Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2016

neil on 12/01/2016 - 14:32
Last edited 12/01/2016 - 18:22

Continued from Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2008-2016

Please make any suggestions for new features, bugs, things you'd like to see changed or anything else. Also feel free to start a new thread in Site Discussion. If it's a little issue perhaps use this thread, if it's a big issue then perhaps start a new thread. Please see the wiki below 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.

Site Discussion

closed Comments

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 07/07/2016 - 18:33

      As stated in the existing thread on this issue:

      Basically we don't want to give store reps who have done the wrong thing, a potential way to exploit the rules further.

      I understand your point (why do negotiated deals follow store rep bans but not store rep posting limits), however it's more about not giving sites that have breached guidelines a way to further dodge the rules (masking it as a negotiated deal), than treating them as store reps on one hand. Basically we aren't trusting them to do the right thing so are removing that right for that ban duration at least.

      As always we are open to suggestions if you wanted to continue discussions in the existing thread or had some different idea regarding negotiated deals for banned stores.

      • spackbace on 07/07/2016 - 18:38

        As always we are open to suggestions if you wanted to continue discussions in the existing thread or had some different idea regarding negotiated deals for banned stores.

        On the reverse, it's actually not about negotiated deals for banned stores, it's for negotiated deals for active stores, not having to follow the posting limits that any store-rep posted deal would have to follow. It's a nice way of side-stepping that rule, and being able to be posted practically daily in some instances.

        And yes, this comment is a backpedal of mine from a year ago I'll admit, but a year ago when people like TA and EC were posting negotiated deals they were posting them once a week or 2 (if memory serves me).

        The comparison with banned stores was more of reference point, that we treat it 1 way in a certain instance, but then change our minds in another circumstance.

        • Moderatorhamza23 on 07/07/2016 - 18:48

          I understand, although my personal view on this is still the same as what yours was a year ago. We are receiving good deals that users are negotiating that we wouldn't otherwise receive, what are we losing out on? Whether that be 1 or 2 a week or 1 most days. The votes will do the talking.

  • SummerZero on 08/07/2016 - 20:01

    I have an idea for the AMEX referral page: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/wiki/american_express_referrals…

    Not sure if the devs can do this, but why not have a random referral generator for each card type at the top of the page?

    The list is quite long for each type now and there are hundreds of referral links there.

    I realize that the current wiki page is basically a random list anyway, but I just think it will be more user friendly to have the random referrals (similar to what we do for some other sites when a deal is posted).

    What do you think?

    • scotty on 08/07/2016 - 23:54

      The current issue is that we can currently have one referral setting per store (usually a domain name). In the case of AmEx you have multiple referral programmes for the store. Yes there's plan to implement a generic "product referral", however can't promise that it will happen soon.

    • zzyss on 11/07/2016 - 09:29

      I like the idea, but I could understand why as a site admin I wouldn't want to do it. It'd require a custom widget on a custom page, which adds to the overall workload.

      My suggestion would be to add another level of collapsible section to the existing Referrals settings page, and then have a referral for each type of Amex card in its own secton, and allow the section to be collapsed so that it doesn't take up loads of space.

      • spackbace on 11/07/2016 - 10:28

        Along those lines (not sure if it's quite what you're asking for, but I think might work), is another list page for the different types of cards, then clicking through the type of card you want, brings up another page with the whole list of referrals for that card.

        Benefit for this system, is up the top of each page for each card, details the referral program for it (because afaik they don't all offer the same referral benefits)

        Now with the amount of different cards available, I think that's the one referral program that's necessary for that sort of thing.

  • Clear on 13/07/2016 - 16:04

    Very minor issue that you can add to the list scotty.

    The wiki doesn't have the theme-color setup for Chrome in Android.

    • scotty on 13/07/2016 - 17:02
      +1

      That will be fixed in the next update.

  • [Deactivated] on 13/07/2016 - 18:27

    Got a funny error today. Thought I'd share.

