The way I understand the system works, if I have once drawn an address, I will never draw the address of that postcrosser again. And that makes sense. But it also seems to work the other way round - and I don’t see the purpose of that! Why should the addressee of my card never draw my address???
If there’s a good reason for this, I’d be curious to hear about it. If not, I’d suggest to change this, because I can see at least two good reasons why it should be possible to match members twice - giving the address once to one of them, and (at least optionally) later to the other:
There are some countries with only 1 member. So once I’ve sent a card to Tuvalu or Angola, my chances to receive a card from there are zero. Well, yes, of course, unless a 2nd member signs up
This is a sad argument, but still: There are some members among us who don’t make much of an effort when sending their cards. Be it that they send out only free cards - while asking for storebought cards - or that they never write more than “Happy postcrossing!” - why requesting to “please tell me about…” this and that. And this is actually encouraged by the rule that the addressees of their cards will never draw their address. If they knew that the people they send to may be the same people they receive from, this would be an incentive for them to put more effort into their own cards, wouldn’t it?
I do agree with you, it also makes it much more exciting and a coincidence when you do draw someone’s address whom has sent to you already. You can then return the ‘favor’ and thank them for their card and how you enjoyed it. I like this idea.
Even though I personally don’t care that much about it, a certain amount of users isn’t that fond of increasing personal relations because it could very well lead to rising expectations. The fear of “retaliation”, i.e. getting “bad cards” on purpose, nasty messages etc. because the sender didn’t like the one he got could scare people away from sending their first postcards. They don’t have a big collection yet and they don’t know what is considered to be a “good card”, so they don’t send anything at all.
“Just send a postcard, don’t worry about the other stuff” is a very strong selling point for postcrossing and it could be unwise to get rid of this core value.
Last but not least, my personal “quid pro quo” is the hurray message. If someone sends his one card fits all motive with “happy postrcossing”, they’ll get a “thank you for your nice card, wish you all the best” and that’s it. If someone writes a lot, choses a cool card, nice stamps etc. they’ll get a lot in return, sometimes leading to DM exchanges. If you want to reward someone with a cool card, why not just ask them?
That is not possible - unless a member has multiple accounts or your card to a member has expired and disappeared from your travelling list after 1 year.
After this year you can draw the address again or the member can draw yours.
Otherwise, you can only write once to each “account” and your address will never go out to these account holders.
In the same way, you can never write to an “account” if you have already received a card from it.
Maybe, rather, an option to choose if they think it’s ok to get a card from who you sent to, or to send to someone who sent to you, and if both agree, their address can be shared this way.
Personally, I don’t want that. It already can happen if a person has multiple accounts, or if a card expires.
I especially like this the way it is now, no relationship, only this one time “meet”, and that’s it.
Like how do you treat a stranger, when you don’t expect/get anything in return.
Actually I’d also very much dislike a situation in which I’d get a “chance to retaliate” for a “bad card”… I had really only thought of the reverse situation, that
it would be nice to draw an address of someone who sent you something great and get a chance to return the favour, or
that someone might refrain from sending a trashy card in the first place.
But the truth is, if somebody sent me a “trashy card”, I’d rather NOT get their address. Just forget about it and move on
Even if there would be a chance to be matched again, what are the odds of that hapenning with this many users? If might happen with the “rare” countries but with everyone else… I’m not sure about that. And to be honest, I wouldn’t remember if I already received a card from someone whose address I draw if there wasn’t anything “special” about that card. And I mean not just a great card and message, but really special. It could also be years in between.
But I wouldn’t mind it being possible. In my case I wouldn’t even be able to retaliate a “bad card” because I wouldn’t know that that person sent me one a while ago. And also because I enjoy picking and writing the card, so I wouldn’t be mean as a move of revenge anyways. With that I would just take the fun out of it and Kind of hurt myself…
I wouldn’t mind if this was implemented, but I really don’t see the arguments you mentioned becoming a reality. Someone trying to not be too difficult just because there’s a very thin possibility that the person they send a card to might send them a card later? Maybe I just don’t have enough imagination, but I don’t see how that could deter someone.
Just like the comment above mine, if I were to get an address for someone that I have received a card from or if I were to receive a card from someone who I sent a card to, I probably wouldn’t even notice that we’ve had an interaction before, so if this was implemented, it wouldn’t change anything for me.
I recommend checking out postcard united if this is a pet peeve. I got cards multiple times from the same people and decided it wasn’t worth it anymore, but if that’s something you’re interested in you’ll love the site
I might be wrong but you can match with the same person more than twice, but for that to happen everyone else needs to be either on travel mode or have received more cards than has sent; which currently is impossible.
Do you mean because in the early days many cards traveled between Ana and Paulo? I think the algorithm probably wasn’t the same as today then. They were also sending inside the same city if I remember correctly, and that’s not possible anymore. I guess Paulo probably changed a few things after some time.
But of course I can’t know for sure, that’s just guesses! The algorithm’s magic is beyond my knowledge.
I really don’t think so… I don’t know about travel mode but I always thought that you get one interaction with one account and that’s it, forever (unless there are multiple accounts of course).
Having more received than sent is very much possible and doesn’t change anything. Or am I misunderstanding?
In my opinion… It isn’t broken, why fix it? I do like the randomness and one-time interaction, and it is one of the strong characteristics that make postcrossing what it is. In a sense, it wouldn’t matter a lot to me personally if this changed, but it would be different “philosophically” if that makes sense.
Don’t get me wrong I agree with you, the system is fine.
I was just saying that in the limit situation, that are only 2 active users (A and B); A only sends to B and B only sends to A.
The only situation that the system wouldn’t give you an address is when you are the only user.
Oh, but if I remember correctly, it happened to Malaysian users some time ago! They could pretty much only send to Singapore and when there was no Singaporean address available, it said “there are no addresses to draw” or similar. At least I think I remember it.
I think the algorithm probably wasn’t the same as today then. They were also sending inside the same city if I remember correctly, and that’s not possible anymore. I guess Paulo probably changed a few things after some time. 
