Ideas for Improvements to Tradelist/Trade Tracker/Journal

Those all sound good to me =D

Oh wow .. I'm not good at starting things like this ... lol I'm an idea person ... lol oh Kaitlan... this is more of your area of starting threads =D

Oh also ... Calender of events ... Would be nice if it weres opened up to everyone to post what's going on in their areas ... by state & state N,E, S, & W =D

Thank you
Brandy

Oh yes! Calender of events!! Love that idea!!

It seems like the trading and swap forums have the current events pretty well covered, but you have to watch all of them because the items you're looking for might be posted in an unexpected place.

It would be nice to have the option of an automatic message that shows up on you homepage when someone adds a plant you are looking for to their have list. That would work better if there was an easy to use non-trading "Have" list in addition to the trading "Have" list and it was easy to move items from one list to another. I know a lot of people use their "Have" list as a personal inventory because the Journal is more complicated and requires more work. I'm kind of lazy about using the Journal because you have to set the status and category.

Regional calendars would be fun for listing roundups, plant sales, etc. Most of the events in my region are hundreds of miles away.

One thing I asked the admins about a couple of years ago was making a Google Maps or Google Earth feed for the GoGardening feature and an optional one for the members based on zipcode. They said they were considering the one for GoGardening but there were too many privacy concerns for a members map. I still think it would be fun to be able to look at a big map and see where members live (in a general sense, not their exact house of course.) And if it was optional the people who don't like it wouldn't have to be involved..

I agree with Katlin & Rock gardner

I have already started a calendar of events for NE Florida & there are some surrounding areas... I have also have one in the Daylilies ... for the AHS for the current year around the country going ... I had one for south georgia also. Its hard to keep up with them ... It'd be nice if there were people who'd volunteer to do certain areas and if people would actually have input of events they hear of. I enjoy doing it ... but it can be time consuming. =D

This message was edited Jun 3, 2010 8:41 PM

I can't find the post, but liked the idea of letting others know when is a good time for you to send and receive plant starts. My optimum time is early spring (March) and I got lots of requests in April/May from colder zones. I didn't like to ignore folks, but it was simply not feasible to send 2' plants. I did reply to most saying I'd be happy to send in fall or early spring, but that may or may not work for their zone. Makes it a bit problematic.

good point Bonehead ... I know its the same way with those of us in the south.

If someone starts an "Journals Improvement" Suggestion Forum / thread please send me the link =D

If this hasn't been mentioned yet, I'd like to see a place at the top of the list where I can indicate that I'm not available for trades at certain times. That way people won't be disappointed when they dmail for trades and I have to say 'not right now'. Going through each item to disable or delete each thing is very labor intensive and time consuming.

I'd also like to see a function where deleting things is easier.. At this point it takes 4 pages to get anything deleted, then you have to find your place again. WAY time consuming. You should be able to hit 'delete' and then keep going. It's easy enough to add something back in if you delete accidentally.

Even disabling each thing takes a lot of time since each time you hit 'disable' it sends you to the top of the list and you have to scroll down to find your place again.

If these things have already been mentioned, consider this a second vote for them.

You are all coming up with excellent ideas!

Thank you.

Yes, rockgardner, I do know what you mean about using the add a plant feature. I have done that, but I find that most people do not see it. You can visit my trade list to see what I mean. I think most people find my list because they are looking for a specific plant, so maybe they never notice the top of the list if their desired plant does not begin with 'A'.

anyway, glad this thread exists for these suggestions.

Pixydish... yea, you're probably right. I spend a lot of time looking at peoples lists and am so used to seeing the messages at the top, I look for it. Which further illustrates a need for the feature you suggested.

btw... whenever you're ready to trade, I'd love some of the climbing Bleeding Heart seeds, if or when available.

LOL!! You are the third one to ask for those. I don't have any seeds left, but I do have that plant growing in the garden and it's starting to bud, so I'm likely to have seeds later in the summer. Dmail me in July and I'll likely have some. I'd be happy to send them to you.

Thanks Pixydish... I just put up a trellis yesterday for my MG's, but was really looking for an unusual perennial vine (just found it). Talk to you in July.

It's a stunner. You'll love it.

Pixydish,
those were some of the things I was trying to explain in my original post. I'm glad someone else has the same idea but can explain it a different way. Sometimes the things I write make sense in my head but not to others!

I was thinking that editing the tradelist should be sort of like an email inbox. You could select multiple items and perform some action on them (such as delete or disable). Then you could click on a particular plant and see a more detailed view that lets you change the attributes.

An introductory section at the beginning would be a nice place to add notes about anything related to trading.

Katlian, that's a good idea. I didn't read all the posts carefully, just went ahead and put my vote in for those kinds of changes. Sounds like it should be a simple enough fix, but I'm not a programmer so that's not an educated opinion. I would love to be able to 'lock' a list if I'm not interested in trading at the time. I would be cool if you could just check a box that indicated you are unavailable for trades. It would have to be big enough that people would notice it.

Like in all caps and in a Red or another bright color ... I know I have a lot on my have list and it really sux having to go back into my trade "have list" and trying to find the right page maybe on page # 15 and having to disable it ... Also maybe When adding something when going through a plant file being able to disable it right away would be really nice.

I am loving all of the suggestions!!! How long before implementation?

I'm not a programmer (software engineer) either, but I did work for a big software company as a tech, and my brother is a retired software engineer. Most any of the suggestions shouldn't be that difficult to implement but it depends on how they go about it... one at a time, all at once... or something in between. Most importantly, where is it on their list of priorities?

Well, I'm finished with using the trade list until it's a little more user-friendly, anyway. But here is another suggestion: how about a 'bulk' upload feature whereby one can add lots of plants at one time? Sort of like the bulk uploading feature on some of the photo hosting sites. You can click on many photos on your hard drive, then upload them all at once at a faster speed. They could do something where one could input information about lots of plants at one time, then the program would upload that information into the trade list format. It would save a lot of time.

I'm beginning to see how my husband considers his job to be 'creative'. I guess it really is. (He's a programmer.)