Freecle / freecycle and balloons on sticks

mttylad

To use Freecycle you need to put your location (approx local area) on both OFFER and WANTED posts.

When posting a wanted, just because you are happy to travel many miles to collect something, someone giving something away may not
want someone else to travel a large distance to collect it - because they (the person giving the stuff away) may be more concerned about emissions than you are. Also this same person with the stuff might be more than happy to give away something that they have to someone that lives locally to them in a community spirit way - more than they would to someone that does not live within their community.

You have to remember that there are 2 parties involved in giving something away.

This is only 1 of the reasons why you should put your location on a WANTED post too.

Re the offers - this is so that when you offer something, the people who think they would like it can make an informed decision on how far
they would have to travel to collect it. Not having the location leads to people arranging to collect then realising that its too far away
and not bothering to turn up - hence a lot of no shows.

Finally, your use of the Freecycle group is dependant upon keeping to the agreed rules setup by Freecycle. This is no different from many other groups and organisations - they decide what rules they want and you have to keep to them - Freecycle is no different.
You may not agree with all of the rules but they are put there for the effective running of the groups, I have to obey them so why shouldn't you?

Soubrette, surely there must be more to how you complained for you to be banned? Either that or it was a pretty greeen mod.
Contact freecycle.org about getting reinstated.

As for being able to thank people - of course you can.
You simply send them a personal email, there is no reason why several thousand others need to see your thanks.
You can also ask questions of the individuals that post offers/wanteds - simply respond to them individually rather than post to the entire group.

As for:

if someone tried to set up an independent forum for Freecyclers (which I suppose has already been tried) it would be threatened with legal action by the "boss" of Freecycle.

This is no longer the case - TFN lost their court case for others using the Freecycle name - the trademark does not apply in the UK. So you can setup your own group in your local area and allow stuff to be bought and sold on it - however do you really expect the volunteer moderators of your local Freecycle group to also manage that too?

Moderating a Freecycle or Freegle group is a time consuming task that no one seems to want to do, someone has to look after the groups and keep it running smoothly - do you have the time to help run it? Even with the moderation tools that are available it can still take an hour a day (broken up into several smaller chunks).
And what do the moderators get for volunteering their free time every day to do this? People not keeping to the rules and arguing about them.

Soubrette

mttylad wrote: »

To use Freecycle you need to put your location (approx local area) on both OFFER and WANTED posts.

When posting a wanted, just because you are happy to travel many miles to collect something, someone giving something away may not
want someone else to travel a large distance to collect it - because they (the person giving the stuff away) may be more concerned about emissions than you are. Also this same person with the stuff might be more than happy to give away something that they have to someone that lives locally to them in a community spirit way - more than they would to someone that does not live within their community.

You have to remember that there are 2 parties involved in giving something away.

This is only 1 of the reasons why you should put your location on a WANTED post too.

Re the offers - this is so that when you offer something, the people who think they would like it can make an informed decision on how far
they would have to travel to collect it. Not having the location leads to people arranging to collect then realising that its too far away
and not bothering to turn up - hence a lot of no shows.

Finally, your use of the Freecycle group is dependant upon keeping to the agreed rules setup by Freecycle. This is no different from many other groups and organisations - they decide what rules they want and you have to keep to them - Freecycle is no different.
You may not agree with all of the rules but they are put there for the effective running of the groups, I have to obey them so why shouldn't you?

Soubrette, surely there must be more to how you complained for you to be banned? Either that or it was a pretty greeen mod.
Contact freecycle.org about getting reinstated.

As for being able to thank people - of course you can.
You simply send them a personal email, there is no reason why several thousand others need to see your thanks.
You can also ask questions of the individuals that post offers/wanteds - simply respond to them individually rather than post to the entire group.

As for: This is no longer the case - TFN lost their court case for others using the Freecycle name - the trademark does not apply in the UK. So you can setup your own group in your local area and allow stuff to be bought and sold on it - however do you really expect the volunteer moderators of your local Freecycle group to also manage that too?

Moderating a Freecycle or Freegle group is a time consuming task that no one seems to want to do, someone has to look after the groups and keep it running smoothly - do you have the time to help run it? Even with the moderation tools that are available it can still take an hour a day (broken up into several smaller chunks).
And what do the moderators get for volunteering their free time every day to do this? People not keeping to the rules and arguing about them.

This is exactly what I told her (the mod), I don't agree with the rule (and I still think the explanation for location in wanteds is cak - sorry) but I would do it.

When I asked why I had been banned then it was because I refused to follow the rule even though I had quite clearly in my response to her explanation said I would follow the rule in the future. I copied the whole set of emails back to her and pointed this out - I am still banned and she has never responded to this latest one.

Is there more? I don't think so, like I said I can come across a bit like a mardy bint as I'm quite direct but there was no swearing or anything.

Being a volunteer is no excuse for rudeness (and banning someone with no email explaining why and how they can appeal is more than rude imo) so it does appear to me that the desires of this mod to 'win' an argument has overcome the point of the group which is to keep things out of landfill.

I'm quite happy to send you a copy of the emails and you can tell me whether they are worthy of a banning

pitkin2020

Freecycle is now too mainstream and isn't being used as its intended purpose. Clearly seen by cool mints ideas. The whole point of freecycle was to allow someone else to make use of something you were going to send to landfill/chuck out for free. How many people in reality throw out a PS3 etc?? Its like being a member of environmental group fighting against pollution then driving around in 6.0 gas guzzler, kind of missing the point!!

