Deals.Woot

There was a thread about this yesterday:
http://deals.woot.com/questions/details/4a38af80-bfc9-4ee8-ad2b-4abb2b8ace35/is-it-me-or-is-this-now-freestuff-woot-com#30

The problem, @rusel, is that if we start categorizing it may never end. Part of this site's appeal (for some of us) is logging in and having to scroll through screens to see what appears. Usually I do so and get sidetracked and then my sidetracking gets sidetracked. Additionally, many of the "Free" items aren't free, are crap, and require a lot of registering (however, I did get free chocolate milk today and damn, it's delicious. It reminds me of when I was a lad...SEE---I got sidetracked again).

FAIL! In addition, please try to communicate using words and sentences. If other people that I'm fond of hadn't already responded, I'd have completely ignored this, on the mere use of "u" and "abt" when it would have been just as easy to say "What do you think about having a Free category just like Popular and Fresh?"

Note the nice clean symmetry of Deals. On the left side (no accident that it's on the side sinister) you find Deals, Popular, and then Fresh. On the right side (dexter, of course, and yes, Latin is a living language), you find Questions, more formally known as "Ask the Wooters," also with its Popular and Fresh. I am a "wooter" and since you ask, I will say that (as @catbertthegreat has already noted) a simple search on the #free tag will provide what you ask, without destroying that elegant symmetry.

Besides, those who are now posting FREE stuff would feel left out, and want attention, and STILL post it on Fresh->Popular.

@sgoman5674: Many people here post from a phone. When I send SMS, it is fully spelled out, grammatically correct, and spell checked (I love my crackberry). In addition, while I know we are doomed to see the same questions over and over, I think that it would be nicer if someone did some due diligence, and said "Oh, that's been asked before, and it didn't go well."

Mind you, I easily forgive the "where's my cowbell that I just ordered?" since that implies someone new, and the site can be confusing. Yes, user @rusel is new, but (since he can vote) has already made at least one purchase on Woot central, and has also looked around here for a bit.

I was also not all that worried, since we know how bad the ratio is for people who ask questions, and then return to see the answers. It also doesn't really have the feel of SMS text, but rather of someone who is just used to lolcat speech.

@sgoman5674: What you say is true. On the other hand, I am cursed with an editor's eye, and mistakes stand out for me (including comments I make, SIX MINUTES after I make them). Our brains do an enormous amount of error correcting. If they did not, ancient Hebrew would be indecipherable, and both Chinese and Japanese Kanji would be unusable. Actually, until relatively modern times, multiple spellings of many words in English existed, and were accepted without comment. Merely look at the handwritten correspondence of any set of well-known people in the 1700s, and you will see that spelling for a word might differ even in the writing of a single person (Ben Franklin, for example).

I still do not care for the substitution of lolspeak as a way to communicate. It was funny as a caption on a picture of a cat, but (except for a few diehards) that meme is over, as is the oh, so clever substitution of numbers for letters, thanks.

It's amazing how rude many of the comments here are.

I do think they should separate the free stuff from the rest of Deals though. There is obviously a place for the free stuff but it seems to be getting in the way of the people looking for deals. Whether it be it's own category or it's own site (freestuff.woot.com as suggested by a previous post) would probably make many people happy.