Separate "Favourites" and "Wishlist"

Postcrossing Suggestions
#1

Many people currently use their “favourites” list as a de facto wishlist. They will never favourite a card that they have received and instead use the list to indicate which cards they would like to receive. It is extremely useful to be able to have such a list on the site, both for officials and for things like tags and swaps. I would not want to lose this functionality. However, it would be nice to also be able to indicate/mark/note cards that you have received and particularly enjoyed. I’m sure the sender would also appreciate knowing that their card was well-received also. :slight_smile:

I want to be able to “favourite” the cards that I find particularly interesting or enjoyable and separately “wishlist” the cards that I would particularly enjoy receiving. (Not meant as a list of demands or any such thing, merely as an indication of preference and tool for unofficial exchanges through the forums.)

22 Likes
#2

An easy, already available option is to use the “description” of the card for it. I’ve noticed I am not the only one adding :heart: there. They don’t form a list, but you can see the description texts when browsing through cards. (I also like using descriptions to give more info of the card, if available). Anyway, my “hearts” are only about the picture side of the cards as they are the only thing visible on the wall. Often I like the textside of the cards (message, stamps, decorations, info, learning new things), but I use my Hurray mails to say thank you and let the senders know how much I appreciate their cards.

3 Likes
#3

I, too, add a heart in the text, as my “favourites” are my wishlist, to inspire anyone who would like to have a look, before sending me a card. :slight_smile:

#4

I would not want this option because most people send a card to me that they have chosen carefully. If this card, however, does not meet my taste I would not mark it as a favorite. So to not hurt anyones feelings I would not want to use this option.

9 Likes
#5

Well, if there’ll be this option I simply wouldn’t “heart” any of my received cards.

Just for two causes: though I like almost every card I receive, every now and then there’s a card I dislike. But then the sender maybe put a lot of effort in the message and / or the sender chose the card nevertheless carefully. I simply don’t like it, but there’s no need to hurt anyones feelings (to be clear: I always tell the people I know what I think - but I’m very carefully with people I don’t know).

And: it happens that a) the sender didn’t upload an image and my scanner doesn’t work. For a couple of days. Then I have no image to like.

5 Likes
#6

Well, as for me, I wouldn’t use this option too because I like all the cards I receive. Although there may be some exeptions, I would never say that I don’t like a card even if I really do so. I prefer to write when I register a card that I like it. It seems to me that words are more important than likes on cards :sparkling_heart:
For me it’s better to use favorites as a wishlist because it may help senders to choose cards for me.

5 Likes
#7

Those hearts in the comments do not count for ones popular cards, so the hearts in the comments section are somehow lost.

#8

That is a great suggestion, for people could favourite cards they like without spoiling their wishlist. And not hearting a received card means exactly just that, not more.

#9

@Robinchen and @Angelthecat That’s very thoughtful of you that you don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. It nice that you appreciate the thought and care that went into chosing the card even if it isn’t ot your personal tastes. That said, how is treating your “favourites” as a wishlist and doing as you’re doing now functionally different from having a wishlist and simply choosing not to use the favourites category?

I would prefer that the option to have favourites – separate from a wishlist – existed for the people who want to use it. That doesn’t mean that everybody is obligated to use it. It just means that it would be there for those who want it. (Just like the current favourite system.)

Right now, some people use “favourites” to indicate the cards the particularly like while others use it as a wishlist. If you think that nobody should be using favourites to mark most liked cards, then perhaps there shouldn’t be a favourites list at all and we should just have a wishlist instead. I figured that, since people are clearly already using the hearts/favourites for two different purposes depending on their own feelings and priorities it would be nice to offer both functions as two separate lists and then each person could choose to use them (or not) as they see fit. :slight_smile:

4 Likes
#10

I don’t like this idea because my favorite wall is not a wishlist and I wouldn’t want people who are sending me a postcard to think that these are the cards that I would like to receive. I don’t want to have a wishlist because I don’t want to influence people’s decision on what cards to send me.
I also believe it goes against Postcrossing guidelines which discourages the use of specific wishlists in profiles.

2 Likes
#11

Okay, but if people are already using their “favourites” list as a wishlist, what’s the difference? There is already a de facto whishlisting system that many, many people use, it’s just not called that. If people are using a wishlist, why not call it what it is? If you, personally, don’t want to use a wishlist, that’s fine. No one is saying that you have to. But clearly many people find it useful/desirable to have a wishlist.

Personally, I don’t have much interest in receiving specific cards and I probably wouldn’t go out and hunt down a specific card just because someone had it on their wishlist BUT I still often look at people’s “favourites” (which, for many users = “wishlist”) to see if I happen to have one of the cards they’re hoping for or to see what kind of cards they like and if I have something similar to one of their wished for cards.

