Today while writing official postcards I had an idea but I don’t know how others would think about it.
I send within my own country and checked send to repeated countries.
I like to send a lot which means that for every postcard I send someone needs to send one back to me - Germany again.
So I thought why not introduce the option to send one way. Meaning not receive one back for this card. A bit like if someone sends cards while set the account to inactive. Just that way you send a card but for that card don’t receive one back. That way we could help to keep the balance. I would prefer that option for example when I have not much time to tend to incoming mail but love to send out cards for example when on business trips. Or just to send a card.
It could be that one gets an extra number of slots for one way cards (when checking that option) or that one chooses how many cards of the acutal slots are to be sent one way.
The profile could show sent, recdived, sent one way to also keep that one seperate.
Ah! Yes. As someone who rather prefers to send than to receive and who is often inactive for that purpose, I think this would be great if implemented. When I put myself active again is because I’d like to receive just a few, not every card that is due. So it’s a bit tricky for me to manage it and this would be a better option!
Although I don’t have the admin perspective on the project, so I can’t think much of how this would affect - or wouldn’t - everything else.
Interesting idea. I understand why you suggest this and it’s a nice thought!
But I’m afraid it wouldn’t help the imbalace, just shift it. As a user in a rare country (Norway), I tend to get too many postcards because there’s a need for more addresses to send to. Then we have to send a bunch of postcards to catch up and start receiving postcards again. I’m afraid “official RAS postcards” won’t make this better.
I agree that more variety would be nice but this suggestion would only help to balance things more if this option is only available for those countries that have too many postcrossers compared to the rest of the world like Germany.
I also fear that it would make the imbalance worse. Where do you want to get all those addresses from? There are already more addresses requested than cards arrived.
From discussions in the old Forum, I know that some people have done this by setting up an account and then setting it inactive (so that they do not receive any cards), checking “repeated countries” (so that the cards are more likely to go to countries that “need” cards), and then sending until they reach an imbalance where Postrcossing won’t let them send any more.
I am not advocating this, merely reporting what I read!
Maybe I am thinking wrong but the way I understand it there are countries like Germany, USA, Russa etc. with many active members who send out a lot of cards. Than there are others from either smaller countreis or countries with very high postage rates who do not send that many cards.
Obviously people from more active cards send out a lot more cards than others hence these cards get received more. This leads to an imbalance because of course the ones from smaller countreis would like to receive cards from as many different countries as possible just as much as anyone else. Consequently their address is given out more often but this is also because many people would also like to send to as many countries as possible.
My thinking was that if there would be a way to send without receiving back (of course this option should not be forced on anyone) these people who opt for this will send out a card to whoever is next in line (meaning here repeated countries is mandatory) so more cards are traveling without the obligation to give their addresses out quiete as much.
For example: I currently can have 62 cards traveling and at the moment I love to write a lot so usually my slots are filled.
With that option implemented I could for exampel choose to send 31 cards the regular way and 31 cards one way (I am not saying there should be a fixed number this is just an example).
Lets say all 62 cards arrive at their destinations. Then except my address is given out to 62 others it is only given out 31 times. That way there are 31 less cards travelling to Germany that would be sent to other places (which of course might be Germany again but not as much than it would have).
I don’t know if that makes any sense but I feel like I could work.
It would be the same as @ColorfulCourtney described but only with one account.
Also in case too many cards are traveling there could be an option saying one way travel is not possible at the moment. That way there would never bee too many cards out.
