How do we make a complaint against a Yahoo Group Moderator?

Question

I am basically being penalised for offering items on Freecycle to more than one FC group at the same time. My response to the moderator is below but I want to take this further.

I have responded to the moderator directly but considering the ethos of the group I am extremely annoyed with their reaction to the above.

Basically, I'm no longer allowed to post the the said group(s) that this moderator is responsible for.

Hope someone can assist.

Answer 1

As stated earlier, yahoo groups and the moderators are not responsible to you.

Cross-posting is one of the major limitations of using yahoo groups for local recycling.  It was one of over a dozen reasons that we build http://free.LocalDataPlace.com to make the experience better.

We try very hard to be reactive to our users.  Heck, you can even reach us on IM!

Take care.

Answer 2

there's no one to take it further to. no matter what the type group, any group can make and enforce their own rules. the only time yahoo will step in is if their TOS was violated and in this case it was not. sorry

there's many FC groups out there, leave this one and join another and be sure you read their rule file carefully.

Answer 3

Freecycle has a set of rules and guidelines that all owners and moderators must follow.  Some are set in stone; others are a bit more flexible.  The rule you have broken is one of the more flexible ones.  Group owners/mods are allowed to decide whether or not to allow the practice of cross-posting.  The group to which you belong apparently does not allow the practice.  

Generally most of the flexible guidelines are decided through general group consensus (via a group poll); yet some group owners/mods decide all on their own, without taking the preference of the members into consideration.  I don't know, without knowing what group you're in, how this one came to be decided; I do know that there is little you can do.  As long as the group owners/mods are not overstepping the boundaries set forth by Freecycle.org, the higher-ups will not do anything.  

Some of these owners/mods get a wee bit power-happy (huge understatement there), and they tend to ruin it for the rest of us.  I was the creator of a Freecycle group in my old hometown; and I felt it would be prudent to discourage the practice of cross-posting, simply because there were so many groups in my immediate area (one being for the city of Chicago).  Honestly, unless you are in a very rural area, why would you want to cross-post?  You're just opening yourself up to having tons and tons of emails for the one item you offer, and running the risk of having quite a few disappointed or angry individuals.  

If I might make a suggestion that worked well in my area, it may work for you as well.  When I formed my group and decided to discourage cross-posting, I did not outright prohibit it.  What I did was strongly SUGGEST to my members that they post in their home group first (whether my group or not, I didn't care); and after 24 hours, they could post in other neighboring groups to their heart's content, should they feel the need to do so.  Only a couple of people disregarded my suggestions, only to find that the way I suggested was far better than posting to as many as ten groups at once.  

As for your complaint against the group moderators, like I said there is little you can do; however, I fail to see why they would prohibit your posting completely.  We were always told that if someone habitually broke our group's rules, we should put them on MODERATION, and approve their posts as they came in.  We were told to only disallow all posting as an absolute last resort; the same with banning someone from a group, only when no other viable option was available to us.  

Go to the main Freecycle page; http://www.freecycle.org .   There should be a place on there for you to email the higher-ups; if you are truly not being allowed to post at all, they should be made aware of it, and hopefully will at least contact the group moderators to try to resolve the situation.  Should they do nothing for you, you may want to investigate other avenues by which to offer your items.  Craig's List is a very good site; and unlike FC, its moderators ARE the people who use the list, the general public......not a few people in a position of power for which they are grossly unsuited.  On CL, as long as you follow their guidelines, you should be fine; occasionally I've been flagged off in error, but all I do is repost my post and I'm fine.  HTH!!