Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2018

scotty on 03/01/2018 - 23:17

Continued from Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2017. This post will be used for general feedback in 2018. Please make any suggestions for new features, bugs, things you'd like to see changed or anything else. Please check this wiki page 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. Please see the Site & Guideline Updates Announcement Thread to keep up to date with the changes/features that we implement as they are added.

Site Discussion

closed Comments

  • tranter on 03/01/2018 - 23:42
    -4

    Get rid of voting on comments already.

    • payton on 03/01/2018 - 23:57
      +7

      comment votes serves its purpose most of the time IMO and should stay

      • tranter on 04/01/2018 - 00:12

        I often wonder what is that purpose?

        • payton on 04/01/2018 - 00:12
          +3

          highlights the useful / true / thoughtful / agreed comments (consensus)

        • Quantumcat on 04/01/2018 - 08:07
          +1

          Means heavily downvoted comments are hidden unless you want to see them

        • theguyrules on 04/01/2018 - 09:14
          -1

          To downvote off topic comments from jv or Scab

        • [Deactivated] on 04/01/2018 - 09:50

          the purpose of comment votes is so that fanbois can neg anyone who posts a neg vote on a deal and it gets revoked

    • airal3rt on 04/01/2018 - 00:04

      Did someone hurt(downvote) you? I, for one, welcome our pseudo-Reddit overlords.

      • tranter on 04/01/2018 - 00:15

        I mostly get positive votes. Now and then I get negative votes but it doesn't hurt me.

    • Savas on 04/01/2018 - 06:26
      +4

      What you should be asking for is unlimited negs.

      • tranter on 04/01/2018 - 07:41
        +3

        Exactly. The fact that negs are limited is an admission the system doesn't work.

        • Quantumcat on 04/01/2018 - 08:08
          +3

          I think limited negs are great, because then people will save them for really stupid comments, or factually incorrect comments, and not just when they mildly disagree.

        • tranter on 04/01/2018 - 10:12

          @Quantumcat:
          In theory, yes, but my original comment above has been negged twice already. Just for stating an opinion when feedback has been asked for.

        • Quantumcat on 04/01/2018 - 10:50
          +3

          @tranter: You gave no reasons for your opinion though

        • tranter on 04/01/2018 - 12:54
          +1

          @Quantumcat:

          And what reasons did the neg voters give?

          I'm glad you value robust discussion as do I.

        • WatchNerd on 23/05/2018 - 12:17
          +1

          @tranter:

          Did you know that upvotes are limited as well?

  • payton on 03/01/2018 - 23:56

    If a topic in Hot Discussions List gets closed, can it fall off the list immediately/much quicker?
    That dispute about $15 has been on the #1 for far too long
    Discourages troll threads too, as they (should) disappear when closed.

    idea#2: can we have a page 2 of the Hot Discussions list .. ie the next lot of hottest topics xD

    • Moderatorscotty on 04/01/2018 - 09:23

      We should probably indicate that a thread has been closed by moderator. However closed threads should still be there because of the amount of discussions already generated. As of page 2, the last item on the list currently only has 29 comments. There won't be anything "hot" on page 2 I am afraid.

  • BlazinPast on 04/01/2018 - 01:06
    +6

    I mentioned it before but didn't get a response. You can currently search titles, but you can't search descriptions + title. This would be incredibly useful as there are so many deals that have multiple items and not all the products can be mentioned in the title. Right now it searches through comments too which can bring up a lot of unwanted search results.

    • Moderatorscotty on 04/01/2018 - 09:25

      Basically you just want to exclude comments from search result? I'll see what I can do.

      • BlazinPast on 04/01/2018 - 10:22
        +2

        Yep. Mainly because not all items are properly tagged in deals. If I was looking for a hard drive, there are probably hundreds of comments that mention hard drive but have nothing to do with a deal containing hard drives

        • Moderatorneil on 12/01/2018 - 16:34

          BlazinPast,

          This has now been implemented. Just add option:nocomment after your keyword.

        • BlazinPast on 12/01/2018 - 17:00

          @neil: yessss, thanks neil :)

          • Ry009 on 11/10/2018 - 17:10

            @BlazinPast: Tried this but isnt working unless im doing it wrong? "keyword" + "option:nocomment"

            • BlazinPast on 11/10/2018 - 23:14

              @Ry009: Still works for me. I just looked up: usb option:nocomment
              It only came up with results that had USB in the title or in the description

            • Moderatorneil on 11/10/2018 - 23:27

              @Ry009: Can you copy and paste the link you are using?

