Thanks Vod.

I did read your collateral post before, but I'm not sure how I missed the post above it... or the title of it, lol (I need to pay better attention). That's a good standard to go by, though. When  I saw all of the negative votes I thought it was from bad experiences, not loan requests with no collateral.

I did read all of the stickies presented, but those seem to work better if you have a decent reputation here. What if a borrower is new, like myself (I'm not a borrower, though) and they know about bitcoins, but don't have the reputation everyone else has?

Personally, I found out about BTC when I was in desperate need of money. My friend in AUS had me set up a CoinBase account and after everything was verified he sent me coins, which I deposited into my bank account. My bills were paid a week late, but they were paid.

A lot of people find out about Bitcoins in the event of a financial emergency, but they find it difficult to get loans even then.  

Under what circumstances would you give a new user the benefit of the doubt and help out someone? How can you tell if it's a genuine emergency or a scammer doing what they do best? How would you handle a situation like this and what would make you feel more comfortable with lending to that person?

I don't need a loan, this is just a question. I don't dabble on BTCTalk too much (or at all) because of what I feel are security issues... but idk.. I might start getting into it and handing out some loans. I'm just not an experienced lender, so I'd like to know how some of the best decisions are made in situations like this (mainly because I can relate to, seriously, needing money very quickly).