There really is no winning or any better alternative. The mods and administration have set rules in place.
Of course it all cost money.
Some things to consider:
Send fewer " official cards "
Consider doing trades, direct swaps, tags and Round Robin’s on the Forum.
I’ve taken a break from Official cards.
Tags trades and direct swaps have arrived to locations faster than sending officials.
I agree, there should be a threshold of say 6 months. If user is inactive for that long, all the travelling cards get registered. I have cards to members you went inactive around the time I sent and haven’t been back on site for more than 4-5 months.
Yes, please. It’s kind of frustrating when cards expire not because they were lost but because the intended recipient clearly stopped doing Postcrossing for whatever reason. There is already the auto-register option when someone’s address changes, so, why not implement that for cases in which a person simply stops logging in? A threshold of 6 months seems perfectly reasonable to me.
What would happen when the person logged back later? He would see received cards that he maybe never received…
True, but, the same is already the case when someone moves and changes their address. Cards on the way to the old address are automatically registered in that case, and that includes cards that may never have arrived at either address. Still, compared with cards being never registered because the user - within their own responsibilities - moved while the card was in transit, that’s clearly the “lesser evil”. I think the same can be argued if someone logs back on after more than six months: if they didn’t register their received cards in the meantime, it’s their own problem if the system has to do their job for them… After all, the persons who sent those cards deserve to receive a card in return, which just doesn’t happen if the system lets the cards expire forever. And, again, if that includes one or two cards that didn’t arrive, I’d still consider that the “lesser evil”, compared to tens of users losing their cards and postage (which is a lot of money) without compensation simply because someone - for whatever reason - took a break from Postcrossing.
But what if they didn’t register them because they never received them? Someone moving is a different situation because the person chooses the option of automatic registration. I just think it would be very confusing for the person, althought this whole situation of disappearing from postcrossing isn’t very common I believe.
One thing that comes to my mind is the situation in China. Postcard are delayed for many months and if someone doesn’t feel like sending with the prospect of receiving only in far future, they may not log in for months because they don’t receive the postcards that are on the way to them. So they would get automatically registered. Can you imagine the unjust feelings it would stir if those people would find cards registered as received by them? Have you seen the amount of hate caused by Postcrossing stop giving out Chinese addresses? (although it doesn’t in fact affect the Chinese users because they wouldn’t be receiving anything because all the postcard from abroad are stuck in overflowing post offices in China) Now imagine all the postcards they haven’t received yet all get registered. If I was in that situation, I would consider the decision to stop giving out my address to be very reasonable but if the cards got registered, I would be mad. It looks very, very bad.
All I want to say is that I think the situation we are talking about is quite rare but the impact of the change may be bigger than expected. So I think it is important to consider also the edge cases and whether it couldn’t cause more harm than good.
But how can you possibly know that this is the reason that someone didn’t register a card?
The only way you could is if they posted something explicit on their profile to say they were leaving and wouldn’t register cards, in which case, sure admin could step in. But has that ever happened, or are people assuming?
But I’m new.
If people don’t register the card, then I can’t receive any nor can I send additional ones out. Therefore, I am penalized even though I actually went out to buy postcards, wrote them out, purchased stamps and went to post office to mail…so yes, the money is spend, but I’m out a lot more than money.
I think it is common practice for some web services to delete accounts that have been inactive for over a year. If a postcrosser hasn’t logged in for a year, then their account is automatically deleted and the traveling postcards registered. While this may still fail to catch the early postcards traveling over a year because they are removed from the system, it makes sense to me: For an inactive account, most postcards were not registered by the recipient while a few did go missing.
Yes, welcome 
You have joined on 7th August and already two of your sent cards are registered, that’s good, right?
Two cards are on their way to you, maybe third one also, just in case.
People do register their cards, as you see with your sent ones.
You can send additional cards even when the cards would not be registered - after 60 days the card expires, you get a new slot (the card can get registered after the 60 days, so it’s not “lost”).
But, yes, there are members that disappear. Something else comes up, a baby borns, a nice partner appears and mesmerises you, new job gives no free time, a sudden moving, no interest. Sometimes they come back. I always think they still mostly get my card, so no money is waste in sending. And in return, some cards to me are lost, so I waste others time and money.
Like I wrote earlier, if such moderator registering should happen, I wish it were different “column” to them, maybe a temporary one, so that if/when the person comes back, they can register the card for real, and it will look as sent and received.
And think, you are new, sometimes member suspect new members disappear, and worry their card won’t get registered. Would it feel nice and ok, if people think this about you, and that they won’t send the card at all, because their cards will be registered eventually. So you would not get a card, only notes about a registered card would be added to your list later when you were bored and leave when you don’t get anything.
So, don’t only think your cards are maybe not arriving and you are penalised, but, to someone, you are the possible not-registering, soon to be disappearing, suspicious looking member. I wouldn’t want this kind of thinking happen any more than it now does nor encourage members not to send the card because there is the back-up of automatic registrations.
If this was a common practice for Postcrossing, I wouldn’t be here.
