Comments / Feedback / Suggestions Thread 2024/2025

scotty on 04/01/2024 - 12:17
Last edited 08/01/2025 - 16:27 by 1 other user

New year — new feedback post. Please use this post to submit feedback and request features. Again, no guarantee that requests will be responded to or implemented, and often feature requests can take months to be pushed out, when there are other issues blocking them.

Similar posts in the past: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018.

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.

Site Discussion

Comments

    • Moderatorscotty on 15/01/2025 - 11:49

      How many is enough? A limit is there because page width is limited (especially when mobile is considered). It's just a constant defined in the code though, but we just want to know what's a reasonable level.

      • ronnknee on 15/01/2025 - 13:19

        True, it might not look good on some people's phones, but there's certainly more room on browsers.

        By my rough estimate on a full sized browser, half the width of the comment section can fit about 13 branch levels

        How about having it as a configurable parameter in the profile settings? Can default to the conservative 4 but allow up to 13.

      • sween64 on 16/01/2025 - 06:50

        6 could work on mobile browsers

    • wisdomtooth on 16/01/2025 - 07:52

      I have the opposite problem; I find it hard to follow the indented replies when they're far below, as there's no link to tap back to the comment being replied to, as there is in non-indented replies. I'm not saying all replies should be non-indented, but that they should all be linked to their branch comment.

    • Moderatorscotty on 24/01/2025 - 10:00

      This has been implemented and you can change the indent depth by

      1. Click on the 3-dot menu at the bottom-centre of any node page, to bring up the Comments setting popup.
      2. Change the "Indent Depth" settings from default of 4 to 6, 8, 10 or 12

      Please note that this setting is account-wide rather than per-device, and applies to both desktop & mobile site.

      • ronnknee on 25/01/2025 - 18:55

        Amazing!!

  • CodeXD on 15/01/2025 - 15:50
    +2

    I can currently revoke my positive upvote for a deal, but I also want to neg a deal afterwards if I have a bad experience.

    For example the strava x hellofresh deal. It sounds amazing so I give it a + at the start and I applied for a box. Then today hellofresh went through and cancelled everyone's plan. All comments from here onwards all had their order cancelled.

    I want to neg the deal but since I previously +'ed it I get the message

    You have already voted on this deal. Your vote was subsequently revoked.

    There are plenty of other examples where a deal sounds good and gets massive amounts of upvotes but then they don't deliver or cancel people's orders. These are not reflected accurately in the voting system but rather comment.

    • Moderatorscotty on 15/01/2025 - 15:59

      This has been asked many times before but we have decided not to develop this. Your use case is valid. However the implementation also opens up opportunities for people to flip between +1/-1 votes which can have undesirable impact to some of the calculations in the backend.

      • CodeXD on 15/01/2025 - 16:06
        +1

        It can be restricted to allow a one time change - and as usual any deal greater than 30 days can't be voted on/revoked for calculations.

        • sween64 on 16/01/2025 - 06:45
          +1

          I’ve asked what was in your OP while back. For very popular deals I will reserve my +ve until I can confirm/claim the benefit.

          For your specific case, you can neg the next Hello Fresh deal that comes along.

  • wisdomtooth on 16/01/2025 - 17:23
    -4

    Why 2 taps/clicks to vote? How about just having the ➕ and ➖ buttons already shown next to each comment, instead of hidden behind a … dropdown menu?

    • WatchNerd on 16/01/2025 - 17:34
      +2

      C'mon tooth surely you can figure out the reason for this one. I can think of 2.

      • wisdomtooth on 16/01/2025 - 17:39
        -1

        To… make it harder for people to vote? 🤷🏼‍♂️

    • CodeXD on 16/01/2025 - 17:40
      +1

      On desktop it was just 1 click to neg yor comment LOL

      • wisdomtooth on 16/01/2025 - 20:12

        Right! Why is mobile different? Discrimination!

