Hot Deal thread crapping

[CRPGer]

/rant on

So I have been checking out Hot Deals for a few weeks pretty regularly- might not have missed a post in the last 5 weeks cuz I wanna build a system in a very limited budget.

But I can't seem to get the actual rules down- the FAQ and guidelines seem straigtforward,

but in practice the vast majority of posts are about

1)This post is a 'repost' (ok a if someone was reposting lots of the time then maybe a comment would be warranted, but a PM would suffice, ?no?).

2)yeah I agree with him this is a repost. Yeah me too! I think I may have seen this before!

What is wrong with a HOT DEAL being listed more than once - especially if the OP searches and doesn't get a hit cuz the other posts were not descriptive in the keywords.

3) This place burned me but I won't give you the details or the reseller ratings to back it up

4) I hate rebates and you should too even though you put AR in the title with the vendor. That vendor never honors rebates!

5) Why should I buy this? I don't want it! it has these flaws... but I don't want to list a real review for reference

6) Your link is a ?referral link? <--- whats that?

/rant off


So just keep I'll wading through it and be glad that there is a minority of people who are kind enough to share their finds.

I would like to share a few but the thread crapping is a major disinsentive for a newb (who wants their imaginary name and icon humiliated

 

[3chordcharlie]

alright - referral links are dishonest, because they provide some form of 'credit' to the referrer for every click. they are not allowd, and there is nothing wrong with posters filling the thread with complaints about it.

other than that, whining about deals without providing evidence (not honouring rebates, etc) isn't really good forum behaviour.

 

[CRPGer]

3chordcharlie-

Thanks for the info, I appreciate experienced forum users (like yourself probably) that help moderate the environment - The Mods can just take out the truly malignant.

A few more questions that I have

So I understand that referrals (which somehow give the posted credit) are bad [according to the helpful Anandtech forums altruistic sharing of info policy]. AND I understand that its good to point out that the OP broke the rule, and even posting an un-refferal version.

When I typed "<--- whats that" I was asking the more basic version of the question. Let me clarify

What I don't understand is the definition of "referal link?" I mean here I am trying to refer people to hot deals. I hope others will do the same for me. But some people are getting a kick back? How? Does there link contain info saying 'Joe Blow234 sent this click your way'? Then the company throws a percentback to Joe Blow? Do 'nearly' reputable places like TigerDirect participate?

Or is the poster with the referral link just abusing the advertising link system widely adopted to support legitimate service and info providing websites? Instead of giving a good website service to earn click throughs - they somehow post a clickthrough banner ad URL as if they were a forum member just sharing a hot deal?

Also I read a post today accusing someone of posting empty quote posts just to get their post count up (which I understand elevates the 'status' under your cartoon). That seems pretty hard to believe. WHo want to just inflate their number of posts when its the quality that will get them read and hopefully get them noticed as a experienced reviewer, a trader or finder of deals that someone wants to read.

Thanks for straigthening me out. Sometimes the nuances are hard to hear amoungst the noise.

Sorry if I tend to write a bit much, answers are appreciated.

Some of the ideas in the above sticky for self-moderation would really help.


CRPGer

 

[Kyteland]

Imaigne that I was an online store at www.kyteland.com and I was selling some item www.kyteland.com/itemA.php. A referral link would be something like www.kyteland.com/itemA.php?refID=CRPGer. That referral would take anyone who clicked it to www.kyteland.com/itemA.php, but the ?refID=CRPGer would mean that you get money if the clickers bought the item. Clicking www.kyteland.com/itemA.php directly gets you to the same place as the referral, but with out giving anyone credit for the sale.

If referrals were allowed then people would post them as hot deals just to get more clickthroughs. It is just another form of spamming. This is the same reason you can't link ebay auctions as hot deals. People would just post all of their auctions to get more traffic. "Hey everyone, look at how cheap this item is on ebay. User rkyte is selling it but I don't know who that person is. Really. I'm not the same person as rkyte. All similarities are a coincidence. You should bid on my... I mean *his*... ebay auction."

It would turn the Hot Deals forum in to a spamfest.

 

[allisolm]

Does there link contain info saying 'Joe Blow234 sent this click your way'? Then the company throws a percentback to Joe Blow?

