By the way, when you talk about 'donations' as "someone asks for it and then gets it without a specific quid-pro-quo in return", that is the way I prefer to swap, and those are the swaps I would join. Better suited to fairly common seeds. My word would be "Oink" or "Request", meaning a request that's granted without a matching item specified in return".
Then there is a directed gift, where someone makes a specific offer, perhaps giving someone else first Dibbs if they join a certain swap. I'll call that "giving Dibbs" because it's an oddball notion.
Another usage is:
DogsNDaylilies said:...
I think there should also be an option to allow for 'donations' so that you could send in any extras that you have. ... (That would make people used to piggy swaps happy, I think.)
I recognize that as a "Bottom of the Barrel" junk-seed phase. I'm guessing that relatively few swaps will opt to offer that. It is a very different kind of swap, tending toward the Round-Robin set of vices and virtues. A big barrel of old who-knows-what dished out to who-knows-who. Not great, but at least it puts all the re-trading into one category that's easy to keep separate from WANTED seeds.
I try to avoid doing that, but fall to temptation more often than I resist.
DogsNDaylilies said:...
I do think it best to find 'homes' for the seeds before they are all shipped off to the organizer, where possible,
Agreed! That's the value of a swap vs. a round robin: you specify what you want.
