You Betcha! I'm new here, but I'd love to have a tool to use for trading and for tracking inventory and garden contents. Love the idea!

Jill!

This would be a wonderful feature!!

>> Then you can click to show that you have it and are willing to trade it off.

That is the part that I'm eager for. I want to list publicly those seeds I have enough of to trade. And make it possible for someone else to SEARCH the lists of available seeds.

I already have different ways of keeping my own private inventory - it includes seeds that I only have a few of, i.e. from trading.

A frill-feature would be some coy way of listing seeds that I only have a few of, BUT could be coaxed to trade away if someone REALLY wanted that and had something to trade for it I was EAGER to get.

Maybe a field that listed something like "eagerness to trade this seed":
- eager to share these for free. Prosyletizer or Pimp for this variety.
- will send for SASE
- will probably trade if you have something to offer
- would trade if you have something already on my WANT list
- MIGHT trade if you have something already on my DESPERATELY WANT list

It would be Uber-cool if there were any way to encourage people to keep their "available" list up-to-date! Maybe list the date on which they last confirmed "this is available for trading now". I understand that is much trickier for plants than for seeds!

The only other thing I can think of is letting people who wanted to trade, but were told "I'm out", push an "unavailable" button themselves. Or maybe fill in a separate column with a date saying "not available on XYZ date". But how would that be kept distinct from "he HAD some seeds left, but didn't want to trade for anything I had at the time"?

I know I sometimes update my public list only AFTER I disapoint someone!

Those are all great ideas, Rick. I'll contemplate them.

I do believe one of the biggest challenges is keeping the information fresh, and not outdated.

'bout time we saw this happen!!

My wish is for the list to match up. For example...I list a Hoya for trade the system could automatically show me a list of people that are looking for it. On the flip side, if I list a plant as "want" it would show me a list of who has it. We could voluntarily add ourselves to any such list...optional only kind of thing.

dave said:
I do believe one of the biggest challenges is keeping the information fresh, and not outdated.

This was a problem at DG, when you would contact someone about a plant on their list and find out they haven't had that one for a year. One solution might be to make all trade listings for a limited time, like an online auction. Someone list a plant as available for trade and the system automatically removes it from availability after a set period of time, maybe 3 to 6 months. You can even have the system send the person a message when an item has been removed so they can re-list it, if it is still available.

Horntoad has the perfect solution, I think. It prevents the system from becoming clogged with old listings. Now for Dave to make it happen!

Horntoad, that's brilliant!

I'm wondering...should the person with avalable plants also specify a shipping season? i.e. someone in the deep south might not ship in full summer, and our Canadian friends might not ship plants in mid-winter. Don't know if we need that or if it's taken care of by just not listing plants during bad shipping seasons.

Just popped into my head so I figured I'd spill it onto the keyboard. It's ok to tell me I'm all wet.

Such as check boxes for Available Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter?

I think we can leave it to everyone's discretion., personally; I mean, we are all plant people so we pretty well know about shipping seasons and it's easily resolved with a tree-mail when in doubt. Just my opinion..

I don't know. My trade lists are elsewhere right now and I have people contact me fairly regularly wanting something ... but it often isn't the right time to either take a cutting, root a cutting when they receive it, or ship a cutting. And I know they are probably not going to have success. Mary's idea and the boxes or something like that might save a lot of back and forth mail (and time).

Dutchlady1 said:I think we can leave it to everyone's discretion., personally; I mean, we are all plant people so we pretty well know about shipping seasons and it's easily resolved with a tree-mail when in doubt. Just my opinion..

Hetty, you make sense, but I'm not sure that we can assume everyone has the same level of knowledge. Before I started buying plants online, it would never have occurred to me to even think about shipping times. Everyone here NOW may be plant people, but we have different levels of expertise (I'm still a novice, in my mind), and in the future as this site becomes THE place on the Internet for plant info, we have the potential to get all kinds of folks who are less knowledgeable than we are.

Great Idea Dave. ..Now I wont have little pieces of note paper everywhere

Good point, Mary!

I think my strategy is going to be to start a somewhat small with a bare-bones inventory system, and then work out from there. As you all see what I'm making and start using it, you'll hopefully see what possibilities start to open up and you can give feedback as we go.

That'll be the best approach, in my opinion, because there are so many facets to this kind of feature and I'd like to try to incorporate the wishes of everyone. We want to have the best trading system out there.

Dave is our Hero!!

I agree with Hetty. Once party A contacts party B about a trade, details like shipping time or season could be discussed privately, through emails. That avoids cluttering things up with a million options and check boxes.

Karen