Have you noticed that some deals that were there before, and a few minutes later they just went puff and disappeared into the thin air? When you try to access it, instead of getting Not Found, you get Access Denied?
No, they did not accidentally stumbled into Area 51 and got captured by the aliens. Let me explain what is happening behind the scene.
Currently users can either vote up and down on a deal. If a deal has been voted down too many times (currently at number of positive votes + 1), then it will be unpublished and put back into the moderation queue. Items inside the moderation queue can only be accessed by the administrators and the original posters. Once in a while I will delete those old unpublished deals permanently.
So in a community-moderated forum like OzBargain, spams and "dodgy deals" get automatically removed. However sometimes it might render undesirable effect. For example an unverified deal (like the recent eBay/PayPal $5 deal) might get a few negative votes and get unpublished, but then verified later as genuine.
What do you think?
Good idea. But maybe they shouldn't disappear completely, a +1-1 deal for example. Maybe have them in a separate section where you can still see them? But not actually showing on recent deals to prevent spamming. Just my 2 cents.
I was wondering, with some moneyback where they have been taken off/run out of money, could we have some sort of notification for when they are taken off and reinstated? Snapfish is "inactive" at the moment, also waiting on Centrebet, hoping to refer someone else.