ChitChat

ChitChat is a forum type discussion section of Freegle Direct, replacing our old style cafes and offering a place for Freegle Direct members to chat to each other (and us!). Members of Trashnothing alone can't participate in ChitChat.

The discussions are public and we ask that people are mindful of others and to be nice. Engaging with your members on ChitChat is a great way to encourage a community feel for your community.

ChitChat isn't visible on Modtools, you will need to be on the ilovefreegle.org site to see it. However, Modtools does offer a few options that will help you interact with ChitChat.

Modtools>Settings>Personal Settings

• You can decide if you wish to be shown as a volunteer when putting comments on ChitChat.
• You can decide if you wish to receive an email saying if one of your community members has commented.

https://www.ilovefreegle.org/chitchat

• Next to your location you will see a drop down box where you can choose how far away you see ChitChat on your personal feed.
• You will get a daily digest as a member, not as a moderator, which will show messages in your community(s), but it won't be sent if you've already visited chitchat recently and so you've had a chance to see the posts in question. That's to stop us mailing out about posts you've already seen.

Moderation

ChitChat allows everyone to post public notices or messages without first being moderated. We have a central team who monitor ChitChat (https://modtools.org/modtools/teams) and who pick up any inappropriate posts to deal with them. There is the facility for anyone to report a post; that report goes to the Geeks team, and they forward to the ChitChat team to deal with.

We added one rule on Chitchat after a discussion on Central in July 2022. After a vote, it was agreed not to allow offers, requests or selling of live creatures on Chitchat. https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/chitchat-rule-on-pets/5128/

Members are allowed to advertise small local businesses. https://discourse.ilovefreegle.org/t/chit-chat/6134/2

As a Freegle volunteer, you also have the ability to edit or report messages from your community members. Click on the top right chevron in the particular chat and several options will be displayed.

There are options to "Refer to OFFER/WANTED", for normal ChitChat posts that would be better posted on the main Freegle page. However, posts where members introduce themselves are tagged differently, and only the Support team have access to the "Refer" options on that class of posts. This restriction was brought in because too many introductory posts mentioning hobbies were being referred unnecessarily.

Deleted or hiding messages works as follows:

• All volunteers should see the Delete option. Note that it's "Delete" not "Hide".
• There isn't an "Undelete" option.
• Hiding does also happen, either due to the "Refer to OFFER/WANTED" options, or automatically when the user is suppressed on ChitChat.
• Hiding isn't the same as deleting.
• Hiding isn't noticeable to the person who posted the item – they think it appears fine, but the post doesn't show for any other non-volunteer Freeglers.
• Delete, however, is noticeable by the original poster – their post has gone and doesn't show for them either.
• The Unhide option only shows for hidden posts, not deleted posts. It was added for cases where "Refer" was used by mistake, so you won't see it on a normal ChitChat post.

Links:

• Freegle Direct - links to other Freegle Direct functions
• ModTools - links to other ModTools functions