Not worked:

1. I don’t live in a conventional suburban rectilinear grid, so my house is hard to find, so I can’t just put freecycle material at the end of my driveway. I have to find a freecycle partner who is willing to be a “depot” when I’m ready to purge.

Suggestion: having a “reple deple” depot for freecycle centers that aren’t conventional

2. As others have said, inquiries about items that are long-gone. This doesn’t bug me so much, as I just hit “reply” and respond “gone” and then send. Elapsed time is about 3 seconds, so that’s not so bad.

Worked:

1. I’ve moved a lot of cubic into places where it will be appreciated.

2. I’ve found specific items I needed that I didn’t want necessarily to purchase.

Note: I own a truck, and have a roster of young friends who can help me with transport.

Off-topic:

My 18 yo daughter recently purged her clothes inventory. Rather than using FreeCycle, we moved it all directly into the local Drug Court diversion program. The intake director called me to thank me — many of the young women come into the program with nothing but the clothes they are wearing.

Small correction to the last link, though, that is Matthew Haughey of fortuito.us, equally famous community guy and probably works with Lee. I love that article.

1) I recently wrote a post about community debate and flame wars, and how I was surprised to discover communities where debate didn’t happen:

http://tinyurl.com/26sg95

2) I used FreeCycle only once, to get rid of some old computer games. This was my problem, and the reason I never re-used the service: I received far too many enquiries. I must have gotten at least 40 emails, despite posting that the items had already gone. If I were revising this excellent service, I’d devise a means of avoiding this problem.

Here’s a dumb strategy: create an automated alias system. When people contact me, they do so through an auto-generated [foo]@malta.freecycle.org address. When the items are gone, I can modify that alias so that the senders get an automated reply indicating as much.

I noticed that some of you commenters said “why moderate”. That’s a great question and I think it’s one that’s been answered in practice on many communities that don’t moderate over and over again staring with usenet groups. Some people thrive on deliberating messing things up and poisoning the well so a great community can go sour quickly. Everyone disperses or spends all their time arguing. Now a not so great moderator can sour the well too but not nearly as often that I’ve seen.

A great article on this is “How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community” by Cory Doctorow. He also discusses people that are exceptionally good at keeping a community working — troll whisperers.
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=199600005

You might also want to take a look at Lee LeFever’s post for ideas:
“Seven tips on how to run a successful community”
http://fortuito.us/2007/05/some_community_tips_for_2007

The second is never to forget that even if you’re providing the service for free, it can become an important part of peoples lives. It may be your forum, if people have been poring their harts out on it for years, it becomes their forum. At least it will feel that way to them, and you should at least try as much as possible to treat it that way.

Flickr does indeed do a great job of doing this when dousing the flames, but often only after they screwed up. Flickr’s recent debatable actions have often been done anonymously and without much explanation. It would have been better not to lite the flames to begin with. Big decisions are made behind the scenes, and only when people get pissed off Flickr starts to really communicate.

Basically all of the things you’ve mentioned starts when people don’t see each other as fellow human beings, and that’s a two way thing. Site owners should be more aware that practical changes always have personal consequences.

(Although not realistic for many sites, inviting your “community leaders” for face to face encounters can also do wonders. With the non-profit local community site I worked on for years we had an standing open invitation for anyone to attend our monthly meetings. Our harshest critics often became volunteers that way.)

a. I don’t like moderation at all…even though our beloved coworking and barcamp wikis and groups have been inundated with spam lately, we persevere keeping it as open as possible.

b. There is a difference between flat and participatory. Yes, you can try both, but from our experience (with many projects), leadership is necessary, too.

c. Everyone adds value to a community, but, in my experience, those who feel they are most entitled are quite often the least deserving. I can tell you many a story in private. With few exceptions, the site owners have the communities needs at heart, but so often get pelted with accusations by those who haven’t the first insight into what kind of work it takes to maintain their sites…especially when trying to please EVERYONE. Yes, some are better at handling the politics than others, but it is hard work for all.

d. You are lucky. I should probably list some of my examples of the irrational flame wars that have transpired on very upstanding sites.

