Rippling Out - Members

What is rippling out?

When you post something on Freegle, your item is shown to people nearby first. If nobody close enough picks it up quickly, it is gradually shown to people a little further away - and so on, working outwards in waves over time. This is rippling out.

The aim is to keep freegling as local as possible. Your neighbours get first chance, which means less driving and a fairer go for everyone close by. If nobody nearby wants it, it reaches further afield automatically - you do not need to do anything extra.

If enough people nearby reply to your post, it stops spreading further - it already has plenty of interest, so there is no need to show it to people further away.

What happens when your post ripples into a new community?

When your post reaches a nItalic textew Freegle community, two things happen automatically.

You are joined as a member

You are added as a normal member of that community so that:

• People there can reply to your post and get in touch.
• Moderators can contact you if they need to.
• Your post behaves just like any other post in that community.

This is invisible to you in day-to-day use. You will see these communities listed under your "My Communities" in Settings.

Your email settings are adjusted on your behalf

We do not want your inbox filling up with new post alerts from every community your item travels through. So we apply these defaults for any community you are joined to via rippling:

• If you were on "immediate" emails on your home community, the rippled communities are set to daily digest instead. You still hear about them - just once a day rather than instantly.
• If you were already on daily digest or no emails, those settings are kept exactly as they are.
• Community events and volunteering emails carry over the setting you already use on your own community, so you get no extra emails.

You can adjust any of these settings yourself at any time - see below.

The intro email

Instead of receiving a separate welcome email for every community your post ripples into (which could be quite a few), you get one single email that explains:

• That your post is now reaching nearby communities beyond your own.
• What email settings we applied on your behalf.
• How to change them or leave a community if you prefer.
• A welcome message from each community your post reached (so you still see what each community wanted to say, without a separate welcome email from every one).

This is a one-off notice about your own post. It is sent even if you normally have emails turned off for group-feed messages, because it is about something that just happened to your account.

Your daily "What's New" email

Because rippling switches your immediate alerts to a daily digest (see above), and joins you to more communities, your daily "What's New" email can now gather posts from several communities. To keep the email a sensible length - and to stop it being clipped partway through by email providers like Gmail - it lists up to around 65 posts. If there are more than that, the email shows the first batch and links you to the website to browse the rest, and the subject line simply says "What's New" rather than giving an exact post count. Nothing is missing - everything is always there on the browse page.

Getting posts that ripple towards you

Rippling works in the other direction too: posts from neighbouring communities ripple towards you. If you have a community set to immediate emails, you will get an alert the moment a rippling post first reaches your area - just as you would for a post made directly in that community. You only ever get one alert per post, however far it later travels, and only once it is actually close enough for you to reply.

If you would rather not hear about them straight away, set that community to daily digest in Settings - those posts then simply appear in your next "What's New" instead.

Reminders about your post

If your item is still available after a while, we remind you shortly before we automatically repost it ("Will Repost: ..."), and later we check in to ask what happened ("What happened to: ..."). Even though your post may be live in several communities at once through rippling, you only ever get one reminder and one check-in each time - not one per community. Whatever you choose - mark it taken, withdraw it, or promise it to someone - applies to your post everywhere it has reached, so a single tap settles it.

Staying in control

Changing your email settings

You can adjust how often you hear from any community in Settings at any time. You can set individual communities to immediate, daily, or no emails, just as you can for any other community you belong to.

Leaving a community If you would rather not be a member of a community your post rippled into, you can leave it in Settings.

Two things happen when you leave:

• Your post is removed from that community - people there will no longer see it.
• You will not be re-joined to that community, even if your post continues to ripple elsewhere.

Your post carries on being visible in every other community it reached, so leaving one community does not affect the rest.

Things you will notice on the browse page

The most relevant posts first

On the browse page's "Nearby" view you see exactly the posts that have reached you - the ones close enough that you can get in touch right now. Posts you have not seen before appear first, then the ones you have already looked at; within each group, we bring the most worthwhile posts to the top by weighing up how close a post is, how fresh it is, and how much interest it has already had - not just which arrived most recently. So you should not find a five-day-old post from several miles away sitting above a fresh one from just up your street. The old travel-time slider and transport picker are gone: the system works out the right distance for you and widens it automatically over time, so more posts appear in your Nearby view as they ripple towards you. You will not see distant posts you cannot yet reply to cluttering the list or map - Nearby stays genuinely nearby. You can still sort by "Newest posted" or "Closest" if you prefer, and "All my communities" still shows everything in the communities you belong to.

