New Feature in Beta Testing - Deal Display

As others have mentioned, when I click on a deal I'm interested in checking out, the OP info is very helpful in determining how much effort I want to put into investigating the deal. The deal title has already enticed me, hence I've clicked on it to research the details. Seeing it's a poster with 1 post and no reps on a deal which sounds too good to be true, versus clicking on a deal and thinking to myself "Oh, it's PersianMafia - I usually find their deals worthwhile." makes a big difference. I'm less likely to feel the need to double-check their info, since the OP has a track record for accurate posts and deals I find interesting.

Having the posted at the top keeps with the forum/community feel, which I suspect a lot of SD users find appealing. It pays tribute to individuals contributing (whether they're staff of the SD business or forum users like myself). If you're looking to break away from your roots and move to a more "commercial" format, then de-emphasizing the poster and moving them to the bottom might be the way to go.

Unrelated note: SD is all about the thumbs up! To hell with "likes" - nothing's better than seeing that deal with +857 Thumbs Up!!!

no good, no good at all

IMHO I don't like the new first post layout on the hot deals forum, like how it is on the FP, I prefer the normal thread post. I like that you guys finally added an expired deal vote thing, it'll clean up searches.

In Chrome:
Quick Reply isn't working for me.
And Reply always tries to double post.

Maybe OP position could be configurable? Like part of a theme thing.
Although it's really just personal preference. If someone wants it badly enough, make a FF/Chrome extension to customize SD. SD Enhancement Suite extension or something.

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 is using less bandwidth from my tests. Less than half. So, it should be faster.

Quote from Brooklynite : 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.

This isn't a thread about mobile or for your ranting, but ill address some things to begin with:

You can always switch back to the simple mobile site, look at the bottom of the page. Believe it or not, lots of people like seeing images of the product.

Regarding the link to the forums from the frontpage, it has been like that ever since we had expanding frontpage deals... we could always add a simple link under the content on the frontpage like "Read more | 34 Comments" but someone else will complain and talk about how our programmers should be fired.

And if you read the post you'd see that they created more than just visual changes.

Related deals is a horrible idea...just adds clutter. And makes no sense, what does a bicycle rake have to do with a deep fryer? No relation at all...

I have to agree, Related Deals is terrible.

Quote from jordanz12 : Related deals is a horrible idea...just adds clutter. And makes no sense, what does a bicycle rake have to do with a deep fryer? No relation at all...

You should ask your fellow shoppers why lol, right now it's 100% based on what other people are viewing.

This beta test will give us a chance to adjust it to make it more relevant. Thanks for participating!

OP info at top.

OP background same color as post background to prevent 'glare.'

Quote from bryantq : You should ask your fellow shoppers why lol, right now it's 100% based on what other people are viewing. This beta test will give us a chance to adjust it to make it more relevant. Thanks for participating!

Maybe consider tweaking the algorithm a little. Like using similar tags or additional weight for "I bought this" or thread activity, or something like that. I don't think views will be enough to make them relevant (I'm just speculating though).

Some things I think should be considered.
The "helpful" rating could make reps more of a commodity, so consideration should be given to the impact on "rep value".

Also, "this is helpful by x/x" doesn't make sense, because you decrement the amount. You could get -10/10 people rate this helpful (obviously you can't have -10 people saying this isn't helpful). I think a simple "point rating" would make more sense. Or adjust so it doesn't use decrements (personally I think using a "point rating" makes more sense).

Sidenote:
I really think reddit has the best reputation system I've seen anywhere for a social content sharing site, and that SD should take some of the lessons learned there and apply them here.
Their methods of preventing abuse and creating a nearly democratic system of moderation for what are almost anonymous users, and the community it has built, would greatly benefit this site (IMO).

what about a compromise with the header by making the OP info smaller then it is now???

Quote from ReverseHandedJO : what about a compromise with the header by making the OP info smaller then it is now???

Wouldn't that just make things worse? Some of the complaints are that they want to see the name, because they decide whether the post is useful or not based on users they know.
Probably they judge by how much rep the person has, or if it's someone like "Selma bot" to see if it's something they should care about.

Makes little sense to me though. You can see who the poster is in the thread listings.

Quote from junhao123 : Wouldn't that just make things worse? Some of the complaints are that they want to see the name, because they decide whether the post is useful or not based on users they know. Probably they judge by how much rep the person has, or if it's someone like "Selma bot" to see if it's something they should care about. Makes little sense to me though. You can see who the poster is in the thread listings.

oh i agree with you it would be for the best to be as big as it is now, but if something has to give to get it back to the top then make it smaller.

how about a user setting to toggle it to the top???