Joining · founding members
Everything else on this site is an example of how Folk.Share will work. The real board starts with the people who put themselves forward now: what they can lend, what they know, and one thing they need, so that it is worth reading on its first day. In public you are a first name and a surname initial, and nothing of yours is published until you have seen how it will look.
Start here
You start with your name and an email address. Your profile opens straight away, and we email you a link to it so you can come back from any device. Opening that link confirms the address is yours, which is the one thing needed before you send it.
Started one already? The link is in your email from updates@folkshare.org, or type your code.
The hall, the library, the school, the food bank, a land trust, a choir. For now, start a profile in your own name and put the organisation under the things you run on the first step: Sydney will set up its own page with you, with one person named as its manager. Nothing about it costs anything.
The first islanders in are photographed by Folklore Creative for free, and the photographs are yours to use for anything you choose. Once your profile is in, Sydney writes to you about a time and a place.
Not yet. It opens once there are enough profiles for the board to be worth reading. Every person, organisation and listing you can see on the site now is an example, written to show how each page will work. Your profile is real: it is saved, read by Sydney, and published when Folk.Share opens, once you have seen it.
No. The first step asks what kind of profile you want, and a quiet one, for mostly asking and borrowing, is a real answer. Most people find they have something once they see what other people are asking for, and an afternoon counts.
They are held for Sydney in Folk.Share's own database and are not shown to anybody else. Nothing is published until you have seen how it will look. If you change your mind, write to Sydney and it is deleted. The privacy policy says the rest.
Founding members are photographed by Folklore Creative, so you do not need one to start. You can add one of your own in the meantime. A face is most of what makes this feel like neighbours rather than strangers on a marketplace. It is not identification and it proves nothing: we do not check it and we do not say we have.
Yes, if you are genuinely connected to it: you work here, you volunteer here, you are here half the month. Choose Live elsewhere, connected to Salt Spring and write a line about the connection. That sentence shows where an area would have.
Nobody. Folk.Share holds a general area, not an address. Where to collect a thing is arranged in messages, and an exact address is shown to the other person only once an arrangement is accepted.
No, and there will not be one. Folk.Share is community infrastructure. If it proves useful it is kept going by donations, an annual drive, and sponsors who support it and do not control it.
It is between you and the borrower, and Folk.Share is not part of the arrangement. What Folk.Share keeps is the record: your conversation, and the arrangement the two of you wrote up in your own words, with what it is, when it went and came back, what it cost if anything, and what you agreed about looking after it and about damage. Both of you confirm the handover and both of you confirm the return, and you say privately how it came back. If it is serious, you tell the administrator privately, which is a separate step. Folk.Share holds no money, insures nothing and collects nothing.
No. There is no Folk.Share contract and no signature. You and the other person agree the details in your messages and write them up so you both have the same record; "agreed" means you both accepted what is written. What that record is worth between the two of you is a question for a lawyer in British Columbia, and we would rather say so plainly than claim either way. The terms say what Folk.Share is and is not.
No, and there will not be. Neighbours are not restaurants, and a rating turns a neighbour into a supplier. You can vouch for somebody, which is a sentence you write about dealing with them, and that is the only thing that shows. If something goes wrong you tell the administrator privately, it is not posted, and one bad afternoon is read as one bad afternoon.
Not as a business listing; there are none. Somebody who owns a business joins in their own name, and their profile carries links to the business and a line about what it offers. So the pottery is found through the potter, and people deal with a person. That is deliberate: the board is neighbours, not directories.
Yes. Halls, schools, libraries, food banks, land trusts, choirs and clubs are all welcome, and it is free for them too. An organisation names one manager, who signs in with their own account and switches between themselves and the organisation. For now, start in your own name and tell us about it on the first step.
Yes. The website does everything the app will do, on a laptop or a library computer, with the text as large as you like.