Swapping on MeFi August 22, 2006 10:21 PM   Subscribe

Feature request: I want swap.metafilter.com. I really want to unload my junk on my fellow MeFites, and buy their junk off them. Please, Matt? Craigslist and eBay don't require a 5-spot to join, unlike MeFi, so that cuts down dramatically on the skeezy lowlife scammer factor. Another advantage is that this place is a real community and people care about their reputations. The community self-policing is strong, and MeFi's full of interesting people with (most likely) compelling junk they want to get rid of. One man's junk is another man's treasure.

Also, people here are really creative. Wouldn't it be cool if Miguel could sell his books here, for instance? Or Steven Den Beste could trade anime with other otaku. MeFites who are painters could sell their paintings. Sculpture. And so on.
posted by evariste to Feature Requests at 10:21 PM (59 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

I suggested this a year or two ago. People seemed to dig it but it was pre-Ask and other features and didn't seem implementable. Hopefully Matt's been thinking about it, though. I'd love it.
posted by dobbs at 10:23 PM on August 22, 2006


Swap Metafilter would be to Craigslist & eBay as Ask MetaFilter is to Yahoo! Answers. A vastly higher-quality, nicer place to be.
posted by evariste at 10:26 PM on August 22, 2006


dobbs-I suggested this a year or two ago.

Nothing new under the sun, is there? :-)
posted by evariste at 10:31 PM on August 22, 2006


All online communities and utilities should be segment-able and fully APIed.
posted by scarabic at 10:32 PM on August 22, 2006


evariste posted "One man's junk is another man's treasure."

Somebody's going to take that too literally.
posted by orthogonality at 10:38 PM on August 22, 2006


To recap, you want Swap.MetaFilter so people can sell their books, paintings, and sculptures.
posted by cribcage at 10:42 PM on August 22, 2006


Oh man... this would be so very useful!

* digs around in jar to find puppy-dog-eyes *

* looks at Matt with puppy-dog-eyes *
posted by silusGROK at 10:48 PM on August 22, 2006


I really like this idea. Members get to sell stuff to each other and matt gets a cut of every sale. I'd use it.
posted by bob sarabia at 10:50 PM on August 22, 2006


cribcage-my original name for it (in a different thread) was fleamarket.metafilter.com, but I went with Swap cos it's catchier. Barter is hard, though-there's a reason currency was invented. I just like the catchy name, and I think people will get it. In any case, I don't actually care what it's named as long as we get the functionality.
posted by evariste at 11:02 PM on August 22, 2006


Well it'd be a nightmare to administrate. I doubt mathowie could ever hope to do the one-man-ebay thing. My initial impression is that it'd all end tears. Instead of taking a cut of transactions, it might make sense for mathowie just to offer a flat listing fee. It might even make more sense to remove money from the equation altogether and offer a membership fee.

But then I don't get the desire to own used junk. And do people really have that much junk? Do people really want to buy junk? Well, no, I know the answers to those questions. God bless America, the engine of the free market, defender of the free world.
posted by nixerman at 11:03 PM on August 22, 2006


Craigslist and eBay don't require a 5-spot to join, unlike MeFi, so that cuts down dramatically on the skeezy lowlife scammer factor

I don't really think $5 is going to cut down on the skeezy spammer factor.
posted by delmoi at 11:09 PM on August 22, 2006


Flat fee definitely makes more sense than a %, nixerman. I'm thinking $1 per listing or maybe per transaction. It would definitely be a bit of a nightmare to administrate, but MeFi already is, and it's already Matt's full-time living IIRC. Plus, it's not like it's open to the whole internet, you have to pay 5 bucks even to join. The whole aaronxtz (I don't remember how to spell it) thing made an impression on me, I think this would work well with the group of people here.

Another idea: people could even sell services. orthogonality could write websites and scripts for people, for instance, or AmbroseChapel could pay a bounty for a ColdFusion programmer to look at the AskMe feed since it bugs him so much (assuming Matt would be down with it).
posted by evariste at 11:11 PM on August 22, 2006


delmoi-I don't really think $5 is going to cut down on the skeezy spammer factor.

Scammer with a C. Small-time crooks like "aaronxtz". In any case, when the pool of suckers is a lot bigger and the enforcement is a lot feebler, as on CL and eBay, why would they come here?

