Jay: yes.
There were enough hard-core seedaholics in that swap that could just COUNT ON there being plenty of anything you were looking for, except for very exotic and specific wishes.
Plenty of people there followed Nature's policy with seeds: have lots, scatter many freely, trust that enough will come back and take root to keep the yard green.
And due to
@JonnaSudenius ' participation in Ella's swap and annual social event , even people wanting exotic and rare things knew they had a great chance of finding some. When swaps limit themselves to USA postal addresses only, and lose Jonna's participation, they reduce the variety of seeds offered by many thousands.
RE the original post, there are some good ideas there for encouraging "balance".
That may be more important for small swaps or less-well-established swaps.
As long as the fairness doesn't prevent any trading from happening at all!
But I suggest one tweak: assume that only half of what someone lists is going to be wanted.
If you list 100 pkts available for trade (no more than 5 of one kind "count"), maybe that should entitle you to only 50 requests TO START WITH. Now you can request seeds at the start of the swap and be likely to get enough of what you want that you expect it to be worthwhile participating.
(If you list mostly common seeds or old vegetable seeds, like me, there will be some swaps that might not welcome you in the future.)
Then, every request OVER 50 that you FILL gives you one extra request to make.
It would guarantee that anyone requesting more than half as many packets as he offered was getting NO MORE THAN he actually gave out.
That would make for pretty tight "fairness", and make trading rather difficult after the first half was committed. Most people would be at or near their current limits, and need to be Oinked from before they could Oink again. Stalled, or gridlock.
It would to allow trades "pending". Joe wants Seed X from Sally, but Joe only offered 40 and already requested 20. Now he has to wiat until someone asks for another seed he has offered.
OR, and maybe this is the genius of the "fairness" idea, Joe can offer two more pkts of anything, and be allowed to make one more trade. And he'll see vividly the advantage of offering something that someone WANTS.
It would assure that numbers of pkts swapped stayed fairly even, with some looseness in the first half of trading, but nothing can address pkt size and age and value differences.
Or maybe the "fairness counting" would apply only to trades whose Offerer marked them as "for Even Trading only". Then you could only request as many "ET" seeds as someone had already had requested from yourself ... or something.
But there has to be looseness to get the trading started. If you can only request as many as you've already given away, then no one would be allowed to make the first trade.
