Sunrise, Sunset. High tide, Low tide. Ying and Yang. Hurray! and penalty?

Postcrossing Suggestions
1

Sunday, March 12, 2023 - 11:45 (UTC -5)

Hello, Postcrossing Support:

Please allow a reply to a Hurray! without costing us a message in our Daily Message Allotment (“DMA”). Our reply to a Hurray! message should be “privileged”.

Right now, when we receive a Hurray! email, there is fine print at the bottom of the email saying " Do not reply to this email! To reply go to <the Hurray! sender’s profile>". The actual From email shows as no-reply@postcrossing.com. So, by “reply”, you mean transmitting a message to the Member who sent the Hurray! message as part of the Register a Postcard dialog.

The sender’s Member Name is a “live” link that, when clicked on, takes us to “send a message” as though we had specifically intended to send a new message to that Member. The Subject is blank without any reference to the fact that this message is in fact a reply to a Hurray!.

It is perfectly natural to be able to say “You’re Welcome” in response to the “Thank You” of the Hurray!, the other half of the clam shell, so to speak. Replying to a Hurray! frequently is needed not only for basic civility (“You’re welcome, glad you like it”) but for follow-up of many kinds.

When we click the link, we should go to “send a message” with the Subject pre-loaded with something like “RE: Hurray! Postcard XX-0000000 has been received”. And only the first reply to the Hurray! would be privileged (not count against the DMA). Further messages in the “logical” (as opposed to “physical”) Hurray! thread would count against the DMA.

As our time in Postcrossing increases, so naturally do our Sent and Received counts. With that comes more need to send normal messages to other Members for a variety of reasons (how are you? Where’d you find that card I just favorited? Are you thinking of going to the Meet-Up, answering queries from other Members, etc.). If we were to send replies to every Hurray! we receive in addition to normal messaging activity, we would exceed our normal DMA more frequently, at least those of us who have Sent and Received large numbers of postcards.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Best regards,

Michael

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I think the official Postcrossing site is set up to be fairly simple and I think the vast majority of Postcrossers like it that way - you get an address, you send a card & you get a Hurray message or notification when it’s registered and that’s it.

If you want more than that, you join the Forum & find other like minded Postcrossers.

I get enough email from the official Postcrossing site now with Postcard ID messages, Hurray messages, Registration messages, comments on postcards - I don’t need more messages saying: “You’re welcome” filling up my inbox.

I can send 13 messages a day now on the official site & I hardly use them at all now. I occasionally respond to a direct swap request or send one or answer a question asked of me, but I haven’t had any problems with the daily message limits since the 1st 6 months I joined Postcrossing, before I joined the Forum.

If you wanted to send replies to Hurray messages, you could now with your daily messages (don’t know how fast it goes up, but I’d assume you’ve got a higher limit than I do - let’s say you have 15 messages a day perhaps?) and still have some left over for other messages.

The official site isn’t meant to be a mass email/message system & I’m sure implementing this would be another strain on the servers.

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I’ve never run up against the message sending limit, but I think mine is pretty high at this point. What i do like about this suggestion is that the response to the “Hurray” message is pre-loaded in the subject field, and I don’t suspect implementing that would be a serious burden on the system.

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Yes, I agree that the pre-loaded “Re: Hurray” subject in the reply form would be a nice touch and make these messages more connected and the process one-step quicker, from the User eXperience point of view.

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We are trialing a reply button on the Hurray emails that auto-fills the related Postcard ID. Unless there’s some unforeseen downside, I don’t expect to revert it.

As for the message limits, we are keep it as is for now. It’s quite rare that one needs that many messages in a single day; a quick look in the database and very few are at the limit right now. Plus the premiss here is to exempt replies to hurrays which do happen for sure, but are not that common.

The daily message limit is deliberately low to avoid spam and keep the focus on the postcard exchanges. For longer back&forth exchanges, the private message system we have is not even that practical and most people move over to email/whatsapp/etc for those.

Nonetheless, I’ll keep an eye for a few days on how many people reach the daily message limit and we’ll keep the idea in mind.

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It would be really helpful if there was an option to opt out of receiving these 2nd messages. I really don’t want my inbox filled with “You’re welcome” emails. I think that’s implicit in the exchange already.

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And will there be a topic about “rude” members who don’t bother replying “you’re welcome” because it only takes so and so little time :grimacing:

I agree, sometimes it would be nice to answer in an easier way, but mostly it’s this one connection, a card is sent and then registered, I like it that way.

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I send messages through the official site so rarely that I never even considered that there is a limit. By rarely I mean… Once a year?

Hm sometimes it would be nice to reply to a hurray but the reason I don’t is not that it’s a lot of effort to do the current way, it’s more that my card might be registered while I’m busy/out doing something, and by the time I could reply I forget/other things take precedence and I never get around to it.

This is a very good point…

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Personally I don’t want messages like “you’re welcomed” to flood my inbox either and I don’t want to flood other people’s inbox as well. Pretty happy with the current arrangement and if a message is required, sometimes I find the member on the forum.

4 Likes