Matters of Opinion

From MoochWiki

While much of the material on this wiki is either "official" policies or answers to FAQs, there are some questions that arise frequently where there are multiple "correct" courses of action, but none has yet emerged as a "best practice" or "consensus." In other words, different members use BookMooch and interpret some of its core policies differently, and that's fine. This section is to provide some of these contrasting viewpoints to give members an idea of different acceptable ways to handle some common but potentially complicated situations.

A few guidelines for using this page:

• When responding to a question, please sign your name, either with three tildes (~~~) or with your BookMooch username.
• Disagree respectfully with each other.
• Start a new section for each question.
• Feel free to group, sectionalize, or re-order responses if there is a logical way and reason to do so.
• Please do not revise content in other people's answers, but feel free to revise formatting (refactor) if appropriate.

How long do you give a member to respond to a request before cancelling?

• In most cases, I give someone a week before sending a reminder e-mail and then maybe 5-7 more days after that. It depends if the book is widely available or not. If I can get the book from someone else, I'll remind and cancel sooner. It also depends on if the member has logged in since I've made the request. If the person hasn't logged in, I give the benefit of the doubt a bit and am willing to wait slightly longer. However, if the person logs in and ignores my request, not only will I cancel sooner, but I'll probably also leave negative feedback! --JaimeLesMaths ^(talk!edits)

• I think there's a fairly strong consensus of waiting for a week before reminding or canceling. More than a week without any communication (accepting the mooch, sending email) is going to cause negative feelings and possibly negative feedback. Msaari

• I give a week, unless there is a suspicious account history (sometimes I'm so quick that I don't check before I mooch). If I don't hear in a week I either send a reminder or just cancel depending on how badly I want the book. --Celestria ^(talk!edits)

Should people be required to put condition notes for books?

• Overall, no. However, I think the community needs to collectively create a sort of "minimum standard" for what can be posted without a condition note (or, basically, specific things that a member must disclose in a condition note if applicable). The condition notes entry screen sort of does this, but many things are missing, including potentially problematic conditions like liquid damage and stains. Ultimately, it's the moocher's responsibility to ask the sender about the book's condition if it matters, but BookMooch isn't a dumping ground for the books that you couldn't even sell at a yard sale. Personally, if the book is a potential keeper, I always ask in the mooch request, but, for most books, I don't care as long as I can read it and be able to post it at PaperBackSwap when I'm done (basically, no water damage or stains and no tears on the cover; not too much to ask). --JaimeLesMaths ^(talk!edits)

• Absolutely! I want to know details about the book's condition before I mooch it. Water damage is never ok. Smoke or any other type of mold is not ok. Dogs/cats exposure is sometimes ok depending on who I am mooching for. Bird exposure is not ok for me (allergies). Bookcrossing is not ok for me. ARCs are ok provided I know in advance. I offer condition notes for all the books in my inventory and I expect the same from others or else I simply will not mooch from them. --Celestria ^(talk!edits)

• Just want to note here the Web address of a site that provides the accepted standardized terms for noting the condition of books: Independent Online Booksellers Association at http://www.ioba.org.--scamp8

• I think it might be helpful to have, say, a checklist as well as the text box. That might make it clearer which conditions needed disclosing (I wouldn't have thought of bird exposure, for example). It might also be good to have a "none of the above" checkbox, so that if a book didn't have //something// checked, it wouldn't be added until something was. And, if you could specify for wishlisted books (or for your entire wishlist) that you didn't want to be notified for books with certain conditions, that would rock. -- Tangent

• I dont really want a book that is torn up but really you are getting someone else's used books that probobally came used from someone before that, so can you really be that picky?--Michelle T

• Trading stripped books: some users suggest listing them with condition notes, but they should not be listed on trading sites at all. A direct quote from under the [About] Bookmooch tab, Legal section: "You acknowledge and agree that you have valid title and ownership rights to any books that you make available on the Site..."

• Underlining and highlighting, for me, can be very distracting - I just received a book for which a) the actual cover was different than the cover shown (not a huge deal for me), b) the cover was extensively damaged by pen, and c) there was highlighting, underlining, and notes in the margins throughout the book. None of this was noted in the conditions, and I think it should have. I left negative feedback, but I wish there was some way to get my mooch point back. --Fountaingoats