New Feature in Beta Testing - Deal Display
 

Greetings everybody!

Over the past few months we've been developing a new design for the way deals are displayed in the Hot Deals forums. We've publicly released it to http://beta.slickdeals.net/ for your feedback. If you start using this URL, you'll have access to all the new features we're trying as well as all the live data.

For example, you can see what this thread looks like on Beta at http://beta.slickdeals.net/f/5496...al-Display

Some improvements include:

• New Cleaner Design
• New Voting Style
• New "I Bought This" and "Report as Expired" Buttons
• New Attachments/Image Viewer
• New Community Details - Allows community to add pricing, category, coupon, tag details
• Related Deals - See related deals based on what other people have browsed!
• Permadeal is now deprecated (and now points to the new Deal Display).

This new design not only consolidates some pages, cleans up the design, and makes it easier to digest the content, but opens up room for other exciting features that will be coming soon such as Price History and Price Tracking tools!

We would greatly appreciate it if you could try it out and let us know what your thoughts are!

*Edit: We're currently rolling this out, so you may experience some bugs in the beginning as the features get added incrementally.

This post can and should be edited by users like you :)
 

This post can be edited by most users to provide up-to-date information about developments of this thread based on user responses, and user findings. Feel free to add, change or remove information shown here as it becomes available. This includes new coupons, rebates, ideas, thread summary, and similar items.

Once a Thread Wiki is added to a thread, "Create Wiki" button will disappear. If you would like to learn more about Thread Wiki feature, click here.

I really don't like the Community Details and I really hate the Related Deals.

I don't like the picture at the side, I prefer it right in the post.

Don't like the background color in the OP.

All in all, I really don't like it. It looks cluttered and crowded.

Its funny that you don't like the background color in the OP since its pretty much the same as the background color in all the other replies?

We believe pictures on the side make more sense, especially when people attach lots of images which clutters up the page significantly.

The community deal details are important because if the community helps categorize things properly, it will improve search results, and if people use it correctly, will eventually allow us to include more specific searches, such as filtering or sorting by price, store, brand, etc.

What do you "really hate" about the related deals?

OMG.. Plz don't change the look of OP post or change the entire look of the thread like new OP post.

Put the Thread Author on top not below.

Do you think that when viewing a deal, people would rather see the thread author first, and then the deal content?

Our research shows the opposite!

Nice changes. It'll take some getting used to, but I like the new format. I like having the deal first.

Likes

Deal first, Author on bottom.
Related deals

Dislikes

Report expired button close to 'I bought this' button
Images on the side (The images are often the crucial part, and should stay in the meat of the post)

I don't know why, I don't like the color, I just don't. It's just kind of glaring. Part of it may be that there are just too many colors on the page. A two tone peach OP with blue buttons, black stripe on Related Deals, all black Community Deal Details, it's just too much.

Related Deals: Looking at one post -- the Snugabunny Cradle Swing at Target. It shows a related deal of snow boots for a toddler or youth. How are toddler snow boots related to a cradle for an infant?

I also don't like "See More _____ Deals" buttons in the OP. It's just not really relevant. I clicked "See More Children's Deals" in the same thread. It brought up an athletic cup, a tv, Lowes coupon, mens shoes and a bunch of other stuff that is definitely not baby.

I prefer the pictures right in the post but I can see the advantage when people quote a post and don't delete the picture before posting the reply. I get tired of the same pics over and over too.

The related deals section wont be completely "related" until it learns some new data - what it does is it grabs anonymous browsing data to see what other people looked at.

Similar to Amazon's "People who looked at this deal, also looked at..."

The "See More ___ deals" button isnt working yet either until we finish rolling out some more features. It'll be a bit more until its completely out. I jumped the gun on the announcement!

stop all the extra ads above the Wiki please

They're not ads.

it's showing me stuff others had bought or looked with prices. It's in the way. looks bad.

That's not very constructive, but your feedback has been noted. Thanks.

it's showing me stuff others had bought or looked at with prices. It's in the way. looks bad. they are on the freebie forum.

Can you give me an example of a thread where this is occurring? I believe they are supposed to be from the same forum only.

Community Deals box and Related Deals box are not in a good position. If anything they just slow down the browsing experience because they cause unnecessary clutter between the OP and the actual thread. If you must have it (which we don't cause no one looks at that stuff anyways), I'd say put the default as a [+] box which would need to be clicked manually to be expanded by the SDer.

Why are we adding: "I Like This/I Don't Like This"? TU/TD is the SD way!
Bumming the Like idea off of Facebook.
Which we are already bombarded with as it is because its embedded into SD.

0 out of 0 found this post helpful. Did you find this post helpful? Yes No
Bumming this off of Amazon & TripAdvisor. Is it really necessary though? If someone hits Yes, does it auto-rep the person posting?

We're going to make the related deals only show up for Hot Deals for now until we get it working properly in the other forums.

It will rep them, but more importantly if a post gets enough positive reviews, it'll get added to a "Most Helpful Posts" summary under the Wiki. If a post gets enough negative reviews, it will automatically collapse the post and flag it for moderator attention.

Ok, well thats actually a great idea! :woot: I've noticed many times when people help to better a deal and it eventually goes into the Wiki they don't get credit for coming up with a workaround/solution for it because no one knows where their post was.

I like the Report Expired button. Makes life easier. Half my Mod Alerts are about this.

X2 don't like it.

Can I turn it off? if I can't turn it off then I will have to create a script to block it then, huh?

Because I agree with the earlier sentiment that I saw this earlier in the Gamer's Lounge that I thought they were ads...

..as long as you give us the option to turn it off if we so choose, then I'm fine with it otherwise it looks cluttered.

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

Thanks! :) I think it's a good idea I just am not too fond of it myself. I could see how this would be super useful though with Black Friday shopping coming in the next few weeks though.

I think it will get more useful once we tweak some variables to make it more relevant and more useful.

Right now its strictly based on what others have viewed and in the same "top level category", but we can add some constraints that'll make it more useful (limit to same forum, match more tags, etc)

This way, later related deals (or related threads) in content specific forums like Freebies or Gamer's Lounge will be extra on-topic. So if you're in a thread about a Battlefield 3 on PC in the gamer's lounge, perhaps itll show Battlefield 3 PS3 as a related thread. It will get smarter/better as more people use it. So help us train skynet...

Feedback from my end!

New Cleaner Design

I don't think anything was wrong with the old design, but I do like the deal before author.

New Voting Style

Please keep the old TU/TD buttons! I would much rather give thumbs up than "like" deals

New "I Bought This" and "Report as Expired" Buttons

I like the idea, though it might be nice to have them bigger/further apart please!

New Attachments/Image Viewer

I don't tend to look at the pictures much, so I'm fine with them being on the side. Maybe a preference setting to have pictures displayed more prominently for those who like them!

New Community Details - Allows community to add pricing, category, coupon, tag details

I'm excited to see how this goes. Free ship tags, etc seem useful, but time will tell hod well it's adapted by the community. Maybe another candidate for a preference toggle?

Related Deals - See related deals based on what other people have browsed!

Please no! I have a way of searching slickdeals that I like and I don't want to be bombarded by other deals that the system thinks are relevant. Amazon started doing this, twice now with external vendor ads, and it annoys me every time I use that site (which is a lot!)

Thanks for your feedback and explanations in this thread! I like the idea of the "most useful post summary" as well as the quick and easy "helpful/not helpful" buttons

Hi, awesome work guys. Any chance you could bring something like this to the hot deals forum section (i.e. not just the curated deals) to have just one grid and have the thumbs up underneath the @(storename) part?

I think that would be really awesome and make the HD section far, far easier to navigate.

I like many of the beta changes. I'm not liking the like/ don't like- keep TU/ TD or use That's good/ That's bad. However, I'd rather have the Related Deals placed before the Similar Threads and like the former also have the option to be hidden or shown. If added to our preference/setting could we select the placement and/or hide the Related Deals.

