Rippling out - Revision history

Jacky at 15:35, 4 September 2026

2026-09-04T15:35:11Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:35, 4 September 2026
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	Since Freegle began, offer and wanted posts were shown only on the community where they were posted. The idea was to keep things local, with varying rules across Freegle communities on cross-posting and boundary eligibility.		Since Freegle began, offer and wanted posts were shown only on the community where they were posted. The idea was to keep things local, with varying rules across Freegle communities on cross-posting and boundary eligibility.

	Over time, analysis of how quickly and widely posts were successful showed that this wasn't the most efficient way to get items reused. So in June 2026, the website and app adopted a different way of distributing posts: rippling out. This was announced on Central on 21 June 2026: https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/rippling-out/9808]]		Over time, analysis of how quickly and widely posts were successful showed that this wasn't the most efficient way to get items reused. So in June 2026, the website and app adopted a different way of distributing posts: rippling out. This was announced on Central on 21 June 2026 [[https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/rippling-out/9808]]

	In short, posts become visible to people gradually, starting with those closest and spreading outwards over time. Broadly, there are outward steps at: 1h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h, 120h (5 days), and 168h (7 days), which happen between 06:00 and 23:00. A post made late evening does its overnight steps at 6am.		In short, posts become visible to people gradually, starting with those closest and spreading outwards over time. Broadly, there are outward steps at: 1h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h, 120h (5 days), and 168h (7 days), which happen between 06:00 and 23:00. A post made late evening does its overnight steps at 6am.

	The guide for moderators is below (taken from [[https://github.com/Freegle/Iznik/blob/master/docs/moderators/rippling-out.md]]		The guide for moderators is below (taken from [[https://github.com/Freegle/Iznik/blob/master/docs/moderators/rippling-out.md github]]
	The guide for Members is at [[Rippling Out - Members]].		The guide for Members is at [[Rippling Out - Members]].

Jacky at 15:33, 4 September 2026

2026-09-04T15:33:48Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:33, 4 September 2026
Line 1:		Line 1:
	Since Freegle began, offer and wanted posts were shown only on the community where they were posted. The idea was to keep things local, with varying rules across Freegle communities on cross-posting and boundary eligibility.		Since Freegle began, offer and wanted posts were shown only on the community where they were posted. The idea was to keep things local, with varying rules across Freegle communities on cross-posting and boundary eligibility.

	Over time, analysis of how quickly and widely posts were successful showed that this wasn't the most efficient way to get items reused. So in June 2026, the website and app adopted a different way of distributing posts: rippling out. This was announced on Central on 21 June 2026: https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/rippling-out/9808		Over time, analysis of how quickly and widely posts were successful showed that this wasn't the most efficient way to get items reused. So in June 2026, the website and app adopted a different way of distributing posts: rippling out. This was announced on Central on 21 June 2026: https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/rippling-out/9808]]

	In short, posts become visible to people gradually, starting with those closest and spreading outwards over time. Broadly, there are outward steps at: 1h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h, 120h (5 days), and 168h (7 days), which happen between 06:00 and 23:00. A post made late evening does its overnight steps at 6am.		In short, posts become visible to people gradually, starting with those closest and spreading outwards over time. Broadly, there are outward steps at: 1h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 24h, 48h, 72h, 120h (5 days), and 168h (7 days), which happen between 06:00 and 23:00. A post made late evening does its overnight steps at 6am.

	The guide for moderators is below. The guide for Members is at [[Rippling Out - Members]].		The guide for moderators is below (taken from [[https://github.com/Freegle/Iznik/blob/master/docs/moderators/rippling-out.md]]
			The guide for Members is at [[Rippling Out - Members]].

	For the technical detail of how the algorithm works (and the approaches that were rejected), see [[https://github.com/Freegle/Iznik/blob/master/docs/developers/reference/rippling-algorithm.md]]		For the technical detail of how the algorithm works (and the approaches that were rejected), see [[https://github.com/Freegle/Iznik/blob/master/docs/developers/reference/rippling-algorithm.md]]


	==Rippling out: a guide for moderators==		==Rippling out: a guide for moderators==

Jacky at 15:23, 4 September 2026

2026-09-04T15:23:39Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:23, 4 September 2026
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	So on a rippled-in post you will not see Blank Reply, or the standard messages whose only job is to write to the poster. Approving it and taking it off your community are still yours to do. This holds however you remove it - the Reject button, a standard message that rejects, or a standard message that deletes.		So on a rippled-in post you will not see Blank Reply, or the standard messages whose only job is to write to the poster. Approving it and taking it off your community are still yours to do. This holds however you remove it - the Reject button, a standard message that rejects, or a standard message that deletes.

			==What you will see that is new==
	===Posts arriving from other communities===		===Posts arriving from other communities===
	Some posts on your community will have started on another community and rippled into yours. You'll see a small notice on the post making this clear ("This post has rippled in from a neighbouring community").		Some posts on your community will have started on another community and rippled into yours. You'll see a small notice on the post making this clear ("This post has rippled in from a neighbouring community").

