Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2017

Continued from Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2016. This post will be used for general feedback in 2017.

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. Please see the Site & Guideline Updates Announcement Thread to keep up to date with the changes/features that we implement as they are added.

closed Comments

    • +1

      It's a one day only campaign with R U Ok? Day. We'll be back to orange tomorrow.

      • Is there a design review scheduled? Would be nice to see some fresh looks even if it's a small change like a typeface or shade of colour.

        • +1

          We do that on the 1st day of April almost every year. /jk

          UI refresh has been planned for a while. We'll do micro-level changes along the way as there are always people who don't take changes well :) I also want to migrate to some more well-established frameworks to have more "industrial look" however that would be quite a bit of work.

        • +1

          @scotty:
          Please whatever you do, don't change the speed at which the site loads. I live in a developing country with incredibly shit internet and OzB loads almost as fast as it does back in Australia. I always use OzB to test my connection as frequently we have issues, presumably DNS, where many sites reuse to load. OzB always loads, fast.

        • +1

          @cymon:

          I live in a developing country with incredibly shit internet

          You don't have the NBN yet?

        • +1

          @Scab:
          Lol. We don't even have working copper lines for ADSL!

        • +1

          @cymon:

          cymon Location: Canberra

          If Canberra is in a developing country I want to see what a developed country looks like!

        • +1

          @sss333:
          Haha cbf updating it wherever I go. I gave you a positive vote as you can see the flag of vote givers for posts and comments by clicking on votes. Doesn't work right now as I'm on the road.

  • Error: Maximum number of search alerts (20) reached.
    Hint: Subscribe to individual stores without using up your search alerts. Look for the 'Subscribe' link in the 'Related Store' block on deal pages.
    Manage my search alerts

    Would it be possible to increase the number of alerts? please Scotty

  • Not 100% sure if this is related to or caused by the site, but when typing a comment just now, Chrome got really laggy. I opened Chrome Task Manager and noticed the two OzB windows I had open were chewing up 1.4 - 1.7GB of memory each. I killed them both and Chrome went back to normal. Those two windows had autoplay video ads (as opposed to animated images) on them. Just thought I'd mention it. I'll see if it happens again!

    edit: it happened again, on a different computer. Here's a video of Chrome Task Manager showing memory usage climb up and up.

  • Is there a way to 'schedule' deal posts? I have a deal right now for 33% off repco for monday 9th oct. I could post it now, but it likely wouldn't receive much attention because its a bad time of day, and because its so far into the future it would largely be forgotten. Better would be to post it on friday, but I'm liable to plan things and then forget them 5 minutes later and never do it. Solution?

    • Save as a draft, then publish when you are ready.

      • Won't happen I'm afraid. And it risks someone beating me to the punch. The utility is far higher to everyone involved if the deal can be published around 10 days before it begins. I know there is the reminder system, which is great, but how many people use it? My guess would be not a lot.

        My suggestion would an option on the posting page to schedule for the future. Upon saving the post, a grey stub would appear (like when a duplicate is posted, I really like that) notifying anyone checking that a deal has been scheduled, and anyone trying to post the same deal will be informed of its presence. Either that or you have all deals pop up again when they're active, like you do when theres an ebay sale, because sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous. You have deals posted a month before they become active, and everyone agrees its great and then forgets all about it.

        • Sorry we won't implement this kind of "schedule and forget" system. Imagine all the people scheduling 33% off Repco to automatically post at the time when the deal starts (and competitiveness of posting deals on OzBargain makes this scenario very likely) — that would make moderators' job a mess trying to remove all the duplicates.

          No. We require all posters to check before submit. You can save as draft, but it is also your responsibility to check at the time of posting going live.

