For my reply on the general purpose and usefulness of copyright, please take a look at my other reply in this thread.
By the way, copyright protection is not only because of possible loss of earnings, it’s also to protect from misuse for any negative / illegal things.
Now this, is one of the most widely spread fallacies of modern times. Copyright was never meant to serve that purpose, and it cannot practically be used to serve that purpose, and whenever it is claimed to be used for that purpose it is used by actors whose intentions are the real harmful and abusive, such as effecting censorship without calling it so, avoiding accountability, and other forms of violations of rights and public interest.
So again briefly offtopic:
There are enough freely available images from which postcards can be printed.
But copying Copyright-protected images from postcard publishers is forbidden and, if it attracts attention, casts a poor light on Postcrossing.
At the beginning I didn’t eve pay attention to how many postcards did people have sent or received. But then I read some high volume postcrossers saying that, due to lack of space, they threw away most postcards. As I enjoy doing handmade, I worry about that ever since and I must confess I tend to put less heart on them.
Still, I’m aware that this can be unfair. So, when I get a high volume profile which sounds nice, and open to handmade, I receive it like a challenge… What to send to someone who has thousands of postcard in order to send something special?
And, when I achieve that goal and receive a hurray message saying that they love it and that they are framing it, it really feels good.
A LOT of people do toss the cards after they received them. I have only been doing this about 4 years and already have a few thousand received cards and well over 6000 blanks to pull from. I am running out of storage room…yet, I have not started tossing cards. I do not have my received cards organized at all, but I would like to have the collection digitized and maybe be searchable by who sent it to me if it is someone I swap a lot. All of that takes time…and I tell myself it will be a good winter project some year. I am very busy with other things in my house just now tho, so by the time I get the chance to do that project it will be QUITE the undertaking and I may well decide against it! haha…that will still leave me with the problem of what to do with all of the cards I have received?!
I don’t normally say this Jacqui but I hope you and I don’t get matched any time soon. I am working my way through a box of “bird cards” and they’re the only ones I have to send out lol.
I find profiles with long lists of “don’ts” a complete turn-off. Also ones that request “no duplicates” and give a link to thousands of cards they have received. I just laugh it off and send a card that I hope they will like.
I’m like Patricia, I find long a high volume member a challenge and I’m up for the challenge! Today I have a few post cards saved usually just for high volume post crossers or special swaps, rare local ones that you can only get here in White Rock or I picked up from my wilderness vacation at the lodge there!
Its true I was intimated in the beginning on what to send but now after 3 years no worries!!!
I have experienced the same. I have gotten my cards marked as favorites just because they are unique and are something that the high volume long list person has, as they want to receive. I ignore the stuff they do not want-its pointless! We are here to share our culture, build bridges, swap if we want to or not-I get it. I cut way back during Covid-19, but a lot of other countries stopped external out of country mail of any kind, due to the fear that a surface might certain the “scary” virus. Just when the world was on its knees, they stopped allowing people to help one another out of the darkness and loneliness and the isolation we have all felt during this last 18 months of fear mongering journalism around the world! You didn’t have to live in a communist country to feel like we all lined up and did what our governments demanded and still are demanding. I am from the USA. What happened to us in this country, the division over whether this was real, whether it was going to kill us all in the very beginning? I can tell you there are many people who suffer still from the fear , isolation of staying at home, as just a simple grocery store visit with all precautions taken, wearing a mask, sanitizing the shopping carts, on and on! The anxiety is still very real here for some people, especially in multi-generational households among immigrants whose culture dictates that the family unit will consist of the elders being taken care of, etc… Our own American Indian population continues to suffer great loss from what I am assuming their tribal leaders, medicine men are calling the plague of 2020. If you travel onto any American Indian Reservation here, they do not look kindly upon visitors who violate their strict Covid-19 protocols put in place to save lives. I say send anything you have and if they don’t like it they will move on and you did the kind thing in asking about it here. All my received cards do not share anything or any cultural messages, the best ones I cherish do…I mark them as my favorites! Something on the card-not necessarily the design or photo is why, its the message on the other side that brightened my lonely existence some days.
I feel the same way sometimes too. I also had people message me and say that they hated my card because it’s not what they liked even tho they welcomed “any card” on their profile. I find people that have the big lists make it hard to find the right card. I’ve actually stopped for a while because there were some people who I really couldn’t find cards for.
that is appalling that someone would actually take the time to message you and say they hate it!! People need to remember their manners and be thankful for someone taking the time to fulfill the promise of sending A postcard…and if they can’t say anything nice they shouldn’t say anything at all.
That’s awful
I think these type of messages should be reported so they will know it’s not ok.
But then again I think: big list → lot to choose from, likely to have something from there
short list → easily I don’t have any of those
If it’s a normal card, I always thank. I do understand that I can’t like every card as much.
But if it’s a food package part, used greeting card part, or my address is shared, I write I don’t like it, or I would have preferred a real card, or card sent by the person.
If I pretend everything is good (when it’s not), they keep thinking it’s good and “everybody likes it”.
I think, if they are so sure they can send something like that, they must tolerate the critic too.
But, I always try to find something else to write too, not “I don’t like this”.
That’s not only rude, but also pointless. I mean… Is there really a chance to get the same profile twice?(not talking about members with several profiles) As it is unlikely, what use does it have to send a message saying you hated the card besides hurting
the sender’s feelings?
Or: they used a translator service, and it translated wrong!
I remember once getting a Hurray in some language, and translated it to Finnish and it said “I really didn’t like your card”. Then she put it as her favourite and another member told to translate it to English. I did, and then it said, “I really liked your card”.
This conversation is a bit off-topic.
These problems you are reporting have nothing to do with “high volume members” - that can happen from time to time, no matter how many cards someone has already written and received.
Finally!
I love homemade postcards.
I can’t understand why it’s impossible to make and assemble a puzzle by mail from an author’s, popular postcard! All right! I figured out, thought about how to get around this limitation. But people say it’s not interesting. Sorry. And setting criteria for automatic popularity systems is not an unambiguous thing. The way to bypass the "copyright barrier” and collect the puzzle alone makes sending a postcard more expensive. Closed swaps are not really available. The forum is silent…
It is strange to read information in questionnaires with 1000 postcards about the fact that they are tired of repetitions and receive reprimands or silence in response to an email.
In general, I hope and do not stop looking for people with an open swap. I haven’t found it yet.
≡)
So far…
.o0o.