  • [Deactivated] on 14/07/2016 - 10:30

    Very very minor problem I spotted: One of the OzBargain Tips has the has the Qwibble cash back logo.

    • Moderatorneil on 01/08/2016 - 16:52

      Cheers. That's fixed.

  • spackbace on 21/07/2016 - 10:21

    Just noticed the Uber referral information still states $20, but it should be $10

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 21/07/2016 - 10:32

      Thank you, moocher has updated it now.

  • spackbace on 21/07/2016 - 11:56

    Are the deals posted on Facebook auto-posted, or manually done?
    Just wondered what the threshold is, just because it doesn't seem to have posted many of the front page deals lately (namely a certain cheap Wii!)

    • Moderatorneil on 21/07/2016 - 13:47

      Deals get posted to Facebook after 75 votes but are limited to a maximum of 6 per 24 hours. There are also manual non-deal related posts mixed in on the weekdays and the occasional location based posts (e.g. Free doughnuts in X location).

      I think what happended to your Wii post is that the maximum was reached. I just had a look at our 3rd party settings which has this enabled:

      Trickle Off: updates your feed and looks for newly published items to post. New items (up to the "Max Number of New Items to Post per Update Period" set for your feed) will post. Newly published items not posted during an update period will be marked as 'seen' and are not eligible for posting later. For example, if during the feed update period your feed has 7 new items, and the "Max Number of New Items to Post per Update" is set to 5, then 5 new items will post and 2 will be marked 'seen' and will never post.

      I think it may make more sense to enable this:

      Post Oldest Items First: Items will be posted beginning with the oldest and working forward. During each feed update, the oldest, previously unposted items (up to the "Max Number of New Items to Post per Update Period") will post. Items not posted during feed update will be eligible for posting later.

      This feature wasn't available last time we checked so will review and find the best settings.

      • spackbace on 21/07/2016 - 13:48

        Ah ok all good :)

  • Clear on 27/07/2016 - 15:23

    The "whos-online" box isn't appearing for me anymore across multiple browsers. Intentional?

    • scotty on 27/07/2016 - 15:26
      +1

      It's now at the bottom of the page under "Statistics". You can still access Who's Online page here.

      • Clear on 27/07/2016 - 15:27

        That'll take sometime getting used to. Thanks.

  • thydzik on 27/07/2016 - 17:43
    +1

    does the ozbargain banner on the emails need to be so large.
    (as seen in gmail)

  • nahi11 on 28/07/2016 - 21:25

    Ozbargain Livechat.

    Instant success guaranteed. Trust me.

    • Clear on 01/08/2016 - 20:07

      Get trolled by jv in real time. Great!

      • nahi11 on 01/08/2016 - 21:38

        Can you think of anything else that word make ozbargain this engaging?

      • spackbace on 03/08/2016 - 15:21
        +1

        I can see scotty putting this idea in the back of his mind for April 1 next year ;)

        • scotty on 03/08/2016 - 15:44

          Someone ruined it with premature announcement again…

        • spackbace on 03/08/2016 - 15:44

          @scotty:

          As if most will remember in 8 months time :P

        • Clear on 03/08/2016 - 23:34
          +1

          @Spackbace: scotty can just spice it up with GIPHY integration so it's not ruined ;)

  • Moderatorhamza23 on 03/08/2016 - 15:00

    Some changes to node (deal/forum/comp posts) and comment report options today:

    Node reports
    Added report option: 'Title/Description'
    Removed report option: 'NSFW' (can use illegal/inappropriate instead)
    Changed the order of expired and out of stock

    Comment reports
    Removed report option: 'Foul language' (due to automatic profanity filter, most of the reports in this option were better suited to illegal/inappropriate or personal attack).
    Private selling was added back in March 2016.