        • @scotty:

          Oh, don't worry about the moderator's, they'll find themselves in a mess no matter what. Like children, better to let them go do what they do, then give them a bath at the end of the day, because you can try as hard as you can to keep them clean and they'll just find new ways to get grubby. One time I even caught hamza chewing on the 'new deal' button when he thought noone was looking. Slobber all over the place :/

          But I do see your point. Jokes aside, do you see it as a problem when deals are created weeks before they become live?

        • @outlander:

          do you see it as a problem when deals are created weeks before they become live?

          Sure. They won't get enough exposure for sure, and that's why we sticky them for a few hours on the day they going live if they were popular enough (usually 50+ votes). Mods can schedule highlights.

        • @scotty:

          Ok, as long as your aware of it.

          Any interesting plans for today Scotty?

  • I wonder if we could utilise the tags on Classifieds posts, to then show up on item pages?
    So lets say you wanted to buy Forza Horizon 3 for example. On the right, you'd see the forum discussions on it, and maybe below that you could see 'Classifieds Listings' and list the relevant posts there

    • Yes currently tag / product pages only show deals but I think it should also show other pages such as forum discussions and classified. I'll need to think about how to present them.

      • That does show forum posts on the right :) just put classifieds under it

        • That is currently the case, except almost all members aren't tagging their classifieds so you won't see it very often.

          I tagged one now so you can see it: Moto G5 Plus

          Related Classified Listings
          Selling
          Motorola G5 Plus

        • @hamza23:

          Oh fair enough :) Was that there for a while or just get implemented?

        • @Spackbace:

          It's been there for many years, implemented before my time.

        • @hamza23:

          But Scotty doesn't know

          Lol, been wanting to say that for a while ;)

  • Is there a way to search within one's own comments?

    During a deal or forum discussion (about an AMP account), I remember coming across a 'gotcha' and posted about it, with link referencing this. Other than going through AMP-related posts, or going through all my comments, is there a mechanism to search one's own comments for keywords?

    Many thanks in advance.

      • Yes indeed :-) Thank you!

        I was trying to look for it in AMP posts, would never have found it.

        So I guess my question is still relevant - would be nice if I can search within my comments.

        How do you find it so quickly? :-)

        • +4

          Google. Ozbargain bluesky AMP

          Was third listing.

        • @Baysew: Great idea. I am going to use this method from now! :-)

    • Unfortunately we only build search indices against individual pages but not individual comments. Therefore you cannot find keywords from specific comments.

      • OK, thanks.

  • Is there any sort of publicly available stats on voting frequency when it comes to deals?

    It's important because if a deal doesn't get enough traction initially, it doesn't break through to the front page. Frankly I think the timing of the deal is more important than the potential utility of the deal. My hunch is that the highest peaks for voting follow the average timetable of the 9-5er, with deals recieving an influx of votes around the time people would be on the train to and from work.

    • No such stats exist, if you have a good deal then just post it, the community would rather know now than later and someone may beat you to it anyway. If the deal is good enough it will hit front page regardless of the time. Also if you post when many people are online / voting then there will also be many other deal posts to 'compete with' and yours can get pushed down quickly so it works both ways.

  • +1

    How bout an official iOS app? The third party ones are (a) rubbish or (b) have advertising - often both!

    • Please see here

      What's the reason for using a third party app over the mobile webpage? What would you want in an app that the mobile webpage can't do?

      • +2

        Actually didn't think of it! Will give it a go cheers hamza

  • Merged from Suggestion: Collapse Deleted Comments on Forums

    Using this thread as an example:
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/332730
    The top comment is deleted, and there's no way to collapse it.

    • Those aren't deleted comments. They are comments that are voted down below the threshold. You can view them by hitting the Hidden link in the yellow bar (and then collapse them).

  • https://www.facebook.com/ozbargain/photos/a.1015121695946413…

    WTF is going on here guys? Someone screenshot your FB post then re-posted it?

    • Yes. I did. Check out the description. :)

      • Ah right I got it

        Long day lol

  • When you type in a search term in the search box, on mobile, if you tap the equivalent of Enter on the keyboard, nothing happens. You have to actually tap the little magnifying glass button to search.

