Request for Information: Open Classified Ads

One of the barriers to local money adoption is the limited number of things you can buy with it. A typical community of 100 middle class people, generally only provide each nonessential services and a few second hand goods. A community that small hardly constitutes a local economy.

Various things need to be done to address this problem.

Firstly, communities need to act strategically to attract and reward providers of essential goods and services, I mean food, energy, healthcare, education, transport, construction. These both involve building relationships at the local level, so sorry but no technology can help there.

Secondly, the money needs to be made more portable, so it can buy things in other systems. I am getting around to this. CES already does it, but in a silo, (soon to be opened up).

Thirdly, along with more portable local currencies, we need to be able to search for goods and services more widely than the local system. The traditional LETS model of independent isolated groups isn't appropriate any more.

So I'm calling for an open classified ads directory.

• It should be accessible via an open API, so that it can be integrated into local community web sites where users manage their affairs. In fact, for my purposes the directory doesn't even need a web front end, or a marketing strategy.
• Every offer in the directory should have a coordinate and it should give search results in order of distance from a point.
• There should be a category system that supports localised categorisation. This is a tricky problem. Alternatively we need to be working with local communities to agree on a taxonomy.
• Each directory listing should come with a privacy setting which determines who can see it, and who can contact the owner
• Ideally there should be some kind of reputation system or trust algorithm. This is a very interesting area, but may fall between the local and the global scopes. Most of the user data is stored locally, and each node in a mesh of trust needs to have elaborate privacy settings.
• Each entry should store the following information. Whether it is offered or wanted. Title, body, user id, user coordinates, range that the user is prepared to travel, privacy, pricing, expiry date, quantity and currencies accepted / offered.

I know of about 30,000 users who need such a service, and I'm ready to write a Drupal module to work alongside the mutual credit module. But perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree? Perhaps there is a peer to peer solution or synchronisation is more appropriate than a central repository? Please share your expertise.