I would like to be able to remove those who disappear without resigning from the swap before swapping starts. I tried to do that by emailing some of the people that were new to me to make sure they did not need more information and knew how to remove themselves from the swap if they were not participating, and got no responses from most. If a mechanism had been available to me to remove the non-responsive I would have.
A few people got bogged down in the system and could not figure it out, even with the tutorial video from Dave and additional explanations because they think about swaps in the traditional sense of signing up, posting a wish list, and waiting for the host to decide their fate. I'm not convinced all of those people thoroughly read, watched, or paid attention to the details because of those assumptions. They did not remove themselves either.
People whose seeds do not arrive are another issue. If a player has a Delivery Confirmation from the P.O. showing the status of their package that was mailed timely and is close, I could hold up the return for a day or so. I won't hold up a swap on speculation, and I won't mail seeds to someone from whom I have not received their end. It's not personal and is not a judgment on the reason given when it happens.
If a participant establishes a pattern of not following through or having serial issues with their packages, swappers will naturally begin to avoid those people. New participants may not have the same frame of reference, though. I don't want to be in the swap police business, but if ever someone had an egregious swap history or was otherwise abusive and I could not remove them, I would prevail upon Dave to do it.
All in all, the swap system works beautifully. Issues around not following through or disappearing or not communicating happen in all swaps. Having consistent ways to manage it when it happens is aspirational: good discussion here.