    • It's actually caused by the bug of auto-complete. If it does not submit the form after tapping Enter, tap Enter again.

      • Works, thanks!

      • this used to happen all the time for me on desktop (different browsers too). was it fixed recently?

  • +1

    Sorting filter by price for product pages.

    Also maybe sorting filter by votes, comments, clicks, etc any other statistics that you can think of.

    Personally I like checking the best price of certain items within the past 6 and 12 months. Even if the feature is not 100% accurate but gives a great estimate that would help me and I'm sure many others in finding their target buying criteria.

    Example last one I did was for the Xbox One S. I found the 500gb version is averagedly on sale for around $200-240 AUD so within that price for say buying on gumtree or eBay with just a console and controller is a good price.. games are extra.. but for the 2tb version it is like an extra $200 AUD sometimes even more up to $500 AUD so that almost double in price and $200 AUD increase is not worth it since you can usually get hard drives for $30-40/tb unless you really want the extra internal space or are afraid of opening it and accidentally ruining something or just buying external hard drives.

    • Has been said before, that would require a separate price entry in order to be able to work it out.
      Not something that's big on Scotty's list to do

      • +1

        So you can't pull data from the already posted title strings? A separate price entry would be great but I was thinking of maybe just using existing deal title data and grabbing the numbers from that could maybe use $ as an extra identifier or something if the deal has many numbers for example then stop after the first %20 or "space" character.

        I see prices automatically highlighted in deal titles could we not just use the same mechanism or formula for that?

        since we have the numbers already in there.. this would mean it could also work retroactively instead of just going forward and possibly no need for an extra price entry unless Scotty wants to do that.

        I am sure there is a way to just grab the price numbers from individual post data then use that to make the sorting filtering algorithms.

        I know this might not work for deals with maybe multiple items or prices (it might skew the filtering) but for the individual deals it should work.

        There is an individual longer way to do it involving specific product tags and using that to locate prices in a multiple deal post but yeah that method would not be great for Scotty to implement maybe time and resource wise nor is it efficient for multiple product tags but anyways I have most of the pseudo code figured out.. I am not sure what language this website is all done in etc or some individual sections are made up of but if he is willing to maybe give me five minutes of his time I can maybe bounce off some ideas and see which ones might work and which ones might not.

        • I believe the big issue as you point out is posts with multiple items or say there is a delivery fee included separately or having 2 prices (e.g. AU and US price). It's a good suggestion and has been discussed but might be difficult to implement without constant manual intervention.

        • +1

          @neil: very true the main problems keep it from being perfect so maybe a beta or disclosure type of situation is needed to not annoy Ozbargain users? Otherwise I completely understand why this feature has not been implemented yet. Difficult situation/puzzle problem.

        • @AlienC:

          Not to mention the tags aren't product specific, so the tagging system would need to be more precise to even bother.

          Your example of an Xbox One S - the tags on here only mark it as an Xbox One. So your pricing would get messed up (showing both XB1 and XB1S results). Then there's 500gb/1tb/2tb. Further complicating matters.

          Long story short, it's such a head fk that it could never be implemented without a full site restructure.

  • +5

    May I please suggest having different colours for both the 'Targeted' banner and the 'In X days' banner/flair? They are not related so having different colours (slightly even) would make more sense IMO.

    Thanks for the new feature nonetheless.

    • Thanks for the suggestion.

      Currently 'Targeted' tag is dark blue, 'In X Days' is a lighter blue.

      We aren't too keen on introducing new colours as there is already a lot going on, however Scotty is currently looking at making the 'In X Days' an even lighter blue to differentiate it more from the dark blue of the targeted tag.

  • +2

    A suggestion that if you subscribe to a deal, that is then out of stock or expired, that you receive an automatic notification or email should the deal become available once again. Currently there is no easy way to discover if the original deal is available again, unless you keep checking on the deal or receive a new subscription comment in you email.

