Trade Lists...

Dave, I've told you personally how much I love your garden!

Since coming here, I've met some absolutely fantastic people, unfortunately, I've also been taken advantage of by several other members, costing me, time, money and plants to send "trades" to them, only to get a run around on why they've not sent my trade, or ignored completely.

Is there ANY way you can make the trade lists generate who has completed trades and who has had trades pending for some time?

Not a feedback system, just a check and balance that will keep some of us from falling into bad traders, and hopefully to deter bad traders from trying to initiate trades they never have intend to complete.

I personally, would like to just see something like

Melissa_Ohio's Trade Status

trades completed--12
trades in progress--10
"UNKNOWN"--0

If someone had several "unknowns" that would tell the rest of us to avoid them, and also might encourage them to get those unknowns disassociated from their names.

I'm not sure if it would be possible for you to pull from the trade journals... but it sure would be a useful tool, in my opinion.

Melissa, I think it would make it pretty hard to keep track of trades since allot of people don't use the trade tracker and Dave wouldn't really know who is trading what. Not really sure of a good answer here for you as I've pretty much have only had good trades with a few exceptions that we all run into. I would however always make sure that the person is a subscribed member that you're trading with and would look at some of their posts to kind of get a feel for people. I'm sorry you've had a bad experience :(

I'm just thinking it would be an incentive for folks to use the trade tracker.

The experienced people won't trade with people who are known to stiff people, but what about the new folks, like me?

Are we just supposed to expect to be "stiffed" from time to time? That is wrong!

of course we're not supposed to expect to get stiffed :)
No one wants that, that's for sure. Maybe if you're not sure about someone you could see if they've traded with anyone else in the past by looking at the posts in the plant and seed trading forums and maybe sending the person they traded with a private email. I really can't think of any good way to post people's names in the open like that. One never knows what the problem behind a bad trade was. This is just my opinion Melissa and I really know what you're trying to get at and I totally agree with you. No one wants to get stiffed, that's for sure. As for sending stuff for postage. I don't send anything until postage is received as I've had some people in the past want something and never send postage. That way I'm not out anything. Don't let my post to try to answer you upset you. I only posted in the sense to offer some words, not to counteract what you're saying. Maybe Dave will come along and offer a way of explaining the feasability to this problem and whether it's something that's doable (that word doesn't look right)

I am new too and I agree with you that there should be some sort of "downside" for the few out there that are cheating people. I have asked around about "bad traders" and the same names keep coming up. Yet I see these same people asking for plants and promising trades when they have people we all know and love stewing about being cheated and not saying anything about it. I believe it would be difficult if not impossible for Dave to police the trades, BUT we as the members of Dave's Garden can let others know of the "not so nice ones among us". Not by posting mean things but maybe by a STAR rating system. Something by your name that shows trade numbers. Or references..there are many ways good contributing members, that make Dave's so nice, can be recognized. Then someone can decide if they want to trade with that person. Times are tough moneywise for many, many people. There is not alot of money to throw around. Postage is expensive but we enjoy sharing with others- it makes us feel good. Let's keep that feeling by "sharing" with those who deserve it.

Just my two cents,

Davena

I would love to see a 'trader watchdog', but I wouldn't want DG to be subjected to the bad feeling that would come from it. I understand they take considerable grief over the Garden Watchdog.

Cheri'

Maybe we could have something like the Better Business Bureau has...people "subscribe" to the list that states ...avers....that they are honor bound by the rules and regulations of the Fair TRADE Practice.

If, after an accepted time, the trade is not completed as agreed upon, then one can post in that forum..."Hey, Roadrunner...I haven't received my trade".

It might have gone astray, but if it hasn't old Roadrunner is going to be embarrased and will ship ASAP! Then after she has, and it has been received...the other party shoud acknowledge receipt of the goods.

This way one could check to see how many times old Roadrunner is lax in her duty.

Just a thought.

Jo....who never trades as she has nothing but Gourd seeds to impart.

Sundry, I don't think having Trades completed, Trades pending and and unknown category would necesarily spawn bad feelings.

Since the particulars wouldn't be revealed, just that they had some trades that had somehow gone awry.... it would be an incentive to me, I know to complete that trade... But, if I was a person just out to get all the trades I could, without ever sending anything in return, soon enough, attempts at trading with someone would be futile, because no one would trade with that person anymore...

If something like that won't work, perhaps we need to do something like Jo has suggested, and in the thread where the trade begins, post, as we have with the co-ops whether everyone has paid or not.... '

List the people we're trading with, and then put a received by their name when the trade is complete.
That may be the only way we have to police our trades, and let others know about our good or bad fortune...

