Plant Swapping

[jimbooo]

how about this

sub forum link to plant swop in the planted pinned thread section.

on opening you see the following

- USA
- Canada
- UK
- Europe

when you enter one of these you get a further breakdown for the USA and Canada in regions, UK can be wide open as postage doesn't change and there are fewer european (Uk excluded) members on here so a general europe page should suffice as long as the poster details their location.

you then add your offer in the relevant section.

on the abuse front -

it will be quite easy to establish who's just in it for the freebies. i recognise 90% of the members in the planted section and would notice if someone new was just posting in the freebies section. All you have to do is click the member name, then "topics by member". If they have 2 or 3 "help me i've got an algae farm" or "new to planted tanks please help" type threads you know theyre serious about the hobby. if they have no other posts apart from plant swop ones you know theyre just abusing it. finally if someone has written those threads just to gain credibility then they deserve to get away with it for their efforts in the first place lol. i dont think it will be a big problem.

with a little research and common sence it will be easy to tell who the abusers are.

at the end of the day if you dont trust someone dont send them any plants. your not under any contract to supply them or anything.

 

[George Farmer]

I think we need to keep it simple.

Here's my initial thoughts.

One open pinned thread.

Members who have plants they want to sell/give away/exchange etc. post their relavant info i.e.

Location,
Plant species,
Quantity,
any other relevant info i.e. the plant is very demanding, cost etc.

It's then up to the potential recipient to PM the plant owner for details of postage etc. The plant owner can decide at their own discretion who can have the plants - all in private to prevent any potential embarassment. Once the "deal" has been done the original poster can delete their thread.

How does that sound or am I missing something?

 

[jimbooo]

sounds fine to me but i would suggest that the sender must edit the topic heading to "closed" or " all gone" or something to save a backlog of lots of pm's on out of date offers. you or LL could just delete the old threads as and when you like

i take it if the sender wanted to post a pic of the plant/plants in question they could just attach it to the thread. along with the other relevant info.

 

[lovell_89]

What if we say that the person has to have made so many post and been a member for a certain amount of time. Say 100 posts and a member for 3 months which i realise that excludes me as i've only made 75 posts but i don't say alot, buti have been a member since july last year. just my thoughts, what do you guys think?

 

[jimbooo]

could do but to be honest i recognise you and if you were to reply to an offer i made i would be happy to send you stuff.

good idea but you'd be cutting out quite a few occasional members who are still genuine like yourself.

 

[Jen]

Putting those kinds of rules never really works. If someone has been a member for 3 months, but only has 20 posts might just flood the forum with one word posts to get their count up.

Not to seem rude or anything, but I am more than likely to send stuff to someone I have seen fairly active in the plant section, and have noticed that they either a- have a good grasp on the understanding of plants needs, or b- have a decent looking tank as it is, and is looking to branch out to new plants. If I'm spending my money on a stamp and envelope, then I want to know that the plants are going to survive more than a week.

 

[Waterloo Kid]

Definitely going to need a way of identifying old posts and removing them I still think a sub forum (like in the catfish forum) would be better as a single thread can and will become confusing. Should make the deletion of old posts easier for the mod team too. Anything with Finished as a subtitle can be removed, no questions asked.

WK

 

[Jen]

I don't know what the plan is (if any), but it would be nice if it were an offer only forum. I can't stand the posts from mostly new member that read 'hi I want some free plants', 'please mail me free plants', 'your tank looks great, I want some plants if you have extra'. They bug the stink out of me. I can see the thread getting littered with those.

 

[pseud]

Yeah, I HATE the posts begging for free stuff too. I don't mind it if people who are experience plant keepers or whatever post 'hey, does anybody have some spare ________ they can help me out with, wanna give it a try', but whne it comes from new members, it just blows.

Anyway... I think the plant swap/sell forum would be a great idea. Especially for those in the UK. There's a lot of uk members here, and I sometimes feel like they get left out of the plant trade thing because most forums cater for the american public.

 

[scott67892002]

Yeah, I HATE the posts begging for free stuff too. I don't mind it if people who are experience plant keepers or whatever post 'hey, does anybody have some spare ________ they can help me out with, wanna give it a try', but whne it comes from new members, it just blows.

Anyway... I think the plant swap/sell forum would be a great idea. Especially for those in the UK. There's a lot of uk members here, and I sometimes feel like they get left out of the plant trade thing because most forums cater for the american public.

i know exacly what you mean but wouldn't you say the someone who has only just started could do with the off cuts to find there feet before they go spending loads of money!!?

i also think there should be some kind of control on who has what but this forum being as varied as it is it would be hard i thought maybe using the part in peoples profiles that says where they've spent the most time but again this would discriminate against plant noobs!!

 

[Jen]

i know exacly what you mean but wouldn't you say the someone who has only just started could do with the off cuts to find there feet before they go spending loads of money!!?

For me, it's not the fact that they are asking... it's how they do it. If you are going to ask people for a freebie, you can do it politely. I'm big on manners, so please and thank you go a long way. Instead of 'send me free plants' how about 'If you have any extras, I would appreciate if I might be able to have a few when you do some maintenance...' I know plants can be expensive, but begging for freebies won't get you anywhere in my books. And I think it's much more appropriate to ask that sort of thing in a PM, not on someones tread. I don't know. That's just me.

 

[IovaykInD]

I think one way of helping mods delete posts easily is by adding a certain code that other people would use. Like if the deal is done, and you want the post to be deleted, change the topic title to something like "Finished Please Close". That way, the mod can just search for Finished Please Close, and everything that comes up, they can just delete it.

With this, you can have a subforum and not just an open topic. I don't think that the open topic idea will work because it will be very unorderley. It will also be harder for people to find their region, and certain plants that they want. If it was all in one topic, then searching wouldn't help at all.

Isaac

 

[ksam]

I've posted buckets full of plants to different people, it just breaks my heart to throw plants away I'd much rather see them going to another person so they can enjoy them too

I've also received a few plants from people, which I've then grown on and passed onto even more people so defintely a good idea to have a swap section

 

[scott67892002]

agreed with jen manners do go a long way. OK so all agreed on no plants to inpolite people also agree with IovaykInD one open pinned topic is going to be far to clutered!

 

[Jen]

Someone mentioned the catfish forum and its sub forums... that would be perfect. A plant swap forum in the Aquarium section, then sub sectioned into the regions... Then you know exactly where to go.