  • Gervais fanboy on 17/01/2025 - 02:21
    +1

    Hi

    Would you consider maybe penalising accounts that spam code requests in these giveaway threads, like these - https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/889215
    Sure, mods can take each comment down individually but I don’t think thats practical nor effective, given that dozens of people will keep spamming anyways.
    All of this is only an issue because for the people that do follow the rules and don’t spam might not get the code as there’s a good chance that one of these spammers might have a code PM’d to them. Which makes everything very very unfair.
    Btw all of this did happen with that $200 off amaysim code giveaway thread that happened recently.

    Alternatively, you can allow anyone to make code requests in comments but even with that, some people might start spamming multiple comments asking for a code to seem more visible, also there’s a good chance that the users who commented first might unfairly accumulate multiple codes.

    TLDR - consider penalising users that wouldn’t follow rules despite being warned repeatedly.

  • wisdomtooth on 18/01/2025 - 13:55

    Given that deals once upvoted, cannot be downvoted, and vice-versa, it's probably not a good idea to have voting buttons on deal list pages (front page, popular, etc), only on individual deal pages, so that voters actually give themselves the opportunity to read the full description and hopefully some comments before voting.

    • HamBoi69 on 18/01/2025 - 14:12
      -1

      I disagree. The amount of upvotes/downvotes that I see on the deal list pages dictates if I should click the link and buy first etc, especially if it’s a price error. Most of the time people aren’t aware of the products “usual” price range, so if they assume it’s a good deal because it’s been posted and buy it without checking the upvotes (to see if it’s a good deal or not), they are losing out.

      • WatchNerd on 18/01/2025 - 14:27
        +2

        He didn't mention not being able to see the votes from the "Front Page" though.

        Given that neg voting requires you to make a comment with a reason it makes sense for upvoters to at least click on the post so hopefully they will make an informed decision rather than just mass upvoting all the new deals in a row on the front page whenever they log in.

        • wisdomtooth on 19/01/2025 - 09:07
          -2

          He didn't mention not being able to see the votes from the "Front Page" though.

          Exactly.

          I must say I myself have been guilty of upvoting a deal in excitement before fully reading it and its comments, only then to revoke my vote once I read them, and thus forfeiting my downvote.

  • Clear on 19/01/2025 - 08:57

    Looks like the emails are delayed for logging in / password resets. My continuous spamming trying to log in probably didn't help.

  • wisdomtooth on 21/01/2025 - 10:02

    Just learnt about aura cb.
    It's missing from the cashback pulldowns on the deals.

  • wisdomtooth on 22/01/2025 - 15:12
    +1

    It'd be great if there was a pulldown on the deal page showing the gift cards available for that store, and the discounts per gc vendor, like we have for cashback.

    • sween64 on 22/01/2025 - 16:42
      +1

      Agreed. However, have you seen this table?

      • wisdomtooth on 23/01/2025 - 18:28
        +1

        Yes, I refer to it often. Could it be used as a basis for the pulldown?

    • CodeXD on 22/01/2025 - 16:45
      +2

      The pull down on the deal page only works for cashback because the cashback sites have an API that can be used to pull data from. I don't believe there is anything like that for gift cards.

      • wisdomtooth on 23/01/2025 - 18:35
        +1

        Could we use the wiki as the basis instead?

  • wisdomtooth on 23/01/2025 - 18:46

    Is there a way of marking a thread for following (i.e. getting notified of new replies in it, like when selecting notifications for replies to my comments)? If there isn't, it'd be cool if it were one of the actions next to reply votes bookmark report hide.

    Also, is there way of differentiating in the notifications replies to my posts and comments and replies to other people's posts and comments I'm following? An icon or colour code, I mean.

    • HamBoi69 on 23/01/2025 - 19:40

      Here: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/12906970/redir

      And here (?):https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/13712921/redir

      • wisdomtooth on 23/01/2025 - 22:00

        Thanks, but the 1st link is about auto-subscription, not exactly what I was asking. I'm asking about manual subscription, i.e. tapping a link under a comment/reply to subscribe to the ensuing thread (as if that comment/reply were yours, and you had notifications for reply to my comments enabled).

