The increase would mean their addresses would be more often in the pool too.
I think one reason for imbalance is caused is by old members who are inactive, but send all possible cards.
There would be limit for new members.
(Your example of your friend is only hear say. Maybe she got more cards later? Maybe there is exaggeration
And if she only got two cards out of 23, that would mean also well seasoned members didn’t sent their cards, right? If that’s the reason why she didn’t get the cards. (And of course you can’t choose a reason, meaning that if it’s a new member, they didn’t send, older member, some other reason )
Are you suggesting Postcrossing should go back to what it was, only same slot amount even to old members, if it looks like the old members don’t send the cards (because they can take another slot and choose to whom they send)?)
I never said that. I think the current limits are perfectly fine for most users and for the global dynamic of postcrossing. I admit there are a few members that would send more if given the chance (I saw one or two people that expressed this wish, in more than a hundred comments of this post). But they keep sending and their limits grow.
There may be a problem with cherry picking, as you say. But also postcards get lost in the mail, or they get misdelivered. There is a problem in the US with machine reading (I’ve had postcards lost and a package returned). But when you see a user who has only sent one or two cards, and went directly to inactive, I see it’s one of three: they drew all the rest and never sent them (they didn’t know how, wouldn’t care, life got in the way etc), or they simply weren’t interested in drawing more, or their postal system is so unreliable that they can’t actually postcross.
Of course, the founders can do nothing about this and wait another 5 years to make sure the forecast is correct.
But by then, Postcrossing will have fallen to 2011 levels, losing about 50% of its postcard volume from its peak (2013…2014).
Paulo (@paulo) and Ana (@meiadeleite) can listen to my arguments and take action to give their project a chance to revive.
And for this, it’s enough just to set up a slot rule. I calculated everything some time ago and proposed a new version here.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”
Nothing will happen on its own. Miracles don’t happen.
It’s time for the founders to make a decision.
This doesn’t tell anything about the true situation since only small amount of members read this forum, let alone this topic, or take time to answer (especially this thread not being only about sending more).
They might be just waiting for their card to arrive either to them or the receiver.
I believe this what you wrote (about old members lost cards?) applies to new members too:
To me seems you have a little negative attitude/mistrust towards new members and assume the “worst”.
A card sent by a new members gets lost as possibly as old members.
Here are all the users from The Netherlands - a total of twelve - that were active (last seen in the last month, at the time) on Feb 24th, 2022, had sent exactly 50 cards at that date - the total cards they sent as of today - and whether or not they are still around:
User
Total today
Status
Average cards sent per month
AggieAgnes
98
active
3.69
Amparo1976
304
active
19.53
Brandi104
84
last seen 1 month ago
2.62
cis
73
last seen 1 month ago
1.77
Esmee308
78
last seen 1 month ago
2.15
Eva2
137
active
6.69
Femkuhhhh
50
last seen over 1 year ago
0
Ineke
66
active
1.23
Lisa3491
50
last seen 10 months ago
0
Logan2014
50
last seen over 1 year ago
0
Sjus
50
last seen over 1 year ago
0
TessWiegers
65
last seen 1 month ago
1.15
A member that has sent 50 cards can have 10 cards traveling at a time. Assuming the worst possible scenario, they will send at least 5 cards per month on average if they keep drawing every card they can send (in 60 days, a card that is not registered expires so they can draw a new one). But how many of them sent at least 5 cards per month in 13 months? Only 2 out of 12. 8 of 12 have gone inactive. And if you compare the two highest ratios, it is obvious the user with 6.69 is not sending their maximum quota either. So the maximum number of users who would possibly benefit from an increase in slots on this sample of data is one in twelve. But this user has already gone from having max 10 cards traveling at a time to having max 20 cards traveling at a time - and last month she had 23 of her cards registered. Sounds like she’s comfortable with this limit already.
Here are all the users from The Netherlands - a total of eight - that were active (last seen in the last month, at the time) on Nov 14th, 2022, had sent exactly 50 cards at that date - the total cards sent as of today - and whether or not they are still around:
User
Total today
Status
Average cards sent per month
Lola84
50
active
0
lotteannemarijn
50
last seen 3 months ago
0
michel1984
50
last seen 1 month ago
0
MissWallet
54
last seen 3 months ago
1
NicVee
118
active
17
STARSIEWERTSEN
61
last seen 3 months ago
2.75
VeroniqueNL
53
active
0.75
xPaulienx
60
last seen 2 months ago
2.5
So again, only user in eight that is very active, maybe close to their sending limit.
