Too many wanteds
WANTEDs can be just as good as offers at keeping stuff out of landfill - see Best Practice Notes#'Wanted' posts are a good thing. If members complain, it's worth looking at your community's stats on your Dashboard in ModTools, which shows a pie chart of the types of messages posted on your community over the past 30 days. You could copy and paste that chart, or quote the figures, to anyone who complains.
Advantages of WANTEDs
- They can jog people's memory about things they hadn't thought of offering, including used jars, broken iPods, rags needed for a hobby, and so on.
- The item requested is genuinely needed, so you know it'll be appreciated.
- Members who initially post a lot of WANTEDs and receive items usually start offering later - that's the magic of generosity, it breeds more!
If someone's still unhappy, suggest they filter out emails from your community with WANTED in the title.
Explain that if someone is being too greedy, other members will notice and not respond - so the community can become self-policing without the need for additional rules.
Disadvantages of limiting WANTED posts
- You'll need to remember the limits and monitor all posts more closely.
- Some members who don't like to post offers on the list frequently respond off-list to WANTEDs - these members may also post WANTEDs themselves.
- Members might just start posting WANTEDs on neighbouring communities instead, causing people to travel further and use more fuel to collect stuff.
- If your community is all OFFERS, you may end up only attracting people who want to get stuff.
Only consider imposing strict rules on WANTEDs if they're seriously upsetting the community, rather than just one or two individuals - and preferably don't bow to pressure from a vocal minority.
Limiting WANTED messages
- Set your community's limits for Wanted messages at https://modtools.org/modtools/settings - Community - Features for members - "WANTED repost time" (days; controls when a member can manually repost, and when auto-repost kicks in).
- For sending to a member: Sample message: Too many wanteds
- For sending to your community: Sample Admin: Too many wanteds
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