So... right now you can view everyone's lists and see it all, whether it's available or not (private items are, of course, not shown.)

Coming soon will be a new area where you will view the actual lists that only contain the items specifically available to this swap. This will be the screen where, once the actual trading window is open, is where you'll place your "I got dibs on this one" kind of orders.

So, does anybody have any special requests? Do you want to see the items on a user-by-user basis, or do you want one gigantic page that contains ALL the offers from everyone, all at once? Or some other way? Any ideas?

Can we have the option to do both?

If we have to choose one, I request the full list, personally. I think that will be the most useful for seeing what is available rather than having to click on each user's name to see what they have. For me, it doesn't matter who is offering it, just what the actual item is and that I have easy access to view my choices when it comes time to make requests.

I like to know where the seeds are coming from so my pick would be one one one basis although it does mean clicking on each one. Anyway it can be all in one list but know who it comes from? Guess that's asking a lot

I've only done one swap before and we had to look at each individuals list which was not ideal for me on a phone. One big list would be nice as long as it identified who was offering the seed.

Also, if we do one big list would everything be alphabetical by member or by plant? What I mean is would all of member #1 plants be alphabetized then start with A again for member #2? Or would all the members be mixed up together?

I would prefer individual lists. I'm counting over 500 plants being offered. I would hate to wade through all the name to pick the 20 packs on my want list.

@Dave, since you asked, I kind of woukd like to see where the seeds are from. Because, if someone has a salvia, for instance, and lives in AZ or ME, it raises the question if I can grow it here. Or, maybe the zone would be nice.

I wont get upset without this, but since I'm in Houston, which is extremely hot and humid, I've learned that I may struggle with plants more accustomed to colder or dryer climates. But, then, maybe I need to learn more about the plants' preferences. Either way.....

I'd like the idea of seeing all at once to save time, instead of jumping from list to list. But I also agree with Lynne, about knowing where they are from, if it is possible.

Sounds like seeing all at once is the preferred way. For each item offered, there will be included a column telling you who is offering it, and where they are located.

I may even make it so you can have the list show only those from a certain member, or all at once, and make it your choice which you see. You could switch between seeing them all or just seeing the ones from Horntoad, for example.

As for the ordering, that may be very difficult to change. I totally understand the desire to have options to sort by different ways (common, latin, etc.) Right now we have a plant name field and I'm sorting on that. But that's common name sorting since the common name comes first in the name. I'll just have to give some thought to that one.

My preference would have been by the binomial name, but some people used custom names rather than linking to the database, it might be best to leave it the way it is.

If it's going to be all one big list, if 2 or more people are offering the same thing, when we request seeds will we be able to specify who the seeds we want are from? (One person may be offering a packet of 5 seeds, another a packet of 20 seeds; or one might have newer seeds, etc.)

Sandy, two post up Dave said yes the name of the member offering the seed will be there. But may also program it so we can choose the way we view it.

I like the "see them all" option.

I hear that re-sorting is not practical.

Certainly I ask for dozens of features some of which that might not even be very useful, so i apologize in advance.

Might it be practical in future releases to add search features and/or filters?

For example, you have places in the site where we can search (for example) just the Lettuces database. We can search there for names that contain "Winter". Or we can search the entire Plant Database for names containing "Tomato".

If that was practical to implement that for searching all rows in a given Swap, we could pull up all Violas or all Marigolds. I think that mere sorting would not help as much, because I see things like "Chard is listed under C, but Swiss Chard is under S". I know that's because different people add plants with different common names, and that's inescapable.

Horntoad said:Sandy, two post up Dave said yes the name of the member offering the seed will be there. But may also program it so we can choose the way we view it.

I think I get it, now that I saw your answer on the other thread, Jay -- thanks again!

I thought about past swaps last night, and would modify my belief that seeing all the swap lists merged is the only convenient way.

Often we learn individual's seed interests by just seeing their swap list. Sometimes that tells me I don't need to look again. Sometimes it tells me that I want to check their list every 2-3 days just in case they put out one more pkt of the kinds of seeds they're into.

Thus even if there are no complex search-and-filter bells-and-whistles, having the option to view just one member's swap list at a time has value.

Like most others, if I had to choose between seeing all swap lists merged, - OR - only seeing them one at a time, I'm glad I would have voted for all-at-once if I had gotten to this thread soon enough.


Howeeeever, right at the moment, we DO have both options with a little effort.

Almost everyone with a swap list is in the Beta swap, and probably most of what they have will also be Offered in this swap, especially if you make a special request.

Go to the Seed Swap Home page, and "Check out Everyone's Lists".
View one list at a time, and take notes on what you want to request (Who and What, and how it was alphabetized).
THEN go to the Beta Swap, scroll to that part of the list, find the What and Who, then click on it.

Rick, are you saying that right now we have the ability to see the combined list for the beta swap? (asking because I can't seem to find it anywhere... just the individual lists )

We do not have the ability to see the combined list for the entire swap yet, but we will soon (probably today.)

It will have the ability to view the whole list at once, or view just limited to individual members.

Thanks, Dave -- I was beginning to think I was going totally brain dead !

This is really going to be a great feature, especially with being able to view the listings either way

As long as I already have a rep for asking for frivolous things, here goes ...

There seems general acceptance that limiting requests-per-day is worthwhile because it gives everyone a gradual chance to compete for whatever happens to be most in demand, and let those who want something the MOST have a better chance than someone who wants 95 other things more. I agree.

Then I was about to start cruising lists and realized that I can't request yet,
and that when I do, I can only request 5-10 each time. It will take many hours just to eyeball each offer, let alone decided which I want most.

And how will I remember where I saw the 6th- and 7th-most-desirable things, for tomorrow? Or things #8 through #30?

Maybe some day ...

{ The short form is: it would be nice if we could flag or prioritize many Offers in many Swap Lists, then come back later to view only our flagged items, and request our highest-priority desires.

We could flag and prioritize requests even before the Swap started. That would even, if totals were visible to the Offerers, let people know which of their offerings will go quickly and which are dogs. Then we could package up more of the popular items and increase our offers, while we still have time to do it. }

Vendor websites all have a Shopping Cart, and many have a "compare these items" feature.
Some sites have a "Wish List" or "Lay-Away List" for things you know you want, but can't buy today.

Suppose it was practical (and worthwhile) to create a Holding Area for each person, implemented as a numeric Priority flag against each row in the combined Offer list. (Maybe the sheer size of 100 members X 10,000 offerings makes this impractical.) The Priority flag would express "how badly do I wnat this?" or "In what order will I request these?"

Maybe it could be implemented as an ordered list for each member, where we just list "Requests I would like to make, in the order I would like to make them, assuming they are still available at that time".

We could click on an Offer to either Request It Now, or Add To Holding Area or Prioritze This .
(I don't want to call it a Wish List because that name already means something else.)

That would let us cruise through dozens or hundreds of Swap Lists and click on hundreds or even thousands of things, without worrying about being excessively Piggish or requesting multiples of the same thing, or getting carried away and requesting things we would have wasted.

THEN we could "View My Holding Area" and see only those rows we had flagged or prioritized.
I'd wean out the duplicates and the over-enthusiastic requests. Re-prioritize while less excited.
I could research the ones I knew less well and see whether they would grow for me, or if I even REALLY wanted them.

THEN I could see my Top Five and Request those five, leaving my Holding Area full of my other top picks for tomorrow's requesting.

That would mesh well with the "priority" idea that Dave mentioned once. While swooping through the combined listss, we could give our desired items priorities from 1 to 5, then sort of filter our Holding Area.

Now take it even further, if eye-rolling hasn't blinded you.

Say it's a swap with 10,000 Offers, and 2% of those are pretty interesting to me.
That's 200 items I might want to request, if allowed and if I had that much space and time to grow things out.
And say I'm limited to 5 requests per day.

I personally would rather find all of them in just a few marathon sessions of browsing, searching, selecting, comparing and prioritizing. It's easier for me to find 1-2 days when I can get several hours free, than manage to find 30 minutes every day to search, select, and then request just 5 things.

So ... say I have 200 items in my Holding Area, prioritized from #5 = "Must Have" down to #1 = "I want it but would not have a place for it this year". Or maybe # 2 and #3 are "I would request these IF no one else considers them #5, and IF enough of my Offers are Requested to qualify me for being THAT big a pig".

Well, if it didn't violate the idea of "show your degree of desire by spending time online EVERY day, searching and clicking" ...

... Dave COULD set it up so that just before each day expires, people qwho had not used up their daily request but DID have some #5s in their Holding Area could have their remining requests for that day randomly sleected fro their #5 list and automatically requested FOR them.

It might even be an undesirable feature since it reduces the need for people to interact with the site to participate in swaps.

But it would bridge the awkward gap between searching thousands of Offers for one's Must Haves and Really Want Badlies, , and only being able to see a few at a time, and request only 5-10 per day.

The idea that a big seed swap might NOT have to take over my life for a whole month is very appealing!


A frill-on-top-of-the-frill would let a high Priority request somehow "stick" to the Offerer's offer even if that Swap's offering was completely used up. The offerer would see at the end of the swap that N people flagged it as Priority 4 or 5, but never got the thing. They would know to collect (or buy) more of that item next year, or items like it. or that they can work out a private 3-way swap with that person for something they or a friend of theirs has.

Even if the Offerer did not see these "sticky priorities", they would have value for the Requester. Years later, viewing those would remind the Requester WHO used to have that thing they wanted so badly. I forsee us trying to tempt or bribe each other to join future swaps and re-offer that choice item, pretty please! "If you join Crit's swap, I will too, and I'll offer the XYZ seeds you want ... IF you re-offer that Goosestrife 'Golden Egg' that's been on my #5 list for ages!"

Weedwhacker said:Rick, are you saying that right now we have the ability to see the combined list for the beta swap? (asking because I can't seem to find it anywhere... just the individual lists )

Sorry, no, I live in the future.

Comes from reading too much science fiction.