Those who would criticize any and all posts seeking info about a provider’s status or recent whereabouts, are not thinking with their big head.
Complaints about such requests seems to be based on the assumption, among others, that any provider being asked about is UTR and so doesn’t want to be found or “tracked”. But such an assumption is, to put it mildly, problematic.
While I am sympathetic to the idea that trying to “track” a provider who wishes to be UTR is bad form/inappropriate, questions about a provider are very often asked in order to find out whether a provider is or is not UTR. Until one knows that a provider has decided to go UTR, requests for info about providers seem perfectly reasonable and should not be subjected to criticism.
As for the idea that we don’t know whether the request for info on a provider has come from “a parole officer, pissed off husband or pimp”, I’m sorry, but that’s just lame. I am sure I speak for many in saying that I don’t know that Breadmaker hasn’t kidnapped any number of providers and those he hasn’t murdered, he has chained to his basement wall, using them as his sex slaves, and that’s why he criticizes requests for info about providers who have not been answering their phones.
But surely my ignorance provides me no more justification to question Breadmaker’s motives for posting than his ignorance about those who post provider queries on TER, provides him for questioning their motives.
The truth, I think, is that a TER inquiry about a provider (and the answers thereto) is, or should be, the least of a provider’s worries. Parole officers, pissed off hubbies and pimps are surely equipped with more effective ways of finding those they seek, than being reduced to using a TER post.
We can also remind ourselves that answers to TER queries about providers need not be truthful or accurate, nor do they seem to offer any info that a provider who feels threatened by a pimp, angry hubby or parole officer, is incapable of handling.
I don’t see how inaccurate info about a provider endangers her – on the contrary. Also, to assume that answers like, “Yes, I have seen her recently”, or “She left town”, or “She’s UTR and wants to stay that way”, or even the unlikely, “She has a new number and it is . . . “, are somehow upping the danger level of being a provider, is not well thought out.