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[Poll] Should Provider Offers Sink?
Hi Everyone!
Glad to see to such a surge of activity in our community the past 3 days as Black Friday has started up.
One issue recently discussed on our discord and among the moderation team is a LowEndTalk wide policy related to Offer threads and potentially sinking them as part of an automated process. To "sink" a thread means that new posts inside the thread will not bump it to the top of the category, so within a few hours or a day the thread, once sunk, would fall to the second page, then third and so on.
So my question for the community today is: Should we Sink offer threads?
No
Yes, immediately
Yes, after 3 days
Yes, after 5 days
Yes, after a week
Looking forward to the poll results and feedback so that we can help formulate a fair and universal approach to offers and their potential sinking.
A big thanks to @FAT32, @Jord and the rest of the LET moderation team on this issue as we work towards a policy for all providers.
And a thanks to the community for speaking up and taking part.
- Should Provider Offers Sink?353 votes
- No16.71%
- Yes, immediately12.18%
- Yes, after 3 days27.20%
- Yes, after 5 days6.23%
- Yes, after a week37.68%
Comments
I think 3 days is fair given people can only post every 2 weeks.
*Edited per user's request: ""You are allowed post an offer every 10 days (posts in the "offers" category and the "shared hosting offers" category are on separate timers)""
Francisco
Personally I would say a week. As some people are not able to look at LET during the week.
By 'sink' you guys mean delete/hide it or mark it as done or something?
I'd like to search (and see) old offers - just to know what expect now/next time and if the thing I am trying to buy is a good deal or just a quick copy-paste and this is generic one posted every two weeks.
Also setting straight out date make no sense tbh - some offers are valid for (for example) two weeks and you want to 'sink' it after 3 days, why?
If the offer stands, it's still active, most is not sold (so providers won't abuse it somehow, lol) let it be there and let people find it.
It wont take effect until after virmach and racknerd have their sales this year
I means it doesn't bet bumped up the page by new comments.
I updated the original post to explain what "Sink" means.
And poll is gone.
Well, it HAS been >15 minutes :P
My personal opinion:
I believe 1 week is fair, if a provider is having traction within their thread - it shouldn't sink "automatically" for at least a week. Let the community engage, interact with providers, and allow members to get the best deal possible for themselves.
Happy Holidays to everyone, be sure to vote and post your thoughts.
where i can to click thats pooling?
There was a little bug in the poll just now that caused us to lose the votes. Please vote again.
It needs to be made clear, if you are going to delete offers posts, whether that is from when the offer begins or ends. As @JabJab says, is it fair to dump an offer in progress? So I don't know which way to vote. If it's from start, no. If from the end immediately. Those are somewhat extreme alternatives.
maybe if providers batched their thanks to the customers thanks for their request which was set up to promote a series of requests, thanks, and thanks it would prevent forcing things to the top.
And $500 in giveaways got one vendor pinned to the top of LET and a lot of exposure on LEB. That is cheap marketing compared to normal ads. Wonder if other vendors had the same chance
3 days.
Plus probably quite attractive: OP can't bump his own thread, only users can.
worth it after a week
I haven’t seen any other provider try. If it’s such a great marketing deal then providers should be racing to post their own giveaway threads, but only one has so far. There hasn’t really been any competition from other providers yet, though if there were I suspect they’d also get lots of attention and cheap marketing.
@adly the point is were any of them asked for the LEB/LET give away, email harvesting event or did it go to a favored vendor
All are welcome to do a giveaway. I am super impressed by how much the community has engaged with the giveaway.
i think is relative, if you set 3 days the campaigns will start 3 days before BF, if you set 1 week, providers will start 6 days before.
so maybe look another alternatives to be fair with everyone...
@dustinc great work with your campaign this year! true marketing guy!
A Rule like "Providers cannot have users bump posts to obtain freebies or discounts on Offer threads" would make more sense.
Because the way the poll is now, there are a few very likely outcomes:
As we can clearly see, regardless of which one of those is implemented, its either an all-week annoyance or just concentrated to the few heaviest days of traffic.
...Before you remind me... yes we have a "don't be a dick" rule. But that one is way too selective in enforce-ability.
so lets brainstorm a few ways....to turn this into a living nightmare for all of us....
You get the idea....
The only real fix to any of this is
A Rule like "Providers cannot have users bump posts to obtain freebies or discounts on Offer threads" would make more sense.
and letting our wonderful moderators deal with it.
Okey, then I don't like the idea of 'sinking' thread - if you want just a list of deals you can cought go to LEB and enjoy the blog-post-thing.
This is forum, this was supposed to engage people and hot shit should be on top - no matter if this is 3 days, 6 days or 14 days old - still valid - go to top! Especially that this problem probably will exists few days a year (with promos like BF/Christmas) and I would expect people to do a little research here and there if they want the best deal.
If people can be cheaply bought with double traffic then this is probably what people wants - let them have it.
also wasn't previous black fridays just done in Black Friday category that was then hidden later?
I should also say that we are open to ideas beyond the simple solutions I outlined.
@SGraf great ideas, thanks for the suggestion.
I see absolutely no reason why anyone else couldn't have done the exact same thing. Just because Dustin has been successful doesn't mean he needs to be hated on for it, really..
Remember, Dustin is a sales guy who could very easily sell ice to penguins and have them come back again for more. The jealousy around here is a little ugly..
I know that I probably don't have a popular opinion on this, but for Christ sake, crying fowl and changing rules (not just LET) tailored to try to block racknerd.. and Dustin still responds professionally and continues giveaways.
No. Let anyone keep bumping threads.
Interesting and relevant offers will stay at the top until they aren't anymore.
I am happy for him that he has some success
My concern is that, people are sometimes a bit like sheep. if one thing works well for one person, others instantly attempt to go the same route.
That is why i also took the time to draw up 2 scenarios achieve the same result by different means.
Personally i am only concerned with the scenario of , browsing LET close to any significant Holiday/Event and having page #1 and half of #2 being filled with this kind of content.
Sorry to be blunt, but as a business owner it's 100% your responsibility how you promote and represent your business.
edited
Yeah and its 100% on each individual what they do for affiliate spam
That was not my point. -sigh-
Do i - as a business owner not get enjoy browsing the forums for the content rather than purely for the advertisements, like everyone else?