I’ve been a member of our local Freecycle mailing list for a few years, successfully using it to offload and acquire various items, from a double futon bed to an mp3 player.
In 2006, Giles Turnbull blogged about Freecycle’s shortcomings, from a usability and webapp point of view. It boils down to “Freecycle is a great idea unsuited to living inside a mailing list once the size of the list is >100 people”. Giles’ proposed solution was a web app, and his post contains some pretty detailed design descriptions. I’m sure that there’s an interaction designer in Giles trying to get out 
(There’s probably something interesting there about group psychology and Dunbar’s Number, but I’m more interested in finding a practical solution.)
Other people have tried to build Freecycle-like philosophy in a webapp form, e.g. SnaffleUp, but they (so far at least, but it’s early days) lack the one thing Freecycle has in spades: a critical mass of users. Oh, and a snappy brand.
What if, instead of building a Freecycle-like webapp in competition with Freecycle, an app were built on top of the existing mailing lists, teasing out all that lovely data and metadata and making it queryable, sliceable, diceable and geo-plottable?
There are three pieces of information pertinent to an item on Freecycle:
- what it is
- where it is
- whether it’s still available
There’s no API to Yahoo Groups at the moment, but it’s possible to get Freecycle mails sent to a mail account on a *nix box, where they could be parsed and inserted into a database for querying by item name, description or location. If we group items by sender, it should be possible to determine that when a “taken” follows an “offered” with the same/similar subject line, then that item has changed from being available to unavailable.
All of that data is present in a Freecycle email, but the inconsistent way in which people format their subject lines makes parsing out the item and location a bit of a challenge.
An ideal Freecycle subject line looks like this:
[BathFreecycle] OFFER: Cat basket (Combe Down, Bath)However, they are often more like this:
[BathFreecycle] offered cat basket bath(As an aside, Bath’s Freecycle list is a great test case, as the name of the city is also the name of an item. Supposing someone wrote “Offer: baby bath”, one would assume that they weren’t trying to offload their offspring but had merely omitted their location. Formalising this in the parser would be hard, if not impossible, such that it may have to be flagged for review by a human.)
A way around this would be to prime the parser with a list of possible locations. Once you remove the list name, the offer/wanted/taken/received prefix and the location, you’re left with the item.
The variability of people’s use of grammar, spelling and format (despite the fact that your messages are moderated until you’ve demonstrated that you can write a subject line properly) makes the subject parser the biggest challenge in implementing this solution.
All of this does raise the issue of increased ease of, and cross-group, querying. Already there are scammers on Freecycle lists, making bogus offers then directing people toward pyramid schemes and the like. Also, it’s seen as bad form to post the same item to more than one group simultaneously; having said that, it’s ok to subscribe to several lists (if you can keep up with the volume of email).
This geocoded database would make it much easier for people to snap up “big ticket” items, possibly to sell on (it happens at the moment). If Freecycle’s aim is purely to keep usable or servicable items out of landfill, does this really matter? Also, I can imagine the central Freecycle organisation not being happy if this “hack” were built on Freecycle outwith their blessing and control.
I know other people find Freecycle frustrating. Does this (very rough) outline of a solution sound like it makes sense?
October 13th, 2008 at 11:49 am
I believe Freecycle have tried something similar to what you suggest, but the primary issue is that the Yahoo! Groups ToS basically forbids it. You’re not allowed to republish the content of any group messages because a) the poster may not consent to your use of their message, and more importantly b) Yahoo! want to serve ads next to the content.
Ultimately, it needs a good web app and to get rid of the mailing lists completely. Unfortunately, it appears that the people within Freecycle trying to build this don’t really appreciate the problem or the scale. A lot of money has been spent with nothing of quality to show for it.
October 13th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I moderate a large Freecycle group and have done for a number of years. As Drew has already pointed out Freecycle did try to build a system on top of the groups as you have suggested but this feel foul of Yahoo! T&Cs. What Freecycle (and other re-use groups) need is a dedicated web app.