  • R-Man on 04/01/2018 - 02:16
    +7

    Suggestion: the ability to @tag other users in comments which then sends them a notification.

    Mod edit 2021: Now available

    • [Deactivated] on 04/01/2018 - 06:15
      +9

      jv's inbox would fill up in a day

    • Moderatorscotty on 04/01/2018 - 09:28

      That has been suggested many times previously, and we had some implementing issues. Low priority at the moment.

      • brisdaz on 26/09/2018 - 17:09

        Tag a User/Mention a User

        8 months later - I hope it's not too early to ask what the status of this is.

        It's a feature request since 2012 - Tag A User / Deal

        Is there a list somewhere of suggestion priorities - this wiki page hasn't been updated since 2016?

        Perhaps +1 this comment if you think it should be higher priority but only if you do?

  • Quantumcat on 04/01/2018 - 08:12
    +1

    Not sure if this is possible already (apologise in advance if it is) but what about the ability to follow a member and be notified when they post a deal, forum topic, or comment (can choose which)?

    • sss333 on 04/01/2018 - 08:44
      +2

      Can't get notification for comments, but can for deals/forum topics/comps when you subscribe to a user (go to a member's page and click subscribe, can choose from web or email notifications in your settings).

    • Baysew on 04/01/2018 - 13:27
      +2

      Click on the "Stalk" button.

  • [Deactivated] on 04/01/2018 - 13:10
    +1

    Unban broden or bikies!

  • [Deactivated] on 04/01/2018 - 13:12
    +2

    Add the feature that will let you subscribe to a product.
    Example: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/product/raspberry-pi-3

    • nocure on 04/01/2018 - 13:14

      Hit the "want" button…

      • [Deactivated] on 04/01/2018 - 13:15

        Will you get notified when there is a new deal?

        • nocure on 04/01/2018 - 13:34
          +1

          That would be nice, but no, it just highlights the product tag in the OP, you could set up a search alert for "Raspberry Pi 3" which will send an alert to your email.

    • moar bargains on 04/01/2018 - 14:04
      +3

      In the same vein as this: Being able to subscribe to email alerts for tags.
      I.e. I don't want to subscribe to all Mobile deals, just those tagged Android.
      Would help reduce the number of emails sent out via more fine-grained control over what people want to be notified of.

    • Moderatorscotty on 04/01/2018 - 16:47

      Tag subscriptions have also been asked many times but implementation is not as easy as you think. Deals are product-tagged by moderators and power users usually after the deals have been posted, as the first revision of the deal post usually lacks many details. Therefore firing subscription emails at posting time doesn't work (as products aren't tagged).

      For now, just use the RSS feed for the product (with /feed appended after the URL) and get alert through your favorite RSS reader.

      • moar bargains on 05/01/2018 - 15:10
        +1

        Ah no worries, thanks for the clarification.
        Maybe they could be integrated into the daily emails? Instead of a posting time alert, a daily update on "There are x new posts for <tag>", or something like that?
        Or maybe some sort of time delay, that scans for updates at regular intervals and emails, rather than at posting time?
        Obviously you know the back-end better than us, but just throwing some ideas out there.

        For now I'm using IFTTT linked to the RSS feed to notify me.

  • follow on 06/01/2018 - 07:46
    +4

    dark theme!

  • WJD21 on 06/01/2018 - 23:22
    +2

    Suggestion; when a deal receives a predetermined number of reports for particular reasons (ie. illegal/inappropriate, spam, dupe etc.), it is automatically hidden pending review by a moderator. Handy for the occassional questionable deal that's posted and the ensuing comments

    • Moderatorneil on 06/01/2018 - 23:26

      Just because a deal receives a lot of reports doesn't mean we haven't seen them. It generally means (if it's not the middle of the night) we are either waiting it out to see what happens (e.g. a price error or more info) or it's being discussed/researched. We'd rather make the correct decision based on guidelines, precedent and group discussion rather make quick decisions.

  • avgbowlofpho on 08/01/2018 - 12:52

    I suggest removing the revision tab under deals, it's seems a vulnerability point for some companies, e.g. that free 2 Months of Netflix deal, although the deal was edited, the original steps can still be found under revisions.

    • Moderatorscotty on 08/01/2018 - 14:08

      Users can report individual revisions on the revision tab to have them removed by the moderators. Revisions are there to keep everyone accountable.

  • [Deactivated] on 10/01/2018 - 13:42
    +1

    Not sure if this has been asked before, but is there a way we can add product tags to a forum post? For example if there's a forum topic about a particular item such as this one, it would be nice to have a link somewhere on the page to the actual product and previous deals. Something like this has been done in scrim's post about headphones, but I don't think we have the option to add tags manually when creating a forum post? Thanks

    • Moderatorscotty on 10/01/2018 - 17:45

      Currently only available to Mods & Power Users. I will take a look later this month.

