vma4922 said: ...
Rick, Was Ella's "piggie swap" different than DnD's and Alana's (Poisondart's)? Just curious
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The basic plan was the same, but Ella had a much longer trading period, and it was all-manual.
1. Prep: everyone lists what they will offer. Each person had one or more pages online where they listed what they were offering as free-form text.
2. Trading period: online requests, which Ella called "oinking for seeds".
3. Everyone mails the requested seeds to Ella / DND
4. Ella or DND sort the FROM bundles into TO boxes and mails them back.
However, Ella's swap was manual so that you had to page through each persons HAVE list and figure out what you wanted most (there are no "stars" and no combined "everyone's swap list" and no search tool like "Hide zero quantity items" or "show only Lillium).
Then, let's see if I remember the next steps. I think each person did this a little differently. These are all manual operations, not automated.
Making Requests
1. Post a request on the Request thread.
BOLD the name of the person you are requesting from! (That established who-asked-first if two people ask for the same, last packet of something.)
2. C-mail the person offering it and repeat the request. (This lets people without much time participate. They can just watch their Inbox and know about all requests made to them. That saved reading the ENTIRE Request thread, which could run to MANY pages each day.
(Then I record my REQUEST in my "Incoming Trades" doc, usually marking it as requested-but-not-gotten-yet.)
3. When that person emails you back, you know whether you got it or not. (If you got it, record it in your INCOMING doc so you know what to expect is coming to you, and also so you know what you have already requested!)
Fulfilling Requests
1. In theory, check all of the new posts to the Requested thread one or more times per day.
2. In practice, check your Cubits Inbox at least daily.
3. For each Request you receive:
- 4. Check your HAVE list to be sure you have a packet remaining
- 5. Mark that packet as TAKEN,
and record who you are going to send it to.
(I do that twice: in an OUTGOING doc and also in my HAVE doc, so that I have a double-entry double-check, and have each outgoing "oink" already sorted by seed variety, and also by WHO.)
- 6. Reply by C-mail AND in a thread that the trade went through OK ("You GOT it.")
At the end of the swap, you have to sort your OUTGOING trades into a list per-person so you have a "shipping list" kind of a double-check. Then bundle it up and send it out.
Ella also had some second and third phases that were optional. I think the second phase was something like "do you want to send in a bunch of "whatever" seeds, and get some "whatever" seeds back?" I may have forgotten what Phase two was, because Phase Three was the "bottom of the barrel" phase. "Bottom of the barrel" seeds were typically old and re-traded ... or maybe I forget.
That was probably more than you wanted to know! Short form: because it was not automated, there were many manual steps and the trading period took a lot of time.