Melissa that's a good idea and that may very well work if we all stick to it. I know I'll probably get sidetracked a few times but listing all the people and whether postage has been received and if the trade was mailed would be a good idea. It's just whether everyone would do it or not. Would depend on each individual but I can try to give it a shot in mine ;)

I like that idea, Melissa. =) Would work well when a good trader starts the trade.

What about when a less-than-honest person starts the trade? We would be reliant on them to put 'finished' by our names. And we wouldn't be able to report on their end of the trade, except in the thread itself.

And there are a lot of quiet trades, that just happen in other threads (which is a very good thing). These would not be reported, but at least we could go look the person up in the trade forum, see if they have any 'unfinished' trades. Before we made those trades.

I'm willing to do it.

Cheri'

I guess I've been lucky in the 2 months I've been on DG and the 17 trades I've done. I've initiated most all of my trades and feel extremely lucky after reading Melissa's posts. Either way it doesn't deter me from continuing to trade freely---guess I would feel differently if I were in the shoes of the "stiffee".

I think that TRULY dishonest traders know that mentioning names is rather taboo, and that makes it much easier for them to get away with their deceptions for a longer period of time than they would if people felt comfortable speaking up about being ripped off.

It does seem like some sort of a feedback system would alleviate some of the problems. Perhaps a feedback forum could be placed on our member page, and when a trade is completed, trader and tradee could leave feedback for each other?

i must say that i'm against this idea. i think that it could very easily become a bigger problem than not receiving a trade from someone.
i think that part of why i pay for a subscription here is that dave and terry have a similar moral and ethical belief system, as mine, that they put to use here at dave's garden. as objective observers they can follow through with any problems that may arise from a person that is consistantly delinquent with trades. i think that we just have to trust that they will do the right thing, in the right time.

debi_z, you make some good points. It is not the unfortunate individual who has been prevented by 'life' from completeing a trade, and even from emailing about the delay, though. It is about someone who deliberately sets out to get seeds and plants with no intention of sending anything for the person's time and efforts. There have been some good examples of this, trades not completed, yet they are STILL posting looking for more trades, so neither life nor communication must be the difficulty. It really is awful behaviour, particularly when it happens to someone new to trading, and perhaps new to davesgarden; a new person does not have the huge number of successful trades behind them to say 'it happens' and forget it. Wish there were a good answer.

At the risk of Dave driving from Texas to Tennessee and binding my mouth, arms and legs with duct tape, I'd have to say it's intriguing to think about some ways the Tradetracker could be used that could/would encourage good trading practices.

The only problem with the current tradetracker is that I could (theoretically) create a bunch of fictitious trades, and mark them all as successfully completed. All that would be displayed publicly would be number of trades initiated, in progress/outstanding, and completed. A reader would have no way of knowing whether the trades were real or not.

Perhaps (thinking aloud here) each person could list their trades, and instead of just marking the trade as sent, the person on the receiving end could also access our list to mark it when it is received. Vice-versa when we receive our end of the trade, it actually links to the other person's tradetracker. The automatic email we can send when a trade is sent could contain a link and reminder for the receiver to access when the trade is received.

Of course, it would remain optional whether or not a trader chooses to use the Tradetracker, but peer pressure can work wonders in nudging us (e.g., some traders might indicate they will only trade with those who use Tradetracker, so they can see their "success rate" with trades.)

I do think it's an interesting idea. Whether or not it's technically feasible, or something Dave is interested in programmming, I dunno. :)

Terry....beats my idea all to heck!! Then again...you always have good ones...LOL Jo

I just had a really strange thought and I have been up all night, so if it is awful, pretend you did not see it. Maybe we could all personally keep a list on our page somehow of people we traded with, if they would like us to and vice versa. Then we have a whole list of people that got boxes from us (and/or sent us boxes). The reason you would have to have the other persons permission is so that others could write that person to see if you are legit or not? That way you are not bashing anyone, but it is easy to see if you fulfill trades. I have had tons of people ask me for advice on how much, or how big of a trade to send. The common answer is "What you would like to recieve". Anyway, do you think people would be too nitpicky or be honest and kind?

Without directly responding to the above posts, it might be necessary to have a way of responding to any negative feedback. Also, a 'pattern' will soon develop, Badseed, for example, will soon be clearly shown by many satisfied people to be a great trader, so if some nitpicker is displeased because a hosta had only 8 eyes and she sent 7, it will be obvious to anyone reading the feedback...

I am interested in something of this nature too, not only would it help the people on Dave`s, it would also filter from here into other web sites which are visited.Most people on here have lots of friends on other sites and would inform them also and eventually the bad person wouldn`t have anywhere to go and hopefully a new user name would be found out fast. It may help if the web masters {Dave} kept a black list and when someone registered,their name and address would appear, he would know not to accept it.