One idea would be for someone to have to be a member for a certain period of time, and vouched for by two other members, to be able to list or buy items on Swap. That way people aren't joining just for Swap (which I know has been a problem with Ask, for instance, people joining just to ask questions and never becoming part of the community), but as a natural outgrowth of the growth of the MeFi octopus.
posted by evariste at 11:14 PM on August 22, 2006


"A natural outgrowth of the growth"-yuck. I'm a bad writer, but that was especially bad.
posted by evariste at 11:15 PM on August 22, 2006


I don't sell any anime. I want to keep the good stuff, and I'd feel guilty foisting the bad stuff off on anyone else.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:15 PM on August 22, 2006


All right, Steven, you could sell your CDMA cellphone. I dunno! I'm saying this thing has legs, specifics aside :-)
posted by evariste at 11:22 PM on August 22, 2006


I'm wondering how you would actually implement this. If you did it like the rest of the site, anyone could read the ads and reply (if a phone number or email address was included) without needing to register. So it wouldn't necessarily filter out the random scammers and non-members if done that way.

You could instead say "reply to the email in my profile" and then only members would be able to see it. But Joe Scammer could just register one Mefi account and then contact the sellers using an unlimited supply of email addresses, without any repurcussions and without anyone being able to link them to their actual user name. Heck, someone could reply and pretend to be a well known user and then scam people using that identity. So using email is out.

This means that all interaction of the buyer/seller would have to be done through the site. I'm guessing that not every person would want their buyer/seller correspondance so there would have to be some kind of personall messaging system implemented.

And then part of the desire is to let the community police itself, so you'd need some way of a seller ratting out a deadbeat buyer (and vice versa) or sending praise to a prompt buyer, and so on. If it was all private communications it wouldn't work either, so you'd need to implement some kind of public forum or feedback system like ebay has.

My point here is that it could be a lot more work that you'd think at first, it certainly doesn't fit in the existing mold of Metafilter / Ask Metafilter / Metafilter Music, where essentially everything is public to everyone and you use email if you want to say something to the person directly.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:34 PM on August 22, 2006


that should have been "not every person would want their buyer/seller correspondance to be public so there..."
posted by Rhomboid at 11:35 PM on August 22, 2006


This comes up *after* I give the classic, mint Michael Jackson action figure and the bag of unamerican.com buttons to Salvation Army?
posted by Gucky at 12:13 AM on August 23, 2006


Rhomboid-maybe Matt could integrate some kind of Google Checkout thing.
posted by evariste at 12:15 AM on August 23, 2006


How about taking photos of the junk, putting those on a website with prices next to them and a paypal linky and then post it at projects.

Maybe I misread the future possibilities but my radar senses that this won't have a level of input that justifies a new subsection of Metafilter.
posted by peacay at 1:12 AM on August 23, 2006


Why does Matt have to reinvent the wheel, when there's a perfectly good solution elsewhere on the net? I mean, I can see how you guys are loathe to click away from the green, blue, black and grey, but this is getting ridiculous.
posted by crunchland at 2:44 AM on August 23, 2006


eh, this sounds really sticky. say you wanted to sell something worth more than moldy old books, or burned CDs... like a laptop or a scooter... shit goes sour then you have angry assholes throwing around words like "lawsuit" and "lawyer".

I can't imagine the head ache would out weight the small benefit it would provide matt.

perhaps if there was a $20 value limit?
posted by Tryptophan-5ht at 3:03 AM on August 23, 2006


But, Tryptophan-5ht, what price can you put on freedom?

(I'll trade it for an Iain Banks book, email in profile.)
posted by Jimbob at 3:14 AM on August 23, 2006


All the other aspects of MeFi have a clear use for comments. I don't see this for swaps.
posted by edd at 3:31 AM on August 23, 2006


This idea I'm "meh" about, but I'd love to see jobs.metafilter.com at some point.
posted by blag at 4:01 AM on August 23, 2006




While not a bad idea, keep in mind that when you inject money or sex into a community, you're playing with dynamite. For the moment, everyone deals with each other based on rep earned via posting. Do you REALLY want to see what happens when we start seeing each others buying, selling habits and paying for them?

