I can't be the only one who thinks associated L plate posts are more often spam than not. Majority of the time they're not even a bargain.
Examples:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289967
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289951
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289547
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289504
Discuss below.
you generally see if someone on their L's list a crap deal they never post again, this happens for individuals, for reps they keep posting because they are permitted to post their stores crappy deals until they get banned.
Could be because they get attacked by an angry mob and decide not to bother again.
I would call it an angry assortment of devices.
yeah serves them right for not posting a deal.
That is so elitist, you know that right? You are not of the OzB lineage, you may not trade here, we have sanctions! You do know there is whois, hoax-slayer and whirlpool to vet them yourself?
really?
Your post a few days ago was ironic enough
You really should go back and read that thread.
I did and it was mostly a "whine" thread probably a lot better than this horrid attempt at trying to run Ozbargain
but yes you raised some okay points but some points that you could try and waste days trying to change, it just wont happen
Ozbargain is changing as a community and its not for the better
Good deals aren't being posted because people treat newbies like crap
I agree with you in some ways with your thread but in others nothing will change
OZbargain has a culture behind it, old ways don't change unfortunately..
As Neil said, everyone starts at L, if people cut them down then why should they return here?
Its hurting the community as a whole and all I see is how to rort company threads on here most of the time, and almost borderline scam posts, those are the posts that should be banned
@shawncro 222: So if we agree on some things, but not on others, like most people do, hence a forum, why all this personal attention?
Your Post and the OP Post just seemed to be "directive" posts about Ozbargain, not singling you out just raising you had some issues in a very similar scenario to the OP, the OP post is completely silly, pointless and raises questions about if they actually bother to read the newbie instructions / wiki here
By all means you are free to post what you like and you do make quite valid points in your post, I just had to raise it as it was a similar situation about a different Ozbargain Topic
Nothin against you at all, maybe you sparked the beginning of this trend :p
While we're at it lets also ban L plate drivers, they're way too dangerous.
… and the virgins, we can't have them going about having sex, they have never had it before!
That moment you wish you could neg vote forum posts…
That moment you wish votes never existed.
Such a terrible system.
in forums yes, on deals, no.
any voting system is stupid
it promotes a pointless waste of SQL traffic / Data retention and server CPU usage
why dont we have a proper reward system, I know there are prizes for the best deal each year but why dont we implement points for a good deal and then the top 10-20 people who contribute actively are rewarded
Sounds better than gang voting, neg votes on comments / deals seems a waste of time, I like a deal, other people do not, they then downvote it
because they can / have nothing better to do
@shawncro 222: voting on a deal causes it to rise to the front page, hence you can skim the site on one page for the best, it also serves for people to share real life infomation, not pretty graphs, on thier experiences with a product. Prizes and or payment would ruin the site, thee are people who make a living winning things, and how would you tell the good deals from the bad if not for a poll?
why dont we have a proper reward system, I know there are prizes for the best deal each year but why dont we implement points for a good deal and then the top 10-20 people who contribute actively are rewarded
We give out awards monthly for all of kinds of things.
Quite simple
A good deal earns votes, I was more pointing out if particular users contributed constantly to the site it would make ozbargain better
You have the general guys SpaceBack, TA, TRENT who all post good deals constantly, I can see what you mean by "stats hacking" but it could be avoided very simply if there was a simple solution implemented
Hi Neil
This was what I was referring to exactly, but I think if it was maybe promoted more and some form of competition offered it would drive more deals / better quality
I dunno, I tend to see a lot of deals from new users and then they don't come back which worries me
the whole culture gets a bit too much, the joys of the internet I guess
Haha, as long as it it comes with an ACL gurantee right?
But I think there could be a lot of changes made in how things operate, but thats not my call
I let Scotty and the team of mods look after the site, I just want the good deals :)
This was what I was referring to exactly, but I think if it was maybe promoted more and some form of competition offered it would drive more deals / better quality
It used to be weekly years ago but people kept trying to game the system so we now pick users manually. We do automated awards on our sister sites, ChoiceCheapies and CheapCheapLah which we deal with people trying to game the system. As the number of site members increase, the more difficult it gets to manage these.
