Suggestion: Hiding our stats

I am putting this in the suggestions category, however I would like to open a healthy discussion about this subject. :slightly_smiling_face:

My question:
Is there any way to hide our own stats from other postcrossers?
Right now we can see everyone’s stats by clicking on their profile.

Actually, when I say STATS I am mostly referring to the received tab on the website where it shows the travelling times of each postcard.

But I do think it would be interesting to discuss the pros and cons of the privacy of our stats in general because I still haven’t think all of this through - hence the title.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this: I have concerns that the information shown in that tab, mainly the dates of every received card, can lead to erroneous assumptions and, consequently, to harassments. For example, thinking someone is registering cards in bulk and bothering the person with messages or reporting them unnecessarily to the staff. This is just one I can think of.

That said, I propose that in the future (provided that is technically possible, I have no idea) our own stats can be hidden from other’s. In this case, I wouldn’t mind the who and where to be available, for example, but I imagine the when could lead to these situations.

What are your thoughts? Am I missing something? :thinking:

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Once I send the postcard, I don’t follow the Postcrosser

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My initial thought: if people are seriously going to be harassing people about registering cards, I don’t think getting rid of stats, whether it’s just the “received” stats you suggest or every single statistic on the website, will matter much. People are going to have in their heads a typical time that it takes mail to reach Country B from Country A and once that time that is up, they’ll start sending messages regardless of the fact that this is completely out of the recipient’s control.

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I would be supportive of this, if they keep the “sent” stats. I check them often to compare my travel times to those of other cards sent from my city.

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Unfortunately there are people in this forum that will complain about others for any reason :frowning: and they don’t see it as complaining, but as “expressing their opinion”.

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I also like to take a look at it so I am not suggesting to remove the whole tab or stats, just tiny bits of information that might be more… sensitive and prone to reports, comments, forum threads, personal messages, etc. :slight_smile: Or at least being given the option to do it so if we want to - or leave it public if we don’t.

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IMHO…I think that stats for me are fine. I usually am just curious about someone’s receiving and sending activity. Nothing else really.
If the stats were to be made for the person only I think it would have to be for everyone across the board.
Not an opt in … opt out. I am generally not a suspicious person but would question why someone chose to hide stats.
To me all the personal important stats are hidden already.

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I agree. An alternative would be to provide the information anonymously. Right now the “stats” option under “EXPLORE” is extremely general and doesn’t help me, but if I could check average daily or weekly travel times from my city to other countries, then I wouldn’t need to visit individual users’ profiles.

BTW if the Postcrossing team is reading this: please aggregate per city or at least per region :slight_smile: even an aggregate per country is useless because other Canadian cities have better postal service, and an aggregate over more than a month is also useless because of service fluctuations throughout the year.

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It would be interesting, I guess. To be honest, I never thought much about it, just considered a minor curiosity. Only after seeing a few posts on the forum I realised that people actually see other people’s stats and some of them make assumptions about them. It would be also interesting if there was a note somewhere advising people… but I can’t think of a proper place for that and adding too many things might confuse someone, so maybe it’s better not.

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A question… since we can already show/hide columns, could you just hide the relevant columns, or does that just hide them from your own view?

I love the stats
I can see how many countries I`ve unlocked, how many sent to / recieved from, which countries not sent to / received from and approx time cards get to destination however takes longer at the minute all being well 2021 will be a better year.

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I say leave the Stats as is.

When I request an address, I check the Stats of my recipient to seek how active they are or have been. Among other things, I notice if they have been away for a while, I’ll make room on the card to say something along the lines of “Welcome back to Postcrossing/Glad you’re back”. If they’re new, I can say “Welcome to Postcrossing”. Also, if they’re back or new, that may affect the choice of card I’ll send.

I’ve never heard of or thought of the kind of harassment that AlterEcho mentions. In any event, you can’t tell if someone’s “bunching” registrations from the Stats. You’d have to look at their Received list, as you wrote, and even there guess that they’re holding on to cards.

Again, I say leave the Stats and the other info you mention as it is. If you or anyone else is being harassed, just report it to Support and they’ll deal with it.

Happy Postcrossing!

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Firstly, if someone would harass me, I would report them. I think everyone should. No point in answering them personally.

