Darren Beale

Recently I got into FreeCycle. If you don’t use it then I would strongly recommend that you at least try it out although it should be noted that the list has VERY high traffic. I think it’s a great concept and I’ve managed to get shot of lots of old hardware that was cluttering up my loft (more to come) plus I got a few bikes for the kids on there, for free mind.

Anyway, there’s been a debate on there and I realised that I didn’t want to read some of the guff and as I use Gmail to pick up the emails, I have created three Gmail ‘Labels’:

• Freecycle Wanted
• Freecycle Offered/Taken
• Freecycle Misc

I now want to classify the incoming emails, so I’ve created the
following three filters:

a) For the “Freecycle Wanted” label:

First screen, subject: FreeCycleLondon +WANTED -ADMIN -OFFERED -TAKEN
Second screen: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Freecycle Wanted”

b) For the “Freecycle Offered/Taken” label:
First screen, subject: FreeCycleLondon +OFFERED OR +TAKEN -ADMIN -WANTED
Second screen: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Freecycle Offered/Taken”

c) For the “Freecycle Misc” label:
First screen, subject: FreeCycleLondon -WANTED -OFFERED -TAKEN
Second screen: Skip Inbox, Apply label “Freecycle Misc”

Enjoy, although of course YMMV.

[Edit]
Actually, since writing this I’ve decided to delete all TAKEN items as I don’t care if they are taken, if I want someting and I don’t get a response, I’ll know it’s gone. I’ve created a new filter that trashes the TAKEN items and obviously updated the other filters.

[Edit2]
Sod it. I’m deleting all ADMIN emails too. There are too many muppets on the list wasting bandwidth with half baked ideas regarding splitting the list up. I don’t understand why they can’t see that splitting it up will result in MORE emails, not less. I get the impression that a lot of people on the list can barely use a computer and don’t get the concept of a mailing list.