Freegle Tech Report 19-04-30
Freegle Tech Report April 2019 Messages 26982-27093 Members 113
General
Financial and CO2 benefit of freegling
For a while now we've had a page where you can search for a political area (like a council) and get stats from the Freegle communities in that area, showing weights etc. Natalie fairly recently came across a bit of work by WRAP (http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/monitoring-tools-and-resources) which has a tool which can be used to model the benefits of reuse compared to how things would otherwise be disposed of. This means we can come up with a figure for the financial benefit of reuse (£711 per metric tonne) and CO2 saved (0.51 per metric tonne). This gives us a credible (because it's WRAP) way of estimating our overall impact.
On the main /stats page we do have a paragraph about methodology; I'll add a link to the WRAP stuff in there although in our recent experience with councils,they don't really care about the methodology, though whenever they've expressed a vague interest it's been quite useful as another conversation to have with them as part of building the relationship.
Direct
Chat
Many members seem to do a thumbs down by mistake. Currently we say "do a thumbs up" instead, but I think it would be useful to allow you to do this so that we don't need to get asked. So I've made a change (not live yet) which means that if you click again on a thumbs up/down, it will cancel it.
A regular complaint is about getting very short replies to offers, like 'I'll have that', or "when can I collect". There have been people complaining about that on chitchat recently.
We could bounce short replies, and tell people that their reply is too short, and ask them to write a longer one.
This would help with that problem, and would be a way to encourage people to be more polite and put more useful info into their first reply.
A middle ground would be to allow the reply through but tell people that short replies don't work well, giving them the opportunity to do a follow-up reply.
Or we could just leave it as it is. Views?
After discussion most mods preferred to do nothing and objected to us interfering with people's messages.
Chit Chat. (Was News)
When people introduce themselves, it goes to the person they're communicating with, and also onto chitchat. That's started some good threads of discussion on there, but one thing that happens fairly regularly is that people then say "what are you offering".I've added some info the chitchat so that you can easily see what people are offering, and click through to their profile.
Digests
contain new posts, manual reposts and autoreposts. I've sorted it so that the autoreposts appear at the bottom. We had a few people who read every digest and didn't like seeing the same posts - this way they can stop scanning when they get to the autoreposts.
Mail
We do get complaints about chat messages not getting through or going into spam. Members feel we should be able to fix it. We try but it is up to the members email provider to receive it and put it in their account. From time to time we do get certain email providers to return emails not delivered properly. There are always a fair number. Occasionally the member has made a mistake with their email address, but most of them have just been bounced.
Bounces can take a few days to come back, as they retry to get them through. We get lots of emails we send out bouncing back. Some are because the email account is not used, or full, but many are because we have been blacklisted, often after a period of the member leaving us in their spam box or even putting us there.
We are getting back any Yahoo bounces at present and Christian is looking into them.
Q & A.
Q. I’ve noticed on Amazon that they support charities but Freegle is not on the list, would it help if we were?
We are not the correct sort of charity but if we use everyclick we can benefit for .05% . If you install the browser toolbar it reminds you when you're on a site which will generate funds. It adds up, especially for larger items
Q. I have a complaint from a member in Welwyn Garden City that she is not able to mark a post as taken nor can she post a new post. When I checked her membership, she doesn’t show as having posted anything at all, yet the logs showed a post approved by one of our mods. So I impersonated her and her previous offer shows as a draft, yet she has replies. There are no posts in her my posts other than this draft.
A.I think she got partway through a manual repost. Checking last night's backup, that message was on Welwyn, since the 8th, so it would probably be around now that she could repost it, and it wouldn't have autoreposted because she had replies. There's a resume button there to continue with that draft. As you say, find out what goes wrong when she tries.
Q. Do we need the function to promise?
The promise button is useful for recording bad experiences with other freeglers, but now we have thumbs up and thumbs down do we really need it? I hardly ever mark an item Promised because a failure to identify the promisee as having Taken, for whatever reason, leads to "the system" marking them as possibly unreliable, and I would rather be the judge of that. Maybe it is not working, or maybe other people are doing the same, because of the last 200 posts on my home group,, none are greyed out.