There are also benefits in seeing the stats.

At one point there were complaints about addresses being given tens of times, when they don’t send so many cards. But it was easy to see, that they had also sent tens of cards. Not exactly on the same days, but a little earlier (day, two earlier from the timeline that the complainer chose the present).

Also, there were complaints of “people” receiving tens of cards at once and then nothing in months, written in the way like they were writing about themselves. Again, it was easy to see, that never happened to the complainer. It was only hear say from what might have happened many years ago to a few people. If even that.

And I enjoy looking at the cards in the main page, and that shows the travel time as well, so would the receiving date be hidden?

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Thank you everyone for your insights on this. I don’t have issues with the stats per se and I’m also on the curious side. However, there has been lots of comments and threads all over the years throughout the forum where the stats are used as a complaint and, even worse, as an entitlement to police the way people do postcrossing.

Honestly, I’d rather be able to hide whatever I want and having people being suspicious of me than being sent messages on how they think it’s weird my card hasn’t been registered yet (because I’m often inactive and the stats can be a bit inconsistent in their views).
And let me be very clear on this: harassment isn’t only on the private messages, it is often seen in comments and threads. So even if you didn’t hear about someone being harassed, the fact that they were indirectly mentioned and discussed online it is a form of harassment.

I guess @syaffolee is right when saying that people will find a way to harass with or without this info. :slight_smile:

That said, I do trust and I’m very pleased with the Postcrossing Team to keep this a safe place. That doesn’t mean people should only rely on the report button. I know I can count on it/them if needed, but I think if there are ways to avoid it then these ways should be discussed - whatever is stats or everything else.

I think maybe an anonymous approach as suggested by @truenorth_49 could work. It could even work for other issues recently debated, such as the picture on the wall being removed by the recipient, leaving an incomplete wall in the sender’s wall. That way, if part of the info was hidden, both could have their way. Is that what you meant, @S_Tuulia? :thinking:

I know, I know. This is complicated. Reason why I didn’t only suggested but wanted this to be a public healthy discussion. I am not saying “Let’s get rid of stats!!”, only stating that some issues can happen when all these info is available to everyone.

I am fine to leave my stats, but I don’t think it’s fair for someone to use it as a case of Postcrossers bulk registering their cards. There could be several reasons:

  1. The person only has a mailbox somewhere else, e.g. granny’s home, PO Box.

  2. Postal systems these days - There are also limited flights, so the postcards will only travel on the limited flights available. I have had 3 postcards arrive in Germany on the same day, even though they were sent on different days. Likewise, I can go for a few days without postcards, then one day I open and I have at least 5-10.

I just think it’s very petty to ‘stalk’ a person’s profile for the sake of reporting the person for bulk registering. A little bit off topic but I feel quite strongly on this because it’s just so petty.

But that said, I think we should guard against these people too, so opting out might be a good option.

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Good question! I think it is only for our view but I’m not sure.

I just hid the received columns inside the received card. Can someone check out my profile and see if it still appears to you, please? :slight_smile:

Yes, thank you! The bulk system was only one thing I could think of, but another one is that I often show a big discrepancy between the send (way more) and received (less) because I’m often inactive and even that can cause suspicions. So I imagine there might be more issues I haven’t thought of because I didn’t experience them.

For me the solution would be easy: you get an address, sent a card, be curious about its journey BUT don’t make any assumptions about it or the postcrosser. :smile:
But since other people’s way of thinking are out of our control, I think the solution lies somewhere in the pieces of information available in the website. I don’t suggest we take it all out, only that we rethink it.

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Looks normal

Thank you, @yudi. :hugs:

@PamUSAOhio apparently if we hide any column, it will hide only for ourselves and it will stay public anway.

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Exactly, I think some are just so suspicious of others, they make their own lives so hard. Stats don’t prove everything.

I seem like I’m registering postcards in bulk too because sometimes I don’t head out of the house especially during this period, so I don’t open the mailbox everyday either.

Also, as Malaysian Postcrossers can only send to Singapore for now due to postal restrictions, and given the limited flights, I often receive Malaysian postcards in bulk and on the same day. This makes my stats look suspicious.

Of course, if our conscience is clear, we have nothing to worry about. It’s just these other people who are so petty that I cannot tolerate.

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