Talk:Box Tracking

Wouldn't it be nice if the box tracking page showed the location (country and city) of a box next to its name? This way someone who thinks about starting a box can see if there already is a box in his (her) location, an decide whether to put himself on the "box request" page instead of starting a box, or start one anyway. --14:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)Lucky Luke

Where did all the boxes go?

Most of the boxes seem to have disappeared in 2009 - we need a better way to track them/get people to pass them on and we need to slap a few people who still have one they haven't passed on.

I'm thinking of starting a couple but not if they get round 3 people then disappear...

Anyone got any good ideas? -- Mowcius


 * Look at the "Nerdeland" tracking page. Getting this box passed on by the second receiver involved a lot of e-mails and phone calls to him, and eventually someone actually picking it up at his place, but the box didn't get lost. When you start a box, you 'll probably have to take care of it sometimes. According to the guidelines the previous recipient is responsible until the next one passes it on, but sometimes this might not be enough and you need multiple persons "slapping" the one that stalls the box. Peer pressure, used in a positive way, might work. Ask for help and work together with others. --Lucky Luke

Disappointed

You would think something like this would take off and stay alive given the amount of open sourcedness that has exploded on the world. My thoughts, if this idea doesn't permanently die, is that if you hold on to a box and don't ship it back out, your account is deleted. No prodding should be needed whatsoever. I don't have a ton of stuff but I already have a few items in mind to send on to the next person. I am sorry to see that so many people who are enthusiastic enough about this to sign up have completely dropped the ball on the idea. I don't care how busy you are, there is just no excuse for this behavior.

I'm old school enough to remember the swap meets and get togethers at Radio Shack's back in the day and this behavior would never have been considered by anyone back then. We were in it together, sharing ideas, knowledge and even parts. It is so sad to see so many people that can't even get off their phones to interact with the rest of the world. When did this become the norm? Facebook, Twitter, these things are utter bullshit and a distraction from what you should be doing which is inventing.

We need to get this back on it's feet with people willing to do some legwork and not just recieve free shit. I'm not sure what I can do in the grand scheme of things but I did manage to delete spam from this site today on the order of 100 or so accounts. I will continue to do so until the powers that be tell me to stop just so I can contribute some small part. I'm also going to think about who to send a box to, though I don't have a garage load of surplus. I just have some things I've salvaged and might find a use for myself some day but in the spirit of true open source and community am willing to give up to keep the idea alive for the greater good.

I think this is one of the best ideas to come along in quite some time and wish I had thought of it.

--Liquibyte

For deleting spam, it would be nice if there was a "delete everything that's over 50 characters written in less than 5 seconds" - bot. The Dutch boxes have seen a post office about 45 times (The small non-tgimboej ones included). I call that a success. Though I have to admit then tend to get stuck when no-one is actively pushing them around, and I more or less stopped pushing. Also, they tend to collect unusable junk that no-one takes out or dares to trow away, and after a while everyone on the list had had the box twice already. (The small ones suffered less from these problems, as they are easy-er to maintain and cheaper to ship) It has its flaws but overall its a cool project. --Lucky Luke (talk) 05:26, 19 May 2013 (EDT)

I had a thought on how to enforce participation last night. I figure that if you signed up here you are, or should be, willing to follow the rules. Not that it's by any means complete but the idea is under Talk:participation. A rewards/punishment system seems to me rather drastic because, as I see it, if you signed up here you should be willing to participate.

--Liquibyte