wildflowers said:... A mention of this can somehow be put on this thread to ward off some of those offenders?? ...
The only thing I can think of is to advertise up front that
each particular swap has particular expectations, and that many swaps will only want members who offer "enough" fresh seeds that match the theme of the swap, that seem potentially desirable to some representative members of the swap.
The host might urge individual potential joiners to "add more seeds" before accepting them into the swap.
The host might coach potential members that THIS swap asked for fresher seeds, or bigger pkts, or more variety, or more unusual seeds, or specific-theme seeds. Then reject them or suggest other recurring swaps they might fit into better.
That's a delicate process and could cause hard feelings or charges of favoritism ... but I think it's inescapable. We might find some inoffensive language that means "Moochers not welcome", but sounds better.
I bet that there will be more innocent people taking home more than they gave away, than there will be people who deliberately set out to "game the system". We should have ways to coach them how to be better swappers - closer to "traders", or closer to "generous people" than to "greedy grabbers"
Ideally, thinking about it now and thinking up polite processes will mean we DON'T have to think much about bad apples DURING swaps.
Hey, if there are
some loose "give-away" swaps and many specialized, "mostly-fair-trade" swaps, Greedy Seeders will have to play fair in the specialized "fair" swaps or they'll get on a list and be banned from the "give-away" swaps! Maybe having many swaps, and many KINDS of swaps, all under one roof, will make the "bad apple" phenomenon self-solving.
The
up-front screening of new members' OFFER lists could catch unintentional freeloaders, or the host might make special rules like "You CAN join, but YOU are limited to 2 requests until you come up with more to offer or people ask for at least 5 of what you offered".
And it brings up
a question that might be different for each swap.
Must joiners show a complete or adequate OFFER list BEFORE they join? .
Or might some swaps have a two-step joining process?
First express interest and start adding to an offer list for that swap.
See other people's Offer lists, maybe Wish lists, and keep adding to one's Offer list.
THEN members would start to be accepted by the host, and commit to the swap, and presumably commit to NOT drastically withdraw too many of what they offered. (Like removing more than 30% of what you offered without similar additions might count as joining under false pretenses - and dropping out would be encouraged by the host.).
In contrast ...
I hope there are some swaps that lean toward "share the seeds freely" more than concern with enforcing fairness. It might spread around older seeds and common seeds, and perhaps self-saved seeds of dubious isolation ... not worth TRADING for precious or rare seed types, but
welcome to beginners or someone just wanting to try short rows of some veggie varieties they wouldn't have bought a full-size, full-price packet of.
We may think that anyone joining such a swap can "JUST" add 5 or 10 seed types from their stash ... but not everyone who would like to trade for a few seeds already has a seed-a-holic's stash. But if we can tempt them into a relaxed swap one year, many of them will be seed-addicts by next year, and THEN bring lots of new seeds to trade.
(It would be up to each host whether or not to make them first go order some seeds so they have something to divide up and put into an Offer list. Maybe each new ATP member gets one or two free admissions to a relaxed swap? Once there are some recurring swaps, that would be easy to negotiate with Dave.)
Such a swap would have to warn members that they may be
donating the seeds they offer, and may or may not find as many things they want back, as they gave. That swap's host might (or might not) check a master list of "selfish seed grabbers" and exclude anyone with a pattern of offering bare minimums, but grabbing fat maximums.
