Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2016

Continued from Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2008-2016

Please make any suggestions for new features, bugs, things you'd like to see changed or anything else. Also feel free to start a new thread in Site Discussion. If it's a little issue perhaps use this thread, if it's a big issue then perhaps start a new thread. Please see the wiki below as your suggestion may already have been mentioned.

The majority of things you see as well as policies on OzBargain were implemented based on user feedback.

closed Comments

  • -2

    I suspect I have someone following me around negging my comments over the last few days over a grudge. I suspect this because comments that were helpful and not negative have been downvoted, sometimes several times. When this happens There is no way to know who is negging you. I think there should either be a limit to the number of times you can neg a particular person's comments in a given period, or the anonymity for negative votes should be removed since it is so easily open to anonymous abuse.

    • +1

      Are you assuming that you will be less likely to be negged if there's no anonymity? What are you going to do if you know who negged you?

      Hiding the neg voters is a deliberate choice to reduce flame wars. It worked when it was introduced and it's not likely to change. A helpful comment will also get positive votes to offset negative votes so as a commenter, don't focus too much on the negative votes you got.

      • You could at least report the behaviour with more confidence than an "I think someone is stalking me" post as above.

      • Hiding the neg voters is a deliberate choice to reduce flame wars.

        Oh crap. The flame wars between me and scotty have begun !!

        • And anyone half a brain subjected to repeated abuse is going to go away and contribute nothing to the community. It's a bad choice.

    • +6

      So tempted to neg this out of mischief.

      • That made me smirk in real life.

    • -1

      I suggested it before but: Compulsory justifications for negative votes. When negging someone, there should be an extra field/box with the question "Why would you like to neg this post?"

      The benefits are threefold:

      1) The poster of the post can find out what they are doing "wrong" and take the criticism on board (or not).
      2) It requires extra effort from the negger so ideally, only truly bad comments will receive a significant amount of negs and this will weed out some of the unjustified negs (eg. comments that are simply impartial and unbiased statements of facts get negged).
      3) Due to the above points, neggers can use their negging tools for the greater good instead of merely being negative nancys.

      Whether the reason for the negging is public or only viewable to the poster can be debated. Probably better to make it public so negging a comment for the reason "coz ur gay" means that it is a clear abuse of the system and punishable (eg. negging privileges revoked for 1 month)

      • +1

        What other website requires justifications for negging comments?

        • None that comes to mind at the moment but a similar system is the "herring" system on Whirlpool where you give a reason for a post to be removed.

        • +1

          @DeafMutePretender: You also need to give reason when you report a comment or a post.

        • Slashdor comes to mind but their system is also broken.

        • @syousef: Slashdot shows the score for the comments but doesn't show who have meta-moderated those comments.

        • -1

          @scotty:

          Yes. I am aware of that. The question was asked "What other website requires justifications for negging comments?". At no point did I say that it worked as I had suggested and as I pointed out there are other aspects of the system that are badly broken.

  • +1

    Please consider leaving insufficient quantity threads still viewable but perhaps greyed out instead of completely unpublished as suggested here.

    I've found bargains before from insufficient quantity threads that were thankfully moved to the forum instead. Some of those really are quite the bargain!

    • Agreed. Also leaving duplicate or other deleted threads where it is harmless to view them. I sometimes see "x for 20% off (duplicate)" and have to go searching to find the original thread, which would be easier if the duplicate was still visible to read to get the retailer etc. or link duplicates back to the original post.

      • or link duplicates back to the original post.

        All duplicates are already linked back to the original post, just click on the word 'duplicate' in the deal feed or store page.

        You can use the recent Huawei $29 Powerbank @ MSY duplicate as an example to test it: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/msy.com.au

        "HUAWEI AP007 13000mAh 2x USB 2 AMP Power Battery Bank $29.00 @ MSY (Duplicate)" click on the (Duplicate).

        Deals unpublished for other reasons are also linked to wikis or other applicable pages. Maybe we can also get those links underlined or similar to make it more obvious they are in fact linked.

        Edit 14/1: We'll get the linked words on unpublished deals underlined in the near future.

