New Feature in Beta Testing - Deal Display

It might be worthwhile to put the Community Deal Details before the post, as a sort of post summary (See attached). It's above the page navigation, so navigation can be a more AJAX operation, eliminating whole-page reloads.

In a more responsive design, things like the deal summary, wiki, voting buttons and attached images should be moved out of the main content area and pushed to other places, like a footer or different page.

The right sidebar might be better served as a table row below the original poster details. For me, voting and attachments are viewed after the original post is read, and sometimes even after I've read the thread comments and viewed the product page. There may not be any benefit to having it consume the main content area.

If the community details block was above the post, and persisted through AJAX page changes, then perhaps the voting buttons could go there so I could vote at any point while browsing the thread. It might also be handy to put the attachments there too, but that might be too much content.

I appreciate the original poster details being below the main post because by the time I made it to the thread page, I've already read who posted the deal on the forum page. I like that change, it gets me to the main content faster and might eliminate a source of bias. I might be less inclined to judge the slickness of a deal based on the reputation of the original poster.

Seriously, I don't need more information than the deal I CLICKED on to view more info ABOUT THE DEAL.

if your intention is to help users, I would say, thanks but no thanks. But your intention is to insert merchant ad later, i.e. similar products selling on other site, just make us a button to kill it when we don't want to see it.

I'm in favor of having the original post collapsible on every page of the thread, so I can expand it on the current page rather than having to go back to page 1.

Quote from junhao123 : It works fine in places like reddit, youtube, slashdot, and countless other sites. If there are enough people actively involved, it should balance itself. The problem with FW I think, is that they don't have a large enough user base that is active, for this to work. There should be a voting/ranking system like what reddit/slashdot has, to add incentive to active involvement. It'll bring the community closer together that can automatically moderate content in a direction that the masses want to see.

Yes, I agree, small number of users in a thread shouldn't be able to hide any post. That's why I said the posts should be either hidden by mod or meet the following

1) there is less than certain number of people find it helpful (may be less than 5?)
AND 2) there are rather large number of people like 30+ (?) people find that post not helpful while less than 5(?) find it helpful. OR whatever numbers that make sense based on the size of SD community.

If there is no huge majority of people find it not helpful in addition there is not enough people (<5?) find it helpful, then may be the post can be hidden. For deal site, there is always people like/dislike the deal. We don't want to turn this into some tool that try to hide the opposite view of the deal.

For SD that has large user base, should be able to get 30+(?) people click "not helpful" easily on a somewhat popular thread if the post is spam or purely personal attack. If the thread is not popular and there are not many posts there to begin with so doesn't really matter.

Quote from sinosudial : I appreciate the original poster details being below the main post because by the time I made it to the thread page, I've already read who posted the deal on the forum page. I like that change, it gets me to the main content faster and might eliminate a source of bias. I might be less inclined to judge the slickness of a deal based on the reputation of the original poster.

So far, not many people think original poster information below the post is good idea.
First, many information of the poster are not in the forum page like if it is new user that create the account recently just to promote that one deal. Also, the old design, the poster information is at the top but it is very small which mean the information about the deal is still right near the top and can get to it quickly. But with the new design, the poster information can be pages down like
http://beta.slickdeals.net/f/5491...ay-be-YMMV
They already have the thumb up/down on the right. Why not put the OP detail AND thumb up/down on the left (or right) near the top?
To most people, not knowing the source of the information is bias by itself. Especially we have seen a lot of people create new account to promote their own store and/or services.
For big stores, reputation may not matter. But for deals that posted for little known store. Or facebook freebie or from little known services, reputation of poster is extremely important.

Couple of things I wanted to mention:

The beta test is a way for us to let you see what we're working on before we release it...

The beta does not support any other themes (thus, those of you on midnight will have issues).

The most helpful posts section will work in the following way to begin with: First of all, we implement the same abuse detection as we do for regular voting, users can still mod alert a post for mod review, however now if a post gets a lot of "helpful" votes, then it will get flagged as helpful in the summary, this is the most important part. Right now we've lowered the threshold for a post to be helpful and show up in the summary just so you can see how it works. Later it will probably be at least +5 votes before it gets flagged as helpful.

For "non-helpful" posts, after it reaches a certain threshold, it will automatically alert a mod. Eventually we'll make it so that after a certain amount it will automatically collapse, or hide the content, but not delete the post (everyone can still see it by clicking a link that's like "This post was hidden due to negative feedback, click here to view".)

Using the "I bought this" button will automatically rep the op, vote up the thread, and add the thread to your own "Things I've bought" list that is private. This way you can always find the threads that you've gotten in on.

Using the "This post was helpful" will automatically rep the author of the post.

So far, I've already taken some notes that I will try to act on immediately:
- Create a "show/hide" preference for logged-in/registered users to control the display of: Community Deal Details and Related Deals
- Play with some of the colors for Related Deals, Helpful Posts, and Community Details
- Try out "Thumb Up" and "Thumb Down" instead of "I like this" etc.

Naturally any change is pretty jarring, so while I appreciate the gut reactions, since it gives us some things to think about, but also give it a chance over a longer period of time. We will also be rolling out changes incrementally, every day or week to incorporate the suggestions we like, so this is a work in progress.

Quote from bryantq : I'm sure we can work in a way to make it a preference/setting.

That would be great. Myself, I find it really clutters up the page. Also, it seems like the page loads really slow for me.

Quote from mickey4paws : That would be great. Myself, I find it really clutters up the page. Also, it seems like the page loads really slow for me.

The beta site also doesnt have the full resources of the main-site, its a smaller test bed so the servers could be getting overwhelmed. That's just a symptom of the beta only, and not a reflection of what it would be like on the main site.

Quote from bryantq : Using the "I bought this" button will automatically rep the op, vote up the thread, and add the thread to your own "Things I've bought" list that is private. This way you can always find the threads that you've gotten in on.

I really like this a lot and I think it will be very useful in finding threads where I bought something.

Someone also mentioned concerns about abuse:

Everything is logged When people edit the wiki, when people edit the community details, when people vote a post up or down, etc, it is logged.

Thus, if a person is found abusing the system, they will promptly have their ability to vote or edit removed, and/or banned.

The same protection is in place for people who abuse thread voting or posting.

Quote from bryantq : The beta site also doesnt have the full resources of the main-site, its a smaller test bed so the servers could be getting overwhelmed. That's just a symptom of the beta only, and not a reflection of what it would be like on the main site.

Ok, thanks Bryantq.

Stop making visual changes! If you got programmers with nothing to do, then lay them off. Your new mobile site is simply an expanded version of the previous one that requires more scrolling and less informantion and too much blank space in between text. The previous version was much better. Pictures in text I disagree with. Your front page also makes it difficult to get to the forum page, which is the most important part where the conversion happens, there is a tiny link only which was changes a couple of years ago and I have never liked it.