Trading Hub- Separate 'Have' box, more characters in 'Want' box

[Fuzzbucket]

Have doesn't need more than 50 characters, I think. If that.

[QVic]

4 hours ago, Fuzzbucket said:

Have doesn't need more than 50 characters, I think. If that.

I agree.

 

For the "Want" box, won't it be beneficial to have a short description and a long description want box?  The short description could be use for keywords so that it is easier for other to search for your trades.  Keywords like CB / PB / Holiday mate / Prizekin etc.  We can limit the characters to 50 and the short description would show up in the Trading Hub.  The long description can have more characters and only show up in the specific trade link (i.e. after you clicked to offer).  Filling in either of the description boxes can be optional.

 

Would this work?

 

 

[Pilauli]

That's brilliant, QVic.

 

I would suggest a list of standard terminology.  This means, for example, that nobody needs to waste 6 characters on "purebred" when they could type "PB", but anybody confused can look at the list of standard terminology and see "PB: purebred: all the ancestors are the same breed".

 

Furthermore, this means anyone planning to offer a purebred dragon can run a search for trades requesting "PB", and don't have to separately search "purebred".  Depending on the way the search function works, trying out all the permutations of "PB" vs "purebred", "CB" vs "caveborn", and several others could take quite a while.

[HeatherMarie]

I'm not sure about a standardized terminology list.... Most of our 'trading lingo' is completely user-made, it's not actually mentioned anywhere in-site at all. I mean, I very much doubt the actual game will ever label anything 'Prizekin', etc. Personally I like keeping user-made things separate from Official Things. (Also, to get nitpicky, how would it be decided which user-made terms are 'common' enough to be included in an official list? And what each term actually means? For instance, does 'CB' mean 'cavebred' or 'caveBORN'?)

 

I think a short, keyword-type 'want' box could be very beneficial, but I wouldn't want that to be the only one that appears on the main trading hub pages. Sometimes there really *is* no short simple keywords that accurately describe what you want... Taking my own trades as an example, I could put 'messy-lineaged' in the keyword box, but if the keyword box is even shorter then the current limit it wouldn't allow me to also specify '10th-gen+ preferred' and 'no (this dragon line)'.... I do not want to get bombarded with tons of unwanted offers because the only thing shown is 'messy-lineaged'. (And yeah, if you click through to the trade you'd see the longer 'want', but how many people actually deliberately re-read a Want after already reading and clicking through?)

[RealWilliamShakespeare]

30 minutes ago, HeatherMarie said:

I'm not sure about a standardized terminology list.... Most of our 'trading lingo' is completely user-made, it's not actually mentioned anywhere in-site at all. I mean, I very much doubt the actual game will ever label anything 'Prizekin', etc. Personally I like keeping user-made things separate from Official Things. (Also, to get nitpicky, how would it be decided which user-made terms are 'common' enough to be included in an official list? And what each term actually means? For instance, does 'CB' mean 'cavebred' or 'caveBORN'?)

 

Omg, the Hub borderline intimidates me. I've been here for years but because I don't socially trade with other members I was so befuddled looking through peoples' want lists. Checkers, stairstep, spiral? PB? Bloodswap? Eg? Altkin? I'm still so confused!

 

Still rooting for a longer want list. Even by 50 or so characters. If a "Read More" has to be incorporated to keep the page looking clean, so be it. I just want to understand peoples' wants in depth and not have to use awful butchered grammar to cram everything in!! I can imagine it's even more confusing for somebody non-native in English, or new to the site. People who don't use the forum (or who don't frequent trading in depth - read: RealWilliamShakespeare) probably have even less idea of what's going on in there.

Edited September 27, 2018 by RealWilliamShakespeare

[Zeditha]

Heather - If there really is no short answer, you could always put 'click through for wants' into the shorter wants box.

 

I'd be fine with it going either way. (Well, it affects me very little, because I rarely use the trading hub anyway lol)

But a glossary on the trading hub site - perhaps a small line saying 'Guide to user-made terms' just above the trades start?