  • ilikeradiohead on 10/01/2018 - 17:09
    +1

    This isn't a high priority, but you know how in FB/Messenger you can thumb up/thumb down/haha/love/angry/wow something. Something like that haha. I need a wider range of emotions that +/-
    [Noting that Facebook has about 50,000 more employees than OzBargain]

    • Moderatorscotty on 10/01/2018 - 17:48

      It would be implemented when we get to 1/10 the size of Facebook :)

    • payton on 10/01/2018 - 20:19
      +3

      ozB is better than FB because we have a dislike button and they don't

  • payton on 11/01/2018 - 12:50

    re: the relaxing of negative vote validity guidelines AKA the 'I think its wrong' negvotes

    I noticed somewhat of a direction change in ozB since the above occurs.

    I remember the firearms and cage eggs deals people were just piling on the negs cause they can, and emotion based negs will usually stick even though it doesn't fall inside appropriate uses of a negative vote. The mob effect if you like, an analogy would be the most disliked trailers on Youtube eg CoD or recent Ghostbusters.

    Having it set this way would just invite a bigger angry mob in the comment section and more work in moderating or the closing of the thread.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 11/01/2018 - 13:02

      There is no direction change or relaxing, the guidelines have been the same for years, you need to read to the very bottom to see the important part in regards to moderator intervention on negative votes.

      Specifically here

      Any negative vote that falls into any of these reasons will be revoked by a moderator. Negative votes for any other reason will not be removed by a moderator.

      If it's not in that list of reasons, moderators don't revoke it and it's up to the community to decide if the vote stands.

      If a member thinks something is wrong and properly explains their negative vote then that's it's over to the community. It's not a moderators job to take sides on moral debates or anything of the sort, we have that list to try and be as consistent and transparent as possible. It's either there or not = it either gets revoked or not, users are also sent those guidelines if a negative vote is revoked so they understand for next time (in addition to the guidelines being linked when any user makes their first vote).

  • payton on 11/01/2018 - 13:14

    ok

    it's up to the community to decide if the vote stands.

    Before, the threshold was 6 neg votes on a comment = revoked
    Now its 8 and the comment poster would just place multiple comments in the thread to 'spread out' the comment negs they receive, going as far as copy&pasting the same response.
    Just my observation

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 11/01/2018 - 13:16

      Now its 8

      Details here

      Effective 10/5/2017 6:30AM. The number of negative comment votes required to revoke a negative vote by the community has increased slightly (to keep in line with growing member numbers).

      going as far as copy&pasting the same response.

      Please report that in the future, duplicate comments should be reported so they can be removed (unless they are specific replies to different members for the same thing then we'll usually allow that, but we can make that call regardless). This isn't something I've really noticed myself but I'll keep an eye out for it in the future.

      You could look at making multiple comments both ways. Yes it might spread the votes but on the other hand making multiple comments on a deal which you have negative voted is just putting you more 'at risk' of having your vote revoked (as you have more comments that could hit the vote threshold rather than just the 1 comment).

      • payton on 12/01/2018 - 17:12

        Thanks Hamza

  • solidussnake on 14/01/2018 - 10:31
    +2

    Why are we allowing everyone to post deals for Ebay coming up in the next couple days until it goes live? Most prices conveniently go up the day before and Oz bargain is getting spammed with POSSIBLE deals not actual concrete ones..

    • xuqi on 14/01/2018 - 14:55
      +3

      I don't mind seeing deals from large companies (i.e. Coleworth specials, or Ebay x% off, etc.) being listed, but potential specific deals such as those flooding the site very recently, with no actual proof is total BS.

      Given that most Ebay resellers increase their prices during the %off sales, it seems counter-intuitive to allow the posting of such deals as most if not all will end up being invalid.

    • Quantumcat on 16/01/2018 - 09:59
      +2

      It exposes the pricejackers?

    • Moderatorneil on 16/01/2018 - 10:05

      See comment here.

      • BlazinPast on 16/01/2018 - 19:03

        A lot of these stores partake frequently. You can look at the eBay price history to tell if they're going to jack the price up or leave it. For example, for this deal, just go to the ebay price history to see that it's 1.9k but was higher before. The last sale including Videopro was on the 20th of December and you can see in the eBay price history that it was 2.27k at the time. Hence, it's pretty safe to say they'd jack the price up to a similar extent during a 20% sale.