    • There are a few ways a deal expiry can be removed, unfortunately the system can't use this as a trigger to send a notification. The best solution currently is to subscribe to the thread, if a deal becomes available again a member can comment within the deal to let those subscribers know it's available again so they get an email.

  • +1

    Suggestion: Be able to put an optional latitude/longitude or address on a deal and be able to view deals near you or get alerted to them by email.

    The food deals are usually specific to a store and if you don't live near the store you're out of luck. But sometimes there could be something and you'll miss it with the constant flood of new posts (if you aren't looking at just the right time).

  • Hope this is o.k. to ask here. A few questions. I recently posted a targeted deal. How do you automatically apply the coloured targeted label, I wrote [Targeted] however it remained in this format until it was updated. Also, I pretty much always remained logged in. Would this be reflected on the Last Login when you click your username, or if you are away from your pc or mobile but have remained logged would it show 'last logged in 1hr ago' Thanks.

    • TARGETED is tagged by the moderators, i.e. not something the users can set at the point of posting the deals. You can report your own deal to draw attention of the moderators.

      As of Last Login, it's only updated when you view a new page. So if you have OzBargain opened in a tab, but went away — your Last Login will not be updated.

      • Ahh so then it'll just say:

        Last Login
        Online Now

        And stay like that 24/7 since you never log off or have intentions of logging off. Always wondered that too, but didn't think it was worth asking to find out…interesting…

        • "Last Login" is actually when was the last time you requested a page. If less than 10 minutes ago it would just show "Online Now".

        • @scotty: Well then you should also include "last page visited: [page name and link] "or "[user] is currently viewing [name of page and then a link to said page they're viewing so you can read what's so interesting there that's got his/her attention! hahaha]", or something similar alongside the "Online Now" status…if you want to go a bit deeper….

        • @Zachary: we don't actually keep records of last page viewed. Users also might not appreciate having that info shown.

        • @scotty: Oh ok fair enough…just seen it on some other forum sites and thought it was the norm around here….being able to see what they've been up to since last login or what they're currently reading or have/had opened in front of them…

          ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  • Hey scotty when there is a new comment which has been removed like 17833's above and you click on the arrows next to the New comments drop down I get redirected to a 403 access denied page.

    This for example

    • Unpublished comments should not be accessible by anyone when with the permalink. So we check whether the comment has been unpublished before redirecting to the right page. Yes it's a recent change.

      • Sorry I should have been more clear (no pun). What I mean is clicking the arrow to see the new comment took me to that permalink which is an unpublished comment. Perhaps implement something that skips over unpublished comments?

        • Argh yes. Unpublished comments should not be included in the new comment list. I'll have that fixed.

        • @scotty: Also if I unpublish my own comment I go to a 403 page. Should that redirect? No biggy.

  • Is there a way to hide deals about a particular product, rather than deals from a particular store or a particular user?

    for example - NEC game consoles, Nintendo Classic Mini, airpods, etc

    • No there isn't.

      • could we have a way to hide deals about a particular product, rather than deals from a particular store or a particular user?

        • Blocking via products becomes problematic as deals are often mistagged. It's the same reason we don't do product subscriptions.

  • +1

    Would it be possible to add an option on deal for users to press if they have purchased the deal?
    It could be a public thing or even private as I’d like to be able to go back and see what I’ve purchased sometimes as I forget.
    If it was public you would probably just be able to show a tally like neg votes as opposed to listing actual members, unless of coarse you gave members the option to remain private.

    • You can use bookmarks / folders. I have two folders relating to the deals I purchased

      • Something I bought
      • Still waiting for

      Useful to keep track the deals you have purchased, especially those that 10c items you bought from Chinese sites and are still waiting for delivery.

