Experienced using nextdoor.com?

March 13, 2016 12:58 PM

Anybody here on NextDoor? I have a few questions.

1. Is there anyplace you know where people are talking about NextDoor, which isn't part of NextDoor? My results from searching just brings up a bunch of internal discussion.
2. I seem to be on the edge of a "neighborhood" somebody else has defined. But for my needs, my house should be in the center of my neighborhood. One can apparently 'turn on' adjacent neighborhoods, but that's not doing much for me; can't see who's members there, that info only available for my own 'neighborhood'.
3. Do you get any value from this site? So far, for me, not so much, it's just neighbors posting, trying to sell stuff.

posted by Rash to Home & Garden (33 answers total)

1. I joined at the suggestion of a local emergency vet, when I brought a friendly stray in for a microchip check. I was not aware of the site before then.

3. I get the digest email. I live in an apartment complex so many of the issues aren't particularly relevant to me, but there are some notes every few days about local crime and traffic issues. There are some sales posts, but mostly people talking about traffic and the local HOA.
posted by honeybee413 at 1:17 PM on March 13, 2016

I can't answer #1 or 2, but as far as getting value out of the site, I do. I actually subscribe to email updates so I can stay up to date. My neighborhood Nextdoor has a lot of posts about suspicious persons and break-ins, which I wouldn't hear about otherwise and like to know about. Local stores and restaurants opening or closing is also useful. I appreciate the ability for people to post about missing and found pets.

There's also stuff I don't care about, like garage sales, but I can tune it out.

I live in a fairly small and quiet subdivision on the outskirts of a large city, if it makes any difference.
posted by liet at 1:17 PM on March 13, 2016

The value for me is mostly that a lot of the dogs in my neighborhood have surprisingly delightful, whimsical names. I have an ongoing mental narrative about what the dogs get up to with one another when they get out, which apparently happens constantly. My life is infinitely richer since I signed up.

Also it's fun to get unfiltered views on neighborhood dramas and controversies without actually having to be one of the neighbors who's home all day doing nothing but gossip. I can hold down a steady job and still feel like I have a sense of what my neighbors are pissed about.
posted by town of cats at 1:25 PM on March 13, 2016 [8 favorites]

I found out the details about someone the police fatally shot a few blocks from my home. This person was a transient so I would not have found out this info any other way. Also found out about a wolf hybrid in my 'hood that was safely caught and relocated to a sanctuary. Also keep tabs about some crime alert stuff. I only log in every other week, maybe even less.

I find the sales pitches annoying. I am in the middle of my neighborhood.

If I were you....

Make up a fake name and gmail account. Sign up for next door with an address in the neighborhood you want to be in, an apartment building or a store maybe? That should solve your problem.

I'm pretty sure based on the signup process that this app is ENTIRELY about data collection, so make your sock puppet believable enough to get past the process. If you don't have fake profiles to use for marketing purposes, make one or two. They are handy to have for stuff like this.
posted by jbenben at 1:27 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

There is a lot of evidence that a lot of racist and otherwise negative discussion takes place there. But it is useful for selling stuff and getting some details on random stuff going on.
posted by k8t at 1:29 PM on March 13, 2016 [9 favorites]

I joined for a few weeks and then left the site because I wasn't getting anything good out of it. I live in a fairly well off and safe neighborhood, and too much of the discussion was about crime and suspicious people. It was disproportionate to the actual crime risk. The tone of these discussions had too much unaware privilege and othering and imaginary fear. After reading discussions I would be both angry at the tone and more fearful of crime than I wanted or needed to be. I wasn't getting anything out of the site that countered the negatives. So I left, letting them know why, and I don't regret it.
posted by Shanda at 1:30 PM on March 13, 2016 [20 favorites]

Mine is not very active at all, so it's mostly useful to keep track of city government stuff, like roads being shut down or community garden sign-ups opening or that kind of thing. But I wouldn't necessarily hear about that stuff without it, so I find it useful.

The crime stuff was preposterous, but it seems to have quieted down a lot after a lot of initial inane chatter.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:35 PM on March 13, 2016

I don't believe making up a fake postal address will work (or using one that you don't get mail at). When I signed up a couple years ago, they mailed a postcard to me, and I had to confirm who I was that way.
posted by getawaysticks at 1:52 PM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

1. No, because see #3.
2. No idea.
3. No. I thought it'd be a good way to form community, but instead it's nothing but people selling things and disgusting, thinly-veiled (or open) racism and classism. I actually started the one for my subdivision. A couple months later, my house was broken into and I posted about it to Nextdoor just in case anyone had seen something, had their place broken into, etc. Instead I got a bunch of replies blaming a) people "from Oakland" (by which they mean black people) and b) those damn renters. (I'm a renter.) I removed myself from the cesspool (and stopped attempting to interact with most of my neighbors).

