My main inspiration in joining metafilter 3 years ago was my interest in the mefiswap. Unfortunately, once I finally joined and participated in a swap I got three cds that were, frankly, horrible. Thus ended my interest in the swap. And metafilter has since been cursed by my existence.

Yeah, I was enthusiastic, but never got all the CDs. Then again, I didn't get all of them with the MeCha swap either. I think that's just the way things go with these things.

It's also pretty ineptly run. That doesn't help much.

I failed to live up to my commitment last time, so I feel like I need to sit this round out.

It's run okay, the main issue is people signing up and then not sending a CD, but there's nothing anyone can do about that. I've done 3 or 4 swaps, I think, and have got a mixture of really cool discs that people have obviously spent a lot of time and passion putting together, and some that, frankly, were phoned in.

I'll do it again - it's good and I've had a pretty good return rate. I even got a couple of bars of Japanese KitKats last time, which was cool.

I did MeFiSwap II a few years ago. Unfortunately I didn't get the memo that the idea was to just introduce people to 'new' and 'obscure' music, and anyway I'm not cool enough to do that. I assumed it was more of a personal/themed mixtape thing. So my effort went into the sequencing and packaging, and a good half of it was basically mainstream artists, so I imagine a lot of my swap set were disappointed by it.

I did use one of those cool black CD-Rs, though.

I shall repeat an oft-quoted (by me, at least) line from Gene Simmons: "Kiss will always be a new group to somebody". Unless it was a CD of the what's in the current top 20, I'm sure it was okay. Good packaging is always a lovely added bonus.

That's a great quote. Well, I signed up. Brace yourselves for my Phil Collins extravaganza.

Unfortunately I didn't get the memo that the idea was to just introduce people to 'new' and 'obscure' music

No such memo existed. There is no theme to mefiswap, what ever you choose to do is going to be good for someone. I don't listen to any mainstream artists by choice or listen to the radio, so your mix would have been at least 'new' to me, if not obscure.

A Phil Collins extravaganza would be useful for emptying parties/losing unwanted guests, for instance.

I will sign up for the swap again, though I have been in a couple of swap sets with less than 50% sending CDs. My packaging is usually average, but the content should be interesting, at the very least.

Dreama does an OK job of facilitating, but pays short shrift to the whiners who then often react badly. Nobody else seems to want to take it on, maybe someone could help her?

Nobody else seems to want to take it on, maybe someone could help her?

I've run MeFi swaps while Dreama was on "hiatus". She's surprisingly territorial about it.

In addition, Klang Klangston has set up a virtual swap thing too...

As has monju_bosatsu.

I screwed up the one time I signed on, so I'm presumably banned. I have the mix, I had a photo/art thing I was going to use as the cover, but something kept getting in the way until I realized I was way late and hadn't even gotten a nastygram, which was, somehow, worse than in fact getting a nastygram.