Justin's point is valid, but it's still a matter of "innocent until proven guilty" versus "guilty until proven innocent." Publicly "outing" someone without solid proof that they've deliberately defrauded you is, in my mind, wrong. That said, as any business owner, including myself, knows, there are lots of public venues where anyone who wants to can do exactly that (the Garden Watchdog at Dave's Garden comes to mind). Yes, the slandered owner can post a rejoinder, and they usually do. EBay allows very limited responses, yet sometimes people manage to make a coherent point nonetheless. But all these venues make it extremely easy to condemn first and apologize later (and all make it virtually impossible to actually remove intemperate postings). A brief example: we (Seneca Hill Perennials) once got a negative posting on Dave's Garden from someone who claimed we were listing plants we didn't have on Dave's Garden Marketplace just to get people to go to our website. She refused to explain herself to either me or the administrators. By checking out her "plants wanted" list I realized she had been looking for a helichrysum sp. that we had never grown or listed, but for which DG gave an erroneus synonym of a species we did grow, but were out of. Had she ever contacted me I could easily have explained this to her - but no, she went right to public condemnation, and the only way I could get the comment removed by DG was to show that the accusation was a direct result of their faulty synonymy. Otherwise, it would be there still. So I stand by my original position, which is that unless you absolutely, indisputably KNOW you've been defrauded, you should not publicly accuse people of wrongdoing. And now I will let it go. :-) Ellen -----Original Message----- >From: Justin Smith <oothal@hotmail.com> >Sent: Jul 11, 2010 5:31 PM >To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >Subject: Re: [pbs] Fraud > > >Hi All, Ellen said this: > > > > > I might not object so much if the >> seller's eBay name were all that were shared, but when you start listing >> names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. and you don't know the >> real story, isn't this going a little bit far? >> >> Ellen > > > > > >It is certainly inappropriate to give out "personal" information about someone without their permission. > > > >If someone uses their home phone, home email or any other "personal" item for their business, it no longer is "personal" but public instead. > > > >That is part of the cost of having a home business you can't keep from taking your work home with you. > > > > > >Justin > >Woodville, TX 8b/9a > > > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ >Hotmail has tools for the New Busy. Search, chat and e-mail from your inbox. >http://windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy/… >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php >http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ Ellen Hornig Seneca Hill Perennials 3712 Co. Rt. 57 Oswego NY 13126 Phone: 315-342-5915 Fax: 315-342-5573 http://www.senecahillperennials.com/