Development Group Report 2016 03

Freegle Development Report March 2016

Group members 54

Freegle Development is a group where new policies are discussed and voted on and any changes of existing policy are discussed.

March once again has been a busy month on Development, with plenty of discussion. We continued with the discussion on communication from February

Task 10 - Find better ways of communicating technical developments

We summarised that the new FD and modtools interface will eventually solve the problem of Yahoo owner emails being unreliable methods of contact. At this time there is a patch in place for all groups that use modtools so that Central can make contact with group owners if necessary and this will improve as time goes on.

For non FD/Modtools groups, Edward will create an interface to record all known emails for groups so contact is easier. He can also provide something that listed groups not using either so that they could be chased to provide a contact email. We can’t provide good communication for any groups that don’t provide us with emails.

Task 41 – Review Caretaker groups

Another topic discussed in February, almost to a conclusion. The final document was polled on and the review of caretaker groups can now be seen on the wiki Caretaker Groups

Task 40 Best practice 3.5 Wanted Posts

This is part of the Best Practice guidelines review and was started in February. The original wording of the document was eventually revised. A poll was held and members of Development were 100% in favour of the changes made. The full document can be seen on the wiki http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Best_Practice#3.5_Do_you_restrict_the_number_of_Wanted_posts.3F

Lending liabilities

A topic that was started by Dominic who suggested that Freegle should take some responsibility in protecting members from the possiblility that they could be held liable if an item they loaned out caused damage, or if an item borrowed was returned in poor condition or not returned at all. It is already highly recommended that groups do not allow borrowing at all. It was agreed that this should remain just as highly recommended rather than being made mandatory, but groups that allow lending should have a disclaimer on their groups along the lines of "if you lend something, it is your responsibility to ensure it is fit for purpose". The main disclaimer doesn’t need changing because we recommend not allowing borrowing anyway. Some advice was added to the wiki to guide moderators in how to deal with Borrowing http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Lending_Liability

Task 40 - Review of Best practice 3.6 Message reject

This was a short review about giving advice on message rejection. There was very little editing of the original document. The revised wording was polled on and the document can be found here http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Best_Practice#How_many_messages_do_you_reject.3F

Task 40 Best Practice review 3.7 Impressions

Again this part of the review was done with very little editing. There was a short discussion on the impression we give to members when we email them and how rejecting messages can put members off. The revised document was agreed on and can be found here http://wiki.ilovefreegle.org/Best_Practice#What_impression_do_your_messages_to_members_give_of_you_and_Freegle.3F

Task 47 - Platform: do specialist groups work?

Edward started this discussion on whether specialist groups are working and asked whether we should continue with them when we have the new platform in place. The consensus was that to date none of the specialist groups, including subgroups on FD have worked and none are particularly successful. However specialist groups that wish to continue, could remain a part of Freegle but as a Yahoo group only.

This discussion is continuing.

Task 40 Review of best practice 3.8 Problems

There were no changes at all suggested to this part of the best practice guide.

Development would welcome new members to join the discussions and help with deciding new procedures and policies for Freegle. If you would like to join us we can be found at; https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/freegleDevelopment/info

Links

• Development Working Group
• Previous report Development Group Report 2016 02
• Following report Development Group Report 2016 04