    Thanks

  • TRENT86 on 03/08/2016 - 21:53

    I think you should maybe look at shortening the time a long running deal is kept up top, some are over 12 months old and still up :)

    • scotty on 04/08/2016 - 07:12
      +1

      That's what "long running" meant. What we need to do is removing some deals as they aren't meant to be long running, i.e. "everyday price" for a specific product.

      • TRENT86 on 04/08/2016 - 14:33

        Yeah everyday prices should be removed from long running deals

  • ripesashimi on 04/08/2016 - 00:19
    Merged from Raise blocked stores limit

    This is like choosing the most 50 irrelevant stores from the 10000.

    • scotty on 04/08/2016 - 07:20

      I had a look at your profile and it appears that you aren't really close to the limit. We won't also provide this level of customisation where you need to block more than 50 different stores.

  • [Deactivated] on 14/08/2016 - 09:33

    The commenting guidelines say:

    Do not draw attention to items that you are selling… If you want to sell your personal items, use the Classifieds section.

    So can I comment a link to what I am selling in the classifieds in the comments of a deal?

    • Moderatorneil on 14/08/2016 - 09:43

      No. Any comments soliciting private sales in a comment will be removed.

  • zzyss on 15/08/2016 - 13:33

    Would it be possible to add an optional "Location" field to bargains, to allow the possibility of filtering deals that are not in your State (for example)?

    (Ideally, the field would support GPS co-ordinates to allow specific stores, etc. to be entered via a Google Maps or Foursquare API, but first things first… :P)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 19:48

      Suggestions received thanks, we'll discuss that internally once things quieten down. The idea of location-based deals/filtering is something we've discussed in brief previously; the ideal solution is very complex and perhaps something for down the track. We will discuss a simple field and the benefit of it VS making the deal submission form more complex; perhaps this can be part of a redesigned deal submission form in the future.

      Thanks

  • spackbace on 23/08/2016 - 13:53

    I noticed that when edits are close together or something, the system seems to get confused as to who did it.

    See this for example.

    All I did was change the start date, it was Ham that changed the title. But it seems we overlapped, so it makes it seem like I did both.

    Not exactly a major prob, but just don't want it causing conflict with the wrong person when it appears to be there in black and white (no proof otherwise)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 23/08/2016 - 14:03

      Moderators can do quick edits and it will put the edit under whoever edited it last, in this case it was my bad. I didn't realise the deal had been edited again and was anticipating it would have put that title quick edit under my revision and not yours. Will be more mindful of that but feel free to flag it as it's easy to quick edit it back and then do a fresh hard edit to avoid any confusion.

      • spackbace on 23/08/2016 - 14:07
        +1

        Ah no worries :)

        As I said, it's all good until something happens. If at any stage the proverbial hits the fan, just need to know you guys have a way of proving who did what :)

  • spackbace on 25/08/2016 - 19:28

    I get the feeling Deliveroo should just have a blanket ban, save you guys some work :)
    (I know, there's a blanket ban for L & P plate posters, but yeah…)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 19:50

      Looks like it has stopped since (for now), we only had 2 since the L/P plate ban. Thanks

  • [Deactivated] on 25/08/2016 - 19:47

    Wouldn't it be better if the title in merged deals went to original deal URL. Example would be here. The post probably had an image in the URL so couldn't '99.9c/L 98+ Petrol (7/11 Heidelburg VIC)' link to the deal URL rather than a page saying 'unpublished deal'.

    • spackbace on 25/08/2016 - 19:49
      +1

      Do you need a picture for that info though? You've just provided it, in text form ;)

      • [Deactivated] on 25/08/2016 - 19:52

        Picture would be better than a page saying: 'Deal Unpublished by Moderator' lol. Not the only example but I think it would make more sense.

    • scotty on 26/08/2016 - 12:20

      I have put a comment in with link to the image. Content of the merged comment is automatically generated and link used can't be changed on case-by-case basis.