That gives me only one in ten low-number users would possibly - not guaranteed - send one or three more cards if given the chance. The rest are either comfortable and much below their sending max - or have decided on a different hobby.
Here are the active users in Netherlands that have sent exactly 50 cards and are active today, April 1st 2023. Anybody fancy making any predictions?
I’m not sure what is your point here? So are you thinking more slots would be ok if no one stopped postcrossing? (Especially new ones?)
What relevance does the inactive have here?
I thought it’s understood people go inactive and even stop, new members, intermediate, old members. Some go inactive because all their slots are taken, some die, and all between that.
I am looking at the more slots from the perspective, where an active member would send more, but can’t. (And yes they can be inactive at some point too, that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t send more at that time.)
I don’t know if you read this topic:
(many members think the low starting amount is good, but after it could be more, and at some point it doesn’t matter - just what the new slot suggestion would fix )
I too remember the phase, when I was “old” member enough to have all go smoothly, but then having maybe only 14 slots, and I could have had sent much more. That time mail was still somewhat faster, so for member in that situation now, everything is even slower.
((From the above link I found that the original sending slot amount was 3, then 5. Both these to all members, no matter how much you sent. Then this changing slot amount came.))
I was very curious and did the same check as @lamelemon but for Poland.
There are at the moment, in the entire country, 5 users with exactly 50 cards sent, who have also logged in within the last month. Interestingly, not one of them is a relatively new member - the newest one joined in 2017…
Very interesting on the whole, I think I will start doing some data gathering of my own
My point was that unfortunately the number of active users still in their lows (thus affected by the sending limits) is very small, and out of them the ratio of people who are actually active and send regularly and close to the limit is very small as well. I don’t see how increasing the slot limit for such a tiny demographic would impact the declining curve.
There are too few people that discover postcrossing just now (it’s been around for 20 years, the most interested demographic is there already), and out of them too few stick around.
You are right.
The TOP-100 accounts for about 3.7% of all postcrossing postcard registrations.
The TOP-1000 ~ 21% of all registrations.
The TOP-2250 ~ 31% of all registrations.
The TOP-5000 ~ 43% of all registrations.
The TOP-10 000 ~ 54% of all registrations.
In total, the game has 800,000 postcrossers.
And TOP-10 000 is only 1.25% of all participants. And this 1.25% make about 54% of all registrations.
Please think carefully about this.
It is impossible to induce (800,000-10,000 = 790,000) participants to start intensively playing Postcrossing by any persuasion.
For them, postcrossing does NOT have the same high priority as for those TOP-10 000 (1.25% of all postcrossers).
But if the founders give the opportunity to the most motivated postcrossers, who play at the limit of their slots (they are included in this 1.25%), to send more, then they will give an increase in the volume of registrations.
And this increase will exceed the rate of decline (-6% per year) in registrations that we have seen for the past 10 years and we will see more. This compensation is in the shape of the curve of New Slot Rule that I calculated.
The blue line is the current slot rule.
The orange line is the New Slot Rule I propose to replace the current one.
The horizontal axis is the number of postcards you sent in total.
The vertical axis is the number of slots (maximum postcard limit).
That is what I am writing about here.
Moreover, even after the launch of the new slot rule, it will take a couple of years to stop the trend from falling and reverse it. Since Postcrossing is a system with inertia.
That’s just it - I don’t think they would.
I agree with your numbers, but not with your predictions.
I don’t think there are enough postcrossers that play close to their hard limit.
And I think the stat that gives more info here is focused only on the 65.000 or so users that were active in the past month - and only on the cards they sent in the last month.
Most of the 800.000 are gone. A few of them come back every few months, send a few cards, stick around a bit, register what they receive, then they take a break again. Some of them were top users. Most of them sent tens, maybe hundreds of cards.
Here’s what I would do if I had the time. Maybe I will in a couple of weeks, on my next holiday. All the info here is public. It would be 2 minutes for somebody that has access to postcrossing’s database. It would be 3-4 hours for me today and another 3-4 hours in say a month.
make a table of all postcrossers that have logged in in the last month - and their total number of sent cards (at least one)
collect the same data in say a month from now
join the two tables to count: deltas; new members; members that have gone inactive; members that have become active again; members that have deleted their account; average cards sent per month; ratio of average cards sent per month to maximum slot limit;
This way we could estimate how many people play close to their limits, the percent of the cards they send out of the total cards sent in a month, and how many extra postcards would bring the increase in slots (assuming best case scenario = everybody that plays now to the max will keep on playing to the max)
I would say more precisely if I had direct access to the all data. And the founders of Postcrossing have this access.
