Main > Everything Else

senseless freecycle rant

(1/4) > >>

myntik1:
I don't know if any of you guys are freecyclers. I used to be a big proponent of it, but now I've grown to detest my local group.  The basic premise is you have an item you no longer need.  Instead of throwing it away you give it to someone who needs it.  I've given away old vacuums, computers, an old working dishwasher, etc.  I always felt like I was helping the next guy along because he wouldn't have to purchase something I no longer need.  I used to live in a progressive city, now I don't (and I'll leave it at that).  Instead of children's snowboats, old toaster ovens and curtains the new group (determined by my city) I'm in has posters looking for xbox 360s, working vehicles, and video ipods.  To me that violates the community that it was supposed to foster.  Also, there have been several posters concerning replies they've received before their ad was posted.  Usually the forum moderators have to review a post before it can be seen.  Some days they rubber stamp them all and other days it takes a couple of hours before your post is live.  This is when I started to sour on the concept.

I posted an ad yesterday and received an angry response from the moderator and now I need to vent.  Over the summer I loaned a guy on freecycle my lawn roller.  He offered to leave me something for collateral for the roller, I declined.  He used it for a few hours and then brought it back to me.  He told me he was going to borrow a tiller off another member. I thought what a great concept. Obviously I'm not going to lend someone my car, but I wouldn't mind if someone needed to borrow that weedwacker I got at a tag sale for $5.  So I posted an ad looking for a framing gun to borrow.  I offered to put something up for collateral if I damaged the gun or failed to return it.  About an hour later I got myself a new arsehole courtesy of one of the mods. Somehow it's better for me to ask for something valued at 3-4 hundred from someone in my community then to ask to borrow it and put something up as security. It makes no sense to me.

ChadTower:

Some of us own Freecycle groups.  Lots of us are Freecycle members.

Depending on the group's individual rules, loaning/borrowing is usually against the rules and written clearly in the group policies.  If it's not in the individual group policy file (which is supposed to be mailed to every member once a month) it should be.  Looks like someone was asleep at the mod wheel last year and wasn't this time.

DrewKaree:
I can't believe they let the "wanted: 360's" posts through though (and their equivalents).  As far as the moderated posts issues, I keep everyone in my group moderated until they've shown 2-3 posts that conform to Freecycle's simple rules and anything additional my group adds, such as no live pets.  One member in our group will NEVER be taken off moderation, and IMO, for good reason.  She ALWAYS posts wanteds, never ONCE since joining has offered anything, and in EVERY post, gives some long sob story about how she and her 2 kids are barely making ends meet and it would mean so much to them to blah blah blah.  Each and every time, I tell her to edit her posts without the sympathy plea/guilt trip additions, and every time, I end up editing her follow-up revision to actually DO what I told her to. 

As I said though, folks DO get removed from moderation after demonstrating they "get" how to post. 

As far as "collateral", technically, it DOES violate the "free" part of Freecycle :dunno  I'm thinking that they're figuring that there's other sites out there for swaps such as that, but there's nice ways to let someone know that.

ChadTower:

My group is full moderation.  It just works better that way in this instance.  If I'm going to be away for a while I will turn moderation off and just not tell anyone until I get back.

shardian:
This was posted on the local Freecycle yesterday:

  WANTED: Corvette (Charleston)
Posted by: "king_midas21" king_midas21@yahoo.com   king_midas21
Tue Feb 5, 2008 9:35 am (PST)
I am looking for a Corvette would like to find a 1963 Corvette Stingray
but any year would be fine even a new Z06 would be Great.



Okay, why the hell would a mod approve this! I am officially deleting my freecycle account. It is ridiculous!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version