From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Fri Mar 10 2000 - 07:49:31 MST
Sasha Chislenko wrote:
>
> I think the most difficult thing is simultaneous delivery
> of all objects, even if you can find the barter sets.
> Also, people may want to personally check the value
> of each found transaction. If people refuse 50% of
> suggestions after they look at them (you can never perfectly
> describe them in a formal way; people want to look at pictures,
> free-form descriptions, talk to the vendor, etc.) and 10%
> of transactions break (not delivered, etc.) then there is
> very little chance to organize exchanges more complex than
> loops of 3 objects.
That is a difficulty. According to independent analysis, the fraud rates
on ebay range from 1% to 6%, depending on what you consider fraud.
Traditional mail order is between 2%-5%, according to many of my
customers at Datamann, so thats pretty standard, and indicates that the
percentage of dishonest people is pretty consistent. From what I've
seen, people who engage in swopping as opposed to selling tend to be
more interested in the fun of swopping and the social aspects, so I
would venture to guess they are less likely to be of the sort to engage
in fraud. Using a reputation broker to weed out the scumbags within one
or two trades will help, and swoppers could have the suggested swop
rings ranked by the reputations of the people in the ring, either as an
average, minimax, what have you.
Posting to multiple rings on the same item would be ok, because
whichever ring fully accepts the trade first will get the trade, so
there is a time pressure like an auction, but its a race that encourages
as much honesty as possible, because you want to convince as many people
as possible to trade.
Mike Lorrey
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