I agree, the photos should remain in the post. I didn't even see them over on the right until I saw this post. I had to reopen the page and look for them. Missed it completely on the new page.

I don't care for the gradient in the OP.
The facebook button is way too prominent. It should not be in the main post.
The same for the "See more Slickdeals News & Articles deals" button - it should not be in the main post.

The black box under the OP is really cluttered looking... maybe it's related to the color scheme? I'm not sure.

I like the new functionality, & how deals details will be more crowd-sourced (goodness knows the SD community is big enough to do it!}.

I agree w/ some posters, tho, that pics are an important part of a deal, & as such, should be front & center as part of the deal itself, not off to the side.

I like the OP on the top not the bottom. We peons are the ones who find the deals and bring them here. We have come to trust the authors not the content.

Please put the pictures back where they belong.

I do not like the 'was this post helpful?'

Is SD aspiring to be a mini walmart?

Once a year we have changes around here and we have a 'thread' asking us our opinions. Our opinions are always asked after the fact. How about asking us if we would like to see any changes before you actually make the changes?

Pretty much everything she said..... ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Dear Slickdeals -

Remember that time when MySpace wanted to add some, "Exciting new features for our user base" and then their, "User Base" bailed on them en mass?

I came across a site the other day that looked like Slickdeals and FW had a love-child and it was absolutely fantastic in it's execution and simplicity.

It had exactly zero of those features listed in the OP.

I agree with this. The current design is pretty simple and clean. It makes it easy to find and read what we are here to see. The new style just has to much going on and most of it isn't helpful.

As far as Related Deals and Community Deals, we don't need it. The SD community is good at sharing deals within a deal post if the situation calls for it. Many times I seen a deal sell out and someone will post that they have found it elsewhere comparably priced or that they have found a similar item that's an equal or better alternative. If I'm looking for this info, I'm going to look to the member posts for first hand knowledge not this bar thing.

But, if you can make it an option as others have suggested, you can make everybody happy.

I don't recall anyone asking us whether we'd rather see the post or the author first.

How did you research it? How did you come to that conclusion?

Double post glitch.


Adding something I just noticed... You need to add the reasons for thumbs down votes and the voting feedback to the new layout.

I don't like that bar at all, it just clutters up the page, feels extremely out of place, and the deals that pop up are often completely unrelated to the thread I am currently looking at

I understand if you want to advertise more products, but aren't all the different forums, homepage, new (?) deals page, and live page enough?

If you implement a functionality to have it turned off that would suffice for me since I don't like it personally, others might however.

Now, as far as the new thread design goes (besides from the bar) please please please make sure you update the background colors to fit the midnight theme you have on the site, I understand if it is not available in beta right now, but later on.

I don't have any problems with the redesign of the OP, however the facebook button should be put somewhere else, in line with other buttons (like it is now), or maybe beneath the ratings for the thread in the right column, in the new design it takes up too much space and pushes the page down even further, I am pretty sure most people don't even use it.

Aren't the Community Deal Details (currently: Tags) something that the OP, or mods, should fill out? Again, this is just more "junk" to scroll through, especially since you already made it to the thread and the info is irrelevant to you. It takes up 6 lines now compared to 1 before, + all the spacing in between.

Comparing the old vs. beta pages side by side I think you have an overall nice design if some minor adjustments are made, I personally would try to make the threads less cluttered and more user-centered in that it should be quicker to scroll down to the comments and see what people have to say. But maybe that's just something I like to do personally, I like to get info quickly without having to sift through repetitive information that is found repeated in every single thread.

I think the color issues people are reporting are due to the other skins (Ice and Midnight) being SO broken right now.

Midnight is supposed to be completely dark, yet the OP is still peach with white text (unreadable), the "Did you find this post useful?" is still light, the mini-profile for posters is still light, even the border around the body is light.. etc etc. Ice has the same inconsistencies. This is a big issue for me just in aesthetics; easy to fix, though.

Like others, I don't care for the OP info being below the deal. The point being already stated that we've come to trust deal authors, and not necessarily a new poster. In fact, the new setup makes it appear like a public service announcement rather than a "deal." I don't like it.

Leave the "Likes" to Facebook; we like our TU and TD deals just fine. I do appreciate the idea of Useful posts, a feature that has been lacking for a while. Just fix the colors.

Related deals? I don't care, personally. Community Deal Details? I think you're just asking for trouble from trolls there. Too easy to change up information there for stores that have done you wrong, products you don't like, etc etc. I think it's just not a good idea.

Otherwise, I don't mind the voting stuff and images being on the right, but you're wrecking the whole aesthetic of a deal post by setting it up the new way.

Two or three cents here from a fellow (but amateur) web developer. :thumbup:

====

Also, to anyone who claims they don't solicit any advice from users -- try the not-so-obvious SlickDeals Site Questions, Issues, Suggestions forum. I would imagine many of the ideas implemented here came from those forums.

the new design is looking as *clear* as google plus (pun intended) :D

for now, I feel mixed about the design, but I'm going to use it a bit more to see what I like and don't like. One thing that I don't like anymore is that the OP is at the bottom of the post; IMO I think it looks better on top of the post. Plus the "finding this post helpful" should link to the reputation points would be great.

Which post are you responding to here? It's unclear.

Post #34 and yours.

They certainly didn't explicitly solicit advice on the OP location that I can find, but I'd have to imagine they've done some sort of focus group or something to back that claim up. :dontknow:

Just reminding that they are open to suggestions at any time and are usually good at responding in that forum.

OP on bottom is good. People would get used to that in within days.

Keep pictures the same. "Like" is for goofs on facebook. Rate This Thread: Thumps up/down is part of this site's panache.

Community thingy should be at the end of the thread. It disjoints the thread in the position it's in now. The few that would use it can scoot over to the end of the thread.

It's amusing to watch forums implement change. People wig out.

Hey thanks for the link! If SD made a post at the top of the forums (like they did this one) and said "hey peoples who made SD what it is and if it wasn't for you we wouldn't exist", we are thinking of changing things up. Here are our thoughts, what do you think?
Further if you were all to abandon us (like myspace) we wouldn't exist and we want you to be happy, so please share your thoughts and ideas with us, after all this is your community too. Then perhaps we would all know that changes were coming, instead of having to dig through the forums to guess that they might be making changes.
That's just my thoughts, but we aren't here for that. We are here to interject our most meaningful, carefully construed thoughts. Signed #34

I agree. It could occupy that space that sometimes occupies the top of the page announcing a contest, etc. Visible but not intrusive.

Also, good suggestion up there about the related deals being at the bottom of the page. It makes perfect sense.

Okay, well I guess my post was misinterpreted, as I did not "claims they don't solicit any advice from users" (and I didn't interpret bunnies46's post that way, but I'll let her respond). To be clear, I just asked about the post vs. author on top issue...

:bulb: Exaaactly.

Right, and I was asking what the "something" was, and how it was evaluated.

Thanks, I read that forum regularly and post fairly often there as well. ;)

I think that's kinda what this beta test and announcement thread is supposed to be, although your version is much more enticing... They should've had you design the announcement. :lol:

Not a fan, but whatever. I'll still come here, no matter how much you clutter up the space with stuff I don't need to see :-)

Sorry but I just dont like it. I do like to see the user/member that posted the deal at the top.

I dont like the facebook like right in the middle, it just seems like a desperation attempt to spread the word about slickdeals.

"I like this" and "I dont like this" just seems like a facebook rip off, time to be unique. How about different variations of the thumbs up....

1 TU = Great deal
1/2 TU = Good deal
-1/2 TD = Not so good deal
-1 TD= Terrible deal

Also if someone clicked a TU then how about that get added to the OP's rep's? It's easier to click on the TU then actually type something in a box and give rep's.