I dunno, I tend to see a lot of deals from new users and then they don't come back which worries me
While I don't have stats on this (need to think of how to query this) but I haven't noticed a change in this behaviour. But yes, we should be encouraging new users to come back by showing that this is a good environment to participate in while being able to accept critical feedback about the bargain they are posting. Not always easy but something we can all work on together.
@Parentheses: when it sells out, breaks the website, makes the news, and Gerry Harvey comes on the TV to call us professionals
Sorry, I did not make it clear. I was referring to voting in the comments section.
Upvoting and downvoting for deals is great.
I agree. L plate associates should only be allowed to post a deal if they have already posted a deal previously.
No one said to ban L plates from making posts but to ban them from making associated posts as most of the time they're just spam or very low rated. Hopefully someone posts a deal for reading lessons since most of you seem to not know how to.
but to ban them from making associated posts as most of the time they're just spam or very low rated.
How exactly is a store going to post their first deal?
Why would they need to?
So a store needs to put a deal up for some other store just so they can post here?
I've heard of stupid ideas, but goddamn yours takes the cake.
That would be breaching post rules if you are associated and you don't state so
That's your opinion and I don't care for it.
Really, that's your counter-argument?
So a business with a username relevant to their business (see here and here) would then have to post some meaningless post, likely not even getting votes, or just a duplicate, to allow them to post their own deal?
And then still they're going to post the same deal they would've the first time, but you've just made it harder for mods/the community by having the first meaningless post.
Majority of the time they're not even a bargain.
Doesn't matter if it's a store's 1st deal, or 51st deal, many still post deals after the 1st one that aren't voted up as bargains.
Would +10 votes from a non-L Plate Store Representative be defined as a bargain or not? Seems it wasn't very well received.
@nurries
Per today's post, I'm calling this comment out for being unnecessarily rude. No need to attack others due to us not understanding your proposal.
As I understand it, you want store rep /associated users to post deals for other sites/stores (a deal they found) before they are allowed to post their own store. OK, so I understand what you are saying, the problem is that people will do the minimum amount of work to be able post what they want. So they'll just pick some random crap that may or may not be a deal. It's similar to forums where to access a certain part of a forum, you need to make x of comments so I'm not sure how it would work in reality.
neil, you made a completely valid point in your post with evidence to back it up. I realised it was a bad idea after reading your post and you have made more valid points again. I was simply trying to educate the people who thought I was referring to completely preventing L platers from posting (which makes no sense).
And it regards to Spackbace he is still salty from our last altercation on his Uber "deal".
Thank you for keeping your responses professional, it is much appreciated.
And it regards to Spackbace he is still salty from our last altercation on his Uber "deal".
Nope, not at all. From the number of deals/comments I make, I fast lose track of conversations/altercations I have.
If you actually read my comment, you'd see that I made most of the same points neil did.
So maybe grow up a lil, the world isn't out to get you, you don't need to push your chest out on an online forum… no one cares.
Yes, you did make valid points similar to Neil. I just didn't want to acknowledge them as I thought you were carrying on from last time. My apologies. Can we just drop this now, thank you.
Cheers. Maybe edit your post to help others understand what you are saying so you don't keep getting the same confused comments. :)
I reckon we should just give them a chance, if it's a bad, they'll be savagely downvoted anyway.
Are you kidding OP?
Maybe we should ban these silly threads popping up constantly…>>>>
just keep scrolling, or have a say, just dont be shitty
This is one of the examples of why we (as a community) are missing out… Businesses see this kind of thing and are turned away… Six(ish) years as an Ozbargainer and I've not put up a single post for our business and have no intention to. Small businesses tend to run lean, so would only do deals they can afford… A 5-10% discount may be a big deal for some operators, and to be ridiculed for offering such a discount would put me right off.
