"joe" wrote in message
...
On 5/5/04 12:16 PM, "Benign Vanilla"
wrote:

A few weeks back somebody suggest an on-line plant swap system would be
a
great thing to have.

That was me!

I thought is was but was not sure. I really like the idea, and want to get
it implemented soon.

snip

Would you have ads automatically go away after a given period say 5 days,
or
would the poster be responsible for that. I guess the issue is you don't
want some advertising something they no longer have.

Each poster of either "a want" or "a have" ad will be able to choose an
expiration date. I'll probably default the date to 30 days. Once a swap has
taken place, and the products is gone, it would be up to the poster to close
the ad, if it is before the expiration date.

I was wondering about the implications of sending plants like water
hyacinth
to places where it's illegal. Would the site make that connection or would
the purchaser/seller just be responsible for knowing that.

The swap service will be nothing more then a coffee shop providing space for
porgs to trade. It will be up to the swappers to determine the costs, and
legality of what they are transporting. We plan to have notices on this, and
make it part of the sign up process. We'll also have links to some of the
government lists to assist.

As to the spam, could a purchaser enter his info in a text screen and your
database would generate an actual email to the seller rather than a link.

snip

This is what I was thinking of as well. We won't publish emails, but we'll
store them. Then a responder can click a link on the ad, and we'll send an
email to the poster, including the responders email. Then the transaction
can take place off-line. We'll only send the initial email.

BV.