Even if the proportion of postcrossers playing at the limit of their limits among the TOP-10 000 is only 5% (just 500 members), this will stop the trend from falling.
There is no need to believe or not believe, everything is easy to calculate here.
This doesn’t make sense ie your example of growingfrom10 to 23 slots so fast.
In my experience I have kept all slots full except a couple of weeks when waiting to send in travel mode so I didn’t go all holiday with no slots.
And yet I have still only progressed to 14 maximum travelling with 268 sent/received. 23 is many months/years away
It’s a deal
I have a snapshot of Nov 14th. I will take a new one around two weeks at most, on my holiday (or maybe tomorrow if the little lemon complies)
Can we agree on a formula and a daily average for “playing at the limit of one’s slots” until then? In sent postcards/day, factoring the max no of cards one can send.
The most active was @suegathman from the US with 437 cards sent. Congrats, Sue! That would be a whooping 7.28 postcards per day at a 100 slot limit.
The “least” active was @tabru from Germany with 285 cards sent. I’m kidding Tanja, congrats, that’s huge 4.75 postcards per day at a limit of 100 as well.
And halfway through is @tilly30318 from the US with 314 postcards sent - that would be 5.23 cards sent per day. Wow!
But somebody who has a slot limit of say 20 will not be able to sustain such a rhythm - they will quickly run out of slots. So how do we factor this limit in playing head to head?
Let’s take @tesc - I remember Tracy said a bit earlier in this thread that she would send more if given the chance. She has at the moment 268 cards sent, so 14 slots if I’m not mistaken. And she had exactly 14 of her cards registered in March, with a max number of cards per month of 20 in March 2022 - which she ended with 115 cards sent, so only 11 slots available.
So maybe we can equal playing to the max to be
(Sent cards per month) / (max slots available) >= 2? Or thereabouts?
You think right. This Ranking is exactly TOP-100 that I mentioned above.
And once more:
Even if the proportion of postcrossers playing at the limit of their limits among the TOP-10 000 is only 5% (just 500 members), this will stop the trend from falling.
Unfortunately, you will not be able to get a correct estimate of gain in terms of averages.
Since the dependencies within this system are NON-LINEAR. And the calculations require more complex mathematical approaches.
I can truly say that those at least 500 postcrossers who play at their limit between 20 slots and 100 slots make about +250,000 extra cards a year. This is exactly the recession that we have at the present time.
And taking into account the fact that their limits will grow faster, then in a couple of years the decline will not only stop, but will also turn into growth.
And, if those are not 5%, but 10-20%, everything will happen faster.
That user is from Amparo1976 The Netherlands. I agree she is an outlier, but these are her stats. She had 50 cards sent in Feb 2022, that’s 10 cards max. One year later, she has 304 cards sent, that’s 15 cards. You’re right, I don’t know why I said 20, it’s only 15. But in March 2023 she did send 23 cards (well, technically she sent some of them in February, but that’s harder to count
I agree it’s hard to get to the precise formula. My last card sent to the UK arrived in 9 days. But if I draw China on that replacement slot, it will arrive in maybe 60…
If we are talking about the TOP-100, then you need to recognize the pattern. Above, I indicated several times what the pattern looks like for those who have accumulated 100 slots for several years and now play at the limit of 100 slots.
For those who have NOT yet reached the 100 slot level, this is an exponential curve with certain characteristics. But among the TOP-100 there are no such postcrossers who play at the limit of slots, the maximum of which is quite below 100. Because they obviously make less than 150 postcards a month.
But among the TOP-100 there are about half of those who play near the limit of their slots, and among the TOP-10 000 such players are 10…20%. I can’t say for sure because I use indirect valuation methods and don’t own all the data that the founders have.
The lowest estimate is 5%. And even in this case, we will get compensation for the downtrend. And it will take a little more time to reverse the trend in the direction of growth due to the inertia of Postcrossing.
It makes no sense to overload this thread with mathematical calculations. They are pretty complex.
Let me just say that the New Slot Rule perfectly solves the problem of the decline in the volume of Postcrossing postcards.
The only question is the political will of the founders.
If so, then there will be growth.
If not, then we will continue to fall. And in the next 5 years, Postcrossing will fall to the level of 2011, and the volume of cards will be half as much as in the best years of the game 2013…2014.
I’m curious why you conclude that anyone with 20 slots will fill them all? I have 26 open just now…I may write 5 cards this weekend, but do not have time or money to do more. I’m amazed that others are sending 500 a month;
I can afford to participate but not at this high level that you guys are proposing…