        And the 2nd link says notifications can be grouped into

        • Private Messages
        • Reminders
        • Referral Expirations
        • Comments
        • other notifications

        … but I was asking distinguishing comments in reply to one's own posts/comments from comments in reply to others' posts/comments one happens to be subscribed to.

        And, speaking of that, has it ever been suggested there to be (opt-in/opt-out) notifications for votes on one's own posts/comments?

  • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:07
    -1

    There's such a bias and skew against negging posts inbuilt in OzB's rules and culture in the name of avoiding controversy that there's literally dozens of people saying this deal isn't worth it, yet not a single downvote. How else are we meant to separate the wheat from the chaff??

    • CodeXD on 24/01/2025 - 09:14
      +2

      Then why not comment and neg the deal yourself?

      • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:15
        +1

        I actually like the deal, and paid for it 😊

        Maybe I would've thought a little harder about it if I saw dozens of downvotes against the hundreds of upvotes.

    • Gervais fanboy on 24/01/2025 - 09:15

      Ask those ‘dozens’ of people as to why they didn’t downvote it..
      And I’ll tell you why over 400 people upvoted it.

      Also, there’s plenty of mediocre posts around that get downvoted.

      • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:20

        I can tell you why; bc if they downvote and their comment is downvoted too, their downvote is automatically revoked. Does that happen with upvotes? No. Downvoters are required to comment; are upvoters required too? No. That's the bias in the rules that promotes a culture of piling on downvoters if they take it up on themselves to put their vote where their mouth is. Shouldn't OzBargain's rules be vote-neutral?

        You put dozens in quotes, but you can just CTRL-F worth to have an estimate.

        • CodeXD on 24/01/2025 - 09:23

          Worth is purely subjective and those are based on their opinion. It might not have worth to them but they can understand why others can take advantage of it.

          Have a read of the voting guidelines before asking why people are not neg voting. Not worth it is not a valid neg vote more in the no vote category which they have done.

          • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:35

            @CodeXD: I know the guidelines. They have an "issue with product"; they believe the subscription doesn't deliver on its promises, and that there are better/cheaper options out there (Amazon, AliEx, Facebook MP, etc). I disagree, I believe eBay is still good for bulky, heavy supplies and materials, refurbished goods and packed furniture (beds, mattresses, etc), but their opinion should be better represented. Besides, if they felt freer to neg the deal, it'd be easier to find their arguments against it (as they'd be marked by a ➖).

            • CodeXD on 24/01/2025 - 09:36
              +1

              @wisdomtooth: Neutral = no vote tho

              • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:47

                @CodeXD: Individually, yes, but in aggregate neutral = not favouring either upvotes or downvotes, neither voting nor not voting. Neutral = agnostic.

        • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 09:25

          That's literally democracy in action though. If an overwhelmingly large group of people believe one thing, who are the minority to dictate terms? I will concede however, that there could probably be a review of the thresholds at which an unpopular comment with a neg gets revoked, but I don't have any data to make an informed comment on that one way or the other.

          • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:45

            @zzyss: No, it's not democracy; it's tyranny of the majority. What terms would downvoters be dictating? On the contrary! It's upvoters who dictate the terms, by piling on downvotes and revoking them. Democracy does not mean erasure of minorities, but that's not even what I'm pointing out. I'm not saying OzB's rules are biased against minority opinions — perhaps that too — but they're biased against negativity (bc "muh, let's avoid controversy at all costs"). These posts about cars (especially Chinese cars) have a heap of controversy in them; I learnt a lot from reading through the comments.

            • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 09:58
              +1

              @wisdomtooth: I don't disagree that OzBargain overall tends to avoid controversy at all costs. But what do you expect from a free website moderated entirely by volunteers? Some kind of judicial system that weighs the merits of every opinion to ensure fair share of voice?

