Set myself the task of reading through all of the threads and comments on Beta swap and those following.
At present I can see how the tool can be great for organizing people and items in a Swap in a simple and easy to use way.

For instance, if every one made their offered and wish lists before trading began, the tool could do a master print out for all the items requested and how many requests for each item offered. If there were more requests for an item than available to trade, a notice for 'more of that item could be posted to see if op or other swappers could fill the gap from their own stash (ie 2 pkts of 50 seeds could become 5 pkts of 20 or even 10 pkts of 10 or a large clump could be 3 small clumps, etc) Kinda like putting items on 'back order'

If haves and wants were more equally matched there would be less frenzy!

As the tool is currently set up can the swap host get a running tally or is that only available at the close of trading?

Just thoughts so far as I still would like to have the actually trading and requests be done in person, rather than click and ship...more of the Key element that Rick mentions above, the heart of the swap/community.

When critteroligist and I began began privately discussing using the swap tool for plants, and then joined in this thread, we were simply thinking of it as an easy record keeping tool for our regional swaps where everyone attends in person. I for one never considered its use in automating swaps, which are major social events for our Mid-Atlantic group. I thought it worked fine for our recent seed swap, and really can't get into the idea of computerized matching of offers and wants. Just looking at using the same basic tool, slightly altered, to apply to plants.

It's probably impossible to have a swap or system that could meet everyone's needs or wants. We all have different preferences. One reason I always liked the group swaps is that I didn't like setting up individual swaps with multiple people. It wasn't just managing multiple shipments, but the back and forth deciding what to trade. Bartering is not my thing, and I was always uncomfortable asking for things, and offering up things in exchange that the other person might view as less valuable. Personality differences I suppose. I also never liked going to yard sales or markets where things either weren't priced or intentionally over-priced with the expectation of haggling.

It also seems like for many of the large group swaps, just trying to agree on a date is difficult. Some harvest seeds early and are ready to trade in early fall. Some like to wait until after the holidays because they are all wrapped up in that. Some want to start sowing seeds in December and early January, while others don't start until March. It is really hard to please everyone when dealing with group activities!

That's an interesting idea!

Almost like a pre-swap where everyone uses "Wish Stars" to indicate what they will be requesting.

Then everyone could look at the overall Wants and Haves and RanOutOfs for the whole swap, but have time to pack up more of some things (or sub-divide large packets, though that appeals less to me personally.)

Especially, it would let us see who-wants-what in time to dig for more seeds, or clean and pack more seeds.

It might also be good to expose those master lists to general view. It might attract more people to join the swap "in the middle" after they see what's already on the table.

molanic said:It's probably impossible to have a swap or system that could meet everyone's needs or wants. We all have different preferences. ...

I agree strongly. It's great that in Dave's system, many things are chosen by the host. One system, many kinds of swaps.

As we accumulate experience with different kinds of swaps using the current tools, and find what new features would fit many people's needs, Dave will probably add and tweak the tools over time.

That's been Dave's approach to adding new forums. First, he makes sure that the new forum is more likely to become busy than to become a ghost town.

I think a social website is like a bar. If you wander in and hardly see anyone, you leave and don't come back.

Or a strip mall where half of the stores are empty and boarded up. Creepy!

If adding a new feature to the swap system makes it harder to use for new members, Dave will probably think twice and make sure there's a need before adding the complexity.

Brainstorming like Molanic's and discussions like these, and running many swaps with the current tool, are all necessary precursors to designing new features. First Dave has to intuit which new features will be heavily used, and which might interfere with other uses.

(Edited to add: plus, it sounds as if he and Trish are currently working on some big secret.)

We're going to use the Seed Swaps tool in our upcoming Spring Plant swap. I appreciate that the "number of seeds per pack" field will take a longer string of alphanumeric characters, not just numbers... we are going to use it to indicate the type of plant being offered (seedling, cutting, bare-root, clump, etc). Number of packs can clearly equal number of seeds. Other than that, it's a matter of setting most of the dates after our in-person swap... it would be nice to be able to disable those irrelevant dates, though.

Question: Is there a way to import an image from plantfiles as the photo for an item on my primary swap list?

Hi Jill

I don't see a way to get an image from the Plant Database into a Swap List, other than saving the database photo to your hard disk (Copy Image, Paste), browsing to it, and then importing it backwards into the ATP swap list. But I think that would use more storage on the server, since ATP would have to hold two copies of any such image.

