I've been using the site for a couple years or so and I've always noticed that literally every deal listed ONLY has positive votes. And if someone does neg a deal for a legitimate reason, other members seem to take offence and neg that person in the comment section, resulting in the neg on the original deal being revoked.
So whats the point of having the + and - on deals, if the community isn't welcome to neg deals??
Well justified votes stay put, but if you don't have a good enough reason, it'll get revoked.
You've made 2 votes in the years you've been here, both negative, both got revoked. For some unknown reason you've never pos voted a deal. Ever. And this is your first post.
I'm genuinely am sure this is not a deal. You can use the coupons and get TWO whoppers for 6.95. $4 for one whopper without chips or a drink is definitely not a deal.
I'm honestly not sure why this KFC deal always gets posted, it's not a bargain - it's just a promotional meal thats priced accordingly to the market (bargains are cheaper than market no?). It's definitely $5 worth of food and its not enough food for lunch (especially a full day at work 8:30am - 5/6pm ish), and I find my self spending extra up to $10 anyway.
Seems you have something against fast food, for whatever reason, and both times you went against the status quo (both deals saw over 100 pos votes).
Boom. Drop the mic.
So whats the point
There is no point. Generally there is no correlation with a high voted deal, and one which is actually good. Also there are plenty of people who upvote a deal based on who posted the deal. Also, there only needs to be a small handful of people to neg your comment when you downvote a deal and then it is negated. The whole system is so flawed it is useless.
the voting system exists is to give pretty much everyone a say
but it doesn't. hardly any negative votes stick (i think less than 10% of mine do). you aren't required to justify an upvote the same way you do a neg, and theres no system to revoke upvotes when the person clearly doesn't know what a good deal is. that's sounds to me like a one sided setup.
The whole system is so flawed it is useless.
Absolutely.
However, the reason for justifying neg votes, is that they have an action…. ie can get a post hidden, retailer banned, etc etc. It doesn't take many votes for that to happen, and wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for one company to damage a competitor by getting a few staff/friends to neg a deal.
The neg vote should be removed completely as it has served no useful purpose for a long time.
wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for one company to damage a competitor by getting a few staff/friends to neg a deal
We audit votes both manually and by the system to detect issues like this.
I've certainly been aware of voting groups in the past…… I don't know if any still exist….
wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility for one company to damage a competitor by getting a few staff/friends to neg a deal.
same could be said about doing the exact opposite and having a few mates neg vote any person who negs your deal so the votes are removed
depends if the deal is around long enough for anyone to notice….
Maybe if you justified your negs with reasons other than 'worst deal post ever' they wouldn't get revoked?
I stand by that comment. it was the worst deal post ever
Rekt 😂
let's take a step back. honestly I did not understand till I read.
have you read the ozbargain wiki getting start re voting
You have to accept the fact that this is a relatively tame community where rules overrule opinions.
If you simply don't like a deal for reasons that lie outside the rules, there's nothing more you can do except move on. This isn't reddit where butt-hurt anons throw negs left right and centre.
Sure the site looks strangely spiffy clean with nothing but pluses but that's because it was designed that way; there isn't enough mod power to handle circle jerks, memes and trolls. I do agree that the bleached feeling of ozb is a flaw but that's how it is.
FYI:
The POINT of the negative vote is to point out if you can get the deal cheaper elsewhere or if there is a major issue with the retailer etc.
From our September stats:
351 deals were deleted by moderators out of 2,888 posted or roughly 12%. So that's 351 deals just in September that would be negged highly.
What the point of the +/- on deals, if people get berated for negging a deal?
Clearly you wouldn't give two shits if your own negs didn't get revoked.
Thanks for reminding me that I haven't negged anyone… yet ;)
inb4 negging Chinese retailers because 'item haven't arrived in 2 weeks' or something
That's literally 95% of issues when I go looking up order numbers.
I neg the odd thing when it's like particularly bad or outdated or something, I pos here and there whenever I remember when something's really good. For the most part, I'm neutral and don't vote, either because I don't think of it, or because it's not worth being massively upvoted.
If I get something for free, I'll usually upvote, so more people get to see it / get it.
As far as I know, from the limited encounters in real life that I've had, most OzBargainers tend to be the same as me.
Neg away, I say.
If the deal is cheaper elsewhere or the vendor is hugely problematic, please post an explanation with the neg.
But if you personally don't like a deal (e.g. free fruit for kids mentioned up thread), why are you sharing your opinion?
I don't particularly like deals on religious stuff, as an example, but it would be pretty obnoxious of me to turn up and neg a deal for that reason.
it wasn't a deal
I've always noticed that literally every deal listed ONLY has positive votes.
That's simply not true. Do note that the default New Deals threshold will hide all deals that have (pos - neg) < -1 votes, so sometimes you don't see the neg voted deals because they have been hidden away (as intended).
should he have phrased it as a statistically insignificant number of deals have neg votes, and most of the ones who do have around a 100 to 1 positive to negative ratio? I'd say a lot of people on here don't ever bother to neg a deal because of how pointless it is
The neg vote was originally developed as an information tool to highlight where a deal might be found cheaper or problems with the product or the retailer.
That rarely happens these days…. more often it is used for opinion, 'punishment' of a particular poster, a listing error, or just 'because'.
The automatic removal of negged posts means that, even though there might be very useful information attached to the first neg vote, the 'mob' of following votes generally ensures that the post, along with that useful information, disappears from view.
Tha same is true for positive votes as people often give votes based on who posted, a particular brand, etc, rather than the actual deal. However, the worst that can happen with positive votes is that it stays on the front page. With neg votes the information disappears. Personally, I'd want to make up my own mind about a deal, not having it decided for me by a small, random (maybe) bunch of members armed with a neg vote.
It's a flawed system that dissuades many people from contributing
The deals that have an overwhelmingly negative response tend to be legitimately bad deals and are removed from the page, and become invisible to us.
That's why it seems as if deals with negative votes don't exist. They do, they are just deleted pretty quickly so you never see them. Edit: see Neil's stats
Remember whether a deal is good or bad depends on the community's response, it's not down to exact science or mathematics — if 100 people think a deal is good, but 2 people disagree and click the red button, a large majority could still disagree and downvote the two into oblivion. Most just neg vote to prove a personal agenda and aren't contributing much to the discussion at hand, and these are more likely to get slammed.
Is this a 'flaw' or an intended feature of ozbargain? Who knows, but the entire purpose the voting system exists is to give pretty much everyone a say, whether you have approvals or misgivings about the comment itself.