Monday, September 27, 2010

Just sayin'...

There is a new phenomenon amongst the LTC swappers on my favorite letterboxing site.  For a couple of years now, we have been happily joining swaps and exchanging theme-based artist trading cards that feature a hand-carved rubber stamp image.  Somewhere in the midst of our fun, our beloved webmaster added a tool called a tracker to our fun which made it so much easier to organize our obsession.  These trackers not only listed participants and their cards, but also made it possible to post notes, pithy comments and updates that would go to all the participants.  Cool, eh?  Hosts and participants could more easily communicate and clarify the theme, give ideas or inspiration or alert to problems or delays with the swap.

Well, it would seem that some artists think they need to update the group when they are sending in their contribution for the swap.  Is this really necessary?  I don't think so.  But this trend is picking up speed as the newer of the participants think this is how it is done; learning by example, I suppose.  The result is that I'm getting a boat load of messages that look like this: "Just finished my cards last night!  They are in the mail in the morning!  Woohoo!"

Do I really need to know when everyone is sending their contribution?

Nope. Only the host needs to know that.  This is becoming a pet peeve of mine, I'm afraid.

When I participate, I may alert the host to watch her mail for my contribution.  Hopefully, she will either let me know that they arrived safely through a message or by logging them.
 
When I host, I log the contributions when they arrive, thus giving notice to the artist that their cards have arrived safely...to the artist, not the whole group. As a host, I don't really need to know when the cards are sent as long as they are prior to the deadline. (And if they are not, I give a one week grace, then sort & send. Everything received past that date gets sent back. It's pretty simple, actually.)

As a participant in a swap, I do not need to know that all the cards have arrived on time - that is the concern of the swap host.  I will find out soon enough when I get my cards; if I get extras returned, I can safely guess that everyone did not get their contribution in on time.

Oh, and just for the record and because I'm a bit of a stickler:

A swap is a group of people that agree to create themed LTCs to send to a swap host to sort and redistribute to all the participants.

A tracker is the tool that Ryan created for the swap host and participants to use to 'track' the swap.  (Thank you, Ryan!)

I don't join trackers...I join swaps.  Sometimes.

Just sayin'...

4 comments:

Mama Cache said...

Well put, SHH!

Unknown said...

Really?? I had never thought of talking about being excited over completing the cards in the swap as being annoying before. I've definitely been guilty of this over enthusiasm.

Thankfully, I don't join that many swaps so I guess it doesn't matter, but I sure don't understand this.

The Wolf Family

Liz Henderson (Hendel D'bu) said...

No need to feel guilty, Mama Wolf - I really do understand being thrilled and excited to announce that my cards are finished and ready to send. It only has started to become a problem when you are in multiple swaps and everyone is announcing their 'done-ness'. I don't mind enthusiasm, really. :-)

Anonymous said...

I recently participated in a swap where this was happening. There have been 137 notes posted on the tracker so far!! I think it's important to keep the tracker notes simple to avoid confusion and the swap participants on task. Lovebirds-NC

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