Pic's on the side I can deal with and will be nice so when I'm at work I wont have to scroll down to see the pic since I can only have a little open so the boss wont get upset.

"I bought this" seem's to barely get used. Maybe change that to an Auto Rep feature?

Love the "Report Expired" but how about a "Report Repost" button?

My final comment is that to not forget SlickDeals.net is a member sponsored site just like the NFL/MLB the fans are the ones creating your profit. If people dont like it they wont contribute and they wont spread the word.

Feels Slow... Could you make the changes to be more responsive . Look wise the beta is very Good.. but Look makes it slow compare to the current one..

I have to agree with so many others that said OP location at the bottom is NOT good.

Just look at post like this
http://beta.slickdeals.net/f/5491...ay-be-YMMV

I usually look at who made the post to see if it is potential spammer (like posted by someone with new account or someone that we know post almost EVERYTHING and doesn't care if the deal is good) or posted by someone that usually post good quality hot deal.

When you have a LONG post like the link above, you have to page down a lot before you can get to the OP information.
The OP information should be right near the top (or top left) since it can indicate the quality of the deal based on who made the post.

I don't particularly like the new look. Everything looks cluttered.

I think it looks good. Nice work on the new look.

FatWallet has this kind of individual posts thumb up/down thing and I don't like it over in FW and don't think it is needed here. People have their own opinion about the deal. Over in FW, for people that really like the deal, they just pretty much thumb down ALL the posts that don't like that deal even though those posts make sense. And thumb up all the posts that promote the deal even though there is really no good "helpful" information in the post. It is nothing to do with helpfulness but more like politic.
In addition, most people usually ONLY thumb up or down the deals since they can see how many thumb up/down the deal has easily from the forum level. Since all SDers (including Mod) will look at the forum, if any thread seems to be manipulate by some one with too much questionable thumb ups, someone else will go into the thread and balance it out. While inside the thread, there are a lot less people (or some threads probably NO Mod) go into each thread for stuff they are not interested in. So it is very easy to manipulate the individual post "helpfulness". People over in FW just start making multiple accounts to mark their own posts. It is much harder for the thread itself to be manipulated since how many thumbs up/down is show on the forum and if there are too many thumbs up on bad deal, people will go into the thread to "correct" that. But it is a lot easier to manipulate individual post inside the thread since people won't notice it.
The post should only be hidden by Mod and huge majority of people marking this not helpful. Again, the majority must be huge (may be over 30 more people mark one way over the others?). And if there is enough people find the post helpful, probably still shouldn't be hidden. We don't want this to be easily manipulated. Same the other way.

This is what I see on the Beta site using Chrome, i'm guessing this is all part of the kinks that need to be worked out?

Meh.

Cleaner = better. This isn't particularly and a lot of it seems like moving things around just to move them around.

Rather have the images in-line with the post.

Rather have all of the controls and operations at the top so that the remainder is content.

Some of the controls/buttons take up more space than necessary. You could make it look cleaner by making them smaller. For example, the did you find this post helpful control takes a full line of space. It could be a simple small icon somewhere else.

As others have said, the community/related deals stuff seems kind of disjointed and breaks the flow. If I'm in a thread, I'm there to read that thread not others. Fine if it adds some value in that context but I think that's usually probably not going to be the case. Most threads stand alone pretty well and where other info is useful it almost always gets pulled in. If it's done using a search, then it's going to be pulling in a bunch of stuff that may appear relevant but isn't really. If you have to have it, then maybe make it expanded/collapsed as a setting option.

I don't really like how the first post looks different than the rest. Just kind of odd. Don't see that moving the author, etc., has any particular benefit versus just leaving the top post to look like all of the rest.

IMO you should try to make this site feel more something like reddit, not Amazon or Facebook.
This is a social content sharing site, not a shopping network. And, more of "news" sharing than a personal feed.

The "Did you find this post helpful?" is a great idea. Letting the masses auto-moderate themselves is a great idea, but I think something like reddit's voting system would be more helpful.

I agree with the "Community/Related Deals" colors being obtrusive. The dark color is very eye catching, and was good to highlight what section/page you were in.
But having such an enormous section of black becomes way too obtrusive. Especially for something that is sort of a "maybe you will like to look at these". It should be a color that blends in to the page, so it's something that you might just skim over.

Also, I'm having a problem with posting using beta in Chrome. Tries to double post every time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have to agree with the previous posts about the location of Related Deals and Community Deals. Their location totally messes up the flow of the page. When I open a topic, I read the OP, then immediately look at the what others have to say about it. I'm not looking for other deals (related or not), so I feel those sections are best served at the bottom of the page, below Similar Threads.

I still prefer OP info at top
 

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.

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

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.

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.'

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???

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???

I really like the "Helpful Posts" feature. Maybe even make it scrollable (or an up-down button or expandable).
Although, I still really don't like the black color.

I don't know if it's just because you're still working on it, but the links in Helpful Posts aren't working. (They are absolute instead of relative paths).

Not a fan of the "Community Deal Details","Wiki", Helpful Posts section. Whatever you call that black chunk. It just a big wall of text to me that my eyes glaze over at. I think its because it reminds me of an Ad and most people have trained their brains to ignore them or assume they arent "real" information.

I do like the "cleaner" layout other than that in regards to the voting, attached images, etc. I like the "Like" button and the signature moved to the bottom.

I agree with everyone who thinks the OP info should stay at the top. It helps make an initial assessment of a deal, e.g., I'd be more likely to keep reading (and keep up with) an extreme YMMV deal posted by a veteran vs a noob. As far as people's points about seeing the OP in the thread listing, you don't get to see this when you click on a deal from an email alert.

I like the helpful posts idea. Having helpful posts moved below the wiki is not only useful, but helps give credit where due. Voting on posts was something I also suggested at one point, but one comment that was made that was also repeated here is that a system like this might be prone to abuse. I would suggest maybe creating a post sticky feature similar to thread stickies in addition to, or instead of, the helpful post feature. I don't even know if this is possible, but this way everyone can customize their own threads. Just a thought...

As far as related deals and the community details, I don't like it and I agree with the expand/collapse button idea. If it's going to stay, then at least put some visual separation from the wiki.

I do like that the wiki is moved above the mod's post for FP deals, just because the mod post usually doesn't get updated as a deal evolves, or without as much detail as you'll find in the wiki.

ETA: what happened to the "voting feedback" link? Sometimes I like to see how people voted. It looks like the little bar graph in the voting section is clickable, but doesn't do anything when you click it.

I have a feeling you will not get the welcomed responses you hoped to expect. I, for one, think the new layout is fantastic. It seems like you guys are doing your research and changing things for the better. Just like when facebook redesigned their site, people were non stop crying. But in the end, it works out for the better. Steve jobs said, " A lot of times, people don't know what they want..." You need to tell us what we want.

we fear change
 

Generally speaking it just doesn't make sense to put it where it is. Why would anyone want to have more clutter, frankly unrelated to the deal at hand, between the OP and the meat of the deal (thread/conversation). They already clicked the forum to read more about the specific topic/product at hand...yet there's just more clutter in the way. It should be at the bottom if anything.

Based on my observing, and posting for the past year or so, I've noted that the best SD's are extremely limited (usually due to a rare deep discount, price mistake, or rapid fire sale) and come and go quickly before there are any worthy "related" deals.

If you're talking about everyday TV deals, or the non-stop computer hardware related deals it might make sense to include some as "related deals" cause these 2 categories seem to spam SDs threads and there are plenty of "deals" to go around.

In terms of the real 'diamond in the dirt' deals that can apply to everyone on any given day, regardless of need or not, there are really no related deals as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure many would agree.

