Over the last couple of weeks scrimshaw has been posting multiple polls in the forum asking community members to give recommendations on some of most frequently asked "what should I buy" questions on OzBargain.
Moderators at OzBargain have decided to run yearly polls to decide the best products in popular categories that get asked repeatedly in the forum. Our aim is to have a central thread where users can vote on the items, suggest options and also change their vote throughout the year. The polls will end once the year is over.
OzBargain is a sizeable community with experts of all sorts, and it's only natural for us to ask for other people's opinions before making important purchasing decisions. Which phone? Which laptop? Which car? Which washing machine? Which investment option to park my $80k other than a motor vehicle? They just get asked again and again in the forums — sometimes the same question got asked every single week. The answers to those "what should I buy" also ended up scattered in multiple threads, if people bothered to make detailed suggestions in the first place (rather than just "please search previous threads").
The initiative here is to use these new consolidated What Should I Buy polls to cover many questions that our community might want to ask (or have already asked multiple times). For example for mobile phones we make polls for the community to recommend the best flagship, mid-range and budget phones this year. That should hopefully cover 75% of "which phone should I get" posts in the forums.
These will be running until the end of the year — new models will be released, and some older models might not be attractive anymore. You can change your votes any time, and hopefully the poll result will reflect what OzBargainers' opinion on the best product to recommend at that point in time. When 2018 comes we will be making new polls, archiving the old ones for record keeping purpose. It's always fun to look at what OzBargainers recommend 5 years ago :)
Here is a list of current polls and recommendations. We are still developing this feature and we will keep you updated in this thread.
FAQ
How do I suggest products to What Should I Buy polls?
If you have a product that you would like to suggest for the poll (that is currently not in the Poll Options), you'll need to make a top-level comment (i.e. not replying someone else's comment) and fill up "Suggestions" text box just above your comment:
Make sure you provide clear argument in the comment why this is the product you would like to suggest. Suggestions will be in "Pending" state after comments have been submitted, and will need to be approved by moderators or poll's OP.
I have a "What Should I Buy" question not covered by existing polls!
Please use this thread to suggest to the moderators.
At the same time we also understand that those polls won't cover everything, as we are only aiming to answer some of the most frequently asked what should I buy questions. People have very specific needs, and if you think your request is unique, feel free to post up your question in a new forum thread.
How about one for best new and used cars to purchase? perhaps some categories based on age, size etc?