How can I help Postcrossing balance the very active countries?

In Postcrossing, those who send postcards also need to receive them. Naturally, very active countries need to receive postcards back in the same quantity that they send... which means that countries with less activity have to send postcards to the most active countries more often than to others.

Postcrossing is aware of this fact and aims, whenever possible, to maximize the number of different countries a member is exchanging postcards with. When this ideal scenario is not possible, it allows some repetitions to occur so that members always receive postcards back in the same amount they've sent.

There are a few actions that you can do to help Postcrossing reduce this problem, such as inviting your friends in less active countries to join the project. By increasing the number of postcrossers in other countries, the weight of the most active countries decreases, making the system more balanced globally.

Another way to help is by activating the option in your profile that allows for more country repetitions when you're sending postcards. With this option switched on, when you request a new address, Postcrossing will not try to select a country that you are not currently exchanging postcards with. This way, you will start to send more postcards to the most active countries, thus helping Postcrossing to balance the different weights of each country.

Not all postcrossers are equal though, and you might prefer to send postcards to as many different countries as possible — that's ok too! The option to send to repeated countries is switched off by default, and you shouldn’t feel you have to enable it. You can select it only temporarily to experiment with, or keep it on (or off) for a longer period of time. Either way, it's up to you. Note that this only changes the destination of your postcards — it does not change where the postcards you receive will come from.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact us.