I have had a couple of times breaks when I didn’t log in for a year or longest break was 3,5 years. I wouldn’t have started again with a new profile and lost all earlier data. So hopefully this will never happen.
(And if someone is wondering I was polite enough and registered all cards before my breaks.)
I also don’t like the idea of moderators or system registering cards. If the card is not registered by the member then it’s not.
If someone has not logged in on Postcrossing for over half a year, it’s very clear they’re not registering any received cards. It’s not clear why they’re not registering them - but then, why would that be the sender’s problem?
It’s good that you did that - however, unfortunately, many members who take a break or quit Postcrossing altogether do not. Half my expired cards are to people who simply disappeared for whatever reason. (I resend the others, of course.) And I would really like the system to register cards in that case, because otherwise, it penalizes the senders for other people’s failure to abide by the Postcrossing rules.
Eh. You really think people won’t send a card because a member is new?!? I mean, it will block the travelling-card slot for at least (!) half a year, and that’s only if that person really doesn’t log back in… O_O I think the risk of that is quite low, really.
Yes, I know some members are thinking not to send to a new member. Even giving advise to another member, to not send, but wait until they register some cards.
Not sending will block the travelling slot for 60 days, same what happens to a card that is actually sent.
Why you think it would be half a year? Or what do you mean?
Some members think, that new members are risk member, and are likely to stop. So, they think it’s best not to send a card, but wait if they register any other cards. If not, they won’t send their card. If yes, they will send their card too. But, of course they can forget to check. And, what if the new member is only waiting for a card from them. 
You absolutely don’t have to though 
Many of my postcards to Russia expire but they do arrive later. Even those where I gave up hope haha. I have had maybe 3 cards fall out of the system (travelling for 365+ days) so far, that’s 1%. But you know the statistics too. I never resend official cards by the way.
I have mindset that it doesn’t penalize the senders as the Postcrossing algorithm works that funny way that you might get (a lot) more cards than you have send. There is a whole topic about that.
But you still don’t know that this is the case. They might not have any other cards travelling to them, it might just be yours, and it never arrived. Lost cards are a fact of life, in both directions.
Postcrossing monitors accounts that seem not to be registering cards - if a person has an above average number of cards not registered, they will be contacted.
You don’t need to police this, the team already is.
Does an inactive member, even if there are no traveling cards to them, get a reminder to come back to Postcrossing? Nudging members to log in once in a while sounds sensible to me. It also somewhat reduces the guessing (card being lost or sitting there not being registered).
Also, I don’t think there will be persuasive justification for the system to register a postcard without the recipient’s permission (unless the account is deleted based on some policy). The case where the system registers outstanding cards upon a change in address lets the recipient make the choice.
I think it is a wise choice for the website to automatically register the postcards sent by others when the user has not logged in to the website for a long time.
First of all, the number of postcards received is related to the number of postcards sent. I know that for a new user, the system will make the number of postcards he receives slightly larger than the number of postcards he sends, but this does not mean that any postcard sent by the sender can be ignored.
In addition, the loss of postcards is indeed an inevitable phenomenon. However, unlike the uncontrolled postal system, we can easily see how long the recipient has not logged on to the website. If he is still interested in this website, even if he does not receive a postcard, he will plan to send a postcard, right?
I heard that the website will not assign the addresses of users who have not logged in to the website for a month to other users. But everyone who gives up this game will have this first month. I have only sent 17 postcards so far, but two recipients have been offline for more than one month, and one of them has been offline for more than three months. I sent two emails to ask if they still planned to receive postcards, but no reply was received.
I think that the offline of the recipient is not the responsibility of the sender, and the consequences of the postcard not being registered should not be borne by the sender.
If we consider that the recipient may have important things to do, so there may be no free time to log in to the website for a long time, then we can extend our waiting time - ten months, or 365 days. But I hope to see my postcard registered at the end.
This is exactly what happened to me once.
I have taken multiple breaks during my time on Postcrossing, even as long as several years, but I have always registered every single card I have ever got, because that is fair for everyone and I agreed to do that when I created my account. I never “just left” or lost interest altogether, I just wanted to take a break (and I have always come back as you can see 
). However, this one time when I got back I noticed that while I was away, a card had been registered even though I had never actually received it. That’s why there’s one “received” card missing on my postcard wall, and it makes me a bit sad as I would love my wall to be complete. Not a big problem of course, and I can see why the card was registered by the team - but that’s a good example why I don’t think it’s a good idea for the system to register all cards automatically (as a general practice) when someone stops logging in. Of course it’s a good idea to do that if it’s obvious that the member is not doing their part - for example if there is an exceptionally large amount of expired cads traveling their way. But sometimes cards really do just get lost, even to those who no longer log in, and it doesn’t mean that those members aren’t trustworthy nor that they’re breaking the rules by not registering their cards.
That is also why I don’t like the idea of deleting inactive accounts automatically after a certain period of time. Of course it’s ok to do that if there has never been any activity on the account to begin with, but many active members (myself included, as I explained above) sometimes decide to go inactive for whatever reason, and they might very well get back one day. In that case it would be disappointing to see all the profile data and cards gone. 
I like the way you are thinking.