 

If there was to be an official glossary, I feel like it'd be most beneficial to actually have it be user-made. Like, maybe TJ can post the News thread, and ask us to write glossary entries in a specific format, perhaps like:

 

CB: Caveborn/Cavebred

A dragon that was obtained from the cave, biomes or market, which has no lineage.

 

as an example. (I've always thought it was Caveborn. Doesn't really matter though.)

It'd require a lot of modding to do that way, though, so I doubt TJ would go for it.

[HeatherMarie]

4 minutes ago, Zeditha said:

Heather - If there really is no short answer, you could always put 'click through for wants' into the shorter wants box.

 

 

 

According to TJ's answers to 'is this bannable' questions, that would get me banned. It doesn't specifically tell people what I want, so it doesn't belong in the Want box. (Hopefully if a shorter box was actually implemented that *would* be allowed, but as it is right now it wouldn't be.)

[Zeditha]

Presumably if there's a second box, saying (wants:) "Offers as listed in longer wants box" is technically telling people what you want, so...

[UnicornMaiden]

I love the idea of having separate "Have" and "Want" boxes, as well as being able to search "Haves" and "Wants" separately. I would also be interested in having an "Offer Description" box. If I make an offer on someone else's trade I might like to say something about what I am offering. (eg "This egg precogged female")

[blockEdragon]

I would love a separate "haves" box, every time I search for wants I get pretty much nothing but "haves"!

Edited November 5, 2018 by blockEdragon

[HeatherMarie]

I am so tired of searching for 'want' keywords only to have every single trade that pops up be a 'have' with that keyword instead. Most recent example, searched for 'blusang' and got three results. Two of them are *haves*. Two out of three are haves. Really, the search box is pretty much useless to find *actual* wants this way. (Don't even get me started on Zyus, the number of trades that have Zyu in that box but are talking about what they *have* is just.... Argh.)

 

Please separate 'have' box! At this point that's become much more wanted to me then more characters in the want box. 

[Kurokosworth]

Support! Putting everything you want can be difficult and searching keywords sadly isn’t as helpful as it could be. I also like the suggested idea of a “more” toggle.

[Starscream]

On 11/3/2018 at 3:28 PM, HeatherMarie said:

I am so tired of searching for 'want' keywords only to have every single trade that pops up be a 'have' with that keyword instead. Most recent example, searched for 'blusang' and got three results. Two of them are *haves*. Two out of three are haves. Really, the search box is pretty much useless to find *actual* wants this way. (Don't even get me started on Zyus, the number of trades that have Zyu in that box but are talking about what they *have* is just.... Argh.)

 

Please separate 'have' box! At this point that's become much more wanted to me then more characters in the want box. 

That makes a very good case for having a have box indeed.

[Guillotine]

More space in the Want box would be nice but a separate Have box is absolutely necessary for the search function to actually work as intended.
 

[Sazandora]

Agreed. Trying to trade off Xenos/Zyus, far too many times I run into people who *have* those two in the wants box, or something that's descended from either. It gets tedious real fast.

[Ruby Eyes]

Also, a "do not want" box. Searching for "xeno" and "zyu" way too often just displays people who explicitly do NOT want those.

Frustrating.

[Fuzzbucket]

I think this is getting towards "asking for too much."

[HeatherMarie]

8 minutes ago, Fuzzbucket said:

I think this is getting towards "asking for too much."

 

I agree.

 

I think, in general, people should *not* post what they *don't* want, in any box. That's certainly not a 'Want', after all. It would be awesome if everyone could agree on what exactly to use the *WANT* box for, ie only what they actually *want*. I do think we need a 'have' box, in part because we should be able to search for trades that have things like name-codes or are a certain gen, things that we can't simply use the dragon-breed filter for. Also because of the fact that a *want* search is fairly useless when a bunch of people put *haves* in that same box. But 'want' and 'have' are the two most basic things in a trade. Things like 'do not want' or 'will only consider if...' or 'possibly want' is just getting to be too much imo.