        • Huh! I've never tried clicking it before. Well done for anticipating my every need ;)

        • @mskeggs: Yeah I clicked on the word once because I thought it was going to send me to the wiki for the definition of a duplicate haha. Pleasant surprise.

    • We'll see what we can do about the insufficient quantity deal posts, there isn't a simple solution such as moving them all to the forum. Moving a deal post to the forum is irreversible - once done we can't move it back to the deals section and republish it. Therefore we could only do that if we were 100% sure that the deal has insufficient quantity and there is no chance of sufficient quantity being discovered.

      Sometimes a deal post is unpublished for insufficient quantity but later republished when further information is received or a store rep adds further items for sale to make the deal complying etc.

      • I understand that it's not a simple solution to move it to the forum. I actually prefer them not to be moved as I hardly ever visit the forum to be honest. I only wish for it to be still viewable that's all. Just so the details can be read.

  • Can somebody split out feature requests vs. bugs on the Wiki page?

    • There are only 2 bugs.

    • It's not really necessary. Bugs should be squashed pretty quickly. Feature requests however might take a long time to implement, or may not be implemented at all.

  • Is it possible to search by comment. EG I looked up something and someone mentioned it in the Dick Smith Clearance deal comments (ie the clearance price they paid), which were about 15 pages long, and I couldn't find it. Maybe if you search and it comes up you could be directed to the exact comment? Or alternatively have the ability to open up more comments per page (like on shopping websites where you can show 30, 60, 90 hits per page etc).

    • That was something requested a few months ago last month and it should be coming in the future. Basically a view that shows all the comments on a single page to make searching easy.

    • Update: The ability to show all comments on a single page was implemented by Scotty last week, for any post that has over 100 comments, a 'comment' tab will show at the top (under the header) that will show every comment on a single page.

      You can use the eBay deal from today as an example. Direct link

      • awesome! thank you!

  • Sometimes my clumsy phone hands accidently neg. I'd like to be able to undo neg ~1min time limit?

  • Is there an option to empty the trash in messages? If not can I request this feature be added.
    I have old unwanted messages in trash dating back a few years and would like to permanently remove them.

  • Is there any particular reason why replying to comments will only sometimes automatically add the [@Username] part?

    • I think it take a few replies in a string before it links back too the OP.

      • I suspected that, but apparently some others in the string have got the notification that I replied to them.

        • Would be nice if you could tag any user similar to instragram.

        • +3

          @nocure: Tag-user-and-notify in comments are definitely in the plan and will be developed sometime this year.

        • @scotty:

          sometime this year.

          Still coming? :)

        • @TheClipIt: didn't I say "this year"? :) As of last year we ended up spending time on silly events such as OzBargain10 celebration.

  • Something akin to reddit gold. (Ignore this suggestion if your cash flow is fine and you have no desire to increase it.)

    Whilst I think reddit gold is a waste of money and the concept of giving money to a website when another user says something you like is ridiculous (or maybe I am just jaded because reddit management is a joke), the fact is it works and reddit makes a bit of money from it.

    If someone posts a deal or comment that means you save a lot of money, giving said user a gold star on top of a +ve vote might be warranted, as long as the cost pales in comparison to the money you save. The gold star gives the user a cool flair/internet street cred and gives OzBargain a small amount of money. The user is then motivated to post more deals and OzBargain gets more cash to continue to improve thus the gold star giver should continue to find more bargains; the circle of life is complete.

    We could buy gold stars/credit in bulk, via CashRewards obviously, and then when a bargain is posted and we are very grateful to the poster we could give them a gold star. The star would be worth about 20c so it's easy to part with. There could even be various coloured stars, like in primary school, worth various monetary amounts so bargain posters could then collect different stars similar to the existing badges. You could even look at store reps being able to post more often if they receive enough stars (this would need to have a few rules put in place obviously).

    • There is already a badge system. People like TA will be overflowing with them.

  • Can links to https://files.ozbargain.com.au/ be treated the same as links to https://ozbargain.com.au? That is, both are displayed with orange hyperlinks and without the blue short link?