              • CodeXD on 24/01/2025 - 09:59
                +2

                @zzyss:

                free website moderated entirely by volunteers

                ozb staff actually do get paid lol

                • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 13:02

                  @CodeXD: I'm aware OzBargain has paid staff, but on the About Us page it says that posts are community moderated? Not that I'm invested in being right here. If I'm wrong I'm wrong.

              • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 11:12
                -1

                @zzyss:

                what do you expect from a free website moderated entirely by volunteers? Some kind of judicial system that weighs the merits of every opinion to ensure fair share of voice?

                Quite the contrary; OzB is over-regulated. Devs have gone out of their way to introduce logic to skew against negative votes. One example is the whole revoking of post downvotes by negging downvoters' comments. That's extra, not necessary to a simple forum. Another example is the restriction against voting on comments older than 30 days. Yet another is the restriction on changing one's mind from upvote to downvote (you may revoke your own vote, but shall not vote on that post ever again!). Why is all that extraneous functionality there? 👇🏻

                OzBargain overall tends to avoid controversy at all costs.

                • CodeXD on 24/01/2025 - 11:48

                  @wisdomtooth: If you think OzB is over-regulated feel free to not use it. It is a free country. Go and do something you enjoy.

                  • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 14:38

                    @CodeXD: Is that the boilerplate answer to each and every improvement suggestion? 🙄

                • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 12:59

                  @wisdomtooth:

                  Devs have gone out of their way to introduce logic to skew against negative votes.

                  I personally disagree, but I'm not saying that you're wrong. You tend to make the distinction between two types of negativity: the right kind and the wrong kind. But in practice, there's no heuristic that can easily distinguish between them and therefore its easier to err on the side of caution. The restrictions are there simply to prevent negativity from getting out of hand. I don't think there's any point in believing that there's any further malintent towards negative votes beyond that.

                  • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 14:37

                    @zzyss:

                    You tend to make the distinction between two types of negativity: the right kind and the wrong kind.

                    Did I? Where?

                    The restrictions are there simply to prevent negativity from getting out of hand.

                    What does that look like? People passionately debating Toyota vs BYD? Amazon vs eBay? Please 🙄

                    • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 15:49

                      @wisdomtooth:

                      What does that look like? People passionately debating Toyota vs BYD? Amazon vs eBay? Please 🙄

                      We're losing sight of the original issue here. A "religious war" (let's say) isn't making any kind of comment about the deal post itself and no matter how educational, is really incidental to the topic of the bargain itself. I doubt OzBargain has the resources to try and keep conversations "on topic" (not to mention page views generate ad impressions, hence $$$) and anyway, there's a separate system for voting on individual comments.

                      Consider Android fanboys negging an iPhone deal because Apple's trivial discounts (yay 5% off!) suck compared to the deep discounts frequently offered for Android devices (see recent Galaxy S25 launch deals). How does that help anyone? If you must buy Apple (e.g. your kid's school requires it) then getting a shitty discount is better than no discount at all, and getting negged into oblivion by Android fanboys is clearly undesirable.

                      That's not unlike your earlier example where you want to encourage people to neg the eBay deal because "Amazon is better/cheaper" etc. Those negs wouldn't be helpful, because allowing those negs to influence peoples' opinion of the deal is undesirable for the same reason as above. You yourself said your opinion is that the eBay deal is valid, and good for you for being open-minded enough to be receptive to contrary opinions, but I think comments are sufficient for that. Not negging.

                      • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 16:10

                        @zzyss:

                        I doubt OzBargain has the resources to try and keep conversations "on topic"

                        Why should it? That's precisely what I'm arguing against!

                        How does that help anyone?

                        I find a lot of help from listening to both sides of a debate, don't you? Even mudslinging and name calling, tasteless as they may be, reveal who's ran out of arguments, and who hasn't.