Jacky: /* How posters appear in your community */

2026-09-04T15:18:42Z

How posters appear in your community

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:18, 4 September 2026
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	===How posters appear in your community===		===How posters appear in your community===
	When a post ripples into your community, the poster is automatically joined as a full Member/Approved. ~~This~~ is ~~intentional - moderators need~~ to ~~be able~~ to ~~contact posters~~ and ~~moderate their posts as usual, so they must be real members~~.		When a post ripples into your community, the poster is automatically joined as a full Member/Approved. That is what lets the post live on your community and lets you moderate it.

			It is not a relationship with your community, though, and it does not make the poster yours to write to. They posted somewhere else and may never have heard of you - see Talking to the poster below.

	What this means in practice:		What this means in practice:
	*You ~~can contact the poster,~~ moderate their post~~, and use all the normal moderation tools,~~ exactly as ~~for~~ any other ~~member~~.
	*The poster appears in your member list.		* You moderate their post exactly as you would any other: approve it, or take it off your community.
	*Your community's member count may include rippled members.		* The poster appears in your member list, but with no Chat button and no standard messages that only write to a member, because there is no conversation for you to start. If they write to you first, that chat works as normal.
	*The join is recorded ~~with reason~~ 'Rippled' in the membership log, so you can distinguish it from a manual or organic join if ~~needed~~.		* You can still take them off your community or ban them, and that happens as usual. It is done quietly: they never joined you, so a message about it would be as confusing as one about their post.
			* Your community's member count may include rippled members.
			* The join is recorded as 'Rippled' in the membership log, so you can distinguish it from a manual or organic join if you need to.
			* If they later join your community themselves, or move house into your area, the membership becomes an ordinary one and none of the above applies any more.

			'''Talking to the poster'''

			Anything we send a poster about their post comes from the community they posted it on. If a post only reached you by rippling, your moderation of it is silent to them: taking it off your community removes it here and tells them nothing, because it is still live where they put it.

			So on a rippled-in post you will not see Blank Reply, or the standard messages whose only job is to write to the poster. Approving it and taking it off your community are still yours to do. This holds however you remove it - the Reject button, a standard message that rejects, or a standard message that deletes.

	===Posts arriving from other communities===		===Posts arriving from other communities===

Jacky: /* Trash Nothing posts */

2026-09-02T11:38:45Z

Trash Nothing posts

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:38, 2 September 2026
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	===Trash Nothing posts===		===Trash Nothing posts===
	~~Trash Nothing~~ posts ~~are currently (22.7.26) not rippled out into new communities~~. ~~Trash Nothing still~~ cross-~~posts~~ an item to several Freegle communities itself, so ~~rippling deliberately stays~~ out ~~of its way to avoid~~ the same item ~~appearing twice - they behave~~ on ~~your~~ community exactly ~~as they always have~~. ~~This exclusion~~ is ~~temporary: once Trash Nothing posts~~ to a single ~~origin~~ community, ~~those~~ posts ~~will ripple like any other~~.		TrashNothing posts ripple like any other post, with one exception that exists to stop members seeing the same item twice. TrashNothing has historically cross-posted an item to several Freegle communities itself, so one item can exist as more than one Freegle post. While an item exists as several copies, none of them ripples out into new communities - otherwise each copy would carry the same item further on its own account. Once those copies have been merged into a single post, it ripples normally. A TrashNothing item posted to one community ripples straight away, exactly like a member's post.

			TrashNothing ingestion is moving to taking a single post per item, which will make this exception rarer and rarer. On your own community, TrashNothing posts behave exactly as they always have, and replies to them follow the same reach rules as everything else.

	===What to expect from members===		===What to expect from members===

Jacky: /* Rejecting or removing a post on its home community */

2026-09-02T11:36:35Z

Rejecting or removing a post on its home community

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:36, 2 September 2026
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	(Back to Pending now works differently from Delete/Reject: it keeps each community's copy for per-group review and does not re-ripple on re-approval - see Reporting a post below.)		(Back to Pending now works differently from Delete/Reject: it keeps each community's copy for per-group review and does not re-ripple on re-approval - see Reporting a post below.)

			While a post is in that frozen state we stop advertising it: it is not included in daily digests, immediate emails or phone notifications, because it is under review and we should not be pushing something we may be about to reject. It also stays out of the Nearby feed and search. Members who are outside the area it had reached when it froze are still told it has not reached them yet, and a reply from one of them is still held, exactly as it would be on a post that is simply still spreading - freezing changes what we send out, not who the post had actually got to.

			The poster is also removed from any community they had been auto-joined to only to carry that post (i.e. where they have no other posts). They keep their home community and any community where they have other activity, and - because this is a tidy-up rather than them choosing to leave - a later post of theirs can still ripple into those communities normally.

	===Reporting a post===		===Reporting a post===

Jacky: /* When a poster leaves your community */

2026-09-02T11:34:39Z

When a poster leaves your community

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:34, 2 September 2026
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	A practical consequence worth knowing: a rippled-in post is shown to the members of your community who are closest to the poster, whose own distance preference reaches that far, and whom the poster's own distance preference reaches - not necessarily everyone. If a member says a post "isn't showing for them", either their own slider or the poster's slider being set to "Nearer" is a likely reason.		A practical consequence worth knowing: a rippled-in post is shown to the members of your community who are closest to the poster, whose own distance preference reaches that far, and whom the poster's own distance preference reaches - not necessarily everyone. If a member says a post "isn't showing for them", either their own slider or the poster's slider being set to "Nearer" is a likely reason.

