Rippling out
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
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).
Rippling out: a guide for moderators
The one big "please don't"
Don't reject a post just because it looks "out of area". With rippling out, a post that started on a neighbouring community can appear on your community even if the poster lives some distance away (by default it arrives already approved - see below). That's expected and correct: the system is deliberately spreading a post that hasn't been collected locally, so your members get a chance at it.
Only reject it for the usual reasons - spam, breaks the rules, wrong sort of thing, and so on. "They're not from round here" is no longer a reason to reject.
The same applies to replies
If someone replies to a post from outside what you think of as your area, that's the system working as intended. Don't ban or block a member simply because they replied to a post you think is out of their area.
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.
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.
- Your community's member count may include rippled members.
- The join is recorded with reason 'Rippled' in the membership log, so you can distinguish it from a manual or organic join if needed.
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").
A post only ripples after it's already been approved on the community where it started, so it's already been vetted - we don't make it sit through a full review again. With default settings, it's approved on your community straight away, appearing among your approved posts with the rippled-in notice, not in your pending list. You can still reject it for the usual reasons (spam, breaks the rules, wrong sort of thing) - see "Rejecting a rippled-in post" below.
(If your instance is configured with a mod-veto window - RIPPLE_RIPPLED_IN_PENDING_HOURS set above zero - a rippled-in post instead waits in your pending list for that many hours, and auto-approves if nobody rejects it first. Either way, "they're not from round here" is never a reason to reject.)
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.
If you edit a post that is on more than one community, you will see a warning:
This edit will apply to the post on all N groups it appears on
(N is the actual number of communities the post is on.) Edit as normal - just be aware your change is seen everywhere the post appears.
Held replies in Chat Review
Occasionally a reply is held because the post hasn't yet rippled out to where that member is. Chat Review shows you it's held because of rippling, not because you chose to hold it. You don't 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 held indefinitely. Members are never shown this reason; only moderators see it.
When a poster leaves your community
If a poster leaves your community (or is removed), their rippled-in post is pulled from your community automatically. The post continues to appear on all other communities where it was approved. The poster isn't re-added to your community, even if the post carries on rippling elsewhere.
Email settings for rippled members
When a poster is auto-joined to a community via rippling, their email settings for that community are set as follows:
- Immediate email - downgraded to daily digest
- Daily digest or no emails - preserved exactly as-is
- Community events and volunteering - copied from their home community settings (no extra emails)
The poster receives one bundled intro email explaining all this, rather than a separate welcome email from each community they've been joined to.
Because rippling moves more members onto the daily digest and joins them to more communities, those digests can gather posts from several communities at once. The daily "What's New" email therefore lists up to around 65 posts, to avoid being clipped by email providers like Gmail. If there are more, it shows the first batch with a link to browse the rest, and the subject line simply says "What's New" instead of a post count.
Repost reminders and chase-ups happen once per item
Freegle reminds a poster shortly before it auto-reposts their item ("Will Repost: ...") and, once reposting is exhausted, chases them up to ask what happened ("What happened to: ..."). Under rippling, a single item can be live on several communities at once, but the poster still gets one reminder and one chase-up per cycle, not one per community. Whatever they do in response - mark it taken, withdraw it, or promise it - applies to the item everywhere it's rippled, so one email is enough to settle it.
Behind the scenes, the item is still reposted on each community independently, so it stays near the top of every local browse list - invisible to the poster, and no extra email for them.
The spam flag and "seen on many groups"
Rippling joins a poster to multiple communities. This does not trigger the "seen on many groups" spam review flag - ripple-joins are excluded from that count, so a poster whose item has rippled widely won't be incorrectly flagged as a spammer.
Rejecting a rippled-in post
If you reject a post that rippled in from another community, two things happen:
- The poster isn't told. They posted to their own community, and the post is still visible there - a faraway community saying "not for us" isn't something they need to hear about.
- The post stops showing in your community's area, but carries on being visible everywhere else it's been approved. Your rejection simply trims your patch off the map.
A secondary rejection is low-stakes: it quietly removes the post from your area, and nobody is upset. Use it if a post genuinely isn't suitable locally - but not simply because the poster is from out of area.
Rejecting or removing a post on its home community
This is different from a secondary rejection above. When a post is rejected, deleted or withdrawn on the community it was originally posted to (its home community), it's no longer a live offer anywhere, so:
- It's pulled from every community it had rippled into, automatically. You don't have to chase it around neighbouring communities - removing it at home cleans it up everywhere it had spread.
- It stops spreading. Its rippling is halted, so it won't appear on any further communities.
This is exactly what you want when you catch spam or a rule-breaking post on its home community: dealing with it once removes it everywhere, instead of leaving live copies on neighbouring communities it had already reached.
The poster is also removed from any community they'd 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.
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.
What to expect from members
Members can now reply to any post they can see, even one that has not yet rippled out to their area. If they do, we hold the reply and deliver it automatically once the post reaches them - so instead of "why can't I reply?", a member might ask why their reply hasn't been answered yet, or notice their message marked "waiting to send". The answer is reassuring:
Your reply has been saved. The post just hasn't quite reached your area yet, so we're holding your message and will pass it to the owner the moment it does - you do not need to do anything.
Worth knowing: on their default Nearby view, a member only ever sees posts that have already reached them, so a held reply usually only happens if they have switched to "All my communities" or otherwise widened their view. What they normally see is delivered straight away.
Members may also ask about the order posts appear in, or about the new distance slider in the filters - see "Members' Nearby feed is ordered by relevance" above for the mechanism.
Members on immediate emails may also notice they get an alert when a post that started on a neighbouring community ripples close enough to reach them. That is expected: they get one immediate alert per such post, the moment it reaches their area - exactly as they would for a post made directly on the community. If they would rather not, they can switch that community to daily digest in Settings.
Some members may also ask why they have been joined to communities they did not sign up for. The answer is that their post has been travelling to reach more people, and the membership is what makes replies and contact work properly. They can leave any of those communities in Settings, which will remove their post from that community.
The two habits to build
- Don't reject a post just for being out of area - that's the system working.
- Don't ban a member just for replying from out of area - same reason.
Everything else about your day-to-day moderation routine stays the same.
Reference: what the 'Rippled' log entry means
The membership log shows reason='Rippled' for any join created by rippling out. This is purely for provenance and audit - you don't need to do anything with it. It lets us distinguish ripple-joins from manual or organic joins, and is used internally to suppress the per-community welcome email (replaced by a single bundled intro), and to exclude these joins from the "seen on many groups" spam check.