A. It's not quite as blunt as that. It will only show them as possibly unreliable if things have not worked out with them more than 25% of the time. Individuals can't judge terribly well, because they only see one transaction. So someone might be promised lots of things and then say sorry and give the same convincing excuse. If they say that to half the people they deal with then they're not reliable even if every individual person they dealt with found their explanation convincing. It doesn't even have to be deliberate, people might be lovely but just never quite get their act together. If there is a pattern of them not following through on items they get promised, then that's worth flagging up.
The nature of it is that things will only stay promised until they are marked as taken, at which point they won't show at all. That means you won't see very many. So people do use it, but I would like to find ways to get them to use it more.
Could we try greying out posts when, say, 5 people have responded, instead? We do show how many people have replied, but we could do more there.
A. I'll think about it.
Q. If you are set to receive group message notifications, either individual, daily digest etc will these show your own messages on them?
A. Yes
Client code changes in April
This is an automated list of the changes to the client code in the last month. If you have any questions about them, please reply to this mail.
Here are the more important ones which would affect members:
- In Find, always default to searching OFFERs even if you have previously chosen to search WANTEDs. This reduces confusion.
- Chat message with < in it is truncated
- Add comment to show that when you mark something as taken/received the name of who took it isn't public
- Add direct link to Privacy page from sign in popup, and clarify that name and approx location are visible
- Rename Invite to Promote, add poster and notice boards
- Add link to Accounts into About Us
- Add headline stats for weight, benefit and CO2 reduction to /stats page
- On mobile, if you use the Find Location button, it's not obvious anything happens; scroll to the map to make that clearer
- Spread page doesn't load when logged out
- Chat broken by a message that's just a number
- Show active OFFER/WANTED count on chitchat and let people click through. Should help with queries about what people are offering.
- Tweak some colours to improve colour-contrast and therefore accessibility (
- For small groups, impacts are wrongly 0.
- Add newsfeed item for noticeboards, to encourage people to do it
...and here are the ones which are minor, or only affect volunteers in ModTools, or are internal changes that you wouldn't notice:
Tweak newsfeed layout slightly
Add video into councils toolkit
In MT, allow hiding of info about getting posters and cards
In MT, privacy page doesn't show properly
Typo in privacy statement
Make noticeboard text more respectful
In MT, move pending admins below admin creation
Fix approve bugs on ADMINs page
In MT, when you approve an ADMIN make it fade out
In MT, allow creation of suggested ADMINs (for Admin/Support) and explain what they are when they pop up on the Admins section.
Add a link to WRAP tool on stats page.
Add financial benefit and CO2 reduction to council authority stats
We want to be able to select start and end dates for stats on council authority pages
Fix MT error on happiness page
In MT, happiness page sometimes omits some entries
Bad noticeboard newsfeed item breaks page
In MT, add per-group config for whether we suggest ADMINs
Require name for noticeboards
Recent fix broke MT map of groups o)
Tweak about me request text
Fix error clicking on profile
Tweak spread page layout
In MT mapping areas are shaded when you move around the map even if you've asked for them not to be.
Council toolkit improvements
Fix chat message line breaks
Add shortlink for poster so we can track downloads
In MT, make change Admins so that they need to be approved
In MT, tweak text for send admin button
Fix newlines in chat some more
Change "Copy to clipboard" to "Copy link"
Volunteer sidebar is showing when logged out, which it isn't supposed to
Board page doesn't render correctly
On MT, make it easier to relink Facebook pages by adding a direct link On Publicity, not always showing missing Facebook pages
Phone not showing in Settings
Chat now has weird nonsense in it after previous fix
April Fool 2019
In Support Tools->List Groups, return Founded date and colour-code Affiliation Confirmed date to make it easier to find groups we need to check)
More donation amount tweaking
In MT, show unlinked groups on Publicity page
Try donation ask at ��3
Pre-render warning in MT is triggering sooner than it should
This is an automated list of the changes to the server code in the last Month. If you have any questions about them, please reply to this mail.
Here are the more important ones which would affect members:
- Chat message notifications occasionally not sent
- If you unfollow a chitchat thread, then you shouldn't see notifications for it.