  • spackbace on 29/08/2016 - 12:33

    Inactive reps on store pages

    Can anything be done about that?

    For example, look at PC Byte's store page, 4 listed reps. 2 active now (ericc and francesca), 1 not seen since December last year, another not since April last year, who even wrote a farewell post.

    This is just 1 example though

    Just wondered if there's a way of filing them as inactive, and not showing them as reps on the store pages. I mean this for all stores too. Just so there's no confusion.

    • scotty on 29/08/2016 - 12:38

      Maybe we just don't list them as "reps" for users who have not logged onto OzBargain for more than x months? x=6?

      • spackbace on 29/08/2016 - 12:53

        Maybe yeah, just Associated? So if they happen to post again, they'll still have the association, but they won't appear on store pages

        • scotty on 29/08/2016 - 12:55

          It's only listing Official Reps & Official Marketing at the moment. So maybe if those users happen to log back they will again be shown under "Reps" for the store.

          For Associated / Employees they don't appear under Reps.

        • spackbace on 29/08/2016 - 13:00

          @scotty:

          Up to you :) I don't know what you guys can do in the back-end, so whatever is easiest I guess :)

          Sounds like it should work well though

        • Clear on 29/08/2016 - 19:57

          @scotty: That would be a good idea. I've had people ask me in the past why the people currently listed as GB reps aren't responding to PMs.

          Though I probably should have mentioned they're no longer employees earlier ;)

  • CVonC on 01/09/2016 - 22:31

    suggestion: add search for keywords in the title only

    • scotty on 01/09/2016 - 23:07
      +1

      Add "option:titleonly" to your query.

      • CVonC on 02/09/2016 - 00:24

        cheers, didn't know the command option for it. it's usually a selectable option in most forums. perhaps include it as one so it's obvious?

        • scotty on 02/09/2016 - 00:39

          There are a lot of search tricks. Need to write a wiki page about it sometime…

  • ahly92 on 04/09/2016 - 11:24

    Be great if we can have a dedicated Take-away/restaurant page…I find that Food-Grocery is two broad and gets mixed up between the two, and when after a food deal, the groceries get in the way and hard to spot a good deal :)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 19:53

      Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have a look at the numbers of takeaway/restaurant/dining deals now vs other deals in that category and discuss internally from there.

      Thanks

      • ahly92 on 17/09/2016 - 14:03

        Thanks! any future update would be nice :)

        • Moderatorhamza23 on 12/10/2016 - 18:13

          Thanks again for the idea. After discussions we've decided to create a new Take-away/Restaurant category, we'll also probably remove the Business/office category as we have few deals there and many can be put in home/garden instead. Scotty will do this in the near future if all goes to plan.

        • ahly92 on 12/10/2016 - 23:40

          @hamza23:thanks so much for listening to the community. Appreciate the follow-up

        • Moderatorhamza23 on 09/11/2016 - 11:01

          @ahly92:

          This was rolled out this morning by the admins:

          Added Dining & Takeaway category.
          Changed Food & Groceries to Groceries
          Removed Business & Office category

  • spackbace on 06/09/2016 - 11:31
    +1

    Any chance the link to the Classifieds could go straight to a broad listing of everything, maybe with tags attached to them (Selling/Swapping/Free/Wanted), just as a quick and easy way of seeing everything? Very easy to miss the links at the top to the different sections, and by defaulting to just Selling, there's every chance the others are being missed by the average user. (Mainly coz I only just realised the others exist!)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 19:55

      Suggestion received thanks. Fair point about missing those other categories, we'll have a look at what we can do there.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 12/10/2016 - 18:17

      Thanks again, this will also be coming soon. Something like a single classifieds page that defaults to all listing types (Selling/swapping/freebies/wanted). Users can then choose to view certain sections only if they wish, however the main/default page will show all.

      Edit: It's rolled out

  • msmhw on 06/09/2016 - 16:24

    is it possible to include www.topcashback.com with the cashback list that appears under the deal photo?

