Champaign-Urbana

Reminder of Freecycle[tm] policy on "just come grab stuff" posts.

Say Freecyclers, there's been a recent run of posts along the lines of "Various stuff at [address], come grab what you want" posts. I think it's time for a rare reminder that this kind of post is contrary to Freecycle[tm] policy. Here's the relevant text from the Guidelines and Disclaimer that you should have received when you first joined Freecycle[tm]: --------- 7. BE NICE. A brief note on Freecycle etiquette: we are all volunteers and we've got a great little community here so when you arrange to pick up an item from another Freecycle member, it is basic good manners to accommodate them as much as possible in terms of scheduling, and then be punctual; they are, after all, giving you something you need and asking nothing in return except that you will show up when you say you will. Also, unless the giver tells you otherwise, assume that they would like you to come by as soon as you can to take away the item. PICK UP. Arrange as you like. Generally, you'll wait until you get a handful of responses or maybe overnight, and then you can pick whomever you like! That's half the fun. Consider giving your starving local charity preference if one should respond. Arrange pickup with one person only, rather than "It's on the porch, whoever gets here first gets it." Otherwise you'll become unpopular pretty quickly with your fellow Freecycle members. Also, only give your phone number to one person at a time or ask for the recipient's phone number. Otherwise you'll get swamped with phone calls. --------- I'll admit that this is less direct that it might be. And it's probably been years since you saw it, but that PICK UP section pretty much explains the Freecycle[tm] model. There is filtering by the system (outside of the control of your humble Moderator) that tries to catch such posts before they're released. The filters aren't perfect and some get through. For a bit more rationale, here's the message sent to the poster when such a post is rejected: -------- Hello, I am sorry, but we do not permit free-for-all posts (such as "It's on the porch, whoever gets here first can have it.') Posting in that manner encourages many people to head that direction, and 99% of those people will walk away disappointed and empty-handed, after having expended a great deal of time and gasoline for nothing. Please pick out a few items, post them and set up a specific time for folks to pick the items up. That approach may seem like more work but if people are making unneeded trips for nothing it will sour them towards you and towards Freecycle in general and that's not good for anyone. Another, acceptable but less preferred, approach would be to do a single OFFER for a bunch of items. (And, of course, don't include where your stuff is in the post.) If someone wants specific items, set them aside and tell any other potential takers that those items are spoken for. If someone wants to pick and choose, tell them of anything already gone and give them a deadline to come look, then hold off allowing any others to visit until the first is done. The downside of this is that there's no way to update your OFFER to say what's still available, so you'll have to deal with that yourself. Again, the idea is to avoid wasting resources by people driving across town only to find that what they wanted is gone. -------- Thanks for your understanding, The Moderator