                        If you must buy Apple (e.g. your kid's school requires it) then getting a shitty discount is better than no discount at all, and getting negged into oblivion by Android fanboys is clearly undesirable.

                        Then you search for Apple deals, and pick the deal least downvoted/most upvoted, just like any retailer review system (Amazon, product review.com.au, Google Maps, etc).

                        you want to encourage people to neg the eBay deal

                        Not true; I want us to not be discouraged from it.

                        allowing those negs to influence peoples' opinion of the deal is undesirable

                        Is it really the site's role to "allow" or disallow how users opinions are influenced? Isn't that each user's own choice and responsibility? Do users need to be chaperoned and handheld, or are we all adults here?

                        I think comments are sufficient for that. Not negging.

                        Why not? That deal in particular currently has:

                        • 436 upvotes
                        • 214 comments
                        • 18 comments with the word worth (I didn't check if each and every one is negative, but didn't check if there were any others without it either — here's one with 14 upvotes — so it's an estimate)
                        • and ZERO downvotes

                        Something is rotten in the state of Denmark…

                        • zzyss on 24/01/2025 - 16:39

                          @wisdomtooth:

                          Then you search for Apple deals, and pick the deal least downvoted/most upvoted, just like any retailer review system (Amazon, product review.com.au, Google Maps, etc).

                          That's not how it works in practice though. Deals are time-bound, and what would you compare the eBay Plus deal with anyway? OzBargain doesn't provide sufficient filtering options to support a robust comparison of like-for-like deals. Also, votes aren't reviews/ratings - star-ratings don't have a negative count as part of their primary metric.

                          • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 16:47

                            @zzyss:

                            what would you compare the eBay Plus deal with anyway?

                            In that deal's discussion, people have compared it to Amazon Prime, to Kogan First, to Onepass…

                            OzBargain doesn't provide sufficient filtering options to support a robust comparison of like-for-like deals.

                            You know you can filter searches by tag and category, no?

                            star-ratings don't have a negative count

                            Aren't 1-star reviews essentially negative?

                • HamBoi69 on 24/01/2025 - 13:47

                  @wisdomtooth: You should create a form post with a poll to see what everyone really thinks. That way you might get a better insight.

                  • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 14:33

                    @HamBoi69: Isn't this the right forum to discuss feedback ane suggestions of improvement for the site?

                  • nocure on 24/01/2025 - 14:39

                    @HamBoi69:

                    You should create a form post with a poll to see what everyone really thinks.

                    Don't encourage them

        • Gervais fanboy on 24/01/2025 - 09:49

          ‘Dozens’

          All I saw was 430 upvotes and dozens 3 downvotes that were revoked due to excessive negs.

          And yes, this is a good practice because there’s occasions when people downvote deals not based on merit but their own personal political affiliations, worldviews etc. I know someone personally that negs any commbank deals(good or bad) just because he has an agenda against them.

          Does that happen with upvotes?

          We could have that conversation if you were to have shared an actual post with ‘dozens’ of people negging a deal but unfortunately there were only 3 people.
          Also, people do neg deals when they feel like it, look at any conservative/Trump deal post. You’ll actually see ‘dozens’ of downvotes.
          So no, there’s no such culture here that’s stopping people from downvoting. People do what they wanna do.

          • wisdomtooth on 24/01/2025 - 09:55

            @Gervais fanboy:

            We could have that conversation if you were to have shared an actual post with ‘dozens’ of people negging a deal but unfortunately there were only 3 people.

            You need to read the comment you're replying to; here's what I actually said:

            there's literally dozens of people saying this deal isn't worth it, yet not a single downvote

            .

            All I saw was 430 upvotes and dozens 3 downvotes that were revoked due to excessive negs.

            Exactly my point. People don't even bother downvoting when they know they'll be piled on and revoked. It's tall poppy syndrome.