And then proceeded to lose half its stock value post-IPO :lol:

I mentioned how we shouldn't copy the "LIKE" feature of Facebook and you can clearly see how many people are against that idea. I think BryantQ sees why we feel that way though as the "Thumbs Up/Down" is a real part of SD. If I saw a yellow thumbs up or down on a shirt, the first thing I'd think of is SlickDeals!

The Helpful Post voting is based off of Amazon and TripAdvisor as I also mentioned earlier. These are not innovations, but how we implement them certainly can be different - and I really like the idea that BryantQ came up with regarding repping the poster and highlighting those posts.

That being said, plenty of people I know are only part of Facebook, because there is no better alternative, they made changes and people were pissed but didn't know where else to go. SlickDeals obvoiusly has some legitimate competition, so it naturally has to be more cautious with changes and proceed accordingly, and I think they will cause they seem to be more receptive to feedback as a whole.

How can I disable related deals?

I had a bunch of thoughts, but I first want to confirm that this is only supposed to apply to deals in the Hot Deals section? The beta site shows it changing for front page deals too. But that's probably just me exploring what I'm not supposed to yet.

Thread Author: I will somewhat diverge from a consensus here, initially I really liked it at the bottom. I generally go to see deals, and do not care about post authors, but that is the way "I" use this site. I wouldn't consider myself a very strong member of the community here, and I think what you have built works. I can see that if you change it, it will de-emphasize the community of people, de-emphasize reputation (except that making +1 and I bought this automatically give people rep is a plus).

Like the icons, do not like how Give Rep and Follow go all the way to the right, not good for widescreen setups.

Related Deals: I don't want to see related deals here. You're taking attention away from the current deal, before bringing the attention right back. If you must put in related deals, I agree with the previous poster who wanted it at the end, near similar threads. Or, have you considered making a right-side banner like original post has in this beta?

Picture Location: With a widescreen setup and no fixed width site layout, it's not that helpful to have the images and extras WAY over to the right. I always like the pictures. I'd probably prefer it if that whole bar were on the left side of the screen. I DO like it out of the way of the main post. So I actually prefer it on the right rather than in the post, but think the left would be better.

Community Deal Details: Don't like the color. It's way to jarring a change from this very light beige white to a dark grey on black setup.

I like the Deal Details specifically, ties in the front page design well with the different tags of different colors. Don't care too much about what categories the deals are in right there. Some other info is good.

I LOVE helpful posts. I have way too many times tried to go through a thread that had an original post and a wiki, and didn't know where to find people who posted good information that didn't make it into the wiki.

Bought/ Expired Buttons: These are cool, though I feel the check boxes should be on the right side, or not there at all. Have it retain a light hue, how about, if they clicked it. Is the idea with the checkbox that they can uncheck it if it was on accident? I couldn't with this test post. And many are commenting that the two should be separated, why not move "Report Expired" to just below the pictures?

I'm really not liking the related deals "bar" I think it takes away from the "clean design" you are going for, it's adding clutter to the page. I do like the other new feature and find them useful. So I agree with others if the related deals garbage is here to stay, atleast add a collapse button or a way to disable it. I honestly look at it as advertising and scroll right past it. It really it just in the way IMHO.

Agreed, related deals is adding clutter. Please add an option in settings to disable it!

Agree with this.
Knowing why people thumb down a deal is helpful: Is it a bad product, bad info, bad price, bad merchant, or is this guy just spamming?
Appears you can't provide why you vote things down anymore.

I also don't like that you can't be neutral. Sometimes I vote something up/down by accident, or decide it's not worth a thumb up or down anymore.

It depends on what the data indicates. It might be that most people are deal hunters and will view anything that is almost close to something that might be remotely worth buying at the right price.

I imagine that the "I bought this" data would be a much better metric to recommend deals on, although, still not quite great.

Just out of curiosity, why are you asking what people like/don't like if all you are going to do is tell them they are wrong?

hate this related deals window. it makes me feel like i'm on a shopping site, not a deals site. it feels very "ad-like" and adds no value for me. it should be at the bottom of the page

i dont need to load a bunch of images unecessarily

Here's my vote:

For overall layout (with a few exceptions)
For sidebar
For "I bought this" and "report expired" buttons
For helpful comments section

Against thread author location
Against community and related deals location
Against image location

What I would really like is the ability to sort by price and vendor on the hot deals forum front page. Would be helpful if I only have x amount to spend for a gift or I want to use a coupon code at a specific web site.

I think you wanted to hear feedback from community. But based on above reply, it sounds like you want to tell people that they are wrong anyway. You may want to put explanation or the reasons of the specific changes you are making in the OP. After that, let the community decide what they like or not, (if feedback is really wanted).

LIKED:
Automatic Reps --- I think this is very important for a community based site. This is the most liked change.
Community Voting (But please provide option to be neutral)
I bough this (since it will group all those threads where I had bought stuff)
Report Expired.
Did you find this post helpful.


DIDN'T LIKE
Relate Deals --- as this is not really a shopping site, i don't think this is really useful to SD community. Remove it or make it collapsed at the bottom.
Community Deal Details -- somehow don't like the background color. Also, maybe we can keep this section towards the bottom.
OP Location --- should be at the top.

Without community deal details, we wont have sufficient data to allow people to sort by price or shipping or brand etc. Some people barely post enough stuff in the OP, which is why we want to rely on the entire community to help normalize the data into something that we CAN sort and search for.

This is a discussion. People's feedback prompts a discussion so that I can explain our rationale, since it may not always be apparent. I can also help answer people's misconceptions if they exist.

We've already taken some feedback and added it to a list of changes we're going to test, but make no mistake: we are not just going to blindly listen to people's suggestions. But I will at least listen and consider what people have to say.

People are free to have opinions, but i'm more interested in constructive feedback that helps us improve. Rather than people saying "you should fire your developers" or stating "i dont like it" without any reason, I'd like people to at least explain why they don't like it, and we can work to fix any real issues.

Some people will dislike it simply because something changed at all. Some people won't even give it a chance. Some of it is trial and error, some of it is experience and research, and some of it is intuition, but I can say with certainty that if we didnt make change and make progress because we were afraid, we'd be stuck in the stone ages.

The explicit neutral option will no longer exist because we dont think that it's very intuitive. Our plan is to make it so that you can "unvote" simply by clicking again.

So if you Thumb Up, and then you change your mind, you'll click the "Thumb Up" link again (which will now look different), to unvote. We'll work on the display mechanics to make this a little more obvious.

We'd like feedback, and ideally constructive feedback at that :) Its not intended to be a yes/no poll, its so we can improve the beta features.

It doesnt help us much if someone makes a short post that's just like
"I HATE EVERYTHING" and nothing else. (Other than making us feel bad obviously). But more than that I was just trying to explain what those sections were for, and the benefits of having them :)

One of the few things that pretty much everyone in the thread so far has agreed on is that the "Related Deals" is intrusive and unwanted by most people. Everything else seems to have a mixed response of some sort. I really hope that you decide to omit it or at least include an option to remove it!

You might've missed it, but I did take the feedback and we will be adding an option to collapse it.

I hope this is what the new SD's will look like because the way it is right now is annoying. Right now if you click on a front page deal it will say Permadeal and you'll go into this weird looking page. Then you click on "View Forum Thread" and it will look exactly the same, only it will be like Slickdeals the way it originally was. I don't understand why there are two versions of the exact same page it makes no sense to me at all.

As far as soliciting the public's feedback I wouldn't listen to any of these people. You think Steve Jobs went into a public forum and asked people what they wanted in a smartphone? Ask yourself what looks good and use your best judgement. Find a graphic designer and have him/her make the page. They have the best artistic eyes, find yourself a Jony Ive and stick with him. If you listen to the average person you'll wind up with an average product.

I think I'd prefer the "Community Deal Details" to be where "Attached Images" are right now.

I prefer the "attached" section (images and otherwise) where it's been, below the post, and large enough to be able to tell it's worth clicking on them to see full size versions.

