it's pretty egocentric to think that because you know something or someone that everyone else does too. The point that's being missed is that this is a larger community than the friends of Aki. Granted there are some people here who know Aki, but there are also many who don't know him or crufin for that matter.
How long have you been reading internet message boards? Not all threads on all boards will apply to every person. In reality, most threads on a board will interest less than half of the members of the board. Do you get annoyed every time you read a thread on a message board that doesn't have anything to do with you?
Using your logic, if someone were to post a thread here suggesting that we buy the new Stratovarius album, for example, the following response would be not only intelligent, but necessary: "Why should I buy the new Stratovarius cd? I don't like Stratovarius. And, for that matter, why should any of us buy the new Stratovarius? Should we now start buying every album that someone recommends on this board?"
See? The Stratovarius recommendation doesn't really apply to anyone who doesn't care about Stratovarius, or who doesn't like them. This is a larger community than the "fans of Stratovarius".
The post didn't start with "For those of you who know Aki..." it started out with "Aki is our friend from Finland..." Who's our? Crufin's and Joe's? Crufin's and Jane's? Obviously he isn't crufin's and Met-Al's, nor crufin's and mine, nor crufin's and many others'.
Use a little common sense. If you don't know Aki, then you're obviously not part of the aforementioned "our" paradigm. You can officially ignore the thread, instead of asking ridiculous questions.
I assure you that reading the post Met-Al wasn't the only one to think "What? Who the hell is this, and why should I donate?" But he's the one that typed those thoughts, and he got flammed for it.
B.S.
Met-Al said "Why should I donate?" to which the obvious answer is that there's no reason for him to do so, because he doesn't know Aki. But then he extrapolated his question to include the board at large, asking "Should we now donate to everyone who can't make it?" to which the obvious answer is that we should all use our own discretion as to what we do with our money. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to know your own answers to these questions; he didn't need to ask them at all, much less in a way that attempts to ridicule the efforts put forth by those of us who felt the need to help.