Exactly. Many sites have affiliate programs. Join and you get an affiliate ID. Post a link with your (or someone else's) ID in it and when someone clicks on it you get whatever reward the company has chosen for affiliates.

Check out amazon.com's program (for instance) by clicking on "join associates" at the bottom of the home page. And Tigerdirect.com does have an affiliate program.

As to the posting of the same deal several times, it's discouraged since the same questions get asked and answered several times unnecessarily as well as pertinent information making it into one thread and not others, etc. This fragmentizes the deal information getting out and keeps members from maximizing the deal. IMHO.

Hope this helps.

 

[Buz2b]

Originally posted by: Kyteland
Imaigne that I was an online store at www.kyteland.com and I was selling some item www.kyteland.com/itemA.php. A referral link would be something like www.kyteland.com/itemA.php?refID=CRPGer. That referral would take anyone who clicked it to www.kyteland.com/itemA.php, but the ?refID=CRPGer would mean that you get money if the clickers bought the item. Clicking www.kyteland.com/itemA.php directly gets you to the same place as the referral, but with out giving anyone credit for the sale.

If referrals were allowed then people would post them as hot deals just to get more clickthroughs. It is just another form of spamming. This is the same reason you can't link ebay auctions as hot deals. People would just post all of their auctions to get more traffic. "Hey everyone, look at how cheap this item is on ebay. User rkyte is selling it but I don't know who that person is. Really. I'm not the same person as rkyte. All similarities are a coincidence. You should bid on my... I mean *his*... ebay auction."

It would turn the Hot Deals forum in to a spamfest.

Just a quick question. Would this be a form of referral link? I ran across it in HD's.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...details.asp?sku=k05-1000&CMP=ILC-FPM03
If you take out everything after the last = sign, the same item comes up.

 

[Kyteland]

Buz2b,

I really don't know, but it sure looks like it. If you look for the item through their search you get http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...-Details.asp?EdpNo=624785&sku=K05-1000

If you look at the the item from here http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1817
you get http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications...em-details.asp?EdpNo=624785&CatId=1817

If you search for &CMP=ILC-FPM03 in Google you get this http://www.google.com/search?q=CMP%3DILC-FPM03&hl=en&lr=&filter=0 and those are all very different products, but they are only linked directly from tigerdirect. They don't show up on other forums so I don't know. If ir was for a referral wouldn't you think it would show up on all kinds of different sites? I would PM the person posting it and ask.

 

[Buz2b]

Kyteland, thanks for the reply. PM sent due to other considerations.

 

[Injury]

In terms of reposted deals, it is an issue to have multiple pages for the same deal for the following reasons:

1) Other deals get moved to the bottom as two threads for the same deal keep surfacing. Some people may miss a great deal on the fact that they only read the first couple of pages.

2) Comments in one thread aren't necessarily reflected in the other. For instance, someone may say that they got rejected for trying to complete part of the deal and that it's going to happen to everyone else, and a bunch of people in the other thread may spend money trying it without knowing it.

3) Deals just flat out don't need to be posted more than once?

 

[DrPizza]

Some of what you're referring to as threadcrapping are actually genuine attempts to help.

For example:
"Hot deal! Car for $5000 brand new! It's a Yugo"
the "thread-crapping" by stating that the YUGO is a POS would possibly be informing others who may not know that, in fact, the YUGO *is* a POS

Of course, everyone has their opinion, but the OP and others in the thread may not realize that although an item is a little cheaper, it may be significantly inferior to some other product.

The key is: Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware.
However, this community usually tries to help each other out by pointing out what to be aware of.
The only problem is, some people have a habit of threadcrapping - it's noise that you have to learn to filter out. Other people have excellent opinions that can usually be taken at face value. If someone (Rossman for example) said "that's not a good deal on a digital camera. Although it's 5MP, the optics are horrible and that company takes forever to return rebates" well, then, that'd be good enough for me to look elsewhere.

I agree wholeheartedly with the "repost" after "repost" which serve to do nothing but continuously bump a thread that shouldn't be bumped. I think elsewhere in the forum issues is a thread about a voting system. Hopefully something like what they're describing comes along soon.