I've discussed ND on Facebook a few times and have found that about 90% of my friends had similar experiences and deleted their accounts. I think a lot of people have done the same, which may explain the lack of discussion.

It's too bad, because the concept is appealing, but unfortunately as it's run it's basically a big ol' garbage fire of a website.
posted by wintersweet at 2:03 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

I just love Nextdoor. I now know the names of a lot of dogs, some cats, and a goose (named Moose) that lives on my street. I've read a lot of updates about animal sightings: MOOSE (a real moose! not the goose named moose) in someone's backyard a few blocks away, some porcupines in people's yards, and where the flock of neighborhood turkeys is currently hanging out.

I've given stuff away and gotten some good free stuff I needed. I've sold a few things, because it seems to be easier to do that than using craigslist. I've heard about the local property crimes. I've got to read threads about dogs/cats reunited with their owners. And I've been able to ask for recommendations about a lot of local services that I wouldn't have any knowledge of otherwise.

I guess from reading everyone else's posts this is unusual for Nextdoor to be so interesting and helpful. Now I love my neighborhood even more than I already did.
posted by ilovewinter at 2:09 PM on March 13, 2016 [5 favorites]

I also live in a well off neighborhood, but I've experienced the opposite of lots of negativity or racism or priviledge.

When I saw the question about the homeless guy who was shot and killed by the police, one person wrote something nasty calling the guy a criminal and a junkie. Pretty much a WALL of responses appeared condemning that narrow view on the situation and providing a lot of backstory about the guy who was shot, a lot of humanizing details of the sort you might not read on a news site or blog.

If your neighbors are shitty and racist, then I guess that's what you get out of the site??

Occasionally weird things like that shooting happen in my neighborhood because we're special. I found out about another shooting (no injuries) + major police action at a place I frequent from the app, an incident I did not see in the news anywhere else. (Yes. Yes I'm moving soon...)

Anyway, that's why I keep it. Everyone's real name and address is displayed in the app, so it's interesting folks are finding others to be openly racist and negative.

Ditto to the person above, I've discovered there are more decent folks nearby than I realized. Definitely a lot of info about animals, too. A lot.
posted by jbenben at 2:17 PM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Our local NextDoor is a mix of good - info about things like our neighborhood volunteer sidewalk clearing, escaped animals, garage sales and paranoid silliness about people walking in the neighborhood or parking their van up the hill when it was icy! Our city is having a deer cull which has been highly controversial and the fights on NextDoor over it were amazing. But on the plus side we were able to give away most of our boxes after moving to someone else about to move. So it's not great but it can be useful. I've got it set to digest mode and get that by email so it's not a big time-sink. I do think it's partly a critical mass thing - where I used to live had so few users that it really wasn't useful and yes there have been some places with really ugly profiling on it.
posted by leslies at 2:18 PM on March 13, 2016

There are mods on NextDoor. I bet if you emailed them and explained your issue,money would be able to accommodate you.
posted by raisingsand at 2:30 PM on March 13, 2016

We are on NextDoor in our boring middle-class suburb. I get the daily digest, and I really enjoy it. Nobody so far has been racist or classist, and everyone's helpful. (Especially when it comes to lost dogs - every dog posted about has been found!) I like hearing about garage sales, but more importantly, I've been taking note of the names of local contractors that are being recommended.
posted by kimberussell at 2:51 PM on March 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

My local nextdoor.com is alarmingly racist, to the point that I complained to the city about them using it to push roadwork updates because it's crazy inappropriate for the city to use it as any kind of communication channel when it's 90% racists being racist. So, no, no value here; in fact I got negative value out of it since it enraged me daily and made me feel bad about my neighbors.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:55 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Here is a metafilter thread where we discussed accusations of racial profiling on NextDoor, which I guess counts for your #1. (I shared my experience with hating the site there too.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:57 PM on March 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm 'lead' for my neighborhood and I actively delete sales stuff and bullshit. I think it's great for communication about dogs/break-ins/garage sales. I guess it just really depends on the neighborhood - I haven't seen any racist stuff from anyone in the 13 neighborhood surrounding area.
posted by PorcineWithMe at 2:58 PM on March 13, 2016

I started to sign up once because I was curious about the neighborhood I was about to move into. Then when I realized address verification was involved, I decided to hold off, since I hadn't signed the lease yet.

The next day they sent me an email noticing that I hadn't completed the signup process, and that they had gone ahead and completed it anyway, including a postcard to verify my address.

In short, they are shady as hell and I'd never trust them to maintain your privacy.

