Is it just me or does the unchecked box of the function “several postcards to the same countries” not do what it should do?
For over months I am sending most of my 10 allowed cards to 3 countries. Most of the time 3 to US, 3 to Russia and 2 to Germany. So only 2 slots are to different countries.
I understand that it is impossible to always have non-duplicating countries, but it should be a bit more surprising than this and I can now even predict where the next card is going.
I have even tried checking the box, save and then unchecking it again.
Those are the countries with the most users, everything else would be surprising. As long there are not significant more users coming up from other countries, this will not change. The system can not make up any slots, if there aren’t one.
this. and a lot of people from rarer countries already have a lot more received than sent because of this. and a lot of people from more popular countries are waiting for cards. i feel like i’m saying this a lot but we should care more about sending to people than to countries.
It all depends on the user distribution at the moment. This changes. Finland and the Netherlands used to be very active 10 years ago for example. As others have said, the function tries to give you as much variety as possible but the effect may vary based on how active people are in different countires. The function is also affected by covid and mail restrictions in some countries.
If you have it, you get nothing else than those 3 countries. If you don’t, you sometimes get something else. I have periods with and periods without, and there is a difference. Since I put it back on, I had nothing else than those 3. Last time I had it off I had new countries that I had never sent to like Austria and Ireland - first time to get those after more than 4 years and more than 300 postcards. I don’t mind too much, it’s just the way it is when most members are in just a few countries and it’s fun anyway!
It’s normal that you may have repeated countries if you can send ~10+ cards even if this function isn’t selected. As others have written, Germany, Russia and the USA are the most active countries with lots of users.
The use of having this function is that if it’s selected you’ll have more cards traveling to the most popular countries. For example, if you got only 5-7 slots for countries and this function selected most of your cards from the beginning would be sent to Germany, Russia and the USA and you would have less chances to send cards to the rarer countries.
For example, I don’t have this function too but during the last months I have 2-3 cards traveling to Germany and the USA because there are users who wait for their cards, participants from the rarer countries have already receive their cards so there’s even an imbalance between sent and received cards and also because there are postal restrictions due to COVID-19.
I hope my explanation will be helpful
I know what the use is. You missed my cynism. My idea was: why give people the possibility to cjoose this function if still 8 out of 10 postcards are always going to the same countries? It is like giving false idea of being able to control it (a little). TBH I would mind less if I wasn’t given the possibility to (un)select this option.
Once you can have more cards traveling, you’ll see that it’ll differ a bit more - when you draw more cards, there’s a higher chance to catch something “rare”. I have 52 traveling atm with 2xBelarus, 1xBulgaria, 1xCanada, 4xChina, 1xCzechia, 3xFinland, 1xFrench Guiana, 7xGermany, 1xHong Kong, 2xIndia, 2xItaly, 1xJapan, 1x Kazakhstan, 1xMacao, 1xMexico, 2xNetherlands, 7xRussia, 1xSerbia, 3xTaiwan, 7xUSA, 3x Ukraine, 2xUnited Kingdom. So you see, there’s still 21/52 to the top three. But since it spreads out on more cards, by the time you have about 5 to the top three you’ll probably get other countries more often. But as others pointed out, it really doesn’t matter so much. (except for playing country bingos. :D)
Oh and as @bom_dia said, I moved it to the General Topics section.
I am sending to repeated countries for almost a year and I really don’t care where I send to. I am from Germany and most of my cards travel there and arrive within one day which allows me to send new cards again
I understood you. Well, look if this function was choosen you would sent more your cards to popular countries. But without it there’s a chance that your card will travel to other countries. At the beginning, it’s clearer that cards go to the same countries when this function is choosen (e.g. 4 out 5 cards go to German, etc). And without this function up to a certain point you always got different countries. But when we can send more cards (about 10+) there always will be repetations because the number of active users from all countries isn’t equal. And it seems to me that it’s impossible to cancel the option to select this function for users with a large number of slots for countries because it would would take a lot of time and resources to change the system so that it also takes into account how many slots the user has in total. There may be bugs if we try to do it. And there are people who like to have this function selected even if they have about 10 slots.
I thought for a while and decided that if you sent 3 cards to US and Russia and 2 to Germany without this function you would send more cards to one country with it (for example, 6 cards to one country).
May I ask did you request all those 10 addresses at the same day or not? If it was done with a break of several hours/days/weeks there are more chances to draw the same countries. Tested by personal experience.
It’s not that I don’t want to send to the same countries at all. And I understand that with more slots there will be more of the same. But now it is so predictable…
As for the question if all 10 were drawn at the same day. No, because I want to send another card immediately
Twice I tried to draw a couple consecutive numbers. And once I did get 2 out of 3 different (than DE, US, RU), . Last Friday I could draw 4 addressess at the same day, but all were with some time in between: DE US DE US.
And as for sending to my own country: I have it on, but I have never drawn a Dutch address. Which seems a bit weird too, since the Dutch are no. 4 (all time, so might be different if you look at only recent numbers), so you would expect at least one out of over a 100 addresses drawn.
I think the pandemic mail restrictions are still greatly affecting this. Yes, you can expect to get the top 5 countries more than others, but in the beforetimes, it was more balanced.
We just need to be patient and wait for a return to normal.
Here’s my stats from December 2020 - Germany and the USA more than 50% of the total.
I didn’t mean that you don’t want to send cards to the same countries. Sorry if it reads that my words have this meaning…
The same happens to me. A month ago I got 3 cards traveling to German (addresses were drown the same day + the next day) and I still have 2 cards traveling to the US (the addresses were requested 2 days apart). But at the same time, I drew about a week ago 2 rare countries. So I may say that it’s predictable and unpredictable at the same time. It depends on what free addreses the system has and on our place in the line of those who request an address.
And as others said, popular countries appear more often because of the postal restrictions due to COVID-19. Although Dutchmen can’t send cards only to 17 countries (if I remember right), there are countries that can’t send postcards to more countries or almost anywhere at all, for example Malaysia, Singapore and French Polynesia (I mentioned these countries because I know exactly about them) who are also rare countries. And if I’m not mistaken, someone wrote in another thread or somewhere else that system gives now addreses of those countries who can send cards to each other.
I assume it’s because at the time you requested an address all Dutch addresses were already “reserved” for people from other countries who can exchange postcards with the Netherlands. Or maybe it’s also possible because the people whose addresses you had drawn had been waiting longer to receive their cards than others and also than your countrymen.
I hope I wasn’t rude and didn’t say something wrong >.<
P. S. Forgot to write before: your cat is beautiful
Malaysia can only send to Singapore :o
Singapore can send to most large countries, look at my sent. Well lately they are not very varied because I had repeated countries on
The other thing I wanted to say is, it’s not like it’s “false advertising”. The function does what it says it does, it’s not like postcrossing knows exactly how frequently a country will come up at any given time. So right now, this is the way things are, sometimes there are a few more frequent countries in the equation (China, Finland…).
It is true that the pandemic and postal restrictions/delays are also a factor…
I think I will try the box for cards to same country, as I just like to send cards to people, I have no goal of specific countries. My question is if I will then just receive cards from the countries that have more members? I would also like to send cards to other U.S. members, will I still get U.S. addresses?
Thanks for any replies.
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