To me it makes sense, for I love to fill all my 100 slots and to send so many in December to spread some love around the world and to support the “Postcards for Literacy” that way! And I love to have that kind of stress then.
During the rest of the year I have 20 or 30 travelling, but having 100 slots does not do any harm to anyone even then.
I see your point, but I think most new postcrossers turn their back on it due to impatience combined with long travel times and Postcroccing can not really change that.
Agreed. I mostly meant is too much for me and said that it’s up to each one to decide how to deal with it - and just because it’s there it doesn’t need to be stressful and, like you said, if the opportunity arises to use all of them then, then one can, you’re right Ralf!
That’s right, those factors are something new postcrossers have to learn too. My point is about equity postcrossing could perhaps give for new postcrossers in place where sending postcards/mails have become obsolete and their postal services are slow and to send cards they need to drive or walk so far to nearest post office
This is my anecdotal example, I invited my friends who lives in a small village to join postcrossing because she found the idea is great! But after I said how it worked she lost interest because she didn’t want to drive 3 km to nearest post office just to be able to send 5 postcards. And from this I could probably feel how hard it is for many other postcrossers who live in rural area where they can’t simply put their mails in mailboxes
It was interesting to see in the beginning how that limit started to rise. I didn’t saw any problem at all.
At the moment, I think that there should be some reasonable maximum limit. Or is there? If there is, that has to be insanely huge! Now, when I have a change to have almost 30 cards travelling at the same time, it feels, that most of them just expires. So, I can send about 4 to 10 cards in one week. Is there any sense just increase the number of expired cards when limit goes higher?
There is a limit. It is 100 and you reach it with 4550 cards sent. Yes, it is very high amd I only reach it in December as I wrote in my reply to -alterecho-.
This conversation was about people cant send 1 for 3 or 4 weeks so I don’t understand your comment. If you are able to send several at once there is no issue.
i was only replying to @catchycat that i understand there’s a difference between countries postal services and maybe we could do something about it.
didn’t know we could only answer in this topic if we can send 2 cards a month, my bad.
I’m going to reiterate a question that I had first posted in this thread–if you think new postcrossers should be able to send more postcards, then what do you think the limit should be? You might be able to follow through and send a lot, but how do you know that other new participants would also be able to follow through?
In my personal experience, I’ve seen people new to postcards bite off more than they can chew. I run a totally separate postcard exchange for writers where I do not give limits to how many addresses people can request. There are always some new people who join and request a huge number of addresses and then later realize that they can’t send to everyone because the cost was higher than they had budgeted for, they have less time than they thought they would have, or other personal reasons cause them to drop out. Because the exchange I run is very limited in scope, I can always find people who are willing to send “angel” postcards to make up for this gap. But imagine this happening on the scale of Postcrossing–it would definitely break down if new participants who have no sense of their own limits keep on requesting addresses but can’t deliver.
I can’t see any country bashing here.
It’s a fact that mail to/from China sometimes needs forever. The same is with Russia. And some other countries, too. But most other slow countries you don’t have travelling several cards to at the same time. USA is sometimes fast, sometimes slow. There are also some countries in Eastern Europe that sometimes take forever.
It’s just the way it is.
I now have 59 slots, I normally don’t have all slots filled except December when there are the Cards for Literacy.
I think the limit is a good thing. Although I know I was impatient then, too.
I used to swap on another swapping site where there are no limits. Sometimes there were people that owed 100, 200 or even 300 swaps to other people until they finally got stopped. That’s why I like this limit on Postcrossing. You have to show that you’re trustworthy because nobody knows you here.
And if there are newbies that take 100 addresses but only send 5 cards to the rare countries (and yes, these people exist…), then maybe 95 other newbies are sad because they sent there cards but don’t get any in return.
Why is this rude? We all had to start with a 5 card limit. So we all know what people are writing about here.
My limit is 7 travelling cards in the moment. I am fine with it and I can see the point of this rule.
Even living in a city doesn’t mean you don’t have to put effort into PC. There are two postoffices I use, and it does take me 1hour travelling and queing to post my cards. I might get a bunch of stamps, but I don’t trust postboxes.
Postcard shopping sucks as well.
I didn’t even realise that the german postal service is supposed to be that good. When I worked as a postwoman in my University years, all I heard was how bad it is, that the country is going down the drain and the Deutsche Post is expensive and unreliable ( from the customers).
No one can change the postal system in their country, so it is no reason for either pride or shame. It’s just the way it is.
The original comment was by a member not that knew who has exchanged over a 100 cards showing investment of time & money, purchasing a variety of cards to send etc. but is limited to 11 cards of which several could be heading to expiry/a war zone reducing the 11 to 5 or 6 in practice. This can lead to several weeks with no participation at all.
5 may be fine initially - they are two very different situations
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I think that to participate in Postcrossing, you need to have patience and the willingness to have gratification deferred These are not bad qualities to have to cultivate.
When I started out, I was very gung-ho and wanted to send ALL the cards AT ONCE! But then I discovered that to thoughtfully select and write each card … took longer than I expected. And also it was expensive to buy stamps, and challenging to find a range of postcard subjects. On top of this, real life kept interfering unreasonably! So for me, at least, it was helpful to have a slow pace at the beginning. It’s true that the first trickle of incoming cards seemed to take forever to arrive, but it is like priming a water pump. You have to put a lot of energy into it to finally get that sweet water coming out.
For people who want to send and receive more cards right away, there is always the forum with its many private swaps, round-robins and so forth. I only wish I’d discovered them sooner! Some of them are huge fun, and you can select exactly the kind of thing you enjoy. But, I will always enjoy the randomness and serendipity of Postcrossing itself.
I totally agree with you.
I always thought of myself as a patient person, but, realised when I started Postcrossing that I had become used to having things delivered “instantly”.
Two and a bit months later I now enjoy the slower way of doing things and the anticipation.
I tend to select 5 or 6 addresses over 2 or 3 days but only one at a time. I have a maximum of 6 available slots. If a “local” card is registered quickly then I’ll pick another address.
Sometimes my number of available slots builds up if I’m busy, then I’ll do another 5 or 6 when I have time. I’ve found that the end of the month and beginning of a new month usually is the time I send the most out and that gives the more distant cards 4 or 5 weeks to arrive.
I never ever had thought about the idea NOT to send a card to a member just because I didn‘t like the destination or profile. It is kind of honour for me to send a card to ALL adresses I pick randomly.
That sounds like someone accused you of doing so.
This was in reply to @mundoo’s explanation:
Another reason is that we don’t want members (especially new ones) cherry-picking the addresses. Let’s say for example you can initially request 10 addresses but you don’t wish to send to some of those members (profile, country, faves, prejudice etc.) so out of the 10 only send 4. What about the others who should receive a postcard from the member and don’t!