I wish there was a way to better include pictures inside a post, for creating step by step instructions.

The "Helpful Posts" is a great thing, and I hope it is somehow tied in to giving people rep and recognition for contributing to the community.

I think the OP should remain reasonably prominent, at the top of the post, again as a way to give them recognition for contributing to the community.

I prefer thumbs up thumbs down. I've TU deals on products I don't like, because they were good deals. We already have enough TU/TD for Apple and Microsoft and other "political" companies, changing the phrasing to "like" I think will make for even more of that.

TU/TD and Like/Dislike also would be used differently, I might TU a deal that I don't want to be associated with, but LIKE a deal I want to be associated with and share.

I'm going to chime in with all the others that HATE the idea of "related deals". I don't want to be looking at pencils and see deals for mopeds. That said, if the related deals were limited to either the same category item (TV's showing more TVs, computers more computers, etc.) and/or the same STORE (Staples being a good example) I could see it maybe having some usefulness. But if it's just whatever someone happened to look at next...no, please, no. The related stuff on Amazon is useful because people will buy sets of things from Amazon. A pot AND a pan, but sets of deals are going to be pretty limited on SD.

I often right click open in new window on Reply (and other things). That doesn't seem to be working.

That came across poorly and somewhat rudely... People are telling you pretty consistently that they hate the related deals idea. If you do have reason to disagree with them, at least consider making it optional.

Could I suggest allowing the option to turn on/off as much of the new layout as possible? Your team will tend to follow the ideas of whomever is loudest, and enthusiasm for an idea can get an echo effect going where soso ideas seem a lot better than they are. If you allow folks to actually adjust what they see to what they WANT to see, you're going to learn from the number of people that toggle things on and off what's actually useful. You might even consider having the system "default" to the most common settings of anyone that makes a change to their setup. (Versus the folks that never find the settings section) When you find settings that are almost never used, you remove them, to simplify things.

I TRULY wish you'd done this with the new FP. The "deals you may have missed" is a constant irritation to me... I'm hating more over time, not less, because I browse from multiple computers, phones, browsers and tablets, and it's made it hell trying to pick up where I left off. It's NOT helpful, and I really wish I could turn it off.

When the first post, no matter how crappy, gets to be the "Original Post", and the person that takes the time to really do up a good original post gets ragged on for being a repost, they feel screwed and put in less effort the next time. Or don't even bother posting at all. Or take Selma's route and just spam everything, minimal OPs, and hope something sticks.

A couple of suggestions to help with that:

You might take the quality of the OP into account when merging posts to decide which is to be the new OP, rather than just posting time.

Possibly time stamp when editing a post begins, and use that to decide the OP.

In other words, don't penalize people for contributing, reward them!

Hopefully if the feedback is strong enough, you'll actually consider more than just tweaking a feature, but whether or not to add/remove the feature.

All valid points. But you will, I hope, still LISTEN to folks. I think some of what you're trying to add, like the related deals thing, works on a shopping site rather than a discussion board. I have to wonder how many folks come to SD looking to buy a specific gadget, versus folks that come looking to see what new deals have popped up, and folks that actually just enjoy the community.

Honestly, I see most of what you're doing as improvements (please put OP back on top, pics back on bottom, community details to the right, keep helpful posts where it is, and DUMPSTER the related posts idea unless it's REALLY targeted.) but I would MUCH rather see the phone/tablet experience get some attention. Where are the official apps?

Followed by that, an improved editor would be nice and some design thoughts towards community building and rewarding folks that contribute with cyber-pats-on-the-back so they keep doing so. And discouraging the folks that are nasty to others or encourage law breaking. (coupon fraud, copyright infringement, hacking shopping carts, etc.)

I'd like to see SD do something similar to other referral-cashback sites. I'd rather give you folks my business than Mist Are Reeeee Bates (see how annoying it is to have "urlhasbeenblocked" and do stupid crap to get around it?) for example. And I'd like to see the juvenile blocking of competition sites cease. It's pointless and really irritating. If you HAVE to make a big deal out of it, leave the site but maybe put a red asterisk next to it that'd explain why you dislike it. If it's just that you lose the referral business, figure out how to keep the business, don't try and make the alternatives disappear. Serve the community first, and SlickDeals will continue to thrive.

That's what Microsoft did with Windows 8, and look how that's working out :p

Or maybe a better comparison would be Digg, a site I truly loved, and which has ceased to exist in everything but the name they sold for a few hundred grand to new owners after so many users bailed due to "design improvements" that the site couldn't support itself any longer.

Going completely your own way is a LOT riskier than give and take with users.


I did miss that, and thanks for adding the option.


As a related thing... SlickDeals is important to people. I've saved literally thousands of dollars thanks to the site and I'm sure I'm not the only one. When you start changing something around that folks depend on, they get mighty nervous :) It's a wonder you don't get a lot more pushback over changes than you do.

One more thought before I head off...

One problem I, personally, have is finding longstanding "FAQ"''sh sorts of posts and posts for ongoing events.

For example, there's a great post with a lot of detail on how to do Staples ink cartridges, and another on StaplesEasyReabtes. I can never seem to find them when I want them.

The posts for places like Walgreens and CVS and how to do their deal programs are easier to find, but still often buried as well.

Maybe SD could use a Wiki section? Hmm, maybe the "wikis" could even end up in the "related posts" section. :)

Okay, time to head home and get some sleep. Have a nice night/day whatever!

The white color for author and title and large black box areas don't adhere to the theme, so it feels visually clashing. It's like looking at a person with non-matching clothes.
I tried changing the colors using some css tools to more closely match the comments and it seemed more visually appealing.

When images are clicked on and displayed in the larger middle of the screen format, there's no way to zoom in. (in spite of it saying to click to zoom :) )

Sometimes folks take pictures of price tags and bar codes. It'd be nice to be able to zoom in to try and read them without having to download the picture.

My first thought on seeing the "Related Deals" stripe was "Why didn't Adblock remove it?"

After realizing it wasn't an ad, the second thought was "Wow, there really is no coherence to what people look at here."

Yup ... That would work. Some option to unvote.

I agree with about everything Zanthexter says regarding the new beta and how the SD team should go about handling feedback and criticism.

My .02:

Dislikes
Location of OP back on top so I can also know when the thread was started.
Images goes back in middle of post so I can directly see what I am shopping for. Additional images can remain on the side.
Report expired button rather close to I bought this button
Cannot zoom in on picture. It closes when I try
Related deals (option to collapse)
Facebook share

Likes
Community Voting
General borders
Link to other deals in same category

Sorry if there are more dislikes than likes. What ever that's not mentioned I probably like.

Why is the colour slightly different in the opening post Bryant??

Is that so ppl recognise its the FIRST POST better??

It looks good. Original post should be sticky for the thread, means visible in all pages. And do you have page themes if someone don't like colors?

I think an option to collapse related deals with a cookie that remembers your selection is a good idea. I personally scout out only a few deals a day that I think are relevant or worth while, generally that can only be caught when they're very fresh, and it is unlikely that another deal caught would pique my interest. Two good deals of the same kind rarely exist in the same time window.

No need to be "social" for the sake of being social. This is an awesome site, and I have loved it for 4+ years just as it is. Major change would not be well received. Keep up the terrific work!

Agreed.

* The site is getting way too busy. There's only so much you can cram into a forum UI until usability starts to suffer. I switched to beta hoping things would be cleaned up some, and now it's even worse.
* The thread starter name is very important at the top of the original post, and highlighting the original post with a different color bothers me for some reason. The post doesn't need any more emphasis. Also, I like the image the item is being linked to right in the post. Not off to the side.
* The'related' items images makes the board spammy/commercially (like I'm shopping at Amazon, and not on a forum discussing deals with fellow deal seekers).

TL;DR: The original design/formatting of the board seemed significantly better in terms of overall "usability".