[sorenna]

Can I suggest that there be two boxes, but instead of 'have' and 'want' make them 'want' and 'notes'? 

 

That gives people a little more latitude, so they can just say "don't want silvers" or "it wasn't influenced" or even "also want mates from group/xxxxx" in the second box instead of just describing their egg.

[HeatherMarie]

1 hour ago, sorenna said:

Can I suggest that there be two boxes, but instead of 'have' and 'want' make them 'want' and 'notes'? 

 

That gives people a little more latitude, so they can just say "don't want silvers" or "it wasn't influenced" or even "also want mates from group/xxxxx" in the second box instead of just describing their egg.

 

Then we'd run into the same problem we have now, of the filter box being fairly useless. If you want to search for trades that have, say, a cavebred, but there isn't a specific 'have' box, and the 'notes' box allows stuff like 'prefer cavebreds' and 'don't want cavebreds' and such, then once again you can't reliably search for 'cavebred' at all. The entire reason a 'have' box is so important, at least to me, is so the actual search filter is useful. Right now the search text box is useless because you can't search for *just* 'wants' without also getting 'haves' that are in the want box. Forgoing a dedicated 'have' box for a box where a lot more then 'haves' are acceptable doesn't fix that issue at all.

 

edit: However, a 3rd 'notes' box would be great. A place to put notes about influence or groups or whatever would be awesome. Just not *instead* of a dedicated 'have' box.

Edited November 13, 2018 by HeatherMarie

[sorenna]

I guess my thinking is that people are going to do it anyway, no matter what you name the box.    Just as they do with the "want" box we already have. So might as well make ONE box the "put anything here" one by design, and hopefully they'd put less random stuff into the Want box?  

[HeatherMarie]

I'd like to believe (maybe I'm just being hopeful) that the main reason people put a bunch of other stuff in the want box is because we don't *have* any other choice right now. We don't have a 'have' box *or* a 'note' box or a 'group' box or anything. I very much hope that if we get a dedicated 'have' box, with clear instructions, the majority of people would adapt and use that for haves instead of the 'want' box. Same with a 'notes' box. Especially if there are clear instructions and a warning against using the boxes for other stuff, I'd *hope* that people would change their 'want' box usage accordingly. Maybe I'm being too optimistic though, we saw what happened with the 'want' box confusions.

[Ruby Eyes]

I think "Wants" and "Notes" would actually be perfect. "Notes" could contain whatever you describe your offer to be, and/or whatever you do NOT want. You can already filter the "haves" by breed, and you can filter the "Wants", so whatever you'd put into the "Notes" would be displayed with the trade but have no effect on your filtering wishes.

Not everyone feels the need to describe what they have, or add a list of things they do NOT want, so labelling the 2nd box "Notes" would give a little leeway.

[Confused Cat]

8 minutes ago, Ruby Eyes said:

 so whatever you'd put into the "Notes" would be displayed with the trade but have no effect on your filtering wishes.

 

 

There should be a search option for the notes, too, so we can still search search for interesting trades that are not a specific breed. (E.g. "altkin", "prizekin", "code" or other words that describe what is being offered.)

[Fuzzbucket]

6 hours ago, sorenna said:

I guess my thinking is that people are going to do it anyway, no matter what you name the box.    Just as they do with the "want" box we already have. So might as well make ONE box the "put anything here" one by design, and hopefully they'd put less random stuff into the Want box?  

 

If they do, they will very likely be modded for it.

 

If you put "want Antarean or Glacewing" that tells the person looking what you want. If they then offer a Khusa that is very silly of them, and their offer will be rejected. It's really not a huge sweat to decline, to be honest. As to rares - well, sure, chance your arm; not a lot of people will offer them, and if they do, you can choose to go for it if you like.