Freegle in Norfolk

New system

A New System for Freegle in Norfolk

We listen to members' feedback!

Norfolk Freegle's volunteer moderators spend a singificant amount of time helping new (and some not so new) members to use the system. We feel strongly that Freegle's use and growth is becoming increasingly limited by Yahoo Groups, for reasons outlined below. We are therefore actively seeking financial support to help us develop and implement a customised re-use system for Norfolk. While it is true that other re-use systems exist, we do not believe any of them share our biggest asset: our team of very experienced and capable local volunteers, on hand to assist Freeglers for many hours of the day (and night!), promote the system to local communities, and gather support from councils and other bodies. Our vision document, The case for a new online re-use system for Norfolk, is available to potential funders and supporters on request.

In a nutshell, what we want to do is to make the system work better in a practical sense, while retaining the feelings of community, friendliness and local support that are some of our biggest assets.Freegle will always remain a non-profit, volunteer-run organisation.

In January 2011 the Big Lottery Fund awarded us £10,000, which makes them our largest supporter. We are grateful for additional support from Norfolk County Council, South Norfolk Council Greenest Communities Competition, Saffron Community Foundation, Heaser Business Consulting Ltd., Computer Service Centre, and Waveney District Council.

Why a new system?

Although Yahoo! Groups has served us well as a free platform offering the flexibility of email-based and web-based use, we are now reaching the limits of effective use. We have learned from our members, via both direct comments and the problems that we help them to solve, that the process of joining and correctly using the group is cumbersome and offputting, and that an unfiltered and unsorted stream of messages is at best unhelpful (and at worst impossible to deal with). There are other issues, but these are the most significant. Clearly, many members are able to tolerate and work around them, but we believe these problems are/were insurmountable for many would-be and ex-members, and therefore they form a significant barrier to Freegle's expansion and the re-use of goods in our region. In particular we believe there is a significant untapped "market" among less capable/experienced computer and internet users.

The links on the left show the Help pages for the current system, comprising a lot of information on everything from structuring the information in messages to managing the amount of email received - all sadly necessary in order to keep our Yahoo-based operations usable for most members. Our envisaged new system would be well-designed so as to need fewer rules, much less explanation, and would provide necessary information directly at the point of use rather than on a separate site.

Our groups map shows how we split Norfolk into its districts, which creates problems for those people living on the boundary. The new system would seamlessly cover the whole county and offer a more intelligent way for users to see activity which they personally define as local to them.

For a little more technical information on our vision for the new system, please read on.

Last modified: 3rd July 2011