As long as I already have a rep for asking for frivolous things, here goes ...
There seems general acceptance that limiting requests-per-day is worthwhile because it gives everyone a gradual chance to compete for whatever happens to be most in demand, and let those who want something the MOST have a better chance than someone who wants 95 other things more. I agree.
Then I was about to start cruising lists and realized that I can't request yet,
and that when I do, I can only request 5-10 each time. It will take many hours just to eyeball each offer, let alone decided which I want most.
And how will I remember where I saw the 6th- and 7th-most-desirable things, for tomorrow? Or things #8 through #30?
Maybe some day ...
{ The short form is: it would be nice if we could flag or prioritize many Offers in many Swap Lists, then come back later to view only our flagged items, and request our highest-priority desires.
We could flag and prioritize requests even before the Swap started. That would even, if totals were visible to the Offerers, let people know which of their offerings will go quickly and which are dogs. Then we could package up more of the popular items and increase our offers, while we still have time to do it. }
Vendor websites all have a Shopping Cart, and many have a "compare these items" feature.
Some sites have a "Wish List" or "Lay-Away List" for things you know you want, but can't buy today.
Suppose it was practical (and worthwhile) to create a Holding Area for each person, implemented as a numeric Priority flag against each row in the combined Offer list. (Maybe the sheer size of 100 members X 10,000 offerings makes this impractical.) The Priority flag would express "how badly do I wnat this?" or "In what order will I request these?"
Maybe it could be implemented as an ordered list for each member, where we just list "Requests I would like to make, in the order I would like to make them, assuming they are still available at that time".
We could click on an Offer to either Request It Now, or Add To Holding Area or Prioritze This .
(I don't want to call it a Wish List because that name already means something else.)
That would let us cruise through dozens or hundreds of Swap Lists and click on hundreds or even thousands of things, without worrying about being excessively Piggish or requesting multiples of the same thing, or getting carried away and requesting things we would have wasted.
THEN we could "View My Holding Area" and see only those rows we had flagged or prioritized.
I'd wean out the duplicates and the over-enthusiastic requests. Re-prioritize while less excited.
I could research the ones I knew less well and see whether they would grow for me, or if I even REALLY wanted them.
THEN I could see my Top Five and Request those five, leaving my Holding Area full of my other top picks for tomorrow's requesting.
That would mesh well with the "priority" idea that Dave mentioned once. While swooping through the combined listss, we could give our desired items priorities from 1 to 5, then sort of filter our Holding Area.
Now take it even further, if eye-rolling hasn't blinded you.
Say it's a swap with 10,000 Offers, and 2% of those are pretty interesting to me.
That's 200 items I might want to request, if allowed and if I had that much space and time to grow things out.
And say I'm limited to 5 requests per day.
I personally would rather find all of them in just a few marathon sessions of browsing, searching, selecting, comparing and prioritizing. It's easier for me to find 1-2 days when I can get several hours free, than manage to find 30 minutes every day to search, select, and then request just 5 things.
So ... say I have 200 items in my Holding Area, prioritized from #5 = "Must Have" down to #1 = "I want it but would not have a place for it this year". Or maybe # 2 and #3 are "I would request these IF no one else considers them #5, and IF enough of my Offers are Requested to qualify me for being THAT big a pig".
Well, if it didn't violate the idea of "show your degree of desire by spending time online EVERY day, searching and clicking" ...
... Dave COULD set it up so that just before each day expires, people qwho had not used up their daily request but DID have some #5s in their Holding Area could have their remining requests for that day randomly sleected fro their #5 list and automatically requested FOR them.
It might even be an undesirable feature since it reduces the need for people to interact with the site to participate in swaps.
But it would bridge the awkward gap between searching thousands of Offers for one's Must Haves and Really Want Badlies, , and only being able to see a few at a time, and request only 5-10 per day.
The idea that a big seed swap might NOT have to take over my life for a whole month is very appealing!
A frill-on-top-of-the-frill would let a high Priority request somehow "stick" to the Offerer's offer even if that Swap's offering was completely used up. The offerer would see at the end of the swap that N people flagged it as Priority 4 or 5, but never got the thing. They would know to collect (or buy) more of that item next year, or items like it. or that they can work out a private 3-way swap with that person for something they or a friend of theirs has.
Even if the Offerer did not see these "sticky priorities", they would have value for the Requester. Years later, viewing those would remind the Requester WHO used to have that thing they wanted so badly. I forsee us trying to tempt or bribe each other to join future swaps and re-offer that choice item, pretty please! "If you join Crit's swap, I will too, and I'll offer the XYZ seeds you want ... IF you re-offer that Goosestrife 'Golden Egg' that's been on my #5 list for ages!"
