Has anybody noticed the ridiculous amount of duplicate deals lately? Maybe we should reaffirm that users need to check if the deal exist before posting it. Because they seem to be ignoring the guidelines.
Too Many Dupes Lately
Lmegatallica on 20/02/2014 - 18:32
Comments
take it easy man…. means not many deals lately and means our friends are still working hard to try find good deals and willing to share…
I know, and usually a dupe might slip through, but its not hard to check the last few pages for the same deal, or to search for it.
Thing is, there are posts that cover a variety of products not necessarily in the title.
ie: savings at Coles that week for one post and a dupe that has one product mentioned in the Coles post.
As much as we put notices and try to detect duplicates, they do happen. However, the stats disagree with your argument of numerous duplicates lately. If we keep pace, then we will actually have a slightly smaller amount of duplicates compared to 12 month average.
Reported duplicate deals:
2013 1 205 2013 2 130 2013 3 142 2013 4 134 2013 5 160 2013 6 190 2013 7 161 2013 8 130 2013 9 130 2013 10 114 2013 11 143 2013 12 202 2014 1 138 2014 2 74If anyone has any suggestions to reduce duplicates, then let us know your ideas (we've certainly tried).
If anyone has any suggestions to reduce duplicates, then let us know your ideas (we've certainly tried).
Let the OP delete it themselves(instead of mods requiring to do it themselves) if they are aware(from comments) that it is a dupe
They usually just replace the title & content with "MOD! PLEASE DELETE!" and if we come across those we'll unpublish it with "Requested by OP" as reason.
However I think what neil is asking is how to help our members not to post duplicates in the first place.
I posted a dupe the other day… other OP beat me by a few minutes (wasn't there when I started)… Being able to delete it is a good idea, even if the delete link is only available for a few minutes.
Deals require a 'store', before submit button pop up a box of 'recent deals' from store or matching the keywords. Have user review list :) I'm guessing you've tried adding this functionality though?
Yes we have already had that for years. In some cases we even require people to tick the checkbox "it is not a dupe".
So its a case of lazy user syndrome :( need a way to retrain them… ECT?
Okay, when the possible dupes pop up, force them to open each in a new tab. When they land on each deal, have a pop-up or whatever where they have to click a button confirming it's not the same. Once they've gone through them, enable the Publish button.
By walking them through this way, there can be no excuse for someone posting a dupe, unless the deals were posted within seconds or a few minutes of one another.
So the auto prompting has limited success in preventing dupes.
Let members submit the deal, but have a mod approve it before it goes live. Like how some sites approve comments. Sure, it's more work, but you can't beat a pair of human eyes that are focused on an objective.
Really bad idea.
Many deals are highly time-critical due to having limited stock, high popularity, being for a limited time only and other factors and by the time a mod got around to approving some particularly popular ones (especially if users discover them late at night/early in the morning), they could easily have expired or have been… OzBargained by non-OzBargainers. We can't have that, we invented the term OzBargained.
Mods have lives too, and greater responsibilities ensuring the smooth operation of this site; they can't be personally moderating deals now, it'd kill the flow of traffic on here.
The bargains must flow.
Self-regulation never works.
Unless there's a scripting breakthrough, the dupes will persist.
the dupes will persist.
Is this keeping you up at night? Is it really a bigger problem that bargins being missed?
Did I start the topic?
If dupes persist please contact your healthcare professionals
If dupes persist please contact your healthcare professionals
please contact the friendly moderation staff via the report button near the top of the page. thank you
Reported duplicate deals:
2013 1 205
2014 1 138versus how many total deals? i think the dupe rate must be very low? and any dupes get removed often within seconds of them being posted.
seems like a first world problem if ever i saw one…..
Good question.
Posted deals by month
2013 1 2158 2013 2 1941 2013 3 2403 2013 4 2357 2013 5 2825 2013 6 2646 2013 7 2473 2013 8 2275 2013 9 2288 2013 10 2433 2013 11 2692 2013 12 2963 2014 1 2281 2014 2 1471So January 2013: 205/2158= 9.4%
January 2014: 138/2281=6%A couple things to note. These are only the amount of posted deals (both published and unpublished). The duplicate report counts include forum posts although forum posts take up only a small amount of total reports. So there is probably a margin of error in there.