I have gotten good things out of neighborhood listservs, but I'd never join NextDoor given that. Instead I'd poke around on Yahoo Groups and Google Groups and search if anything exists independently. If not, you can always start one. In a previous neighborhood, one couple did that by going door-to-door around the block one night to gather signups. I think that made it a lot more valuable anyway as people had met face-to-face (and that inspired other community events like a block party).
posted by veery at 3:24 PM on March 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Here to report that my neighbors haven't posted any racist/classist dogwhistles that I've noticed. Mostly bulletin board type requests or sales, and conversations about the utility bills, sale of local grocery store, and so forth.

I checked it out because I read about it on metafilter and r/seattle. I am in an economically and racially diverse modest suburb, so maybe that makes a difference.
posted by stowaway at 3:52 PM on March 13, 2016

I've been a member of nextdoor in two different neighbourhoods. I find it quite a bit more useful in my current neighbourhood than my old one. The new place is a little more dense, has sidewalks, and a nice park where you are actually likely to run into your neighbours whereas my old neighbourhood was bordering on exurb levels of neighbourly detachment. Here, I've been "Thanked" (nextdoor speak for favorite) multiple times by the mayor of my city (who lives a couple of blocks away).

I haven't seen any overt racism (probably helps that I added a profile picture, and am reasonably active so others know that there are coloureds on the site with them) . I signed up with a fake abbrievation of my name (they require 2 letters in each of the last and first name fields, so think something like Sp Mo). Since I moved to the new place, I updated my name to be full first, short last: like Sparkle Mo. I've never gotten any kind of spam or direct mail sent to Sp Mo, Sparkle Mo, or the site-specific private-domain email address that I used to sign up ([e-mail]) so at least for now, it doesn't seem like they are directly farming my info out...yet.

So yes, the value of nextdoor absolutely depends on the quality of your neighbours. It's a little disappointing that you can't really scope things out without being address verified, but then again, there is something nice about the fact that people can't see the posts unless they are address verified.
posted by sparklemotion at 4:19 PM on March 13, 2016

Huh, I love Nextdoor and have gotten great value from it in the few weeks since I've joined it, particularly recommendations for services, discussions of school issues, stuff like that. I wish I'd joined years ago. I get a digest email, scan it if I have time, otherwise just use it for my own inquiries.
posted by fingersandtoes at 4:33 PM on March 13, 2016

I know about it and we don't have it where I am (ruralish Vermont) because there is a local thing called Front Porch Forum here which I think may be similar?
posted by jessamyn at 4:39 PM on March 13, 2016

I like it. Some sale stuff, but in my (pretty progressive, organic type neighborhood) it's a lot of calls to action about porgressive issues, lost dogs, and anyone have stuff to feed our goats kind of posts.
posted by purenitrous at 4:58 PM on March 13, 2016

I have found the app very helpful. We have had overt racism, talked about at length, ageism directed at skateboarding teenagers during the summer, also talked about at length. For the most part, it is very friendly and informative. If someone bugs me too much I hide them from my feed. Very easy to do.

The most powerful thing about nextboor in my neck of the woods has been watching a group of strangers coming together and helping the homeless. So far they have found housing for two older people that each needed help accessing services, finding housing, clothing and jobs. It is amazing. I live in the Sellwood neighborhood of Portland OR. Pretty family focused so if someone is living on a bench all of sudden it is noticed. Instead of people getting all freaked out they tend to reach out instead. That is not to say that they won't call the cops if a person is sketchy, or post about somebody acting oddly, they will but it is mostly positive stuff.

I have used it to sell furniture, give away furniture, get information about who to complain to about construction noise, and I think I found a yoga teacher. I consider it a pretty good resource when the wackos are blocked from posting on my feed.
posted by cairnoflore at 5:58 PM on March 13, 2016

I can't help with #1 or #2.

As to value: I get some minimal value from it. I get individual emails from my neighborhood, and the daily digest for nearby neighborhoods. It's been good for general awareness of what's going on in my area, but not a whole lot more (so far).

There was recently a lot of discussion when many of us lost our DSL connections for most of a day due to a downed fiberoptic line, but no one said much beyond what I already knew from my local ISP. There are announcements of events, but none that I've wanted to attend. But maybe in the future one of those will catch my eye.

We also get the standard buy/sell/give away posts. I use my local freecycle group to give things away - but I have a few things to sell, so maybe it will be useful for that. I haven't tried it yet.

I thought the recommendations for service providers would be useful, but I've seen people recommended that I've had nothing but bad experiences with - and I've seen people who've given me 20 years of good service (including just recently) get knocked. So I'm not putting much weight on the recommendations of neighbors I don't really know.

