From the Editor: Looking Back from 100+ Trades in the Exchange

In a little over 6 months, the trading forum has changed names, and became part of a much larger and more comprehensive site for the Reef and Marine Aquaia hobbyists on the internet. At first, traders were just asked to mail me their trades, and that lead to a form based approach, and soon, we expect to have a new automated system running that should make using the Exchange easier, friendlier and take some of the manual labor out of it. But the road has not been easy...

While the Exchange was still growing, the usenet group rec.aquaria.marketplace came about out of the re.aquaria reorg, and this posed a big hurdle for the Exchange. Could it survive with this new competition? Would it still attract the necessary viewers and traders? I think so! The Exchange has many benefits over the usenet group, such as:

• Emphasizes trading over outright selling, which helps all aquarists.
  
• No commercial ads.
  
• Trades placed are available to the whole world without any propagation delay.
  
• People who are looking to buy/sell/trade already come to the Exchange by the thousands.
  
• The for-trades are persistent: they don't get erased by your server after a week or so.
  
• Via the Corey search (and soon an internal trade search) you're able to find what you're looking for easily.
  
• Soon the trades will be searchable by geographical location.
  

I think the greatest achievement of Exchange will be the preservation of organisms, a conservation of equipment, and a greater appreciation of reef life.

A few people have sent feedback on the Exchange and I greatly appreciated it. Many of their suggestions have been, or are being implemented. I would encourage more people to make suggestions/changes/etc., as this forum is for You! The success of the Exchange rests squarely on its users - the whole internet aquaria community. What you can do to improve the Exchange:

1. Before posting a trade, check to make sure someone isn't already looking for that item - because somebody probably is! I can't stress this enough!
   
2. Notify us when your trade has changed, traded, sold, or is otherwise unavailable.
   
3. Notify us of any Email address changes.
   

It's been a wonderful experience running the Exchange and I hope it continues to be a useful service in the ever growing internet aquaria community. I am proud that it is the most active trading board of its type on the net, and I hope you all congratulate yourselves for participating in it!

- Todd Zebert, Editor-in-Chief

PS. For all of you active Exchange users, the RTO isn't just for trading anymore, we've got lots of great stuff in the Pipes and Features departments.