Has anyone ever done those game sites with Ladder tournaments? I never participated in a Ladder, but my broad understanding is that participants join a central website which tracks wins and losses in particular games. The participants must report the wins and losses. Only games which all players are Ladder members get reported. These games are played on different web sites, but are all reported to a central website. Each player is assigned a rating based on his wins and losses (and the rank of the person they won or lost to, and it gets more complicated from there ....)

What about something like that? It wouldn't even have to be a DG thing, if Dave doesn't want to deal with it. Like a plant/seed trader rating place thing.

This could be a really bad idea, I haven't thought it thru. Just throwing it out there for discussion.

Cheri'

The big problem with trading and some of the suggestions is honesty. We all like to think we're honest, most of us are honest and honour our trades but unscrupulous people will always find a way around it.

Like others here, I'm an Ebayer, there have been a couple of rare occasions when pressure has been put on me to leave good feedback or threats of reports and bad feedback if I didn't do whatever these people imagined I'd feel obliged to do (they have, of course, been woefully wrong).

I certainly wouldn't sell or buy at Ebay if I thought someone had access to my feedback!

I don't particuarly care whether or not someone sends 3 or 5 divisions, I do care that they send at all.

I don't feel that we need an elaborate feedback system, just one that tells us yes they sent it, or no they didn't.

That's what I'm thinking, yea or nay. complete or incomplete.

As to dishonest people giving faulty feedback, it seems to me that if the webmaster got that complaint about a person more than a few times, the webmaster would take steps. On the other hand, if the same person kept making that complaint about other people, it would reflect badly on that person. It's about good sense.

I Ebay ocasionally, as a buyer. And I check feedback before I do business. No one has ever left bad feed back on me, and I've never had cause to leave bad feedback on anyone. I do always leave feedback. It's so important to the sellers.

Anyway, dishonesty is what has brought us to this discussion in the first place.

Cheri'

This is a very interesting thread. If I could add my two cents. I've only participated in a handful of trades and so far they've been wonderful. I was wondering out of all the trades, how many go bad?

Elsie, very few go bad and a lot of us tend to only send out what we can afford to lose in case it does go bad. When we've traded with someone a time or two then begin to trade your more important stuff with the people you know will come through.

The dishonesty of someone who doesn't complete a trade intentionally is frustrating to lose the stock, time and money, so it can be difficult to let go when someone does it to you.

At the end of the day you can't really police something like this unless everyone participates in the scheme. I don't trade much at the moment but I've traded with quite a number of people and am still in contact with some of them from a long time ago, occasionally one will email out of the blue and tell me about a fantastic plant they've grown this year, would I like seed. I also know a couple of people from elsewhere I wouldn't trade with again but I certainly wouldn't make it public, they might think the same of me *G*

elsie, I would say not very many at all.

The problem is that you have no way of knowing who the one bad trader in a hundred is, until you get shafted. Then you find out that many others also got shafted by the same person. Some of us don't have a lot to trade, so a bad trade is very costly. To some of us, it's no big deal. Unfortunately, those with the least to trade are the most vulnerable, since newbies haven't had a chance to develop the friendships that allow the private exchange of that type of information.

I personally have not yet had a bad trade. (knocking on wood) If/when I do, I want to be able to prevent it from happening to others.

I would like to
1 - discourage dishonest traders from taking advantage of us in the first place.
2 - make the information available, when there is a bad trader amongst us.

I would like to do this in such a way that it has a positive spin on it. Not like a black list or anything negative, rather a system where all the traders get rated, good and bad.

And I don't want to get too deep into it, just completed or not completed. Everything else is too subjective. I could send out 5 basically identical plants to 5 different people, and there will be one who is thrilled to death with the plant, and one that thinks it's skimpy, and the others are satisfied. Ya know?

That's my take, anyway.

Cheri'

I agree. Complete/Not Complete is a possible way to handle the issue. This would take sometime to organize for Dave, but it would be a nice added feature.

I think the problem can be solved by having a separate forum for trade problems. They can either be resolved in the forum or not. If this was done in a non accusatory way I think it would be quite useful. If a trade was not completed due to extraordinary circumstances the trader could explain and trade later. Life happens. Just my two cents.

Alot of this is taken care of in Mail CAll. People post there when they get things from other members....as a courtsey thank you. You might get a hint of "good trades" there. JMHO Jo

The idea of "rating" traders is certainly not new - it's probably been around as long as people have traded items, sometimes resulting in receiving the proverbial "pig in a poke."