I’m actually referring to alot of various forums (I haven’t spent enough time in the freecycle forums to make any determinations) and these patterns emerge over and over again.

You know what baffles me is that I know many of the people who are site owners behind the forums where there have been the cries of: Censorship, Entitlement, etc. and, all in all, these site owners are good people, trying to do right by their community…sometimes making mistakes, sometimes getting hot under the collar themselves, but always having their hearts in the right place.

I don’t know Deron well enough to make that kind of judgement, nor is it my place to do that here. But Freecycle as a community is not healthy right now. Far from it. There is very little productive discussion going on amongst the Moderators. Instead, people are attacking one another. I don’t know about censored posts…I haven’t read any that have been deleted, but I will definitely ask to see what determines a deletion. I have also asked Deron to see his financials. I certainly did not glean from our meetings that he has much personal cash, but he could be great at hiding it. Now that Freecycle is an official charitable organization, the law states that he must disclose all financial information, including what he gets paid, so if you don’t know already, you will.

I also don’t know enough about the history of Freecycle to say who has ownership or what Deron has done to guide it to it’s current saturation. I do know it’s stifled right now. It doesn’t want to grow. As someone who has studied these cultures (as well as run and been part of them) for years, I may be able to mediate this a bit. I don’t know.

I understand your passion and I hear you. I want to hear more about the hard working group owners and why you think there is so much anger in this community. It’s such a pity because the idea is so darned amazing.

Let’s chat. Feel free to email me (on my contact page).

Isn’t that against the freecycle rules? Oh, I forgot, OIDG is immune from the rule of no moderation as is the Freecycle Modsquad. Post something that the management doesn’t agree with and you’ll find yourself put on moderation so quickly it will make your head spin.

“# Censorship – rabid cries of censorship. Seems this is the most common outcry of all.”

Isn’t this also against the rules?

“# Entitlement – oft spoken, “We have the right to …” – and oft tied to the censorship thing. Unfortunately, people don’t understand their true rights on the net. Google deletes your account? Bummer 4 you. You really don’t have much for retribution. It could happen on ANY site, too. Keep local backups? Remember, too, that your hard drive could croak at anytime, taking all of your data with it (mine has) and you are not entitled to sue your hard drive manufacturer for the lost files.”

And this new website will change the chances of your hard drive crashing or losing your google id?

While your addressing issues, let’s talk about what happens to all the hard working group owners that have worked to promote freecycling to what it is today? Their new job will be to yuk it up to promote freecycle so that their so-called “founder” can line his pockets with even more cash?

Let’s talk about the stolen graphics used to create the freecycle logo. The very same logo the freecycle network has applied for a trademark on.

Let’s talk about a law suit that has been filed against a man who has done nothing more than use the name he was given the right to use when he created his group.

Want to know the truth about what’s going on with the freecycle network? I’d suggest http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fcnext

A few thoughts for you…

1) Why moderate? You can setup bad word filters and enforce policies like having to register to post and not accepting email addresses that people can easily hide behind (think hotmail.com here). You can even enforce the use of a name vs a handle. Once all of this is done, do forums need to be actively moderated or is this simply the position most default to? After all, if you’re trying to create a flat, participatory community, it’s contradictory to have much more than a light touch of moderation. And that should be to enforce rules people agree to when they signup to post.

2) There’s a tension between “we provide this board as a service and foot the bill… so our word is law” and “without people actually coming here and participating, all you have is an idle server.” That is, between the people actually footing real bills and putting in real time to manage the forum and people who participate on the forum. Both add value, neither can exist without the other… but often one group feels that they are more important than the other.

3) There’s a difference between bluntness and flamewars. I participated in a very active forum but since we all had to use our names few actual flamewars broke out. Anonymity has its place, but when people can snipe without fear, the tend to do that.