Development Group Report 2016 10

Freegle Development report

                                October  2016
                            G roup members 61

Freegle Development is a group where new policies are discussed and voted on and any changes of existing policy are discussed.

The group increased by two new members again this month.

October on Development was a little quieter than usual.

Locations without a Freegle group

We started off discussing the areas between groups that belong to no specific group. Some of these areas are quite large and we discussed whether local teams should be able to start new groups in these areas.

The new Mapping system in Modtools, now allows us to expand our groups to cover some of these areas by extending our catchment areas, though that cover is still not sufficient in all areas of the UK.

The suggestion on Development was for mod teams adjacent to the areas that are not covered adequately, to be allowed to recruit and train moderators, then create a group for them to run. The neighbouring group that enlisted the moderators, would then support/mentor them until the group finds its feet.

This wasn’t considered to be an ideal solution, Partly because it was noted that groups set up by neighbouring moderators to fill gaps tended to not do as well as groups started by someone living in the area and partly because of Freegles rules that state we don’t create groups just to fill a gap.

The discussion ended without a suitable answer to the problem.

Task List Review : organisational provision

More tasks on the Development task list were sorted, with some tasks , which were no longer relevant now that the new platform is up and running, being dropped, some were allocated to various teams within Freegle and some have been kept on the list for Development to deal with at a later stage. There are still a few more tasks on the list to go through.

Starting new groups

A variation on the earlier discussion on Locations without a Freegle Group, the question was asked, Should we open groups centrally in the largest areas, that are currently not covered by a group and are too far away from any other group to be a reasonable distance for members to travel?

There have been lots of interesting ideas put forward in this discussion. Including whether or not there is room for variation in GAT procedures, should the proposal be agreed. Or, if the group should be opened and then cared for by neighbouring mod teams, until they can recruit local moderators who in turn, could take the group on as permanent owners. It may be easier to find people to take on existing groups than to try to find people to start a group from scratch.

A suggestion put forward was to consider having trials and if after a set period the group wasn’t doing well, we could just close it, so that we are not supporting non viable groups that were nationally created.

We ended October discussing whether a national group if it is decided they should be created, should be Freegle Direct only or if we should still set up Yahoo groups alongside.

The discussion is continuing into November. If you have a large area near you that could support a group, then this discussion may affect you and it would be good to hear your views on how these areas should be covered.

Development group make changes that affect all Freegle groups. We would love to see more people join us and help with discussions and polls to get a better idea of what you the moderators really want. If you would like to help in making decisions for the future of Freegle, we would love to see you on Development

https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/ neo/groups/freegleDevelopment/ info

Development team.