Things that would be helpful …
An app that guides people to format messages correctly
Not having to bounce incorrect messages but being able to ‘hold’ them, get in touch with the member and ask them to update the message, then send it through – all through the app.
The ability to see posting stats – who has offered, who is responding to offers – this would enable us to pick up the people who try and hoover up everything, usually to resell. As you say Freecycle is about reuse but members do get really upset with traders, as they want to feel their stuff is going to someone who will use it rather than profit from it.
Groups often have rules such as ‘balance your wants with offers’ or ‘no more than 3 wants a month’ which could be enforced automatically.
Members would like to be able to flag no-shows which are a huge issue. A comment system would probably be a nightmare but just being able to say ‘this person didn’t show up’ and see that count against a member would be useful.
Members would also like to be able to see who offers to the list or responds to wanteds and use that when choosing who to give an item to.
A lot of the above are achieved by the amazing work done on the Freecycle Firefox extension. This makes the moderators lives a lot easier and we can see numbers of posts and so on, however it is just dealing with the data we have and, as you note, the problem of people posting in different formats is an issue for the toolbar as well.
Personally I think the situation would be best solved by way of an open source project to create a re-use network application. It could be used for any re-use network or group not just Freecycle. There ought to be no reason why a Freecycle group owner couldn’t move to a different method over the Yahoo Group. The Freecycle organisation however do not allow mods to even run their own site about their group (with information and so on for members) so any mod taking a Freecycle group to a new app would essentially have to leave TFN - even if the app pinged all the messages to the Yahoo Group as well…
October 13th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Great post. It encapsulates really well the conversations that I’ve had with a number of people. Ultimately: great content, flawed interface into that content. SnaffleUp – as you say – is suffering from the opposite: nice (or at least better) interface but not much content.
It’s also an interesting question when the political / TOS stuff comes into play as well. At the end of the day, you’d assume that the Freecycle motive to cut down on landfill and encourage re-use would be at the very top of their strategy: HOW you do it should presumably come lower down the list of priorities. But you could also understand that a feed to SnaffleUp or a.n.other system which ultimately resulted in less people using the original mailing lists would be seen in a less than positive light by the Freecycle founder and stakeholders. I think this also touches on the Yahoo! TOS: again, these should surely come second to the primary motive?
Ultimately, I think the best possible answer would be also the bravest and boldest one: Freecycle will get the closest to that top-level strategy by opening up their data, and becoming mainly (only!) a content broker (an API layer, in tech speak..) which allows as many people as possible to consume their data, and NOT (necessarily) providing the interface into it. If SnaffleUp, Sw0p, a.n.other recycling community website could get at the formidable content and enthusiasm which surrounds Freecycle, the output would only be positive: more people taking part through more channels, therefore less stuff in landfill.
October 25th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
A project I am currently working on – Ecojam is trying to provide an alternative to the email based freecycle with its “free stuff” section:-
http://www.ecojam.org/free-stuff
Categorisation (with RSS) and the ability to upload photos are a couple of advantages that it offers over a mailing list
November 11th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Hi, I’m the founder of ecojam. I was thinking along the same lines as you guys. But when I approached freecycle bristol, they politely turned down the offer to make it more user friendly by Ecojam hosting them. The owners of Freecycle are large waste corporations in the US. Lawyers were sent after a community group in the UK who called a bring and buy sale a Freecycle day.
We have tried to address the problems of Freecycle. On Ecojam, the items are categorised and you can select to be emailed only when the type of item you are looking for is listed. Alternatively you can get RSS feeds. It also has images of the items and a map showing you where to collect the item. We hope this will get even more people into reusing furniture.
We are hoping to reach a critical mass by large organisations listing their office furniture. The University of Bristol is the first to do this, and we are taling with Bristol City Council (who are a co-supporter of Ecojam).
