Group Mapping
There are three ways that a community has it's area defined within Freegle.
Core Group Area (CGA)
This is the exclusive area that a community is approved to cover, decided with GAT when a community is affiliated within the Freegle Affiliated Group Area Guidelines.
Default Posting Area (DPA)
This is the area that Freegle Direct recognises as the posting area for each group. Our system works on postcode recognition, so when someone joins the site they will be offered the group that covers their DPA first. They are, of course, welcome to join whichever group they want, but if they subsequently post a message on the site without logging in first, the system will default to the DPA to place their message on the relevant group. Once logged in, a member can easily choose which group they wish their message to appear on.
DPAs are defined by each community and can be adjusted via Modtools in Settings/communities option and the new polygon details sent to geeks@ilovefreegle.org. The Support team (support@ilovefreegle.org) are very happy with remapping DPAs for any community. DPAs can't overlap, so there might need to be negotiation between abutting communities to make sure everyone is happy with any changes. DPAs can extend beyond a communitys’ Core area to cover areas not covered by any other communitys' Core or DPA.
Catchment Area
This is the area that each community is happy to accept posts and members from, which can be as wide as they like. It is not affected by the Core area and DPA, but is down to each local team to discuss and decide how large an area would be beneficial to their community members.