If you don’t want to influence what cards people send you and would prefer not to state any preferences whatsoever, that’s absolutely fine. I followed this paradigm initially because, like you, that was the takeaway I had from reading the guidelines as well. After sending a few cards however, I realized how much joy I got out of trying to match people’s interests and desires. After that, I went back and edited my profile to add some preferences and guidelines in case there were other people that felt as I did and got a lot of pleasure out of trying to match a card to a user.

This is all optional. If you don’t want to state preferences, don’t. If you don’t want to try to match other people’s preferences, don’t. If you don’t want to have or create a wishlist, don’t. I’m not saying that this is something that everyone should do. I’m saying that a lot of people are already doing this. So far, I’ve encountered more people that use the “favourites” list as a wishlist than as a list of favourite cards receivied. (Such people have already posted in this thread, in fact.) I don’t see how adding separate a separate favourites and wishlist would be any different from the system that’s already in place beyond making it clearer what the actual intent behind the heart was. Rather than having one function that some people use for one thing and some people use for a completely different thing, there would be a separate function for each of the two main use cases.

2 Likes
#12

The best for me is that I can get to know about wishes and preferences in writings in profile. I rather not make a “quality” difference between received cards and favourite them all. Also I strive for making a comment to all that loads up front of card. Here I can make it functional towards for instance nice, funny, educating, or meeting my preferences stated in profile.

#13

But if my favorites are now called “wishlist”, then I have a wishlist, even though I don’t want one. It’s not optional anymore. I’m not going to remove my 1000+ favorites from my wall because I don’t want a wishlist. I still want my favorites. I guess to me the problem is the name. I wouldn’t have an issue if there was, for instance, only 1 favorite wall, and you could click on a button that says “Show only favorites not received”.

#14

the sender will know i like their card because i will tell them in the hurray message. and also the other way around, if someone tells me they like my card but they won’t favourite it that doesn’t hurt my feelings.

i don’t see a problem with this. as a sender you don’t have to look at someone’s favourites, i just use it as an indication to see what kind of cards someone likes. and the people who use it as a wishlist are from the forum like you said, so they can participate in tags. so everyone’s happy.
i don’t see the need to add another wishlist to someone’s profile, i think one is more than enough (especially if you call it wishlist and people see it as a chance to say they only want white monkey’s flying in the air or they’ll be very disappointed in you).

#15

But the suggestion isn’t to rename “favourites” to “wishlist”, it’s to have a wishlist that is separate from “favourites”. You could use it or not as you choose.

#17

The suggestion was to have a wall for cards that you have received and one for a wishlist. I don’t favorite cards that I have received and my favorites are not a wishlist. So none of these walls would be of any use to me. Where would I put my favorites then?

#18

What would happen with our current favourites then?

2 Likes
#19

I agree and have advocated for some time for a split – “favorites” and “wish list.” Favorites would be just that – cards you like and maybe want to scroll through yourself as time goes on. Maybe you have received them, maybe you just like them. They are just your favorites, not a shopping list.

“Wish list” would be also just that - cards you hope someone will send you. Maybe you even already received them, but you don’t mind (or even enjoy) duplicates, or maybe they are exclusively cards you don’t have yet but would really like.

Some people may have both sections blank, some people may have both sections filled with thousands of cards. Maybe there would be crossovers - cards that are both “favorites” and on the “wish list.” To me the benefit would be that people who don’t want duplicates could still “favorite” their received cards and people who are confused by the whole thing could just go to a “wish list” and know what they were looking at.

#20

To add to this - I sometimes like cards I wouldn’t normally like - maybe this yellow 1960s card evokes some memories but at the same time I don’t necessarily want to receive more cards depicting the same thing etc. and don’t want to suggest anyone otherwise.

With favourites as a literal wishlist it also serves as an indication of what I may like (there’s plenty of birds there and nice views of sky, exactly what I specify in my profile)

I chuckled at that last sentence :smiley: But now I’m thinking about it - how would adding cards look?
Do I need to click twice to add to both lists (separate icon for each)?
Is there a default list when the other one is sort of special and needs me moving cards from one list to another?

I’m just wondering out loud here, having over 1k favourites myself and really unwilling to spend time managing them :grin:

#21

Cool idea, I totally agree, I am using favorites list as “favorites” list, and add there most beutiful postcards I have received and also some postcards from other user I especially like.
But it seems that for many of postcrossers it is treated as “wishlist” , so I started to receive duplicates :no_mouth: