a major reason, but it would certainly make for an interesting documentary, to really get these people's stories. In any case, most of the young, apparently healthy "homeless" people who I see hanging around Eureka seem to be completely self absorbed and really very concerned with cultivating a certain grungey "look" - the clothes, the hair artfully arranged in dreadlocks etc. This makes me wonder how "needy" these people really are. It especially makes me sad when I see them using an animal (usually a dog) to try to get people's sympathy. They put out a sign for dog food. One part of me says I'm being mean, maybe they're just lonely. The other, more cynical New Yawker tells me they are using the dog as a prop. Poor dog.

Sorry to get off-track, but this is something that has bugged me for a while. It seems that any time you try to make a system for being nice to people, it will immediately be taken advantage of by someone. And yet, does that mean you completely withdraw the service? It's a tough nut. Online communities tend to be very nice and congenial when they start off, but then as they grow and become more popular, you get more of the people coming in who don't feel so responsible, you get the trolls and attention seekers and the ones who just don't care. The collective IQ seems to plummet. When you're in a small room with people you know, it's good, but when you're in a huge hall with thousands upon thousands of other people, then things tend to go downhill. Digg and ****** are falling into this trap as they grow, it seems to happen everywhere. Crazyguyonabike is fairly lucky in that the community is fairly self-limiting - there will never be so many people there that it becomes unmanageable, I think. You can still get a handle on who's there and what's going on. Same with this forum, you keep running across the same people, and you get to know them and some of their foibles over time, which is nice.

I don't know how to address the "moochers vs real people" problem, except by perhaps screening people by phone before agreeing to offer them a place to stay, and then laying out strict rules as to what they can do and how long they can stay, etc. There's really no other way to be sure - you can just throw your home open to them and offer everything you have, but then eventually one of them will come along and just take it, and then you'll be another soured individual, ruined for everybody else by one selfish asshat. "Good fences make good neighbors", and similarly "Good rules make good guests".

Neil