  • I'd like to get notified whenever I get a PM (for all messages in both new and existing conversation threads).
    Will the email option "First unread message of each conversation" best for this, or will this only notify me of new PMs from new (not existing) conversations?

    • Edit: Looks like this works for me (I get an email for all new and existing PMs).

  • +1

    Can we have a filter on the All Competitions page to NOT show competitions that require Social media share actions like comment/like/share?

    • It should already be there.

      • Entry Requirements
        • Include all
        • Filter by requirement
          • Account/Membership
          • Email Subscription
          • Like/Follow/Comment/Share
          • Purchase
          • Recruit/Referral
          • Survey/Questionnaire

      Just select "Filter by requirement" and check all except "Like/Follow/Comment/Share"

      • Pfft.. silly me

        • Actually it doesn't quite do what you want, sorry. What was suggested above will only exclude comps that only have Like/Follow/Comment/Share as a requirement.

          Edit: So if a comp has 'Like/Follow/comment/Share' as well as 'Email subscriptions', it will still appear in the filtered results.

        • It's a good suggestion, but will require a change in the filter interface to make those checkboxes exclusions rather than inclusions. Leave it with me.

    • The change was rolled out this morning, see announcement

      • +1

        I noticed :) Thanks Mod!

  • +1

    Maybe make an unreport button?
    I accidentally submitted wrong report since I was in the wrong forums.
    Soz for the inconvenience.

    • That's not a problem as we get almost 4000 each month. We can figure out which ones need to be acted on.

  • +1

    Hi
    — for mobile version of ozbargain, can we add that 'Go To Post' sorter thats available on the full site? Reason I ask is that in a thread with 100's of responses, finding the four new posts isn't as easy on mobile without it

    Original Poster (53) <>
    Neg Voters (10) <>
    New Posts(5) <>

    — also, some threads in the Comment section gets quite long (esp when the poster explains in depth), maybe an idea to add a little button on each comment that takes you right back up to the post it responds to? The reply I'm looking at can be at the bottom and the actual post is all the way up
    Its already implemented for deeply nested comments, but if the replies are all to the original comment poster, the links aren't shown

  • Not sure if you're aware or if it's been mentioned, but on Android the forum poll formatting is broken: https://goo.gl/VTgxyw

    • Thanks. Looks like it's broken on a resolution with narrow width. I'll fix that.

  • for some reason site keeps asking me if I want to subscribe to the daily newsletter :|
    is it because I logged in from another machine?

    • Click on No Thanks it should then refrain from displaying that for the browser session.

      • I usually login on multiple machines, I've been getting that prompt a number of times after declining it .. this is over a month period.
        It doesn't remember my choice the first time?

  • On Android two sections don't scale properly and the Replies column gets clipped.

    Comments and Forums.

    All the other sections work perfectly.

    • What phone are you using? You appear to be using something with a very narrow screen. Your previous issue was fixed in this morning's update — however I have to find a very narrow screen profile to reproduce it (even old iPhone 4 won't do).

      • Galaxy S5.

        • Strange, I'm using an S5 but your text seems to be bigger than mine

        • @Spackbace:

          No idea, my text is minimised as small as it can go.

  • +1

    Suggestion - Revising the posting limits for poorly performing stores.

    Currently, they could post every 5 weeks or so, even if they're bad deals, and keep going and going.

    Any way of just making it an avg vote count over every rolling 3 months or something? I dunno lol

    • See performance based ban. Badly performed stores get temp banned for a month, but 3rd ban would be "permanent". It says "1 year" in the wiki but that would be the minimum length after review.

      • +2

        Yeah but it's this rule:

        The 2 latest rep posts are 30 days or less apart, and

        So if a store knows that, they can post to their hearts consent every 5 weeks, with no repercussions, regardless of how badly the deal gets voted down

        Case in Point - Now leaving enough time between posts so as not to get banned

        • We'll review the policy when the mods meetup next time. Do you have some example of stores exploiting this?

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