			===Reaching a town from a very rural spot===
			Rippling normally grows a post outwards in every direction at once, up to a limit on how far someone could reasonably travel. That works badly for a genuinely remote poster: the circle fills up with empty countryside long before it touches anywhere many people live. Measured on a real case, a post from Hawes in the Yorkshire Dales could be seen by about 430 members at the maximum, while Kendal - the nearest town, and the one people there actually drive to - sat just outside the limit at about 47 minutes.

			So for posts whose whole reachable audience is small, the ripple now also looks a little further out for a genuine cluster of members - a town - and extends towards up to three of them as narrow spurs, rather than pushing the whole circle outwards over more empty ground. In that Hawes example, taking in Kendal roughly doubles the number of people who can see the post.

			Deliberately clusters, not "the nearest community centre": a community covering two towns has its middle in the fields between them, so aiming there would reach neither.

			Members inside one of those spurs are treated exactly as everyone else the post has reached. They see it on Browse and in search, they are told about it in digests, emails and phone notifications, and they can reply. There is no separate category of member who can see a post but is never told about it, or who is told about a post they then cannot reply to.

	===When a poster leaves your community===		===When a poster leaves your community===

Jacky: /* Members' Nearby feed is ordered by relevance, with their own distance preference */

2026-09-02T11:33:03Z

Members' Nearby feed is ordered by relevance, with their own distance preference

@@ Line 87: / Line 87: @@
 *The posts we email them (their daily digest and immediate emails) - the same narrowing.
 *How far away other people see their own posts (new). Setting it "Nearer" also caps who their own offers and wanteds reach: someone far away won't see the post in their Nearby feed or be emailed about it, even though rippling had carried it that far. Left at "Further" (the default), there is no such cap and the post reaches as far as rippling takes it.
 It still has no effect on the rippling engine itself (what it approves or joins, or how far it carries a post) or on moderation, and their choice is remembered between visits.
 A practical consequence worth knowing: a rippled-in post is shown to the members of your community who are closest to the poster, whose own distance preference reaches that far, and whom the poster's own distance preference reaches - not necessarily everyone. If a member says a post "isn't showing for them", either their own slider or the poster's slider being set to "Nearer" is a likely reason.

Jacky: /* Held replies in Chat Review */

2026-09-02T11:28:37Z

Held replies in Chat Review

@@ Line 52: / Line 52: @@
 ===Held replies in Chat Review===
-Sometimes a reply is held because the post has not yet rippled out to where that member is. This now applies to replies made on the website and app as well as by email or Trash Nothing - wherever a member replies from outside the post's current reach, the reply is accepted and held rather than turned away. Chat Review shows you it is held because of rippling (not because you chose to hold it). You do not need to do anything - the reply is released automatically once the post reaches that member's area, or once the post has finished spreading as far as it will go, so no reply is ever held indefinitely. The member who sent it sees their own message marked as "waiting to send"; the owner is not shown it until it is released.
+Sometimes a reply is held because the post has not yet rippled out to where that member is. This now applies to replies made on the website and app as well as by email or TrashNothing - wherever a member replies from outside the post's current reach, the reply is accepted and held rather than turned away. Chat Review shows you it is held because of rippling (not because you chose to hold it).
 ===Members' Nearby feed is ordered by relevance, with their own distance preference===

Jacky: /* A reach/map view on posts */

2026-09-02T11:25:26Z

A reach/map view on posts

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:25, 2 September 2026
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	===A reach/map view on posts===		===A reach/map view on posts===
	On posts in your moderation screens, there's a "View rippling reach" button (with a map-marker icon) ~~showing~~ you on a map the area a post is currently visible in - useful for checking how far a post has spread, or why it turned up on your list. It also ~~tells you when~~ a ~~post’s reach~~ has ~~been frozen~~, ~~and any~~ moderator can open it, not just ~~mods~~ of the communities the post is on.		On posts in your moderation screens there is a "View rippling reach" button (with a map-marker icon) that shows you on a map the area a post is currently visible in. This is useful for checking how far a post has spread or why it turned up on your list.

			The blue area is where the post has actually rippled out to, read from the engine rather than modelled from the schedule. That matters because the two can differ: if the reach was frozen (for example the origin copy went back to Pending) a warning above the map says so, and the reach can also be trimmed where members have left a community or capped by the poster's own distance preference. A post that has not rippled out yet says so instead of drawing an area.

			A post in a very rural spot may show one to three narrow spurs reaching out further than the main area, towards a nearby town. See "Reaching a town from a very rural spot" below.

			Any moderator can open this, not just moderators of the communities the post is on - since rippling is what carries posts beyond their original community, the person wondering how far one travelled is often not a mod of where it started.

	===A reminder when you edit a shared post===		===A reminder when you edit a shared post===