I assume that many of us have accounts in other swap websites, and we do swaps through those other websites. We can also do in-hand swaps not related to any site.
In these external swaps we do not benefit from the advantages of the swap process in Numista:
- we see if an item was included in another swap,
- we know the total weight of our items to swap (important for the shipping price),
- we can export the swap to a file at any time,
- we can update our collection on the swap page when it is finished…
These advantages are not enjoyed in our external swaps:
- we do not know if we include same item in other swaps (we need to search in all our unfinished swaps),
- we do not know the total weight of out items (we need to look for the weight of each item on Numista; or use a scales if we have one, but we have our items for swap in storage and we need to take them out to weight them),
- we need write our swap in a file,
- we need to search in Numista for each new item obtained, and each item sent, for update our collection when the swap is finished…
Numista allow to manage a swap between two Numista members, but… if we could use the swap interface for manage a swap between a Numista member and an external member? I do not know if the database structure for saving swaps will support this with minor changes.
Things to adapt it:
- “Swap monitor” page:
Now display the list of swaps between members.
Here can added a “Create an external swap” link, which opens a new page requesting the name of our external swap partner, then we click the “Create” button and the page opens with the empty swap.
The “Swap monitor” page will display swaps between members and external swaps, with same style (perhaps with a mark that distinguishes them). - The swap page (Swap #N with MEMBER):
Similar to an internal swap, but only managed by ourselves.
Some action are not sense, now (our swap partner is not a Numista member): send a message, view profile and rate member.
Our selves get more items for add to the swap, in our side and in the side of our external swap partner.
Our selves select and deselect the items of the swap.
Our selves confirm or reject the swap (in only one step).
The messages box is not necessary. It can be replaced by a multi-line text box (textarea) for writing notes about the swap.
- “Exchange with…” page:
When we add items to the side of our external swap partner, this page display our items for swap. We select the items wanted by our external swap partner.
When we add items to our side, this page display all Numista items. We select the items we wanted and that our external swap partner has for us.