        For another example, there's this one. The price at the time was something like $300 before being jacked to $369. Looking at the price history, you can see that the last time it was sold was on the 26th and 27th of December at a price of $374. That happened to be the time of another eBay sale hence quite obvious it was going to be another price jack.

        Maybe you guys have figured out another way to verify if something is going to be a price jack but I think this is a pretty simple way of determining it. I'm happy to help out for the next sale if something will be jacked up in price or not.

  • AlienC on 30/01/2018 - 02:14

    Google Play Music Product Page so we can compile all the free YouTube red and Google play free 3-4 months trial deals into one page.

    YouTube Red product page exists but not Google play music.

    • Moderatorscotty on 30/01/2018 - 09:17

      When you sign up to YouTube Red you automatically get Google Play Music — those two products are bundled together.

      • AlienC on 31/01/2018 - 21:18

        Some deals have been poorly posted as Google play music only and so don't all get bundled under the YouTube red product page banner.. searching for them can be a pain you can try yourself. I am only trying to help man and cover the lazy or half asses attempt as we know the world ain't perfect more of a patch it and fix it later kind of struggle but to each their own.. try searching for the free YouTube coupon trials they are all over the place..

        Ok I leave in your hands..

        P.s. I know.

  • tooblue on 30/01/2018 - 09:44
    +11

    New automatic scroll/expanding feature on deals page?

    I never like this feature. It means one has to go through all the previous listings to reach one particular item. When one leaves the page the return, he has to go through all the listing again. It is much slower and taking much effort than simply click a page number at the bottom.

    I think generally websites use this feature is to prevent users go to lower ranked pages but promoting the items on the first few pages.

    • Moderatorscotty on 30/01/2018 - 10:10

      Don't you always start from the first page and then enter subsequent pages? Also when you scroll through you'll see that the URL actually changes with page=<number> added to the query parameter. You can then use that URL to jump back to that specific page.

      • Scrooge McDuck on 30/01/2018 - 12:02
        +1

        I've noticed a bug:

        The Freebies page loads deals which aren't marked as Freebie at the bottom.

        • Moderatorscotty on 30/01/2018 - 15:42

          It has been fixed.

        • bluesky on 30/01/2018 - 16:46
          +2

          Hey good to see you back …

        • Scrooge McDuck on 30/01/2018 - 22:09
          +4

          @bluesky:

          Thanks, but I'm not really back.

          I just logged in to read my fan mail.

      • LoungeLizard on 31/01/2018 - 20:21
        +2

        So instead of just clicking on the next/prev page icon I have to manually edit the URL? That makes no sense.

    • Loki556 on 30/01/2018 - 16:31
      +6

      I agree - this change is making it quite difficult to navigate around. When you are browsing, it makes it difficult to go back to the page you are interested in, or forward a few pages ahead if you know roughly where the item was.

      I can't really see any positives with this change.

      • SBOB on 30/01/2018 - 19:42
        +1

        I agree - this change is making it quite difficult to navigate around

        you're telling me.. I didnt notice and just spend 2 hours scrolling to find the bottom of the page ;)

    • LowRange on 31/01/2018 - 01:05
      +2

      Yes this feature is terrible, it offers no benefits to a pagination system and has many drawbacks. Unfortunately someone decided it's trendy and now we all have to suffer the effects. I loved that OzB had not followed the trend.

    • fattyboombatty on 31/01/2018 - 12:42
      +3

      What benefit does this feature add? It makes basic site navigation more difficult, so what's the trade off? Surely there must be some benefit I'm missing for this to be implemented.

      Not having a go - genuinely curious

    • Make it so on 31/01/2018 - 13:16
      -1

      Sorry, but I actually like it. Having to press the tiny pagination buttons (and pressing the wrong one) was very annoying.

      But I think the usability could be improved by changing how things are loaded. I think it should start loading before the user reaches the bottom, and it should not wait for images to load before it shows the next content. In other words, show text ahead of images to avoid delay.

  • thatguyfromthatplace on 31/01/2018 - 15:05
    +7

    Infinite scroll is crap, Ozbargain. Get rid of it.

    • DarthAntz on 31/01/2018 - 15:17
      +5

      people who view ozbargain all day can keep track of bargains after work by jumping to the page its on, but its more difficult to do that with infinite scroll.
      Infinite scroll also poisons the charm the site has as a homage to time of internet when it all started.

    • twocsies on 10/02/2018 - 16:36
      +2

      Why not just make infinite scroll an option? I really hate it. Please give me the option to remove it. Or A/B test to see if it's what people want (IMO infinite scroll will decrease click-through rate).