I haven't seen anything racist in my group, thank goodness. There were some posts about packages being stolen off porches - but no accusations of any sort, just a warning that it was happening. (The suspected thieves have since been caught.)
posted by jeri at 6:17 PM on March 13, 2016

My local Nextdoor is fairly racist and classist. It's useful for hearing about crime. But the latest hubbub has been homeowners in a nearby gated community, and some farther away in the same city, people named Agnes and Edna, freaking out about a body-paint bar that moved into an existing bar building on the main drag (which I live closer to than most of the commenters and am not concerned about). It's total Music Man stuff, "won't someone think of the children," "what about our property values," etc. Only it's a fairly liberal area, so there's lots of personal autonomy–denying faux feminism currently being thrown around to justify the condemnation of the venture.

Clearly this is the most interesting thing most of the retirees and other property owners around here have had to talk about in a while, and they've actually used Nextdoor for some major organizing efforts against this "corrupting influence." This, despite the fact that our police station is full of mold and asbestos, and endless construction projects that disproportionately benefit moneyed property owners in the area are putting local shops and restaurants out of business and wrecking our tires and suspension, and one of the local business owners who's come out the most strongly against the bar hypocritically hosts burlesque shows in his bar...

Anyway, at best, I find Nextdoor occasionally entertaining or informing, but around here, it's a lot of classist gated-community types who don't respect local renters' opinions or seniority in the neighborhood (which in many cases outstrips theirs). The students who compose a large percentage of occupants in my specific neighborhood rarely speak up on the site, which is a shame. But I can't blame them for not wanting to wade into the muck of Nextdoor.
posted by limeonaire at 7:50 PM on March 13, 2016

I joined Nextdoor because we were having dog problems (people use our park as an off-leash dogpark, then the dogs poop on the playground and the owners don't care). Animal Control finally hung out at our park for a week and the problems subsided.

I live in the cheap corner of a very upscale neighborhood, though, so I only see two things:

1) People trying to sell really expensive junk;
2) Busybody neighbors whining about the brand of sidewalk salt people use on their driveways.

I have also signed up for 9 'hoods around mine. I get the once-daily summary of posts and laugh at how ridiculous it is.
posted by TinWhistle at 8:35 AM on March 14, 2016

The only thing I learned from NextDoor is that my neighbors are racist and don't understand probable cause. One suggested that if anyone see anyone "odd-looking" in the neighborhood, that neighbors should call police and have the person stopped so he/she can identify themselves. (Or what folks upthread have said about racist/classist dogwhistle language). I deleted my account after a week and just read the police blotter in the newspaper and talk to the folks on my street to learn about any petty crime issues.
posted by nubianinthedesert at 10:51 AM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

This search on Facebook may turn up people in your Facebook feed posting about or commenting upon NextDoor.
posted by Mo Nickels at 12:13 PM on March 14, 2016

We signed up for nextdoor when we moved into our new house in January and find it useful at best, a little inane at worst. We live in a very mixed neighborhood and have seen no overt -isms. Like others have said, mostly garage sales, giving away stuff, lost dogs, etc.

It has been particularly useful as a way for neighbors to discuss crime, crime reporting, interactions with local government.
posted by bluejayway at 1:54 PM on March 14, 2016

I check it about once a week. My neighborhood is very strong on pushing back against racist crap, and has gotten better about stupid "suspicious persons" posts. It was very helpful in organizing against the loss of our most significant bus line.

I really didn't like NextDoor at first because there was so much talk about crime that it was getting me down. Now there's a lot more about events and other neighborhood stuff, garden swaps, things like that. It is so dependent on neighborhood, though- I see some spillover from the richer, whiter hills neighborhoods and there are a lot of terrible (racist, classist, ageist) people there.
posted by oneirodynia at 2:20 PM on March 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

It looks like it must be highly neighborhood-dependent. My experience has been a good proportion of helpful posts: lost/found pets, suspicious behavior (and I do mean honestly suspicious in that one case), city announcements, local events (we just had a city marathon, traffic was impacted). There was even info and a call for volunteers for the new Habitat for Humanity house around the corner from me. I also live on the edge of a college campus, so there's information about school events too (when it might impact traffic/parking).

I haven't seen anything racist or bigoted in any way, and the only crime reports have been about phone scams and notice of an ATM skimmer found locally. Oh, and a couple of cars broken into.
posted by timepiece at 1:33 PM on March 15, 2016

Our NextDoor group is awesome. Recently, people used it to have a meet-up about a possible prison expansion, and several people directly addressed racial disparities in policing. It was a solid discussion, and I think our neighborhood group has avoided some of the nastiness other people have encountered. Like others have said, it probably depends on where you live. Primarily I read about lost pets and zoning controversies, but it's been a good way to stay informed.
posted by mmmbacon at 5:33 AM on March 18, 2016