  • has anyone else has a download just pop up on ozbargain and ask you to save? for some reason 3 times it's happened in pro the past week where I change page and a download link pops up bottom of page and looks hell suss asking me to save

    • On desktop? Would you be able to get a screen shot? Do check your browser for malware though, as it's a common cause for those pop ups.

      • Yeah use a laptop, I will save a screen if It pops up again

  • -4

    Can we increase the daily negative vote on comments auction to more than 5/10 a day. There are some users cough jv cough that need EVERY comment she/he makes be made a negative.

    • You should click the 'hide' button to hide all comments from any particular user sitewide - I suggest you do that now. Negative voting every users comments because you have a personal issue with them sounds like a good reason to decrease the amount of negative votes per day, not increase them.

      • +1

        Totally agree hamza.

  • On a store page, how hard would it be to make a button at the top for 'Hide Expired Deals'? Would just be damn handy if you're looking for something :)

    • +4

      It's coming. New store pages will be segmented into

      • Long expiry deals
      • Active deals
      • Expired deals

      It might get pushed out to our servers by the end of this week.

      • I just noticed it today. Looks good and no complaints. Thanks.

      • Not bad :)

        Don't suppose the coupon field can still show? Domino's for example. I know I know, we have wiki's and stuff, I just prefer to go straight for the deals themselves :)

      • Would it be possible to have Long running / Active deals show as list instead of grid if that is our preference set on the homepage? I assume it currently reverts to grid to show all the Long running / Active deals, when there is a large amount of them, on a single page that isn't massively long.

        • When there are 3 or more long expiry deals, or 6 or more active deals, it would be using grid layout to reduce the page size. It is not going to be in the preference.

          For now you can add ?old=1 to the URL for the store page for the older behaviour, although the long expiry deals will still be in grid format if there are 3 or more of them, as previously it just does not show more than 3 long expiry deals.

      • +1

        On the store page the active deals no longer shows how many comments have been made and there is no longer a notification on the post to show if new comments have been made. Is this something that can be put back in?

        • +2

          Yup I'll look into those.

  • Comments which have the greatest amount of + votes, can we please have them at the top of the thread accordingly?

    Might be only me but most of the time i tend to browse through pages to read comments which have the most + votes.

    • +1

      Great idea. Then all of jv's comments will be right down the bottom :)

      • +1

        Not lately :P

    • I know it's not what you are suggesting, but keep in mind that deals with a large number of comments (100+ I believe it is), has a top comments button at the bottom of the screen to show the top 5 most voted comments. Example from this deal:


  • Raised this via TWAM, but may as well add it here. Mobile Chrome via iOS - click on any notification, and it takes you to the top of the destination page, rather than straight to the comment.

    • Yeah, it does something similar for me in Mobile Firefox (Android) too: when you click "new" comments under My Account > Comments, it jumps to a random location on the page (also: no link to jump to next "new" comment in mobile). Basically comment anchoring seems to be broken on mobile.

      • it jumps to a random location on the page

        Only on Mobile Firefox? Okay on Chrome? The mobile site has mostly the same structure as the desktop site including the anchoring so I can't see why it would behave differently.

        no link to jump to next "new" comment in mobile

        The "comment controls" basically don't fit. Well it's just not possible to fit all the functionality of the OzBargain desktop site on mobile without making it too busy.

        • Yes, just Firefox - latest version, Android (Lollipop 5.1, Sony Xperia Z1)

          Steps:

          Open OzBargain and log in
          Click My Account > Comments
          Find thread with "new" comments and click the link (e.g. "2 new" button)

          Expected result:
          Page opens at first new comment

          Actual result:
          Page opens at a location "near" the new comment

        • @zzyss: It could be the page changed length after loaded? For example a banner ad that pushes the comments section down? I'll give Firefox a try later.

        • Scotty, not sure what you've done, but after 2 weeks of pain on my iPad with Mobile Chrome, the issue seems to now be resolved. Thank you :)

        • @zzyss: yes I guess the page expands due to ads might be the cause on Firefox mobile, as it has always been 250px above the actual anchor. I will find a way to fix it.