    • Moderatorneil on 06/09/2016 - 16:27

      It's already there. e.g. Macy's

      • msmhw on 06/09/2016 - 16:30

        thanks for your reply, but I noticed for some deals doesn't work
        such as
        https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/264523
        or some of AliExpress deals I saw recently which I had to look by myself.

        • Moderatorneil on 06/09/2016 - 16:35

          Cashrewards & Pricepal give us a feed whereas Topcashback we have to manually put in. I'll see if I can get updated. Any other stores missing?

        • scotty on 06/09/2016 - 17:49

          Aliexpress does have the TopCashback rate on it. For example this deal clicking on the button shows 7% from TopCashback.

          I'll add Banggood + a few others, and they should show up on OzBargain tomorrow.

  • 17833 on 07/09/2016 - 18:03

    I don't know how much people particularly look at the badge system, but it would be good to create a badge when someone is nice enough to give away something for free in the classifieds. For example, https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/264544 That was fantastic of dazzywazzy and I was thinking it deserved a bit of recognition, a special badge might be a way do to that. Not sure what you would call it though.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 20:01

      Our badges are generally for specific things and on the most part automated. That type of behaviour wouldn't be possible to define or automate. However if you spot someone go out of their way to assist or do something selfless let us know, Scotty might be running a prize than month for someone going above & beyond to assist others.

  • donnot on 07/09/2016 - 21:17

    Have you guys thought about implementing a save function for comments, where you could save links to people's comments to a section on your account? Just an idea, as I often find myself searching for comments and this would save a bit of time.

    • Clear on 07/09/2016 - 21:34

      I just have a folder in my bookmarks for it.

      • donnot on 07/09/2016 - 21:51

        That does work to an extent, but it would be nice to have comments saved somewhere on our accounts and, similar to reddit, have the title of the thread along with the comment displayed (or part of it).

  • zzyss on 08/09/2016 - 09:39

    I like the new colour scheme, wish it were permanent. Although the OzBargain logo should be less plain. At least 2-toned?

    • scotty on 08/09/2016 - 10:52

      That wasn't a new colour scheme, but rather one-day only R U OK campaign to raise awareness. It would be back to orange after today.

      • [Deactivated] on 08/09/2016 - 19:30

        I first saw it at 1.30am and thought the "night mode" discussion forum ideas had been implemented.

        • scotty on 08/09/2016 - 19:38

          There's actually no plan to implement a night mode due to the complexity of the themes (and something that needs to work on three sites).

        • [Deactivated] on 09/09/2016 - 13:43

          @scotty:

          There's actually no plan to implement a night mode

          ):

      • zzyss on 09/09/2016 - 13:42

        Yeah, I realised that after making the post, checking FB and the forums for the discussion about the site redesign, LOL.

        I kinda prefer the yellow :-)

  • Clear on 09/09/2016 - 11:37

    Would it be possible to add something to the store page to let reps know if they can post 2, 3 or 4 deals a week?

    I noticed that it's letting me post a day early so I suspect I can do 3 posts a week currently.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 20:21

      It's a bit tricky as posting limits are on a rolling window so information/limits can change at any given moment, also a single vote either way can increase/decrease the limits and you may find that the information you were told 5 minutes ago is no longer correct.

      Basically for stores that perform well: The default is 2 a week (7 day rolling window) but if your last 2 deals hit the front page you get 3 a week (7 day rolling window). If the last 3 deals get 50+ votes each it's 4 a week (7 day rolling window). That is assuming of course you post that much, otherwise those extra posts become null. You will however be able to predict whether you can make a 3rd or 4th post based on the performance/votes of the last 2 or 3 posts within the 7 days.

      Edit: If you ever aren't sure about posting limits/when you can post next feel free to TWAM and we'll sus it out.

      Thanks

      • Clear on 13/09/2016 - 20:45

        Alright that makes sense. Thank you.