For the future, maybe @Dave would modify a swap feature.

(1) You can already import to your swap list from your Plant List, using the "green recycle" icon. Maybe Dave would add a control for "and carry this photo along with you".

(2) Or, more directly in response to your question, maybe he would allow the Swap List to pull an image from the Plant Database.

(3) Or provide a field we could edit, in the swap list, for pasting in a link to an ATP image from the Plant Database. That seems like the least work and least complexity.

(4) I thought there was an "Add to Swap List" button in the plant database, but I'm not seeing it right now. If there were such a button, that might benefit from a control to choose an image to carry along into your Swap List.

I'm guessing he's busy with the NGA now.

I think Dave's original idea was that people would take a picture of each seed packet, save it to disk, then find it again from the Seed Swap tool, and import that picture of a seed packet so people could see what they would be getting. Not an image of the plant or the fruit, an image of the seed packet being traded.

(I'm not using that field for that purpose. It doubles or triples the work of adding an entry to the Swap List, and I don't think it's very useful. But a photo of a bloom or plant would seem useful to me.)

For me, the challenge is at home: to label each pkt that I split with the size (1/16th tsp, 1/2 tsp, "20-30 seeds", "~150 mg", etc. Right now I measure them accurately, then lose the info, then have to guess when I list something for trading. Or laboriously re-measure the amount in the pkt.

Thanks, Rick! I didn't realize there was that relationship between my plant list and my swap list... more reason for me to get a plant list going! I agree, as more people start using this tool and as Dave finds time, he'll hopefully be able to inter-link primary swap lists with the plant database.

In the meantime, I can put a link to a database entry / photo into the "comments" field for an item on my swap list... not the same as having a pretty picture right with the entry, but still helpful.

Ahhh! Is a link "clickable" in the comment field?

I'll check, but I'm hoping so...I know I can put clickable link in other boxes for the swap...

Nope, can't add a clickable link to "comments" or to any other field that I tried. But since, as you pointed out, the plant name ITSELF is a clickable link to its database entry, that's actually not a big deal.

I'm just happy to have a tool that's so much less cumbersome than what I've done in the past!

Jill, maybe this isn't what you're asking -- but if you import an entry to your swap list from your plant list, it will be clickable and take the "clicker" to the entry in the plant database, where they can see the photos. If that makes any sense...

That does make sense, and it's useful, thanks! Still hoping for a way to directly import a database image to my swap list, but I think somebody was right when they said the image field may have been meant more as a place for a photo of the actual seeds (or plant) being swapped, a WYSISWYG image.

"the image field may have been meant more as a place for a photo of the actual seeds (or plant) being swapped, "

yes, that was Dave's original intention (although in the beta swap I think the majority of us agreed that a photo of the plant is more useful).

OK, sounds like we're revisiting a previous suggestion then.

The more of us use the tool for various swaps, the more likely Dave will take time to tweak it! :-)

I'm even thinking it could be adapted to group buys, an easy way to show how many more bulbs or other items of a certain type are still available... Of course, a google spreadsheet will do that also.

i hope the National Gardening Association website eventually sends people over here to swap seeds (or plants).

Critterologist I just added a plant to my swap list for the Mid Atlantic Plant Swap.

I added Gallardia 'Grape Sensations' and used a picture from my own photos to post in the far right column. Two other plant photos are on my swap list and they are from Plant List/Files and are not taken by me. I guess unless I havr added my own photos to my own Plant List that I can't choose which pic from plant lists will appear.
The two plants with Plant list pic when clicked on will show more than one photo from plant file. Not sure yet if I can post multiple pics of my own.

HTH

Here is a link to my Swap List
http://garden.org/apps/swap/li...

MM -- if you select from the drop-down list when you add a plant to your swap list, it will link to the plant database and anyone interested in that item will be able to see all of the associated photos when they click on the name (and you can still add your own photo in the "image" column, as you have done).

Just to try it out, I added your Gaillardia to my list from the drop-down list; after clicking "add a new item," typing in "gaillardia grape" brought up the appropriate entry, and clicking on that added it to my list. This is what it looks like (click on the image below to see the whole thing):



You can see the actual, "clickable" entry on my list here: http://garden.org/apps/swap/li...
(and it looks like you could be the very first person to add a photo of this plant to the database!)