Frequently Asked Questions

Man, you should see my inbox....

So here's the problem: there are a lot of people who are new to trading, and simply do not know how to get started. They need an actual HOWTO-type page that will tell them everything that they need in order to get started trading, how to trade, what to expect, what to give, how much postage, etc, etc, etc.

So, I'm willing to write the bulk of this, but I think it would be a better FAQ if everybody contributed. I figure we need to divide it into sections (chapters, if you will). Each section addresses a particular issue (one section for Postage, one for how to seperate seeds, one section on how to package the seeds into packets and into the envelope).

Who's willing to help? I'll start by making a skeleton of this FAQ and we can start putting content into it.

Dave

Dave - Why not just link people to the FAQ on the gardenweb seed exchange? Wouldn't that be easier? After all isn't this just a place to maintain your seed list? I know traders will trade among themselves here but the bulk of trading will still go on through GW...won't it? Maybe you could put a link directly to the GW. FAQ right on your (DAVE'S GARDEN) FAQ page.

Regardless if you still would like to make a page for here I'll give a hand. Tell me what you want me to take care of and I'll get started.

Why not just link people to the FAQ on the gardenweb seed exchange? Excellent idea, and that should go into a "For More Information.." section of the FAQ.

But why even write an FAQ? The reason why I think we should make our own FAQ is the same reason that I created this site in the first place.

I think that GardenWeb could be doing a lot of extra things for their users. I think it was gardenweb's place to create a really nice seedlist and trade-list for their users to enjoy. Instead they got a very bare-bones seedlist feature.

I wanted more for myself, so I wrote some programs on my computer here, and set myself up with some lists. Then I wrote more programs to allow myself to keep up with all the people who I was trading with. Eventually, I had a really nice website that only I was able to use. So, I opened it up and made it so that anyone who wanted to can come in, create their account, and have the same features that I enjoy.

August 17th was the day I opened the site to the world. In the two months since then, we have had 40,000 pageviews, 5,000 visitors, and 115 signed-up members. I must be doing something right.

The more I spend in the gardening community, the more I see what little is being done for my fellow gardeners. This is the age of information, and by bringing gardeners together some really amazing (and fun!) things can be accomplished. I think it could truly make our gardening experience more efficient and more fun.

Hence the work I put into this site. It's my contribution to the community, if you will.

But, back to the FAQ. I see the FAQ benefitting us in two ways:

1. It will give us a FAQ, obviously. The FAQ will be extremely complete, since we'll have lots of people looking at it and actually contributing directly to it.

2. Ulterior motive: We've been talking about putting together a database of common plants, complete with germination info, pictures, plant care, etc. Putting this together is a LOT OF WORK on my side. It requires hours of planning and programming to put something like this together. Writing the software to drive this FAQ would be the beginning point of something larger - a membership-created database of plants. The FAQ could easily be extended to become much more than just a plain FAQ - it could become a large book on gardening.

Well, I didn't mean to write a book here. As you can see, I care deeply about the gardening community (I'm a passionate activist I guess) and want to give my 110% to that community.

Best,
Dave

Dave we can all see the hard work you've put into this site and I can't even express how we all appreciate it! You obviously know what your doing ... so let's do it! I'm sure you'll have other volunteers out there. I'm a computer moron but I'd be glad to write up some of the text for you -as long as I can take my time. I'm a slow typer too!

Actually, I already did. ;-) I spent the past 5 hours writing a new engine to drive this FAQ.

It's not really ready for prime-time, yet it is quite far along. I spent a lot of time planning it out, and quite a bit of time actually coding it.

So, go here: FAQ and see what you think. There is not much content there yet, obviously, since most of the work I did today was writing the programs that would allow people to edit this stuff.

It's a good start on the content, though. I tried to add chapters that I thought would make sense to have at first. Now I can simply go in and edit these chapters through my web-based programs.

If anybody sees any section that they'd like to write, let me know and I'll give you the appropriate access to change it, along with instructions. I've tried to make this really easy to edit, but the process will definitely need streamlining as we go along.

Dave

That looks great Dave. You can count on me for how to package your seeds....or how to mail them.

I, for one am impressed, Dave! Great job on the FAQ page! As far as having a FAQ page...I think it's a great idea because this is a separate website from Garden Web, and although I first came here because someone told me I could store my list here, I'm also doing my trading here as well as Garden Web...and I think that's what most people will do! I don't think most people will only use this website just to list their seeds, so they need a FAQ page here too. I'm willing to do what I can to help you out...just let me know if you need me for something! I do have ONE suggestion tho.....I think you should also create a page for gardening links, so people like me who have a gardening website can list it there, or if we find a great gardening website somewhere that can be listed too. I know when I'm looking up anything to do with gardening, it's really a lot of work finding those good websites...so you could save people the trouble of all that searching! And if you don't want people to be able to list the links themselves, you could have them send the link directly to you (or me, if you'd like me to be in charge of that part of it!), so the link could be approved before it would be listed here. What do you think, Dave?

Poppysue, I setup the faq to give you permissions to edit the sections you mentioned. You are the first guinea pig to try to edit the FAQ. Let's see how this works. Go to this page:

EditFAQ

Click until you get to the section that you wanted to edit. You should be given an option to actual edit it. Type in whatever you want to type in there, and it should work. Please let me know how it goes. This FAQ is the staging ground for something much bigger, and it will definitely need some fine tuning!

Does anybody else want to edit a different part of the FAQ?

Best,
Dave