Having a section for sales stuff is ridiculous, there are plenty of other ways to sell stuff locally and those should be used its not freecycle. Same if you want something and are willing to pay for it, put an ad in the local shop/paper etc. If you start saying you can advertise something for a couple of quid you then why shouldn't everyone ask for payment, why should others be generous enough to list stuff for free.

Its no longer genuine (yes there are still some) people offering stuff to other grateful people, you have a lot of people who just collecting so they can sell on and you have the others who have to give a sob story to get anything.

If your happy to give something away that may help someone else use freecycle, if you want a couple of quid for it use eBay/freeads/local/paper/shop window.

chickywiggle

mttylad wrote: »

Moderating a Freecycle or Freegle group is a time consuming task that no one seems to want to do, someone has to look after the groups and keep it running smoothly - do you have the time to help run it? Even with the moderation tools that are available it can still take an hour a day (broken up into several smaller chunks).
And what do the moderators get for volunteering their free time every day to do this? People not keeping to the rules and arguing about them.

i volunteered when ours wanted people. but despite me telling them i was very computer savvy and yahoo groups were not rocket science they still expected me to go to someones house and be 'trained' how to do it. not surprisingly i told them where to go.

sivyour

Hi,
I volunteered too.
I fulfilled all desired criteria and am pretty good with pc's..I even code my own websites.
I got no reply, but saw the same request for mods a few days later??

The ridiculous wanted ads grate on my too. With one lady asking for 4 high value items, including 36" + flat screen tv and a flat screen monitor.

In blackburn there are often dogs for sale and once I forwarded an ad to a mod stating these adverts should not be getting online and recieved a stroppy message telling me to sell my dog elsewhere. Upon putting her straight I was informed she didnt have a pc and moderated from a mobile which meant some things slipped through as she was a new moderator!

I also get fed up with the same people who reply to all my ads with. I'll take it all and Im only round the corner.

I get mad with : I run a rescue, please give me all your items! I have my own menagerie to feed, I do not collect more pets than I can feed and then claim to be "a rescue" so that I can get stuff to sell to feed them and I dont think others should either!

I dont mind true sob stories though, I once gave a baby monitor to a lady for her daughter who was having a baby which had a birth defect meaning it would die when it was born.

mttylad

In general, almost everything that has been asked for has at some time or the other been given away on Freecycle/Freegle groups.
Laptops, cars, caravans, conservatories et all. Baby stuff is very popular, as are white goods.

Although I have not seen a working xbox360 nor PS3 given away, people who have them know the cost of them and prefer to sell them on.

We limit the number of wanted posts to 3 per 30 days - unless someone is also making genuine offers at which point their wanteds can math the number of offers. In general - this works well, if someone wants to make a daft post wanting a lamborghini they can do so - I consider the members intelligent enough to ignore this post however the wanter then only has 2 wanted posts left.

I rejected a request for a PS3 this week, I considered it excessive from someone who has never offered anything.

RE the mods -I too have not bothered with people who could have helped quite well because of their pc skills, because when they joined
they have only ever posted wanteds. Allowing them to be a mod would give them quicker access to free stuff so I would only consider
making someone who fully joins in with the spirit of the group.
I very nearly made someone a mods who I later found to be a trader selling stuff from the group. It is hard choosing someone to help based on just their say so - so a face to face meeting and explanation of how to run the group - not just how to work the software is needed. AFAIK Freecycle insist that new mods go to mod training school (a group just for training) so that they are taught how to do it correctly with both the correct technical methods and ethos.

I did have a good mod one one group but he has been ill so I am on my own now - which makes it hard for me to go away on holiday. I do not want to put out the general "mods wanted" type post because of the number of serial wanters that respond.

mttylad

With my freecycle groups hosted on freecycle.org they had such a bad management policy that they were short of mods so used US based international mods that did not know the local area etc - the policy was that as soon as possible people are allowed to post unmoderated so they get to make as many wanteds and sales etc as they want. Its not much different now - even with Blackburn.

I would not be a mod on freecycle.org for all the tea in china.

thepedestrian

Offered - pay as you go sin cards -

I was initially interested in this , but on opening realised it was a typo !

Amanita_2

Cool_Mint wrote: »

The idea that Freecycle is a "community" is total bull***t, it's not even possible for Freecyclers to say hello to each other on Yahoo Groups because conversation is not allowed.

Snip

I'd like to see a sub-section of Freecycle that did allow buying & selling for members who have a good reputation but there's no option for members to discuss any new possibilities within Yahoo Groups and if someone tried to set up an independent forum for Freecyclers (which I suppose has already been tried) it would be threatened with legal action by the "boss" of Freecycle.

Many areas have a sister "cafe site" that is not moderated to anything like the same degree and posts that are not allowed on the main site are fine - ie chat, requests for info, advice etc. Might be worth having a look around your own home site to see if there is a link or asking the local mod team.

Mojisola

Amanita wrote: »

Many areas have a sister "cafe site" that is not moderated to anything like the same degree and posts that are not allowed on the main site are fine - ie chat, requests for info, advice etc.

Our Freegle has a cafe site. It's great for asking for borrows, selling something, advertising local events and getting referrals. I've had work done after personal referrals for gas and electric repairs and have been very pleased with the recommendations.