Deals.Woot

Suggestion...

Replace most questions asked with most questions answered

Apple Discussions is a good example...
http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa

If you're going to keep "Most deals added" you need to figure a way to weight that result with a "Most deals ignored" score so we can tell who's just adding crap to see their name at the top of the list versus who's adding legitimate deals.

Hooray for the Green Boxers!

Hmm. It's a little disconcerting that the highest voted comment is quite devoid of links. I tried to find the comment that was listed as the highest voted one to see the context, and didn't manage to locate it. (I gave up before checking all of the entries in that person's "comments" tab, in part because the comments tab doesn't actually list comments, it lists things that were commented upon. I think.)

Was that deliberate, so people don't just keep voting on the leading comment? If not, a link to the comment in context would be really nice.

@shrdlu: Perhaps Woot is changing their pages for the upcoming "widescreen format" revolution that is happening. I can see their page just fine on my 19" LCD TV screen (very similar to todays Sellout.woot) and just fine on my Acer Aspire One. Another option for users is to Zoom out and make it fit on your screen. A little known tool for many. Firefox is View -> Zoom -> Zoom Out or Ctrl--

@shrdlu: Change the size of your screen at the bottom right hand corner of your browser.

@dpavlik21: Some people use a lower resolution (my mother, for one) because they are near-blind and that's how they can see the computer screen. She has a nice monitor that she keeps at 800x600. Drives me nuts.

At the very least, websites should be designed for no larger than 1024x768 as the default.

To those concerned about the width of the leaderboard - I'm able to view it just fine on my 14.1" laptop monitor, and my Firefox window isn't even maximized. my laptop's screen resolution is 1280x800.

@slabraham: If you see a deal repeated - either by the same member (sometimes folks accidentally double-post) or by two different members, hit the "Tattle" button on the most recent post. The default subject is "Duplicate".

Just tattle to the mods and they'll take care of it.

I love the ideas here, & I personally feel strongly that the leaderboard (& other things evolved off of it) will be what keep our community coming back. Everyone loves a good game.

Challenge #1 in all of this is figuring out exactly how to incentivize the right (helpful to the community) behaviors & disincentivize the wrong (harmful) ones. Obviously our current counting-stats (purposefully) don't do that at all, so I'm glad to see people suggesting tweaks and new ideas.

Challenge #2 is identifying ways to algorithmically measure, calculate and rank what can sometimes seem subjective goals. This is actually likely the hardest part to get just right & it's what we're puzzling out in response to most of the good thoughts here.

Challenge #3 is naming & describing the scores/stats in an intuitive & extremely brief manner. A high score board is fairly pointless if people can't figure out what it's scoring or how to make it onto the board.

I'll do some @ replies to some of your specific suggestions.

Question: What, exactly, determines what a "popular" deal is? Is it based (solely) on "votes"? Or is it based on the number of people who actually purchased the item? Wouldn't PURCHASES be a much better measure of "popularity" than simply the number of VOTES?

I would think the "bottom line" (no pun intended) would be to sell stuff, not just to run a popularity contest ("Oooh! That's a good deal! - too bad I don't have the coin to actually buy one, but if I did, I would!" "I don't really need one of these, but that's a bitchin' good price!")

If it doesn't sell, nobody wins.

@absdmc: There is no real way for Woot to track if an item is purchased from this site.

A deal is determined to be "popular" by how many votes it receives.

@absdmc: To help prevent gaming the system, we're not going to completely reveal the algorithm for what determines 'popular' deals, but yes, it involves votes, and yes, it also involves more than just votes.

@jguthrie: The link to the leaderboard is http://deals.woot.com/?leaderboard and you're correct, that unfortunately takes you away from the "Ask the Wooters" section if you're currently on it. It feels weird that way because it's in a lightbox/modal dialog. I'm think we might want to dedicate a full blown page to the leaderboard if we can come up with enough ideas to fill it up.

I would recommend removing the 'more deals' button. I also suggest adding capabilities to gather additional information about a deal by hovering over it. I'm actually partial to how onedealaday has their website established. Only problem with theirs is choppy tagging of items by categories.

@shawnmiller: I like the idea of a leaderboard dedicated page. Though what to put on it is a very good question.

Is Woot! trying to stay away from the blog/community aspects of the other .woot sites? It seems that there is only one "community" tab compared to the 5 that are on the other .woot sites.

@anotherhiggins: No no, I would suggest having a user configurable number of items per page (e.g., 20, 40, 100), and a count of the number of pages at the bottom. Having to click 'more deals' seems unncessary. What situation(s) will there be when someone would not want to see more? The click here to continue approach seems designed into each aspect of deals.woot, including the discussion section. Takes a bit of time to track down what you're looking for, including my original post depending on how the default list is sorted.

@psyeye: OK - I totally agree with that. Only having 10 deals visible by default is a problem IMO. There have been busy-ish times even before green-boxers were invited when all 10 spots would fill up in less than an hour. I don't think that gives deals enough visibility.

@phatch: I agree with Phatch.........because you have the potential for folks adding a lot of junk just to get to the top of the leader board, sort of the 'first' phenom..... ;-) (I hate that) LOL

I like the use of a customer one to five star rating plus comments
also, pro & con. My two cents.

@RickDuhrkopf: The only way to click on the Leaderboard tab is if you are at the top. Just like the "Add a comment" screen, it will cover over whatever is at the top of your screen.

I do feel that clicking the leaderboard redirects to the sponsored deals page is bad. An issue I brought up earlier.

@B236EN : I don't see what you are saying. I navigate on and off the site and through it all the time and it only pops up when I click on the link. I am using Chrome.

@bonuscoyote, @B236EN and other people complaining about seeing the leaderboard all the time:

what browser(s) are you using? We just had a report from @sgoman5674 that it isn't happening in Chrome, and I'm not seeing it in Firefox.

@fgarriel: some of us are old.....and need our resolution going the other direction so we can read....IE big letters...bad enough I have bifocals now.

Hey guys- So far every page on deals.woot.com is too wide for my screen. I am using a netbook, Acer Aspire One (AOA 110 1588 ZG5) with 9 inch screen. Currently I'm browsing using Windows XP SP3 and Opera 10.01 (because Firefox and IE are way too slow on this SSD only machine - its also only got 1 GB of ram.) Its not too wide by much, but enough to be annoying. Also the text on the buttons on this Add a comment form are not properly vertically centered on the button, the cancel and submit appear in the middle of the top line of each button. Best luck! - NG

How bout making it where it wont keep popping up every time I check out a deal and come back to the page, there is a link to view it, that is all you need.