A distance slider, if you want one

In the browse filters - and in your Settings, under "Feed" - there is a simple slider marked "Nearer" at one end and "Further" at the other - no numbers, just a feel for how far you would like posts to come from. It starts set to "Further", which means no extra limit beyond the posts that have naturally reached you. If you would rather only see things from close by, drag it towards "Nearer" at any time; drag it back whenever you like.

"Further" means further in the countryside than it does in a city, because it should. If you live somewhere with few people nearby, the nearest town is probably somewhere you already drive to, and its posts are the ones most worth showing you - so the slider reaches further out for you, and the "Max ... miles by road" note under it will say a bigger number than it would for someone in a city centre. In a busy area there is usually someone much closer, so reaching half an hour across town mostly means being emailed about things you would not travel for. Freegle works out which of these applies to you from how spread out other freeglers are around your postcode; you do not have to tell it anything.

The same setting works both ways. As well as narrowing which posts you see and get emailed about, moving it towards "Nearer" also limits how far away other people see your own posts - handy if you would rather only hear from people who can easily get to you. Left at "Further", your posts reach as far as rippling naturally takes them. (It measures distance by road distance and travel time, not a straight line, so it follows real geography like estuaries and coastlines.)

That both-ways rule applies to the slider when you move it yourself. It is your decision about how far you are willing to go, so it seems only fair that it says how far your own offers travel too.

The starting position Freegle works out for you is different, and it only affects what you see. It never shortens how far your own posts go. That is deliberate, and the reason is that the two are not really the same question. Working out that you have plenty of freeglers close by is a statement about your neighbourhood, not a promise from you about how far you would drive. Using it to stop your spare sofa reaching somebody twenty minutes away would just mean one less thing gets reused, and it would not help anybody. So Freegle only holds your own posts back when you have actually asked it to.

Freegle remembers your choice, along with your other filters (which posts, which communities, and sort order), so you do not need to set them again next time you visit.

When you post, there is no group to choose

When you create a post you no longer pick which community it goes to. Your post simply reflects where the item actually is (based on the postcode you give), and rippling then shows it to the right people, closest first. You no longer need to think about "which group should I post to?" or post to a second group for more reach - the system handles that for you.

"You can always reply - we'll pass it on" On the default Nearby view, every post you see has already reached you, so your reply goes straight to the owner. Only if you move away from that default - for example by switching to "All my communities", or widening what you are looking at - might you come across a post that has not rippled out to your area yet. You can still reply: we simply hold your message for a short while, then pass it on. That gives people closer to the item a head start, which is the whole point of rippling out, but it is a short wait rather than an open-ended one - usually under an hour, and never more than three. The wait depends on how far outside the post's current area you are, so if you are only just outside it, it is very short. If the post ripples out to you sooner than that, your reply goes straight through at that moment instead.

You do not need to do anything or come back. It is delivered automatically, and your reply shows as "waiting to send" until then. Nothing is lost.

Quick summary

• Your post: Shown to people nearby first, then gradually further away
• Nearby browse order: Unseen posts first, then seen; each ordered by closeness, freshness and interest, not just newest
• Distance slider: Optional "Nearer/Further" control in Browse and Settings; narrows what you see and are emailed about, and how far away other people see your own posts; starts at "Further" (no extra limit)
• Browse filters: Remembered between visits, including the distance slider
• New communities: You are joined automatically so replies and contact work
• Email defaults Immediate is switched to daily; no-email and daily are unchanged
• Community events/volunteering emails: Carried over from your own community's setting
• Intro email: One bundled email explains what happened and how to change things
• Repost reminders / check-ins: One per item, not one per community
• Leaving a community: Removes your post from it; you are not re-joined
• Changing settings: Adjust per community in Settings at any time

Link: Rippling out