This is OzBargain though, not OzDeal. If your business can't afford to post up a bargain (ie. cheapest product on the market) then you shouldn't be posting here anyway. I hope you can see where I'm coming from. We also own a family run business and I would never post a deal here unless we know we are the cheapest on the market.
Sure, I can post a deal with a 10% discount code from our online store, a result of which, you could by our product cheaper than anywhere else (that's not an assumption, it's a fact), so it would fall under the category of a bargain… However, I could almost hold my breath until the first comment about our products (as a premium range) costing more than product x that is not actually the same product…
Yes, we could afford a 10, or even a limited 20% deal…
Would we offer it here though? With entitlement flying around here so haphazardly, it's likely someone will lose an eye?
No chance.
I recall a deal being posted about an office chair not long ago which was selling for over $1k and it had a lot of postive feedback albeit a bit of negative feedback from frugal members who think it's "just another" office chairs. Deals of the premium range will always attract those types of users and there is nothing you can do about it sadly. Honestly, if I knew my product was cheaper than anywhere else (despite being able to buy a crappy version from elsewhere for cheaper) I would post the deal as that's definitely a bargain.
I love this community and appreciate the advice and bargains it gives access to but I don't like where it is heading. No need to be mean, negative and degrading there is enough of that in everyday life.
Please see my post from today regarding aggressive and unnecessarily rude comments. Please report any comments.
And no one seems to get my jokes.
What's up with that.
I even do crow impressions
Fark,Faaarrk
Am I the only one here who has never heard of the term "associated L plate posts"???
From the help:
- first deal posted by the user
- the user is associated with the business (employee, some relationship with store)
A deal is a deal…. 10% off is a deal, even if its not for a product you don't like!
A deal is a deal if it's the cheapest. One store might have something for 10% off that could be found elsewhere.
In saying that, I agree with the above posters that premium products should not always be compared with low end products (ie. cheap $50 Officeworks chair vs a suitable ergonomic chair).
There exists a number of store reps example who use ozbargain purely as an advertising platform, e.g. the offering were already overpriced/garbage to start with, and to add salt to injury, they offer some measly discount. There was no 'bargain' to start with.
Despite failing terribly, they keep posting because hey, free advertising.
Maybe the penalty for being a very poor performer (negative overall votes, or very low votes) should be increased ?
IMO they are clutter we can do without, and they're the small group of reps that annoy people.
There is little incentive for them to 'shape up or ship out' ?
They'll just wait a month or two and post another spam
ps. overpriced as in a $15 or less crapola from aliexpress being sold for AU$150, not a proper 'premium' product.
That store in particular looks like they'll get a performance based ban if/when their next deal flops (afaik)
I think I suggested at some point that the minimum vote average should be harsher, considering there are a couple of members that seem to blindly up-vote deals or whatever. A store should get at least an average of +5 to stick around (imo), which should be easy to achieve
- Maximum 1 deal per 24 hours
- Maximum 2 deals per 7 days is the default, however:
- If the vote average across the recent rep deals is 0 or below, the domain is temporarily banned until the vote average is corrected over time.
- If the vote average across the recent rep deals is between 0 and 3, the domain is temporarily banned for 2 weeks from the last post.
- If the vote average across the recent rep deals is between 3 and 8, it is reduced to maximum 1 deal per week.
- If the two most recent rep deals made the front page, the limit is increased to 3 deals per week.
- If the three most recent rep deals get double the front page minimum votes or more (currently 50 votes), the limit is increased to 4 deals per week.
A store will be banned if deals posted by representatives continually attract a low amount of votes. The system will ban a store if:
- The 2 latest rep posts are 30 days or less apart, and
- The vote average for the store's rep posts over the last 90 days is less than or equal to 1
Everyone starts at L, thus you are saying that store reps should never post.
Goes both ways (from the last few days),
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/288917, +83
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289563 +10
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289168 +38
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/289011 +7