- Fixes to notification emails, and don't email the same ones repeatedly
...and here are the ones which are minor, or only affect volunteers in ModTools, or are internal changes that you wouldn't notice:
Return founded date when listing groups
Debugging chat email issues
Don't notify by email for About Me notification
Add ability to hold community events and volunteer ops
More reply text strippings
Update schema
More admins
Call to list all pending admins
Add call to delete an ADMIN
In MT, start work on approval of ADMINs..)
UT fixes.
Improve chitchat digest mails
Allow fetch of posts for walk blog.
Allow noticeboard create logged out.
Spread the word preview.
Allow modification of noticeboard details…
Add server code for addition of noticeboards
Add sponsor names.
Fix thanks mail ..
UT problems.
Trigger a build.
Link to gift aid declaration form.
Turn off logs in UT (.
Add some function for Edward' stroll .
Finally fix problem with Facebook posts not showing .
More ADMIN fixes .
Create copies of suggested ADMINs when they exist.
Server changes for suggested admins .
We want to be able to select start and end dates for stats on council authority pages .
In MT, happiness omits some entries as paging algorithm wrong.
More happiness fixes.
In MT, reverting an edit breaks the subject line...o)
In MT, Happiness page showing wrong groups .
Strip TN signature .
Auto-admins setting.
Tweak noticeboards (.
Only generate newsfeed item for noticeboards once we have set some info to avoid accidental clicks .
Improve reliabiliity of notification emails .
Ask people to put up noticeboards in chat notification mails, and change donation link to our favourite one.
Newsfeed noticeboard items.
Update schema.
Invalid LiveIntent placement ids .
Remove error log.
Allow pinned newsfeed entries ..
When you open a single newsfeed item, the new OFFER/WANTED info is missing
Add active counts to newsfeed.
Fix to notification change.
Help debug problems with business card payments.
Newsfeed digests have very long subject lines.
Chat mod chaseup email has bad URL in i.
Add shortlink for poster so we can track downloads
In MT, make change Admins so that they need to be approved
In MT, tweak text for send admin button
Fix approve bugs on ADMINs page
In MT, when you approve an ADMIN make it fade out
In MT, allow creation of suggested ADMINs (for Admin/Support) and explain what they are when they pop up on the Admins section.
Add a link to WRAP tool on stats page.Add financial benefit and CO2 reduction to council authority stats Add financial benefit and CO2 reduction to council authority stats
We want to be able to select start and end dates for stats on council authority pages
Bad noticeboard newsfeed item breaks page(
Require name for noticeboards
Facebook
There have been a lot of problems with groups not linking to their Facebook pages for publicity this month. We seem to be over most of it now but it is worth checking in your group settings that you are linked to the correct page.
Mobile
I've just released new versions of the Freegle and ModTools apps for Android, catching up with the website eg the change to "ChitChat" and "Spread".
The iOS apps have been submitted for approval.
Freegle: version 1.4.12
ModTools: version 0.2.12
Chris
Apps hat
Modtools
26982 Publicity items not showing in Chrome
This has been happening for a couple of days. No changes to my PC would account for it. The menu at the left shows an item needs dealing with but in Chrome it doesn't show in the main part of the screen. It's OK in Firefox and using the app on my Samsung phone. Sorry I can't help with a TV as my ISP blocks TV.
A. I fixed a problem like that this morning. Can you do a Ctrl+Shift+R to double check
Tech Chat
I not sure if you’ve noticed but new messages on the MT’s chat for tech are not showing in the main chat box, last one showing is your request for a member ID. I saw an answer for that in the left hand menu which didn’t appear in the main pane and I think the person has now replied to say their answer didn’t appear, going on the short bit you can see of the last post made in the menu list. Don’t know if it’s affecting any other chats but they get email advice too so not so much of a problem unless some only use chat to reply to members. Does show as unread messages on the bubble just nothing in the chat pane.ard Platform Hat
A. Yes, that was an excellent problem caused by having a chat message which was entirely numbers. Ctrl+Shift+R and you should pick up the fix.
Jean
Tech Group Report
April 2019
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