OzBargain Update 13 Oct 2007 - Freebies and Minimum Vote Visibility

Two main features added after today's update, and these are basically the implementation of what has been proposed in this discussion thread.

Freebies

Freebies (free samples, free promotional offers, etc) are used to be submitted as a "deal", although technically it is not, and it also happens to be the same that some prefer to see more deals than freebies.

So the first step is to separate freebies from deals and coupons.

1. When you submit a deal, there will be a new option 3. Freebies where you can submit a freebie. Currently I have only migrated deals that have been tagged as "free" or "freebie" over to this new type.
2. All freebies are listed under the /freebies link, with RSS feed here. I think it will be very useful for those who specifically looking for free samples.
3. Freebies are still mixed with deals and coupons, and listed under New/Recent Deals. They can still be promoted to the front page.

One question that I would like to ask though,

What is a FREEBIE?

Hopefully some of you guys can help me answering this question. It can be blurry sometimes between a "deal" or a "freebie" so I am hoping to have a strict guideline for it.

Minimum Votes Visibility

Initially the idea is to separate freebies from deals and coupons. However I sort of like the way it was before, so I proposed something that is a bit more complex, but hopefully going to be more useful flexible.

Now you can change the minimum number of votes a deal/coupon/freebie requires in order to be visible on (1) front page, and (2) recent deal page.

The threshold currently (as of 13 Oct 2007) for a deal/coupon/freebie is

• At least 3 more +1 votes than -1 votes to be visible on front page.
• At least equal number of +1 votes than -1 votes to be visible on recent deals page.

It will stay the same for unregistered users. However if you have an account here at OzBargain, you can click on

1. "my account" on the left hand sidebar.
2. "edit" tab
3. "Preference" tab

Then you will be presented with a page of options where you can modify how you want the visibility threshold to be! You can control settings for both front page and recent deals page, and you can also control different threshold for different types of posts.

For example you really hated the freebies and you only want to see freebies with at least 10 votes, you can

1. Change "Minimum Votes" under both "Front Page" and "Recent Deals" to "Customised"
2. Change "Mininum Votes for Freebies" under both "Front Page" and "Recent Deals" to "10".
3. Save!

And you will see the result instantly.

Last time I made some code change and it was totally broken for the first few hours so I am sort of expecting the same happening again today :) So feel free to leave feed back IT IS NOT WORKING or something like that.

Note: Sidebar "New Deals" is not following new rules yet. I'll get that working today.