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re: Followup 2: intl mooch ratio change Lethe: if you just set points to 0, the equations are explicitly solvable, no guesswork needed. Ratio is never going to hit 2 while points are greater than or equal to zero if smooches/2-for-1s and all the rest of it are ignored. But many comments I saw on the site were from people who got points from smooches or did 2-for-1s. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Followup 2: intl mooch ratio change Since you quoted my economic post, let me quickly reply to your response. You wrote: "I don't see how the change in mooch ratio can be seen as a form of protectionism. To the contrary, what the change causes is an increased incentive to send more books internationally." And if senders initiated transactions, that would be great, but that just isn't how it works. You've imposed a global cross-border restriction on international mooching -- people won't want to do it as much, to avoid risking their ratio. But every international send needs an international mooch, so the total international traffic decreases. If senders initiated transactions, the opposite would be true. I don't think you've thought this through. Beyond that, it's rather disingenuous of you to cherry-pick the one comment of positive tone out of the flood of negative and neutral feedback you received to start your post, then quote someone who says they don't quite understand the maths, and try to make that seem representative of all the comments we've posted. It looks like you're ignoring the users and listening to yourself. There is a time for that, and you've obviously decided this is it -- you're wrong, but only time will tell. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Followup : intl mooch ratio change Just want to echo Teagirl here: as if it wasn't bad enough to apply these changes retroactively yesterday, singling out users in your post above was also just not on. You can make an example using yourself or people whom you have asked for their consent. John, an economic model is nice, but you can't have an economy without a basic social contract and ideally rule of law. People won't participate in something they feel is detrimentally unpredictable, whatever its benefits might be. Deeply unpopular and unwise though the ratio change is, you wouldn't be seeing this level of furore if you hadn't made it retroactive. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Followup : intl mooch ratio change "Thanks to the person who pointed out that it may be a technical pain to implement points change *without* applying it retroactively." I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. We are not talking about implementing a network stack here. Based on our usage of the site, we already know the database columns are there to separate points by date, and the calculation is triviality itself. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Followup : intl mooch ratio change Oh, another economic thought. You singled out someone's case and pointed out that they have received 3 books for every 2 they've given -- *as if that's a bad thing*. Are you really trying to make a 1:1 economy? Economies need growth to grow, by definition, dammit! Bookmooch's economy (I'll grant you that conceit just so we can talk in the same language) is small and you are trying to apply a huge change (again, let's not even discuss how not on it is to do so retroactively). Economies grow by value being produced (and not by currency being produced from thin air -- that's just a lubricant). Given how many people are taking value away by having accumulated a lot of points, I would think you'd want to jealously protect any source of value and tread carefully with any changes, lest they restrict that value. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Followup : intl mooch ratio change Dude, I understand what you're trying to do economically, but it's just as short-sighted as protectionism was. In fact, it's a form of that. In bookmooch economic terms, you're basically putting barriers around international trade. Before, you used to have incentives around international trade. Now you have an incentive for domestic traffic and a disincentive for international traffic. (Bit more complicated than that but let's not argue trivialities.) If there's any reasonable lesson we can draw from the economies of international trade, it's that protectionism is, in the long run, not a good idea. And you are not looking at the long run here. Even a pure 1:1 ratio and point calculation would be preferrable -- it would remove the incentive from international mooching, but at least not disincentivise it. It would grow more slowly because of postage rates, but at least it would grow. This way it's just going to shrink. Also, for someone who considers themselves savvy, it's a pretty glaring error on your part to have changed things retroactively. People get out of places where they don't feel protected by the law. You must cultivate a sense of history, because it's let you down. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Mooch ratio change for international Just wanted to post again in this thread. There's no shame in an honest mistake. Your users have told you (in unequivocal terms, I might add) what they think; it's now up to you to listen to them and if you do so, all the more kudos to you, and rightly deserved. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Points policy change thoughts I think the multimooching idea is eminently sensible. People already do it all the time. On sheer postage cost grounds, you could even knock more than 10% off per book, but you have to keep the incentive there too, so 10% sounds great. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Mooch ratio change for international Whole-heartedly agree with the comments. International mooching is great, and presumably you want to encourage it, because on it's own it's significantly more expensive, and not everybody is made of money. Part of the inducement for international mooching is the points difference, and another part of it has been the difference in the mooch ratio. In fact, since the points delta is still there, people who trade internationally rather than just domestically will slowly bleed ratio! Please undo this change. You may have thought it was small, but if you'd thought through all the ramifications (and now that you've heard from us), I'm sure you no longer think so. laddiebuck 13 years ago

re: Idea: an hour of me Love the idea. Like Zakle but much better, and zakle seems dead anyway. Plus there would be an initial population of BookMoochers to help get it off the ground. It sounds great to me. You'll be able to mark an offer of time as local or remote, right? As long as there's full-text search in the offers, plus options for local/remote and after that in your own state or country, or maybe a certain number of miles, I can't see what would go wrong. laddiebuck 13 years ago

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