How are people paired up? I realized this could be turned into a very interesting problem since the definition of international shipping is dependent on a person's location and there are groups of people for which a Secret Santa configuration do not exist. For example, a lone person in a country who refuses to ship internationally will not be able to send a gift to anyone. If Vic is going to be a nice guy, he will also minimize the need for international shipping.
Yeah know what, over the course of writing this post I think I figured it all out. There's one condition under which a group can't be made, and the number of people who have to ship international has a lower bound of the number of different countries. The upper bound of people who have to ship international is a little more interesting. Even better, how would Vic pick pairs to minimize the total shipping cost even within countries?
I use a very advanced and sophisticated method to match up partners actually! I like to call it "Drawing from a hat." I used an orange SPYDER beanie the first year, an Italy national team beanie for the second year and a houndstooth porkpie hat
(ROLL TIDE!) the third year. This year I plan on using my Ran hat. I write down everyone's name and 3 letter country code (USA, GBR, JPN, ESP, etc) on a sheet of paper and cut them up. In order to insure that those not wishing to ship internationally (meaning outside of the US) don't have to, I fill the hat with all the American participants first and draw a partner for each name on the list. After those have all been paired I add in all of the international participants and continue pairing off. Along the way I ensure that no one sends to the same partner as last year. The positions can be swapped though: the first year N-Forza shipped to MJP while MJP shipped to N-Forza the second year.
Far as international shipping is concerned: the userbase of this forum is incredibly international but predominately American. Therefore, I let those living in the US decide if they would like to ship internationally or not. Those living in other countries are not offered this option because we've never had another country with more than 1 participant except Japan. This marks the first year of multiple participants in several countries. Of the 36 people signed up 22 of them are from the USA, so there is a bit of country bias, but no other country fields enough participants to make "no international shipping" viable.
I do nothing to minimize shipping costs or distances. The hat has no bias towards distance and neither should your generous heart!
That doesn't mean that if 2 people live in the same country that Vic can't spare one of them the cost of international shipping.
Also, if it turns out that the only person living in the US chooses No, Vic is screwed, and I picked No so who knows, Vic might be screwed.
In this case I PM the other person and tell them that they have to be able to ship internationally, otherwise it's not feasible for them to participate.
Indeed he isn't! I imagine at least 1/3rd to 1/2 the people on here are probably from the US, myself included.
Nearly 2/3 usually.
why am i joining this
why am i so FOOLISH
because you like to PARTY HARD!!!!
Because it's lots of fun is what and anyone who argues otherwise is a butt :colbert:
Also, is there an ETA of when we'd get the names?
WORKING ON THEM RIGHT NOW AHHHHHHH!