Various friends had raved at various times about their success with the The Freecycle Network (tm) (as their Trademark FAQ suggests it be named), both in getting things and in having things "go away". Since I'm attempting to declutter, it seemed worth joining to get an idea of the sorts of things which are offered/taken there, in case some of the things that I have -- but no longer want in my house -- might be of use to someone.

The Wellington (NZ) Freecycle is a Yahoo Group is (ie, Yahoo hosted mailing list), and says 'The Wellington Freecycle(TM) Network is open to all who want to "recycle" that special something rather than throw it away.' (Although most of that is suggested boilerplate; cf the Wellington, FL, USA Freecycle group which requires an application process for joining.) The list is restricted to members only (eg, no public archives), as seems to be the case with most of the Freecycle Lists. It then lists a subscribe email address which you can email. (As well as a "Join This Group!" which appears to just go directly to the Yahoo account creation, rather than, eg, a Mailman style subscribe page.)

So at 12:12 today I sent an email to the subscribe email address from <freecycle@MYDOMAIN> (I always try to keep my subscriptions to mailing lists, websites, etc, with a unique email address in case the email address ends up being spammed). Within seconds I got an auto-response from Yahoo asking me to confirm my subscription (good mailing list practice). At 12:14 I sent the confirmation email back. And then about five minutes later when nothing had happened (given the immediate "please confirm" email) I also went to the confirmation link in the email -- which told me that it was a moderated list, and my subscription was waiting moderator approval. A little surprising, but perhaps they've had issues with spambots. I figured it'd get approved within the next day or so.

It was not to be. At 14:14 I received an email from "Yahoo Groups Notification" advising that my subscription request had been denied:

-=- cut here -=-
    From:    Yahoo! Groups Notification [notify@yahoogroups.com]
    To:      freecycle@MYDOMAIN
    Date:    2009-12-20 14:14
    Subject: Request to join Wellingtonfreecycle denied

    Hello,

    Your request to join the Wellingtonfreecycle group was not approved.
    The moderator of each Yahoo! group chooses whether to restrict
    membership in the group. Moderators who choose to restrict
    membership also choose whom to admit.

    Please note that this decision is final and that Yahoo! Groups 
    does not control group membership.

    [... blurb about Yahoo Groups ...]

    Regards,

    Yahoo! Groups Customer Care
-=- cut here -=-

That's it. No explanation. Just "not approved" and "this decision is final".

Given the time delay (ie, 2 hours), I'm assuming that the decision was made by a person rather than automation. Despite the statement that "this decision is final", I emailed the list "owner" address (at 14:24) asking why I'd been rejected -- given that the mailing list says that it is "open to all". To date I've heard nothing back.

Apparently only the Cool Kids (tm) get to use Freecycle.

If there's some rule or process I violated I can't find it -- the Member FAQ (as opposed to the Moderators Manual) lists subscribe/unsubscribe addresses as if its an ordinary mailing list, and makes no mention of special application procedures, nor does the Wellington Freecycle list information give an indication of anything special that has to be done to apply. (If the list was restricted to, eg people willing to give up a bunch of personal information to get a Yahoo ID, I'd have expected the list software to have rejected it prior to the moderation stage. And the Member FAQ #13 explicitly describes joining via email, as I did, like any other mailing list on the 'net in the last 20 years.)

After some more digging around in the Moderators Manual, it appears that if anything I should have received a Pending Letter for New Members after the mailing list confirmation process, or a questionaire if they wanted any more information (and be given a few days to provide the additional information). Instead I went from applying for membership to denied in 2 hours, without being asked for any more information AFAICT (not even my mail server shows any indication of mail to freecycle@MYDOMAIN other than the list confirmation and denial messag).

About the only other avenue for appeal seems to be the generic info@freecycle.org. (There's a NZModSquad list which presumably has most/all of the NZ FreeCycle moderators on it, but I'd expect that to be both more restricted and less appropriate; and a global Freecycle Mod Squad List. Interestingly the Moderator Dos and Don'ts explicitly suggests not asking for personal information when approving members, although it does imply some sort of vetting process including cross streets without suggesting how that information might be found. The Yahoo ID application process asks for a zip code (or equivilent), but only in the password recovery section, so it's not clear whether the Freecycle moderators get access to that or not.)

ETA: Possibly against my better judgement, I've sent an email to info@freecycle.org asking that they get someone to update the description of the Wellington, NZ FreeCycle list to describe whatever restrictive criteria are in place, given it is demonstrably not "open to all".

To date, 2010-01-01, I've not heard anything back about why I was rejected from the list owner. I did get a reply from the NZ Outreach person in response to my mail to info@ though, which tended to confirm my impression that it was supposed to be an open list. We'll see what happens.

ETA 2010-02-19: I received another message from the Freecycle NZ contact wondering if I'd been joined up to the FreeCycle Wellington list; to which I replied no, that message (2 months after the first one) was the first I'd heard from anyone connected to Freecycle this year. Curious timing, since I'd basically given up on Freecycle ever responding in any way (even my follow up email at the start of February went without response).

ETA 2010-02-22: Two months later I have succeeded in joining the Wellington Freecycle List by using a different email address (at request of Freecycle coordinators).

Alternatives

Transition Towns, Wellington lists:

as well as noting that "sets of magazines" (one of the things I'd like to have a new home) seem to change hands quickly on Freecycle (presumably amongst the "in crowd").

The only other alternative I can find is:

One of the more useful features of Donate NZ is that it allows organisations to list wishes (eg, OLPC have listed memory sticks) which people can fulfill -- and possibly I might be able to track down a few organisations after some of the things I want to give away.

And of course attempting to sell things on TradeMe, and things like the Salvation Army and Mary Potter Hospice. But one of the reasons that I was looking to give away many of the things is that I want them to be gone without (a) the hassle of having to try to sell them, and (b) limiting it to things that the Salvation Army/Mary Potter would be able to sell. (Having seen the Mary Potter donation area I'm sure they don't want things they can't easily sell.)