I would absolutely love to have a customisable default. I start almost every one as a formula anyway (‘Thank you for the … card! I especially loved ….’) so it would be really handy to have the basic outline there for me already!
But I also think a generalised default is a good idea. I agree with others that it would probably mean slightly less people would take the time to personalise each message, but so what? Here in the forums, it is apparent that some people put a lot of emphasis on the Hurray message and feel hurt when others don’t, but a lot of the time the offenders are likely doing so without even realising. Maybe a default message could lessen this issue by helping to place less emphasis on the Hurray in general. Maybe a reduced emphasis on the message would also help some postcards get registered faster (and have less risk of being forgotten), such as when the recipient doesn’t have much time and feels they need to wait until they can write a message. And of course it obviously wouldn’t stop people who want to write a personalised message from doing so.
It would support lazyness and lead to more impersonal messages, for it is easier to just take the default message instead of writing an individual one, thus contradicting the aim of Postcrossing to connect people.
And if people do not have time to answer, then they need to take time. Sending default hurray messages is as bad as sending empty ones.
It would support lazyness and lead to more impersonal messages, for it is easier to just take the default message instead of writing an individual one, thus contradicting the aim of Postcrossing to connect people.
The goal of Postcrossing is “to connect people across the world through postcards” so the Hurray message might be a nice bonus connection for some people but it’s not the point.
In my understanding, as the sender you experience the connection when you read the profile and write the card, and then of course as the recipient it’s when you receive and read the card. So, I don’t see the Hurray message as strictly necessary to this goal at all (and I don’t see how a default message would be any worse than the common clearly copied-and-pasted hurray messages a lot of people use).
That said, I do still write personalised Hurray messages, and would continue to even if there were a default, as I imagine many people would.
To me, they would be worse because even if the sender uses their own copied text, I will receive that text only once - whereas I’m afraid I would receive the default text many times.
A default in English would greatly help those who have limited English language skills or use a different alphabet. Something simple like “thank you for your card” and people could add on more as they wish. This is a good idea