We've recently enabled automatic rep bans for those who continually post bad deals (formerly manually done) which should have reduced the posted deal count.
Off the top of my head, I think the duplicate deals are removed probably within a few minutes on average. If I can figure out how to create that SQL query, it would be an interesting stat to see.
If anyone has any suggestions to reduce duplicates, then let us know your ideas (we've certainly tried).
Hi neil. Biggest issue is the search engine. Need something done about its accuracy. Often misses posts when I search for key words.
Cheers.
Does it really bother you that much? I mean I see some once in a while but they get removed eventually.
Being too nasty / picky puts people off reporting deals… do we want that???
Encouraging posts is the idea that makes sense to me… but some don't agree it seems.Bend a little people…. :-)
BTW… has this been discussed before?? (sarcasm)
Agree 100%. I posted a deal in Jan 2013 and some of the comments were:
Is it only at Clarks stores ? or stores that sell Clarks ?
- I didn't list myself as a Rep for Clarks - so how could I know? I noted that the deal was at the Kotara store, you can check other stores yourselfI'm confused … what is the actual deal?
- The title clearly said - Most Men's Shoes $29 - Women's Shoes from $25
- The opening line began 'Just got about $600 worth in shoes for $87 at the Kotara store'
- You can do the simple math and work out the savingscant see any deals on the site. No point anyway, with womens shoe sizes only going up to size 8!! I am a size 10!!
- The title clearly said Clarks Shoes Instore
- Just because your particular shoe size isn't available doesn't mean it's not an ozbargain worthy dealI still find lots of bargains online and in bricks and mortar stores almost every other week - had a great one at Sportscraft on the weekend, but with the 'nasty \ picky people' that I see troll through here daily I'm not going to bother posting. It's easy to predict the kind of comments that will appear, and from the usual suspects too. It's probably why we always see newbies posting their first deal with a plea to 'be kind'.
but with the 'nasty \ picky people' that I see troll through here daily I'm not going to bother posting.
You are by no means alone…… and often the responses are from 'no post leechers'….
Well you probably can win yourself a Nobel Peace Prize if you can solve the Internet trolling problem once for all.
I'm sure I've seen this post before? :-D
1st world problem
The combination of the following also leads some people to believe there are more dupes:
- Fewer number of super duper deals.
- Retailers are more careful to check their deals now (because OZBer will take full advantage of it very quickly).
- Similar deals happening again (which were also there few months ago).
Still a lot of OZBers posting deals and mods doing a great job.
There seems to be a heck of a lot of dupes/spam where the store has been left as 'Uploaded Files' (my favourite shop in the whole wide world), maybe have a more noticeable warning when a user tries to submit a deal with this domain (and prompt the user to input the correct domain before it can be posted too while they're at it).
prompt the user to input the correct domain before it can be posted too while they're at it
Current issue is that not all stores have a domain name. That's mainly an issue with OzBargain where we use domain name to determine stores. However this day and age there are still some shops that don't have a website.
We are developing a way to allow specifying the store without domain names.
Why not just give a worning/banned (temporary) to how post dupes per month for example 2 dupes a month?
It could have a negative effect in that it may discourage the poster from posting again. While dupes are annoying and in most cases easily avoidable, at least those that post them are giving it a go.
Agree. We don't want to punish people for accidentally posting a duplicate. When we do remove a duplicate we make sure there is a comment acknowledging that their post was a duplicate. Duplicates are posted by many people but mostly new users to the site.
Black badges are not something you want:
Ahem… This badge will be given to individuals & merchants with questionable behaviour. Might not be something that you would proudly pin on your shirt.
Unfortunately, I earned mine last month, however it did take me 7 years.
I've noticed that, but they seem to ignore the popup box that says something like Are you sure any of these deals isn't a dupe
I always check if any deal I post is a dupe..