Rating systems for plant/seed traders have been discussed at DG before, and usually the consensus is that while getting burned is bad, a rating system would only lead to more hard feelings than it's worth.

Which is why I suggested what I did - it's not a rating, per se but a means by which the person on the other end of your trades can help you do two things:

a) confirm that your items arrived at their destination; and
b) establish a good reputation (based on the fact the items were received)

Trades that go astray DO happen every now and then. But it would be fairly easy to infer from the number of "M-I-A" trades when someone is having more than a simple run of bad luck with the postal delivery system.

The condition of the plant or item is is a whole 'nother matter, and if you think rating/feedback systems sound great, I'd recommend checking out eBay - they have an entire FORUM dedicated to people griping about the inequity of the rating system. Ugh.

Terry, I'm feeling very dense. How would I know if someone who says they're going to send me a plant has MIA trades?

I've developed my own little system, if it works, not sure. How effective it will be, not sure, but I gave it a shot. I listed all of my trades that I have going right now in the Seed trading forum as a list and have everyone's name and when I mailed (if waiting for postage) and hope that people will let me know and be honest (which I don't doubt) when they get it :)

flowox, I have noticed your list and it is very good thinking. I have a lot of people I am doing trades with ( about 15) or SASE and this is a very good way to remind people to send that postage so a trade can move on.

Davena (one of the ones on Flowox postage list) :-)

elsie, a summary of our trades would have to become viewable by others. It wouldn't include the particulars of each trade, but a tally - number of trades, number of completed trades (as indicated by the recipient the trade was received) and the difference would be outstanding trades.

The one downside would be that very active traders might have dozens of trades "in the works", so some type of dating might be necessary so a reader could see how many trades have been outstanding for quite a while.

elsie, the point is right now you don't.

That's what we are trying to find a solution to.

=)
Cheri'

So, then, does this rating program mean that new traders, or those who don't trade much, look like bad people? I really don't need people saying through emails to each other "that AngelSong is a bad trader, look at how small her feedback is." I've been here a while, and just don't trade much. If I get to a point when I want to trade, it could be nearly impossible to find someone that will trade with me. I think this is a lot of hype and finger-pointing over one or two trades gone bad. If I were to start a trade, then have some horrible family or personal disaster, I'd hate to see what some of you would say about me, and my "bad trading".

How's about if we all behave according to the "Christ-like" principles of this webforum, and give freely, expecting nothing in return? For those of us among the Christian faith, I certainly don't think Jesus is sitting in heaven waiting for "His end of the trade He made with us." He gave freely, remember?

My opinion, as it has always been, regarding a "trader rating system".

Terry, please forgive me, I was being dense. I'm cleaning and it takes a lot out of me. LOL I thought you meant right now I could see who has MIA trades.

Angelsong, a new person wouldn't look like a bad person, as more than likely when they posted the request for trade, we'd know they were new.

A new person would only look like a bad person if a couple of months pass, and all of their trades are still pending.

I don't advocate a feedback forum, I'm simply advocating a complete/incomplete column, and Terry, I believe suggested a date be added.

No one will look bad except for those people who don't trade well with others.

I don't believe there is a single person among us, if someone approached and said, I have nothing to trade, and no money for postage, but I would love to have some of your (whatever) would refuse to send that person something.

Asking me to send you something, when I know you have nothing to trade in return is an entirely different than someone promising to send something, and then not, and continuing to do it to other people.

Angelsong, I don't think with Terry's suggestion anyone would look bad unless they had a bunch of MIA trades. Someone who had no trades wouldn't have any Incomplete.

Giving is good, and most all of us do that. Trading is different, it's trading. It's dishonest to make a bargain and arbitrarily break it.

Not talking about life happens stuff, just dishonesty. There is a huge difference.

Cheri'

Ultimately the decision is Dave's to make, and he may well nix the whole thing because it does tend to stir up strong feelings, both for and against. I would say to the person with one trade: if that single trade was received without incident, I would trade with them just as readily as someone who has a track record as long as my arm. Since you can also find out easily how long someone has been a member, a newer member isn't necessarily penalized by their newness. I'd be willing to bet most people here will continue to give a new trader the benefit of the doubt, until they prove themselves to be up to no good.

For those who have been burned by some bad trades, and they see the trader continuing to trade with others, it can be frustrating. If there's an easy, non-accusatory, and fair way to make it harder for "bad" traders to continue their practices, then it's worth exploring.

I won't debate religion here, but before we start berating each other for not having a Christ-like attitude, I will say there's a pretty good example of Jesus' attitude toward cheaters in Mark Chapter 11.