For instance: Imagine if we had dating.metafilter, where members could check each other for serioius or not so serious relationships. AskMe would freaking EXPLODE.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:36 AM on August 23, 2006


Why, if I had something to sell, would I come to a place with a small, intelligent group of users when I have a vast marketplace of idiots at my disposal on eBay? Stuff would be less likely to sell, and would go for a lower price. And, as others have said, it would be a collosal amount of work for mathowie and likely a legal minefield too.

The services side of thing is maybe more interesting - jobs.metafilter.com with listings for positions and a place for freelancers to put their resumés &c. might be good. (Though, given the exchange rate, probably not much good for me...)
posted by jack_mo at 4:39 AM on August 23, 2006


I think a swap feature would work better in areas that freecycle already works pretty well in -- well-populated urban areas. It's still going to be pretty unuseful out in the boonies. I can't really see the MeFi model extending in any useful way there.

blag: jobs is definitely in the works.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:41 AM on August 23, 2006


This isn't a very good idea. There aren't enough members here to make it feasible. You may get a few mates buying crocheted scarfs off each other or swapping mixtapes as a token gesture but I doubt it could ever compete with eBay (where I have never been scammed or sleazed on) when it comes to the serious sale of art/homemade goods. I think regular organised swaps via Metatalk is about the right level for this kind of activity.
posted by fire&wings at 4:49 AM on August 23, 2006


To Whom it May Concern:

I am writing in complaint of the MetaFilter trading service, which I recently participated in. As part of a negotiated agreement, I offered to ship out a vintage Power Macintosh in exchange for a 1996 Toyota Supra. Having sent the computer out, as agreed, and waiting over three weeks for my expected item, I received instead an inkjet-printed image of an elephant embedded in a crude cardboard frame.

Out of good taste, I shall refrain to describe in detail what act the elephant was performing; suffice it to say, however, I am neither amused nor impressed.

posted by Smart Dalek at 4:53 AM on August 23, 2006 [5 favorites]


I really want to unload my junk on my fellow MeFites, and buy their junk off them.

Great, I'm hanging out with a buncha junkies.
posted by jonmc at 5:38 AM on August 23, 2006


jess: sweet. thanks for letting us know.
posted by blag at 5:51 AM on August 23, 2006


evariste writes "orthogonality could write websites and scripts for people,"


Funnily enough, I just completed a small SQL optimization project, for pay, for a fellow mefite. But that was after I answered his askMefi question about the problem, and he in turn asked me to email him about my hourly rates.

Of course, any mefite can ask for me for unpaid help in askmefi or for paid help via email. People have even "paged" me for (unpaid) technical advice by posting "orthogonality please email me" posts in metachat. But out of fear of appearing mercenary ("I'll answer your question for cash") I haven't usually explicitly mentioned that people can hire me if they need more than the quick answer askMefi can provide. And I've perhaps made it difficult by having a fake email address.

But basically, I enjoy technical questions and I enjoy helping people with them, so sure, if you want something that goes beyond what askmefi provides, I'm happy to consult on an hourly or firm-fixed-price basis.
posted by orthogonality at 6:23 AM on August 23, 2006


Posting History:
MetaFilter: no posts and 15 comments
MetaTalk: no posts and 4 comments
Ask MeFi: no questions and 14 answers
MeFi Swap: 5 A+++ WLD BUY FROM AGAIN, ITEM IN EXELENT CONDITION and 3 PAID PROMPLY, NO PROBS and 1 PAID $1500 FOR LAPTOP, RECEIVED BOX OF DAMP SMELLY ROCKS AND MYSTERY 'FLUID' and one I'll bid on you til there's nothing left but crumbs! Then I'll bid on the crumbs
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:38 AM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


I am neither amused nor impressed.

You forgot to say that you're pissed and slightly baffled.
posted by desuetude at 6:43 AM on August 23, 2006


wifeswap.metafilter.com
posted by atrazine at 6:51 AM on August 23, 2006


The Something Awful forum has a fairly good sales board, which is members only. There's no administration cut or anything. It's just another forum.