        • @scotty:
          Thanks!

  • SUGGESTION: Sort forum posts by votes.

    USE CASE: Forum on (Loopholes) with many pages of responses.

    BENEFIT: Best comments are generally high voted, so would be cool to sort parent comments by vote descending, that way best stuff surfaces to top and saves reading time.

  • About the new store pages, in the 'active deals' gallery, it only shows the time the deal was posted, not the date. I think it's a good idea to include a date as well, as many active deals are older.

  • Another thing with the new active deals is that clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the post and not the actual deal.

  • It would be nice to be able to follow other users; some posters really intrigue me.

    • You can follow user's posts via RSS, for example yours. With the RSS then you can put it in your RSS reader, email you, tweet you whatever when there is a new post using Ifttt.

        • Yet people ask about email notification all the time, which should have died decades ago.

        • After Google killed off Reader, it took a huge plunge however the 6 or 7th most referred site to OzBargain is from Feedly.

        • @neil: well I learned something new today

      • Thanks for that information but I would love real time notifications like when I get a reply to a comment I made. Well its essentially the notification feature of FB.

  • -3

    I wish when we hide comments from specific users they disappear completely until we change the setting.
    currently the comments only get collapsed so I have to see their username over and over. I don't like it.

  • I'd like to be able to surface any forum threads that have 0 (zero) replies so that I could try to answer the unanswered questions on this site.

    EDIT: I just saw the "unanswered" option in the forums menu - cool!

  • +1

    Hey guys,

    Any chance you'll be adding coloured header bar support for chrome mobile?

    I've noticed a lot of sites rolling this out recently, and it's quite pretty. I don't want OzB to be left behind… :)

    I'm far from a website expert, but it doesn't appear to be too difficult to integrate.

    • +1

      :) looks great guys!

  • Referral wiki link to show on posts for that company? So instead of the referral link box (on some deals), it could be as simple as 'see Wiki page for referral links' and a brief explanation of the benefit

    • I think the long term plan to get rid of all the wikis to put them in the automated system. A bit tricky if people are just given a code with no link.

      It also has been suggested to include a wiki at the bottom of deals from certain stores. They could, as you say have a link to the referral wiki page but also some tips/tricks.

  • Any chance of trialing the 'Treasure Hunt Marketplace" format as a real market swapping marketplace?

    • Not likely. To put that into a working product would probably need a lot more development.

      • Cool thanks, I liked the Treasure Hunt format and thought it may be fun for all the little voucher and prize swaps that go on around the place..

  • +3

    Hey guys I like the old format when looking at deals searched, the grid is takes longer and you really need to focus :)

  • It would be good if "Error: Maximum number of search alerts (10) reached" also included a link where you can delete your search alerts. I find it quite hard to find that page.

  • Is it possible for a search to filter front page deals only?

  • With product tags can we have a way of suggesting a tag?

    1 that came to mind today was Havaiana thongs. Could do with a product tag as it's a popular enough thing.

    Most things I know get merged in the back end (like model numbers linked up etc), but there's always these quirky things that spring up which would be good to have a product page :)

    • All the product tags are added manually by moderators, it's one of those things that we need to be careful with to ensure there isn't already a product tag written in a different way (if you ever notice 2 tags for the same thing let us know so we can merge them). Mods will add product tags as they come across them or turn tags that powerusers have created into product tags as you may have noticed from tags you've added.

      If you wanted to suggest a product tag, I'd say the best way to do so as a poweruser is to write the product tag in & then hit report in the revision tab (the ! under ops column and choose 'category and tags' and write 'please add product tag') - we'll then add it if it's appropriate. Regular users can hit report on the deal or on a revision if there is one and ask us to add a product tag also, which we'll once again do if it's appropriate.

      Thanks

      • Yeah I knew you guys worked your magic in the back-end, just didn't know about maybe creating proper product tags for things like that :)


        Another suggestion!

        Showing forum topics for products under their tagged page

        For example (just coz it's something I noticed recently). If we listed forum topics somehow on the same page, it could show people discussing that product. Maybe it could be treated like a product page is?

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