  • DarthAntz on 31/01/2018 - 15:13

    would love to be able to search for 'international' in competition searches.

  • payton on 31/01/2018 - 15:50
    +6

    Hi scotty
    Looking at the comments in this thread and this one it seems large majority of comments are not in favor of the infinite scroll.

    Would be great if there's an option to switch back to the old style as it afforded several usability benefits lost in the new system.

    The infinite scroll works a treat for shopfronts where there are limited number of items to be shown, with ozb its hundreds of 1000's so not great.

    Many thanks

  • LoungeLizard on 31/01/2018 - 20:18
    +3

    +1 for getting rid of infinite scroll, on desktop at least anyway.

  • mekktor on 01/02/2018 - 17:25

    Clicking on any of the coupons at https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/dominos.com.au opens up the dominos site which causes your session to expire on that site. Does it have to do this? It's pretty annoying when you expect the links to show you details of the deal but instead end up just having to put your order back together from scratch.

    • Clear on 01/02/2018 - 17:36

      That's not happening to me on Desktop or Mobile. I can click, touch and highlight the coupons themselves without redirection. Are you clicking on the link itself to the right of the coupons that take you to Dominos?

      • mekktor on 01/02/2018 - 19:36

        Yeah, I'm talking about the links to the right. In other places on the site, a link like that would take you to the deal itself, so I instinctively click it for more info. I just don't think it's ideal for those links to have different behaviour to the rest of the site with an annoying consequence.

  • [Deactivated] on 02/02/2018 - 01:02
    +1

    When you click on forums it should take you to new discussions, just like it does for deals

    • payton on 02/02/2018 - 11:41
      +1

      No thanks, you're already commenting everywhere

      • [Deactivated] on 02/02/2018 - 17:56
        +1

        nah nah i'm not in the competitions page yet

  • thatguyfromthatplace on 10/02/2018 - 17:10
    +2

    Hello OzBargain, I just wanted to let you know that after using the site with infinite scrolling for over a week it's still utter shit. Get rid of it.

  • RickyNelson on 12/02/2018 - 22:07
    +2

    Is there a way I can view the deals a certain number per page like old days?

  • jv on 13/02/2018 - 12:50
    +2

    The new scrolling feature is bad… Way too slow

    I prefer having page numbers.

  • payton on 13/02/2018 - 14:11
    +1

    Clicked ozbargain from an old PC (that was still logged in to My Account) and got the 'do you want our newsletter' prompt again
    What is the deal with these? I imagine by the time people get the newsletter the popular stuff would be gone already?

    Thanks for putting the page system back!

  • [Deactivated] on 14/02/2018 - 13:28
    +3

    Not sure if it's that important, but can we have a single forum post in the future where we can merge all "insufficient quantity" deals in that thread? I know we can post low quantity deals as a forum post like I've done before, however the deals which get unpublished aren't accessible to anyone once removed, so it would be beneficial if we can just merge it in a single thread even if it's going to help 2-3 people.

    • Savas on 14/02/2018 - 13:38
      +3

      That's a good idea.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 14/02/2018 - 17:41

      Thanks for the suggestion and sounds like a good idea. Since we can 'merge' the insufficient quantity deal post into an existing forum thread, that also means that worse case scenario we can republish the deal post with votes intact (unlike 'moving' a deal post to the forums which leaves no trace and is non reversible).

      We have an existing forum thread for ALDI which we'll keep as it's dedicated thread. We had a look at the numbers and from quick glance the vast majority of insufficient deals were for ALDI (already gets merged) or eBay. So we'll create a new thread for eBay and a new thread for 'everything else'. In the future if there is a particular store that has a large number of insufficient quantity deals we can consider giving them their own thread, for now we'll keep it at 3 threads: ALDI, eBay & Everything else and merge deals to the appropriate forum posts, rather than unpublishing them. Some users who only want to know about particular insufficient quantity deal can just follow that particular forum post, others who want to know about them all can follow all 3.

      We'll get those forum topics started as soon as possible, hopefully this week, then go from there.

      • [Deactivated] on 14/02/2018 - 17:46
        +2

        Thank you hamza!

  • lowballs on 14/02/2018 - 16:00
    +1

    Infinite Scroll is trolling your users. Get rid of it. Do not even make it an option. Just boot it out of existence.

  • 17833 on 14/02/2018 - 16:32

    Wow, so many comments on infinite scroll. Another request, can we please have a choice. I can't even uses OzBargain at work now, as the browser never functions properly on a good day, and it will not load the new deals no matter what I try. NZ and Singapore sites still have page numbers, why implement it here?

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