We're going to make some tweaks to the "related deals" bucket to try and make it a little more relevant.

The related deals reminds me of the "Similar Threads" at the bottom which has horrible accuracy on similarity

I remember when *at Wallet changed their format and it became so busy and spammy, I stopped going there. I hope that this doesn't happen here at SD. I find the "Related Items" really intrusive and very distracting. I hope we can have the option to turn it off in preferences. I don't care if there are related items, I'm not interested. I'm only interested in the deal I clicked on.

My goal would be: able to decide quickly if its a great/ok/bad deal. So pic on side is good idea not middle, as well as anything not important to the deal. U got great ideas with this new interface

Or at least make the "Related Deals' blockable by ad blockers so we don't have to look at it.
I'm sure if you took a vote, most people would thumbs down the "Related Deals" section.

I want to load the page quickly, and the more images, the slower loading it is. Images of the subject deal are fine, but I don't want to see "related deals"

We do appreciate the hard work SD does in making this a great site, and I hope it continues to be a great site to quickly find the best deals.

My thoughts:

• The OP definitely looks brighter - kind of "glaring" like other people said. I think it doesn't stick with the uniform look of the page. It just feels wrong.
  
• I think the color for related deals and community details is too contrasting. Honestly, when I opened a thread to look at the info and saw the dark colored boxes underneath the OP, I thought that it was the bottom of the page - and didn't realize there were other posts underneath. I didn't read the information, didn't look at it. Just based off of the feeling I got from it: not pay attention to it, skip it, and close the tab.
  
• I like the idea of there being a preference to close that section of the thread. Maybe make it an expandable box, so that we don't have to see that information every time. And I'm happy to hear that this is something you all are looking into :) I'm not saying I would never look at it - but I don't want it there every time I look at a page. It would be nice to go "Oh, I'm curious about the details and related pages - I will expand this box for now"
  
• I don't like the pictures being on the side of the OP either. It makes it look like ads, and gives me a feeling that it is irrelevant - so I didn't look at it until I started wondering what on earth people were talking about. I like the over-all look with it on the side, but it just doesn't flow with the post - seems disconnected.
  
• I do like the "Was this helpful" thing. And I especially like that it makes some highlighted posts. Reminds me of how on Woot, they will highlight some posts for people to look at in relation to the deal. Also reminds me of Amazon though - and that does get abused by people who want to just hide someone's posts all the time. So that may get tricky if it ends up being used to collapse or delete posts at some point.

Thanks for listening! :wave:

i agree with the glaring background color. btw is there a theme which can make the board black instead of the color its at right now?

Quick, first impression, my thoughts exactly. SD, please don't go the way of FW.

It "feels wrong" is right.

In the old dayz, what kept me coming back to SD, was cause it's simple, easy to read, easy to follow. After all, I'm here looking for deals, no? Where's the OP's link to the retailer site? How do I get in on this deal? What are the steps? Why is this thread/deal 5 stars TU or TD? Should I pull the trigger? Should I wait? What if it becomes OOS/DEAD?

I first started with +echbargains. Then I found SD; and got comfortable. Then I tried FW, cause I heard about them. But kept coming back here.

I guess I should add ...

Amazon pages are "busy", but I continue to shop there.
Newegg pages are "busy", but I continue to shop there.

They have good products/prices, mind you. But they also get me from point A to B really quickly.

In my opinion, that's what I think SD should stick to. Get me from point A to B quickly. It's okay to have features and stuff, and "busy" pages, but as long as you get me from point A to B, quickly.

I prefer that also, since that's how my eyes flow, when reading/looking at a deal/thread.

I think TU/TD is good neough. I think Like/Dislike adds confusion.
"Why is there a like/dislike?"
"Is this similar to facebok's like/dislike?"

I haven't read the other posts. But if "related deals" is what I"m thinking it is or should be (like on Amazon), then I LIKE the idea of "related deals". But, it has to be related though.

If it is not related, it could be "things I might like"; "things I might have interest in"; ... based on recent shopping experience or patterns.
Or, "popular deals".

Do you have to call it "related deals"?

Edit: I see "Related Deals" now. Is it already live? Some of the deals don't seem "related" at all, to the OP's post/deal/thread. Maybe I don't understand how it is "related"?

I have to disagree. It could work on a slick deal site. I'm not just here to discuss, on a board. I'm here to find slick deals (shop).

If I have a product in mind (i.e., sata cable), I come here. What deals can be hand for that, at what price? How cheap/slick of a deal can I get it for?

When I'm in the market for a 32" lcd tv, I come here. What are the current/recent deals that have been posted for 32" lcd tvs? How cheap/slick of a deal/price can I get a 32" lcd tv for?

I look at front page. I look at hot deals. I look at local deals.

If "related deals"; "things I might like"; or "things I might have interest in", get me that 32" lcd tv for a slick deal price ... guess what? That feature stays (enabled).

I wonder why. I've seen apps from Google store, on Android. But I think they are user created.

What would you actually do with SD on your phone/tablet? Would you just research? Would you actually go from their referral, and buy at the retailer, on your phone/tablet?

I can see why they want to eliminate the competition. Makes sense. It is annoying/cumbersome, when I have to type +echbargains. But that's all it is, annoying/cumbersome. Perhaps, SD can filter it, so it's not actually a link, but just the word.

True. If I understand what you mean. If I can click through slickdeals, to anotehr site, so that SD gets the referral, then I would rather do that, then go to the site directly.

The "Related Deals" reminds me of those fields you see on Amazon when you see "Frequently Bought Together" and "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" below an item you are trying to review.

Granted these fields may make sense on Amazon for comparison purposes and from a "marketing" perspective, but on Slickdeals it makes the webpage look even more busy than it is (and I use Google Chrome w/AdBlocker Plus) and most importantly, it does not help me when looking at a "SLICKdeal" posting.

I come here for one reason...to find a SLICKdeal, not for regular internet shopping. I rely heavily on the SD community to find a SLICKdeal on a particular item (that is why I absolutely LOVE "Deal Alerts"). Deal Alerts make more sense than "Related Deals".

To me, "related deals" are similar to notifying a mod about duplicate SlickDeal posting...not giving me the benefit of finding another SlickDeal on a particular SlickDeal that I am currently looking at.

I've relied on SlickDeals for years, back to the "Dark Deals" days...I've seen many changes over these years. Many I have not liked and grown used to but this "related deals" needs to be at the bottom of the first page vs. near the Wiki IMO.

I really, really dislike the Related Deals feature. It's intrusive and adds unneeded clutter, with very little benefit. I'm not all that interested in which other threads people are viewing in addition to the one that I'm looking at. If I want to know what threads are with looking at based on the community's interest, I rely on the voting and the view counts. If I want to see similar products or categories, I rely on the tags.

Please make this feature one that can be optionally hidden or collapsed, or consider the user suggestions to ditch it all together.

Is the Like/No-Like option because it's going to now show up on FB, if we choose one? I don't Like that.

I hope the dark option remains, though the OPs are showing up white with near-invisible text for me.

The page does feel a bit too crowded, but that may be just needing to get used to a design change. I'm not big on related deals, because they often aren't related in a way that's relevant to my needs.

I don't think news and articles needs to be on the front page? I dunno, they aren't the first thing I look for, when I come here.

I like the 'bought this' 'deal expired' buttons.

The price-tracker is interesting, though it doesn't appear on all the deals.

Nope. It's just SD re-branding the Thumbs Up / Thumbs Down system.

Obviously needs to be changed, as not one person here has been in favor of changing it.

Pretty much what bunnies46 & calistyle (probably others as well. Haven't read every post).

As much as we don't like to admit it... Us OP's to like to receive credit for the deals we post. If people are going to start seeing the deals without having to see who posted them, I believe it will lead to less deals being posted.

