Europe seems to be saturated with postcards. My last 24 cards all went outside the union. Must be the ramifications of WPD. Anyone else recognizing strange or unusual postcrossing behaviour?
Stay safe!
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That is interestingā¦ I think WPD creates to much chaos. I hope the system will be able to return to normal soon, so we can get on with the program.
I went active yesterday. So 9 people got my European address. But didnāt know things where like this.
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Iām not sure but actually WPD shouldnāt affect the algorithm too much.
Even if Postcrossers saved their slots for WPD it means that there has been sent less postcards before October 1st, so there remain more addresses in the pool which are available then for WPD.
It happens to me too that I donāt draw addresses in Europe for some time and I think thatās just randomness.
Thatās just my thinking, maybe Iām wrong 
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Yeah, @Angelthecat, I did. Cards within Germany are too fast for my liking.
Randomness and distribution go hand in hand. If the distribution isnāt as expected, I tend to lay it on the randomness factor as well, @Lunamuc 
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I noticed during WPD that set of most common countries depends on time when you draw addresses: for example, if one from Russia does it early morning - then getting mostly USA addresses (who have evening at the same time and free time), then during late morning more European addresses, and during day mostly Asian addresses when they have evening 
I think that algorithm prefers giving out addresses of people who are active on the site at the same time, like someone is registering cards and during that their address is given out for sending
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Okay, so this could be a point that it looks so āun-Europeanā.
Russia and the US are the āusual suspectsā. And then the system searches for any other available addresses (except Germany).
I too donāt have many European addresses in the past months. Just one card to Finland is traveling and until some days ago I had another European card, to the Netherlands.
When I take a very fast look on my sent stats I can see that between January and May (then I took a break) I just had a handful cards to Europe (again, excluding Germany).
But, indeed interesting. Thanks for starting this topic 
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I donāt have that issue. Iāve got plenty travelling to Europe I wish I could figure out how to get different countries tbhā¦
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Maybe itās out of the topic, but I drew 6 addresses on WPD (it has been my first time to draw so many addresses at once!), and one of those was to Russia, though I had a card traveling to Russia already. Obviously I checked the ādifferent countriesā option, but I still got it. I directly felt the shortage of the addresses!
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I have the box ticked too but always get multiple Russian and German addresses (a common example for my travelling cards is shown above). Even on non WPD. Today I picked 3 cards and 2 were to USA. I donāt think the āno multiple countriesā button is working.
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Canada Post has suspended mail to Russia, so any Russian addresses normally algorithmed (yes, I made it a verb) to Canada rotate through other countries.
Not sure of other countries that have suspended mail to Russia, but more of them would add an extra burden to this algorithmic disquiet.
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āUnusual Postcrossing behaviourā in delivering of addresses may due to the war between Russia and Ukraine. There are many countries in the world which donāt send mail to Russia or Belarus, and Finland is among them. Those addresses go to the members who CAN send their mail without limits. The flights over war area are also limited. I think these may be some reasons why Iām getting official addresses nowadays only to Germany and USA. Before the war I got often addresses to Russia, China and Asian countries.
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āUnselecting this option does not guarantee no repetitions.ā Turning off the repeated counties option only reduced the change of repetitions.
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I hate to think how many duplicates Iād get if I didnāt have it un-ticked then.
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Years ago many complained that there were too many Russian addresses, so I ticked the box and for months sent almost all my officials to Russia. I didnt mind as everyone wants a nice card and Iām not going anywhere in my life just nowā¦hopefully it freed up adresses to other places for newer members to enjoy more variety. (Iāve been a member for 12 years and already have lots of variety on my wall)
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Interesting 
On October 1st I drew addresses at the same time and got 2 in North America, 2 in Asia and 2 in Europe (I turned off Russia)
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Yes, but I usually got addresses from different countries before. Thatās because I only asked one or two addresses at once before. 
Thank you, algorithm!
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Well, I drew 33+18 addresses on my profiles on WPD and there were exclusively Germany and Russia! I mean, these countries are most active, so I ticked the my country option and the repeated option to help a bit with drawing the most common addresses during times of many postal restrictions 
(my Asia/USA statistics comes from other postcrossers who drew on different times and their subsets of countries were very different from mine)
But also for example on both of mine profiles I drew same addresses (on WPD - two other postcrossers), and every time I drew big amount (10 or more) of addresses simultaneously on both of mine profiles - the probability to get the same person seems very high (at least it feels much higher than it should - about 1 in 20 or less and I doubt that only 20 addresses were available for me to draw) - thatās why I think āactive on the siteā theory is close to reality (often if you check the address you just drew, the person would be āseenā very recently)
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