[sarduci]

Originally posted by Fishguru
The best way you might accomplish this, is to do this.....Instead of having people fighting over zoos from certain people.....

Names are picked at random by me, out of a hat and matched up. No picking is involved as to who want what from someone else.

make 2 lists, and the beginning person on the list would have to have a thermos. They send a frag of zoos determined by the agreement, to the next person on the list, once that person gets the zoos, they send their frag to the next person on the list.

I'm guessing there are about 30 to 50 people once this is said and done. To have 5 different lists of people, where any one person can bring an entire group of people to a complete stop if it takes them a week to get something out, would be a bad thing. If everyone trades at the same time, I'd say 90 to 95% will have gone smooth. The remaining 5% would take a few extra days, with a few of them taking a week. No single point of failure to the system with the current plan.

USPS Priority is fairly quick unless you ship coast to coast. so maybe could dividde the list into west coast east coast to start....as fast as this can go, you can get 3-4 rotations out of it on a good season.

With random trades outside your area you can get things that maybe are not in your area for you to buy or trade for. Besides, with sending a frag out to two different people, you get two of them back. Three to four rotations with my method nets 6 or 8 new frags a year, which is only being paced by me. If I wanted to, I could in fact pace this as a monthly thing and get 7 to 8 trades for 14 or 16 frags if I had a good core group of people that were prompt with everything.

We did a thermos trade a few years back, and had 4 thermos's in the mail at any given time, and must have had 4 or 5 pass my door that season. If you post the list roation on the webiste, they can get the persons info right from the site, and maybe have a spot to mark off wether they have something or not to trade at that time, some might only have 1-2 frags available, and after a rotation or 2, might not be able to stay in anymore.

The list is generated from the current list plus any new people. Existing members will rotate with existing members, new members will rotate with new memebers for that swap. That way people who show that they can play nice can play with each other, and people who may not play nice don't screw with the people who really want to do this.

(BTW, the list will shuffle after the first run through, as to not get same selection.)

No need to do that as the list is dynamicly generated via the Random Hat Method(tm). I put the names in a hat, and pull them out. =?)

Here is what it may look like on the website.....

Personally, nobody's personal info is getting posted anywhere. I'll have a list, and send an email to both people exchanging the contatcs. That way if someone need to get their info again, they can contact me or that person. If the info is wrong, their info was listed in the e-mail and can be seen by all three parties, myself, that person and the person they are trading with. This will help with mistakes and head off misunderstandings. Any one given person will receive two e-mails, one for each party they trade with.

This will also help me avoid "moochers" who don't trade. If someone gives one address then right before the trade happens they send you a completely different set of information, it's a bit shadey. Remember, people who don't play nice will be blacklisted and never be let back in.