            • Gervais fanboy on 24/01/2025 - 10:03

              @wisdomtooth:

              there's literally dozens of people saying this deal isn't worth it, yet not a single downvote

              lol I did read it, my only point was to challenge your theory behind these people not negging. I don’t believe that we have a cultural problem here where people don’t neg deals out of social pressure, I believe there are other reasons at play here.
              Agree to disagree.

  • wisdomtooth on 25/01/2025 - 10:49

    Is there a way of having an alert for new polls and classified ads?

  • wisdomtooth on 25/01/2025 - 10:58

    Is there a way of making polls multiple answer? I just created one, and assumed it would be (hadn't created polls in a long time, and forgot they're single answer by default).

  • wisdomtooth on 26/01/2025 - 08:13

    Could we have a Hide on Popular Deals page option along with Hide on Front page and Hide on New Deals page in the drop down tag menu on tag pages? The 1-day Popular Deals is my OzB home page, and I just wish I could hide some categories I'm not interested in from there.

  • wisdomtooth on 27/01/2025 - 23:04
    +1

    At the risk of giving too many suggestions in a row… This is cosmetic, and no biggie, but it'd be cool if a deal's title showed below the frozen OzBargain banner when scrolling through a post, in smaller font. Producteview does that. I often open many tabs from notifications, and as it lands in the notified comment, I forget what the OP was when I get to it later. I then scroll up to the top to see what it was, but then obviously I lose the comment. Mr. Bean stuff. Not sure if others have the same experience.

  • Mr BoMBAStiG on 29/01/2025 - 12:25

    When you post a comment, you are taken to your comment anchor in the deal post. You then press back again and you just go back to where you were in the deal post, which is usually your comment so essentially nothing changes. Press back again and you can keep deal browsing.

    I propose that since you are taken to your comment after posting, the action of pressing back again should take you to where you were before writing the comment.

  • kerfuffle on 01/02/2025 - 13:12
    +3

    Guessing there isn't a way to block users from seeing your comments that you post here?

    There is a user who was quite misogynistic towards me and was stalking me across this site from five years ago, to the point where other users noticed. They were permanently banned. They somehow managed to get unbanned late last year and I'm pretty sure are up to their old tricks again, as literally EVERY single comment I've made since January 9 has been negged (and I expect this one to be negged as well); subsequently, this has made me less likely to comment. And if it's not them, I know who else it'd be, so I'd like to block them from seeing my comments as well.

    I know you can hide comments from users, but you can't block people from seeing your comments.

    • WatchNerd on 01/02/2025 - 13:34

      Mods would be able to see if it's the same person so I assume that's regarded as trolling.

    • Gervais fanboy on 01/02/2025 - 13:39
      +1

      True, even the comments that are neutral and benign have been negged. So petty

    • HamBoi69 on 01/02/2025 - 13:50
      +3

      While I'm not discrediting your story, and I agree with your circumstance, I'm just trying to think about how that'd work in practice. For example, say a member said something about a company like "X is dodgy because Y happened, avoid", etc., but then blocked the rep or OP of that deal from seeing their comments. They'd be none the wiser as to what was happening, and they can't add their version of events or provide a response. Or they're indirectly badmouthing you without explicitly stating your username, i.e. "That guy that ALWAYS posts the Coles Gift Card deals, haven't they got anything better to do?" etc. etc, and you can't see that comment because they blocked you.

      I mean, I only see the worst side of things, but that's just my two cents.

      • Gervais fanboy on 01/02/2025 - 14:09
        -1

        True, the only recourse here is if mods could categorise the stalker’s behaviour under something objectionable and give him a strike or something..

        Or alternatively, the stalker has already read this post and gotten the message and will just move on from kerfuffle.
        Regardless, it’s just some meaningless negs imo. I have people following me around, doing the same to me lol.

        • HamBoi69 on 01/02/2025 - 14:29
          +1

          Same here. And yeah, I hope they've gotten the message on kerfuffle.

      • wisdomtooth on 01/02/2025 - 14:49

        An exception to the block could be made to OPs and associated members?

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