Also when I see certain OP's I know it's a **** deal and don't have to waste time doing the research myself ;)

Having the deal listed first may be preferable for newbies and lurkers, but if you took a vote of the established SDers (including Moderators/Deal editors) I would venture to guess and say the opposite would be true.

And as calistyle said - I don't remember being asked what we would like to see first... the OP or the deal.

p.s. - I'm not a fan of the other changes either... I guess that's what this thread is for - feedback.

p.p.s. - I "found my post helpful" so I clicked "yes" :lol:

nice idea.

Hi back! I mod alerted your post just to see if all buttons are working as normal. :lol:

Aww I luv you too! :nod:

Just testing out all the 'buttons' to see if everything works as it normally would. You can delete this post.

Just to clarify. I am not a person, I am a bunnies. Bunnies have intelligence and as you can clearly see, I am above average. :look: How many bunnies do you know that can type something and have you sitting here reading it? :woot:

Question. At the top where you have an outline of the 'most helpful' posts, I see that there is 5 of them. Is that how it is going to remain, top 5? Or will it be top 10, 20, etc?

I hope it's only 5. Don't need any more crap getting in the way of the OP and the discussion, IMO.

I like most of the new layout, but I do find you need to make more of an effort to see the pictures and think pics should be more featured as opposed to a sidebar. Also not really a fan of related deals but have no problem glancing at them and moving on. I like the idea of the OP being a slightly different color, but didn't notice that additional posts by the op were different. I think that would be a nice addition and would help identify when there was a response or addl info posted by the OP as a reply.

<3 the new "Price Tracker" feature.
Please integrate that into the info section or the OP.

And make it more accurate, and maybe have price tracker addable as Community Info?

Yeah, I think I prefer the OP being first. I don't usually post deals (I can't find them on my own!! :lol: ) but I figure that if I did post them, I would end up being less likely to receive reps if the deal came separately, before my OP.

I figure people would see the deal, and then ignore the next info from the OP. :dontknow:

First and foremost, thanks to the Slickdeals team for their hard work and dedication to improving an already great website. I took the time to give you guys some feedback because I love this site and want to see it grow in a positive direction.

[Likes]
* The concept and implementation of “Did you find this post helpful?" is great! Adding to the wiki and suppressing bad comments is perfect.

* Report Expired seems like a very good idea. Hopefully, this will limit the amount of manual deal management the admins must perform.

* The ease of the community 'adding deal details' should prove to be helpful for searching out deals. Hopefully, the community embraces this idea because it’s only as good as the users make it

[Dislikes]
* Like many others, I do not care for the “Related Deals” section. It feels like an advertisement… well it is an ad for the slickdeals website. Overall, I feel it cheapens the experience. There is already a button/link that provides the same functionality if the user really wants to see related deals. The “See more xxx deals” link after the OP deal and before the author is sufficient.

* The big “Click to Zoom” image placeholder. Instead of having the default image placeholder, I would suggest using the first image if applicable. The concept of clicking to zoom should simply be implied. Also, the location of where the images are located is questionable.

[Defects]
* When I click on the "Click to Zoom" on an image, if there is only 1 image the arrow -> is enabled. This implies there are more images to view


Overall, excellent work. I look forward to these new changes!

I believe that's how Amazon has it too, at the bottom. Guess what they put at the top, at "eye level"? ... "Add Item" ... "Checkout"

What was the goal of "Related Deals"?

Was it to get people to 'see' related deals?

Or, get people to 'buy' more often, through SD deals/referrals? Which in turn I guess SD would make more through referrals? I don't understand referrals, so just throwing the questions out here.

If to just 'see', it should be at the bottom.

If to 'buy', it's a bit intrusive near the wiki, since when I first go into a deal/thread, I'm hoping to find out more information about the deal, not see "related deals".

By the way, thanks SD for providing your users the opportunity for feedback. We may not always know whats best, and I know some feedback may seem non-constructive, but I hope your research/beta testing/user feedback gathering, clears the water and produces a good end result.

This is going to shock you Bryant, because I tend to only speak up when there's something I really don't like but in this case, I like some of it. :faint: :lol:

I do like the top half with the thread posters info down at the bottom instead of the top. Although I wonder if it being less prominent that will mean people are not reminded to rep the OP, but then I don't care about reps so what the heck, just playing devils advocate there. I like the thumbs up and photo on the side of the top half that's better too.

I don't like the related deals section, not having a way to shut that down, it's really busy and very annoying. Give me an option to close it one time or turn it off in settings and I'll be happy, don't see that in Beta at the moment.

However I really don't like the 'Community Deal Details', it's nice that it's at the bottom but putting it in an all black box makes it very busy, whereas before it blended into the background more so it didn't make the page look cluttered. If you go back to a neutral background and neutral script, that would fix it.

I'm on the same page. I don't care either way. But then again, I hardly post deals. I mainly come here to find deals.

The rep thing works, in my opinion. It's a simple way to reward somebody, let them have their bragging rights, for posting a deal. What does it cost SD?

Why do people post price mistake deals, when they could just keep it to themself? Bragging rights.

Plus, if more people are affected, the retailer might be in a PR nightmare, and compensate. I got a $200 off coupon from HP, for being in on a price mistake deal. More bragging rights.

It's not just the rep. Somebody remarked it earlier. You remember the OP (ala their reputation). I still remember who the OP was for the HP Touchpad firesale, Iconian. Grant it, I visited that thread like a thousand times. But, anytime I see a deal where Iconian is OP, I'm happy to be in that thread.

I also remember EVO-IC. Anytime where he is OP. I feel sorry for the noobs. I was once a noob to his thread. 5 TUs, multiples pages, "buy now, now, now" vibe. Essentially his deals are hocking Chinese sites/products. I already know what kind of site/deal he's going to post. I just move on.

I like the old style Front Pages ,because it show which one it New since I last visited
For the Relate deal as long as similar deals like the OP ,it ok w/ me.TK

I do like it and a cleaner design... BUT please kill the photos on the side. It just didn't seen to belong there. Really a flow killer, it's a place you expect ads too... Nothing makes sense with then there, period eyes are really use to seeing junk there and drawn to the center of web pages.

Hope me feedback helps, Keep up the great work, Thanks

1. The black shading around the community details is certainly glaring. Maybe that could be controlled by a theme/stylesheet for those who like dark/midnight themes.
2. The helpful posts may or may not be helpful and its possible a wisecrack and follow ups to them end up as the most "helpful" posts more often than not. Maybe this section can be collapsed or else there could be an option to sort the posts by most helpful/ most recent/ oldest within the thread similar to how the threads can be sorted within a forum thread listing.
3. Related deals - I hardly look at related deals in amazon/groupon and all the other sites so personally for me, it doesn't give me much but I can see how SD can make some money on related/suggested buys

Just click on the 'List' button to view them the way you're used to seeing the FP deals. Once you do that, the next time you go to that page you will see the 'new since last visit' thingy.

Right above the deals are the option buttons...'Grid', 'List', 'Simple'.

Also, the new since your last visit works on Grid too..

I don't think I like the images on the side, either. It's really no big deal to me, but it seems like less room for images. If I'm wrong, then ignore me.

The "related deals" section is something I rarely ever use on other sites, because it usually doesn't have anything that interests me. I don't see that being any different on slickdeals, and even if I'm wrong, I'm fairly confident that I'd find that deal, anyway. So it just seems like wasted space and too much like ads for my taste.

Overall, I don't really see much difference in the new site, although I think I like the "report expired" link, depending on what it does. If it just puts "dead" or "expired" in the title, then it's great. But I hope it doesn't move the entire thread, because I often find deals that still work, despite being labeled as "dead".

I'm reading the following article on Windows 8 interface, and was reminded of this thread. Just thought I would share; not the office politics, but the consumer response:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tec...8/1702511/

I thought this was interesting. I haven't read it yet. I believe it's the rationale behind Windows 8's new interface:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archiv...creen.aspx

Element Hiding Helper must be used in combination with Adblock to make it look the way it used to. Two or three clicks and related deals are gone.