  • spackbace on 12/09/2016 - 18:19

    Suggestion - Are you able to remove the 5min limit on editing a post when it's been tagged with 'Referral'? Like you can with store posts. Means we can fix the links, delete the code, whatever it is, a lot quicker (well, 5mins quicker lol).
    Mods aren't always online to sort it within that timeframe, or otherwise occupied :)

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 20:29

      Sounds like a good idea, will find out if it's possible to add 'referrer' tag as an exception to the 5 minute lock (which currently includes L Plate & store rep posts).

      Thanks

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 12/10/2016 - 18:21

      Scotty will be doing this one in the near future thanks. Any post with a 'referrer' tag will be excluded from the 5 minute poweruser edit lock (assuming the system picked it up, ie 'referrer' tag is present).

  • [Deactivated] on 13/09/2016 - 10:19

    Just got this message:

    OzBargain is broken at the moment, and the backend will be restarted "very very soon".

    reloaded the page it worked fine.

    • Moderatorhamza23 on 13/09/2016 - 20:33

      Nothing to worry about. Too technical for me but it may come up now and then if there is a database issue or if you try and load a whole heap of pages at once. Refresh will fix it unless a serious issue exists.

      Thanks

      • [Deactivated] on 13/09/2016 - 20:45

        Something similar happened to me today and I was only loading one page.

        Several times I was trying to load one page and the page took ages to load even though there were only a small number of comments in the thread. On most occasions the pages eventually loaded. One time I got an error message similar to the one above so I used Clipilts technique of reloading the page and things worked quickly.

        • Moderatorhamza23 on 14/09/2016 - 01:21

          Several times I was trying to load one page and the page took ages to load even though there were only a small number of comments in the thread.

          Yeah that's not just you, there have been some server issues for the past couple weeks. Scotty informed us that the database server is stalling every now and then, this is leads to a 10-15 seconds period where things stop loading.

        • [Deactivated] on 14/09/2016 - 08:03

          @hamza23: Thanks for clarifying that. I had thougth it was something to do with our network or one of the scripts running on the page. It only happens very rarely so I hope it doesn't affect too many members.

  • TheOneWhoKnocks on 17/09/2016 - 19:22

    There seems to be an issue with some of the icons on the Tips & Hints page.

    • scotty on 17/09/2016 - 19:49

      Yes there's a configuration issue. Should be fixed hopefully.

  • [Deactivated] on 20/09/2016 - 18:10

    Sorry if this has been answered before, but is there a chance of the rule regarding a minimum of 10 items being avaible at the time of posting to be modified slightly? I know that there are some exceptions about this, however, I find that many times when I go to post a deal I realise that there are only 8-9 available in quantity (e.g eBay deals), which therefore would result in the post being removed. Is there a possibility of such posts to have an exception when they just miss out on the minimum quantity by 1 or 2. I know this would be a case-by-case process, although it would very convenient when it comes to those situations. Thanks

    • Moderatorneil on 20/09/2016 - 18:32

      The exception to the insufficient quantity guideline would be if the item was high valued. The problem is if we say 9, then we'll get a request for 8, 8 then 7 etc. etc. Big picture is there needs to be sufficient quantity to satisfy the the 1m views we get everyday.

      That said, part of the targeted deals discussion we had was a place to have limited quantity deals whether it be finding a few things at your local Big W or having a small amount of stock from an eBay sale. We'll see what we come up.

  • shimmie on 20/09/2016 - 22:53
    +1

    I subscribe to the daily OzBargain email and need to filter through it every morning. It would be great to have a customized email option where we can select categories or even retailers that we want to get deals from, or at least ones we don't.
    These could be in the form of an immediate email blast as soon as the deal's posted.

    • mskeggs on 21/09/2016 - 08:24
      +1

      Take a look at the options under subscriptions in the 'my account' tab. I think everything you want can already be done.

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