Once we have perfected our model, we hope to replicate Ecojam in cities and regions across the UK.
Matt
November 11th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Just had a go on Snaffle-up and when searching a 50 mile radius from my house couldn’t find any common items. But its a very slick site.
I think Ecojam has the advantage that it is starting in one locality (from the bottom up) and that it already has over 2000 members who are using Ecojam for other reasons as well – e.g. to find green businesses, to search for an ethical job, or tune into local news, discussions and events. We haven’t reached that critical mass but who knows in a few months…
I would be very grateful for any feedback anyone might have on the Ecojam site.
Cheers,
Matt
December 31st, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I write plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer which attempt to build on top of Yahoo’s site and make it more useful for Freecycle groups, for example adding a message formatting tool, and the ability to manage your own posts. It requires group owners to opt in to using it. You can read more at http://wiki.memberplugin.org .
February 17th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
[...] lateral thinking produces the obvious transition for improving Freecycle: scrape the Freecycle data (e.g. by parsing the constant flow of emails) to maintain a database [...]
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Sounds like there a lot of reasons why Freecycle isn’t being improved, and that’s really sad.
Personally, I used to be an avid Freecycler but have lately given up. There are 2 reasons for that: ‘no shows’ and snafflers. It’s an absolute pain in the ass to hang around, waiting for someone to turn up and take something, and they never do. We recently offered a new, never used mattress (from guest room) on the NYC freecycle list and had 3 ‘no shows’ in a row; in the end we gave it to someone in our building instead. It wasn’t exactly the first time that’s happened, but it will be the last time!
Snafflers are also a pain: those people who snap up everything on offer, so you have to watch the list really closely to get anything you need. (I haven’t had much luck with ‘want’ requests.) I don’t mind dealers being on Freecycle as they’ve taken some things from me that otherwise would’ve gone to landfill, e.g. a fridge that needed minor repairs, but there has to be some sense of proportion here. Someone like me who’s given away dozens of items should be able to grab 2 or 3 things that come up that they do need!
I think some sort of reputation system will be essential going forward, so people like me who give things away can see which people are no shows and who’s given away heaps more than they’ve taken, and make a decision accordingly.
I’m not just here to complain about the problems though, I’m also here to offer my help. I’m a UI designer / usability person, Masters-qualified & 8+ years experience, and I’d be happy to volunteer some of my time to help improve Freecycle or create a viable alternative. My email address is [redacted for privacy]; please feel free to contact me if you’re working on something like this and need a designer to help.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Hi Sara,
Thanks for your comments – very interesting and revealing.
I think there’s something wrong at Freecycle’s core, in that the mailing-list-based, quite informal system cannot cope beyond a certain number of people, and once you get the “snafflers” and no-shows. A more robust system (that designs for bad behaviour) is needed.
Thanks for the offer of help with UI design. If I get around to doing anything with this, I’ll be in touch.
Best regards,
Tim
April 21st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Here is an other try with web interface…
http://www.onlinerecyclers.com/
May 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Hi Tim,
I blogged about this with some similar thinking at:
http://simonhammond.com/blog/2009/02/17/the-art-o…;
Then I went ahead and hacked together some code to root out any obstacles. None seem insurmountable so far, so I made it open source and dumped it at:
http://code.google.com/p/freelist2web
With dharmafly.com/openfreecycle also pushing in the same direction it seems the time is ripe to take Freecycle to the next level. What do you think?
Si
May 14th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
There are certainly plenty of capable technical people tackling this problem, but it seems there are significant "political" barriers to this from the Yahoo T&Cs and the Freecycle organisation inside me. Maybe there's a chance in getting them to see the light, but the geek inside me prefers the option of going undercover, hosting it somewhere remote and hoping the lawyers don't find me. Maybe when lots of people use it and find it useful, they'll realise that enforcing their legal "rights" would be a stupid idea.