Is Adblock a Firefox extension?
EDIT: Thanks and repped. Works great for Firefox. Wish there was something like that for other browsers though.

I have Ad Muncher. Does anyone know if I can block Related Deals with it, and if so, how?

Well, I might be a bit late to the party, but here's my thoughts:

I would rather have the authors information at the top. The reason is because I know who many of the prolific deal posters are and whether or not their deals are good, great, or bad. When I see that right away, I know what to expect when I read further.

I do not like the attachment pictures on the side. The reason is because most forums use the side of the page for ads and other things that I try to ignore. Because of this, I avoid looking along the right side of the page and with the attacments there, I don't even see them - and I typically want to see them.

I do like that the buttons (Add to List, Mod Alert, etc.) are larger.

I like the report expired button.

I like the community voting on the upper right. I LOVE the way the poster's info is on the bottom because it should be about the message, not the messenger. If you have the OP's info on the bottom, why not follow through and do that with the rest of the messages in the thread? It would look so much cleaner and nicer. I would love that.

For the first time ever, I clicked on "Related Deals" and I thought it was actually interesting and relevant. I actually liked the way you could scroll to the left or right and see more items. Before this I never even knew it was there and I never ever clicked on it.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tec...8/1702511/

I hate the related deals. Everytime I click on one, it seems to be already dead and in Deal Talk. Waste of time clicking on those links.

I could see this ^^^ being a huge problem.

feedback - need to work on browser support.
 

used Chrome 23.0.1271.64

attached how it looks like

It's been looking like that in FF today too.

not very linux friendly..words are piled on top of another in some places, both firefox and chromium

annoying

It takes time to get used to, but I admit I like the new look. Related deals is a waste of space though.

Is there any way we can have a poll put in the beginning of this thread? It would make it much easier to sort out peoples feedback.

Iam really not a fan of this related deals. I buy really obscure stuff so it wouldn't quite work. At the least I hope there is a setting to turn it off or disable it on an individual basis.

That was a mistake due to a rollout of the giveaway banners on production but not on beta.

I can only imagine the amount of work, effort and time (which equals money) that went into trying to get new features and content added for the SD community.

Having said that, I certainly hope that people making the final decision are seeing the overwhelmingly negative response to most of those features.

There is the simple, "oh, c'mon - this is just people being reluctant to change"......and then there's the responses in this thread.
People do not like, want, or appreciate some of the things that are being rolled out - regardless of the amount of man-hours or dollars it took to implement them.

Good luck to you, I certainly wouldn't want to be the one to can most of the ideas after working to get them finished......but I would rather be that person than the one that rolls them out anyways and has to deal with the backlash.

Some feedback will be taken where we believe it makes sense :)

Also we've made some algorithm changes to the Related Deals section - they should be much more relevant, and restricted to the same forum. In addition the ability to collapse related deals has been added for registered users.

Change is always difficult...people will get used to it.

I don't think it's working. For example, I posted a deal about Zenni Optical having buy one get one half off for eye glasses. The related deals currently showing are greeting cards, a beer can holder, mouse, binoculars, tv, and a blu-ray player.

I am actually looking for a router so I clicked on one. It would have been nice if the related deals showed me more routers but it didn't. Instead I get a Nook, a mens shaver and camera.

How do you collapse it? I tried the little - sign on the right and that wasn't it.

I like the community deal details, but you should have the setting of being able to automatically have this minimized, and expand if you want for each deal.

I just deleted a category from a Community Deal Detail section by accident. Maybe you should add a pop-up screen to confirm deletions or edits. Or a revisions section like the wiki so you can figure out what you accidentally deleted.

Might have been stupid on my part - I thought it was an expand/collapse button. Then again, maybe not, because that's what a minus (and plus) button could also mean.

Awful. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just leave things alone. It works and I'm happy the old way.

I clicked the beta version, and it seemed to move twice as slow as the current version. What gives?

On a separate note, I hate targeted advertising. Everyone is doing it, and it makes you want to avoid the sites altogether. What is even more annoying is making a purchase online, then seeing the targeted advertising for the next 2 months. Clearing browser data (disc clean up, CCleaner, delete cookies) doesn't help. I understand everyone needs to make a buck, but I honestly don't post as many deals here because of this.

The images on the right make me feel like they are the "sponsored links" like we have in google and always ignored.

That is a lot of scrolling just to get to post #2 in a thread...

The ads at the top of Slickdeals, that I see from Newegg, Amazon, etc. seems to be more relevant, to what I have been recently researching or looking at in SD.

Moved this thread to Site issues and suggestions forum now that we're done getting beta testers.

Both AdBlock and Element Hiding Helper exist for Chrome too.

Thanks, but I was looking for something that would work with Avant browser. I installed Chrome but it drove me crazy because the hot keys would mess with my word processor. I suppose I'll have to spend more time figuring out how to turn off the hot key function in Chrome.

Ad Muncher works great but I'm not sure how to actually block an element with it.

A question Bryant,

Why is the first post on a thread a slight different colour buddy??

I asked this before but you didnt reply about it and im just curious.. (Its not a bad thing im just wondering)

The first post is important so we want it to stand out; Some things were more important to us than others:

The title is the most important part, since everyone crafts a detailed title, but not every puts as much detail in the post body. So I made the title stand out, larger, easier to read and should be the first point of focus for your eyes. Next the body, which stands out from the rest using the gradient and shadow, along with the little arrow to direct the flow. Next would either be the author or the product images.

Some of us have some differing opinions regarding poster information first or deal information first; one would like to believe that deals should be judged on their own merit, not biased by whoever is the author. But at the same time, I recognize that the authors deserve recognition because they are contributing to the community, this is why we made it easy to rep a person: hit i bought this, it reps them, large rep and follow buttons, etc.

If you recall when we did the OP (original poster, first post) redesign to its current state (horizontal OP on top etc), people also freaked out.

But in this iteration, we cleaned it up, removed some redundancy (for example the breadcrumbs at the top of the page listed Slickdeals.net Forums > Hot Deals > Deal Title, in small font. Then the deal title woudl be repeated again, also in small font.

We'd waste a lot of space; so actually if you compare the two designs, you see we are actually delivering the content closer to the top of the page in the new design.

See the image below;

But another shorter answer to your question is, we made a gradient from the darker tan to the lighter tan and used almost the same colors. (See how light the background is behind the attachments box?)

Ah i see that my friend,it does clean it up a little doesnt it?


Thank you for all your hard work :)

I don't know what to make of this, nor the area to fill in the catagories, since I never search by catagory nor do I look at related deals, since for all I know they are probably already dead. I'm bookmarked to go right to the forums main page where I then click on "hot deals" and just browse through whatever's there. If I'm looking for something specific, I use the search button. That's me though,everybody is different.

Thread author below the deal looks fine. :)

I like the price tracker feature once it matures a bit.

It looks fine. I like windows 8 and don't mind change. Just telling you how I do things so you have another viewpoint. :)


Maybe you could code into the user profile an option for people to turn off or keep minimized by default "related deals" and "community deal details" if that's possible. I would get a bit fired up though if they changed the thumbs up and thumbs down icons to those jagged versions they like to use once in a while though. :) I also like the yellowish hue the forums have. Not many forums have it and it's useful for monitor calibration. I know it sounds strange but I've come to associate that color with slickdeals, which has a somewhat unique look and forum format that works really well at least in my opinion.

I proposed an automated "dead" feature in another thread for this very reason. BryantQ hasn't yet responded although other Mods have. Feel free to check that thread.

can there be a option to expand the forum back to 100% its weird having these 2 blue bars on the side and not having a way to fix it even ad block wont hide it =/. other than that i love the updated beta