Some considerations from what I've seen over there:
  • Bad buyers/sellers have to be punished somehow.
  • The $5 membership fee is a meaningless barrier to entry if you're selling anything valuable.
  • Do you allow preorders, where people pay and then the goods are manufactured, etc.? Even with the best intentions, this usually goes badly, as you can see in the MeFi Music mix CD.
  • Companies selling can really ruin the community feel.
  • Both buyers and sellers expect better prices, because it's a "community". Someone is going to be disappointed there.
  • Lots more people want to unload junk than want to buy it.
posted by smackfu at 6:57 AM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


Now a wifeswap is something I could, er, get behind.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:23 AM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


This is something I'd like to do someday (I'm almost done with jobs.metafilter.com), but one thing holding me back from doing this is figuring out how to organize it. If it's people selling anything, having one stream of for sale items would probably be too much and require categories and a taxonomy and the next thing I know I'm going to have to duplicate ebay.

But then again, if it was a buck or two to list an item, that might cut things down to a low total per day but that'd still be a page with say 25 things for sale per day that could be anything from an guitar to a toaster.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 7:51 AM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


jobs.metafilter.com? Let me be the first to ask, "What color will it be?"
posted by boo_radley at 8:25 AM on August 23, 2006


Small-time crooks like "aaronxtz".

I've already explained this to you -- that monkey was alive when I put it in the box and dropped it off at FedEx.
posted by aaronetc at 8:55 AM on August 23, 2006


"What color will it be?"

The color of money of course ... oh wait ... okay how about the color of cubicles ... okay hold on ... yellow?
posted by geoff. at 9:23 AM on August 23, 2006


the color of hyperlinks.
posted by sonofsamiam at 9:26 AM on August 23, 2006


instead of targeting it for goods- or wife-swapping or such, why not just have a general-purpose bulletin board where members could put up all kinds of announcements that don't belong elsewhere here? so i could post if i have something to sell or want to buy...somebody else could post if their band is playing somewhere this weekend...someone could give a heads-up on cool jobs available, or announce their job skills...people could self-link! kind of like ask metafilter (with tags and such), but instead more like 'hey metafilter, guess what...'...and you could call it HeyMeta...hey.metafilter.com
posted by troybob at 9:53 AM on August 23, 2006 [2 favorites]


but keep it members only, of course, to keep out the riff-raff...
posted by troybob at 9:54 AM on August 23, 2006


The color of faded dreams.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:54 AM on August 23, 2006


a general-purpose bulletin board where members could put up all kinds of announcements that don't belong elsewhere here?

MetaChat
posted by mattbucher at 10:01 AM on August 23, 2006


Nothing new under the sun, is there? :-)

No, but I found a ballpoint pen under the laser printer.
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 10:03 AM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


oh, so that's what metachat is! cool...sorry for my ignorance here...was just thinking something more generalized wrt goods/jobs/etc would be more manageable...
posted by troybob at 10:21 AM on August 23, 2006


It'd work if it was just a site for swapping stuff. That thing for that thing, currency strictly banned.
posted by reklaw at 11:11 AM on August 23, 2006


nothing agitates mechazens like the perception that they're mefi's dumping grounds.
posted by boo_radley at 12:26 PM on August 23, 2006


One idea would be for someone to have to be a member for a certain period of time, and vouched for by two other members, to be able to list or buy items on Swap. - evariste

So then the barrier for entry is 15 dollars instead of 5 dollars.
posted by raedyn at 12:49 PM on August 23, 2006


nothing agitates mechazens like the perception that they're mefi's dumping grounds.

Now, see, I would have bet that they'd get more agitated being called "mechazens."
posted by crunchland at 12:57 PM on August 23, 2006


True. I much prefer "Mechanoids."
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:04 PM on August 23, 2006


Godzilla : Mechagodzilla :: Mechanoids :


posted by sonofsamiam at 1:24 PM on August 23, 2006


The only people who complain, crunchland, are the mechalite. It's too mechaplebian for them.
posted by boo_radley at 4:42 PM on August 23, 2006


Now, see, I would have bet that they'd get more agitated being called "mechazens."

No. Most of us prefer that name.

Nothing agitates mechazens like the perception that they're mefi's dumping grounds.

Correct.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:13 PM on August 23, 2006 [1 favorite]


the green, blue, black and grey,

Is someone a good seamstress? Or 3d-modeler? I feel a flag coming on...
posted by baylink at 9:14 AM on August 24, 2006


« Older Chicago Meetup Followup   |   Question about a deleted AskMe Newer »

You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments