Although I have not made any requests for seeds, I did join the DnD swap in order to learn a little for perhaps future and to also just share some seeds. I have gone through the lists just to see what items had become "0" or taken. I have to agree with both DnD and Horntoad, that it appears that there would still be plenty to go around if someone joined late, and they would be at the loss for losing out on perhaps some specialty items.

Weedwhacker said:Interesting -- I thought people could join at any time too... but I think the reason Dave gave above for not doing so is a good one. "Primarily it is to avoid the situation of one person joining late in the trading, offering up just a few items, and swooping up dozens and dozens of offers with the vast amounts of tickets that are given late in the game."

That still doesn't make since. Let's say someone joined my swap on day 5 of 7. My dibs increase by 4 per day, so it would be, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 for a total of 60 by day five. The person that joined on day 5 would get 60 tickets but everyone that was there at the beginning got the same 60, but had 4 days to pick over the better seeds before the late person. As far as coming in with only a few packs, unless controls are added to the host control panel the they can do that now from the beginning of the swap. I'm not sure how hard it would be to code be it could be done so that anyone joining late would start with that days number rather than the total. So using the above example someone joining on day 5 would start with 20 not 60.

signet said:I am confused . I have been watching and trying to learn about the swaps since bowing out earlier..........I dont understand ...... why do you need tickets to swap? Do all swaps have to be open to all people ? I am wondering as I made a post about swapping daylilies and dont know , now .....reading this, maybe I have done something that is not allowed on this site. How does one delete a post if in fact my post is not allowed Where does one find all the rules for what goes on on the site in general ?

I should apologize in advance for posting this here .....I have not been able to figure out where to post things and be assured I am not over stepping . Any help is appreciated

Hi Heather

No problem at all swapping anything you want with someone else. You can even advertise things for sale, at least in the "Classifieds and Group Buys" forum.

Once you join some organized "group swap", you can only request N things per day from that group swap, so that everyone gets a similar chance to grab the most popular or scarce items. Dave does that by issuing a certain number of "tickets" on each day of the swap. One ticket lets you request one seed packet.

The number of "tickets" issued increases each day, so that after the first 3-5 days, most people have already gotten everything they wanted the most. By the 7th or 8th day, everyone has so many tickets that only their unwillingness to appear greedy keeps them from just requesting everything in sight.

My guess is that excessively greedy people will wind up being excluded or constrained the same way they are in most group swaps. Not being invited back next time, and/or being counseled privately or shamed during the swap.

I've only met a few excessively greedy people in swaps, but almost every newcomer worries that they aren't bringing "enough seeds" to the party. Then they come back the next year and have three times as many things to offer.

Horntoad said:

That still doesn't make since. Let's say someone joined my swap on day 5 of 7. My dibs increase by 4 per day, so it would be, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 for a total of 60 by day five. The person that joined on day 5 would get 60 tickets but everyone that was there at the beginning got the same 60, but had 4 days to pick over the better seeds before the late person. As far as coming in with only a few packs, unless controls are added to the host control panel the they can do that now from the beginning of the swap. I'm not sure how hard it would be to code be it could be done so that anyone joining late would start with that days number rather than the total. So using the above example someone joining on day 5 would start with 20 not 60.

I seem to be having trouble getting my mind around this tonight... but actually I still am not all that keen on having the incremental daily increase in the number of dibs. Does the setup allow a host to specify a certain number of dibs daily -- say 5/day -- that just stays constant? Maybe I'm just overthinking the 'possible' ways to abuse the system, but it seems like having such a large number of dibs after just a few days somewhat encourages people to go through the list of available seeds at that point and scoop up everything that's left, which, while fair according to the rules, somehow does not seem right to me.

Weedwhacker said:

I seem to be having trouble getting my mind around this tonight... but actually I still am not all that keen on having the incremental daily increase in the number of dibs. Does the setup allow a host to specify a certain number of dibs daily -- say 5/day -- that just stays constant? Maybe I'm just overthinking the 'possible' ways to abuse the system, but it seems like having such a large number of dibs after just a few days somewhat encourages people to go through the list of available seeds at that point and scoop up everything that's left, which, while fair according to the rules, somehow does not seem right to me.

No there is no way to set a flat rate, but you can set it at a lower rate or change the rate during the swap. You keep say someone is scooping up seeds, but everyone has the exact same number of packs available. If you set a flat rate people would get very few seeds by the end of the swap. For example my swap runs for 7 day and has a multiplier of 4 which means at the end of the swap the most anyone will get is 112 packs of seeds. With your method of only 5 packs per day no one would get more than 35 packs of seeds. In one swap that I'm in now there are over 1500 varieties of seeds with many, many thousands of individual packs of seeds available. My tiny swap with only 7 people probably has well over a thousand packs of seeds available. Nobody is get short change or scooping us unreasonable amounts of seeds.

Weedwhacker said:

I seem to be having trouble getting my mind around this tonight... but actually I still am not all that keen on having the incremental daily increase in the number of dibs. Does the setup allow a host to specify a certain number of dibs daily -- say 5/day -- that just stays constant? Maybe I'm just overthinking the 'possible' ways to abuse the system, but it seems like having such a large number of dibs after just a few days somewhat encourages people to go through the list of available seeds at that point and scoop up everything that's left, which, while fair according to the rules, somehow does not seem right to me.

I think this would be more of an issue if the people giving the seeds were doing so grudgingly. In my swap and in the beta, we're excited to see our extra seeds go to new homes! We're not going to use them anyway, so it's better they go to people who will.

As for the method of increase in the tickets, it's actually a brilliant design, but the host can go in and change it. The way it works is it starts out small so that not everyone gets everything they want the first night, usually (which keeps things fun and exciting) and it keeps any one user from callings dibs on TONS of items the first night to where others don't get anything they wanted (keeping it fair). The number increases, though, because after the first few nights most people are satisfied they got their top favorites and now is onto their second tier of favorites. If it didn't increase, the swap trading time would have to be SO LONG. It would probably need to be a month long, and people would get impatient, bored, or too busy to continue with it being drawn out so long.

I think the big factor to consider here is there seems to ALWAYS be far more packets of seeds available and far more tickets provided in the end than anyone ever uses. There are always extras. It would be different if there were only a hundred seed packets and twenty members...but that's not the case. That is also why swap hosts can set rules stating minimum numbers of seed contributions or maximum packet requests. It hasn't seemed necessary in the swaps I've been in, though.

The swap host can also change the multiplier mid-swap, too. For instance, I wanted the first night to be 3 dibs, but I upped it to a multiplier of 4 the second night so that members had 8 dibs the second night (I left it at 4 which meant the third night was 12 tickets, fourth night was 16...) If it ever became a problem, the host could theoretically bump the ticket multiplier down. For example, if the host started with a multiplier of 5 and realized on day five that 25 tickets was too many, they could bump the multiplier down to, say, 2 for day six and everyone would only get 12 tickets. With good contributions, though, I don't see this as ever being necessary. It seems the bulk of people are generous and more than compensate for the unlikely greedy person. It seems hard to believe there would be someone 'greedy', but I suppose it could happen anywhere, even on ATP. I haven't seen it yet and no one can be any more greedy than anyone else, really, since everyone gets the same number of tickets and the host can set minimum contributions.

My minimum contribution requirement was set to only 3 packets and everyone blew that out of the water, pretty much.

In my swap we have one person who doesn't have a ton of contributions because their yard is a blank slate and that person felt bad requesting items but everyone in our group was more than happy (excited, even) to be giving their unwanted seeds to help that person fill up their garden.

Cross posted with Jay

" If you set a flat rate people would get very few seeds by the end of the swap. "

I guess I'm still thinking in terms of a longer time period for the swap, such as in the Piggy Swap. The advantage to that would be that someone who for whatever reason was unable to participate in the first week or so of the swap, would still have the ability to get in on the action and make up for lost time. (I do think it's best, though, that everyone would have to "join" before the beginning of the swap.) So, if the trading ran for a full month, at 5 packs/day each person could be receiving 150 packs. Or the amount per day could be raised somewhere along the line, depending on how things were going.

Just throwing the idea out there; it sounds like the current swaps are going great!

The Piggy Swap is very different in that it was very time consuming. You make a request for seeds in a thead, then start a new thead to ask another person. Then you have to wait maybe for hours or even a day to see if your request was granted. Here it is instantaneous. There is no need to stretch it out for month. Taking only 5 picks a day for a month would cause people to loose interest.

Weedwhacker said: ...
I guess I'm still thinking in terms of a longer time period for the swap, such as in the Piggy Swap. ...
... someone who for whatever reason was unable to participate in the first week or so of the swap,
...
Just throwing the idea out there; it sounds like the current swaps are going great!

I agree, we're all just tossing ideas around.

I was thinking in the opposite direction: a "Sudden Death" swap.

Everyone gets three tickets at 12:00:00 ATP Seed Standard Time
Swap swap swap

Everyone gets five more tickets at 12:05:00
Swap swap swap swap swap

Everyone gets seven more tickets at 12:10:00
Swap swap swap swap swap swap swap

Everyone gets ten more tickets at 12:15:00
Swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap

Everyone gets fifteen more tickets at 12:20:00
Swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap swap

...

The swap might be over at 1:00, or more likely 12:40.
Or let it run a "whole" extra day.

Obviously, this would only be for people who could make a firm plan to be HERE for 30 minutes on the appointed evening, and keep the time zones straight. Maybe have a "check-in" right before the swap, and anyone who isn't there and clicking gets to, or has to, drop out and have their seeds hidden.

My guess is that, if anyone signed up for such a thing, the first request after the first swap would be to reduce the time interval from five minutes to 2-3 minutes.

That's an interesting idea, Rick!

I do think it might be easier to do it on a Saturday and draw it out to every 10 minutes a new set of tickets are dealt out so that people have a chance to Find a few items from their wish list that are left. (It's hard to remember what's available when there are hundreds of seed types!)

The "Lightning Round" would only work if you spent plenty of time before the swap starts, setting up all your "Wish Stars" in priority order.

I don't know if you could ever find enough deranged seed-addicts to get one going.

RickCorey said:
I don't know if you could ever find enough deranged seed-addicts to get one going.

Present company excepted, OF COURSE!!

RickCorey said:Present company excepted, OF COURSE!!

Now that's better, haha!

Very interest concept Rick. I'm afraid I might be one of those addicts signing up for that one.

Rick, I think you just found yourself a seed swap niche....you should see about working with Dave to start it.

I'd like to see someone host an "Empty Your Seed Box Swap" where everyone is aware they are trading seeds that could be older, unwanted, or difficult, without having to explain. I say that because I'm trying to clear out my stash.

You could call it the Seedy & Suspicious Swap.