I'm missing out so what am I doing wrong?

203846930

Sorry but is there any reason why you don't start at the top of the board and work your way down through all of the threads?
It may take you a few visits on a single day but once you get to the bottom, go back to the top and start again, this is what I did when I started comping more seriously and I have yet to miss a single comp. I don't use filters or the worse than useless search function, I just take the board as it comes and job done, it now takes me about 10 minutes on each of 3 visits in a day to check off all the new comps posted on the board leaving me plenty of time to check the rest of the forum for anything interesting.
I don't post any comps but sometimes comment on comps that have been posted and starting this week I am now registering with some sites so that I can enter more.

Molly4

Hello duncanthedog
Yes what you suggest sounds a good idea. As of this time today there are 61 pages of competitions. Working my way through and not sorting, with the closing dates all over the place will take me a very long time. I don't think I could complete the whole board in one day and by the time I got to the end the closing date for some competitions would have past. 
Now you have got on top of it, it does work for you and only takes you a short time to keep up with the new competitions added. Perhaps I'll have to allocate myself a few days to enter all the competitions and not worry about the ones I've missed because they have closed by the time I get to them. Then I would be on top of it as well.

I'm not sure there are many of us who don't have that fear of missing out on the chance to win that got away!

Apologies I forgot to add I am a member of other competition sites. As MSE is not as good as it used to be I can find other good competitions to enter on those other sites. 

mjm3346

Molly4 said:

I'm sorry mjm3346 you have confused me even more.
As the closing date for this particular competition was 26/12 and I sorted by "closing date" then this competition should have showed up in the "sort". I looked at every competition that showed up in the "closing date" for 26/12 and this competition did not show up at all. Irrespective of when they are first posted all competitions with a closing date of 26/12 should show up in the "closing date" search. Some of the other competitions in this "sort" were posted a month ago, some only a few days ago or even a day before so it makes no difference at all when they are posted. 

The system does not sort by the date in the title it sorts by the date that has to put on the system when the competition is posted (you cannot see it and it makes no difference when a competition is posted)  - so the closing date in the title of 26/12 has nothing to do with the date the sort function uses which might have been 26/12/2021, 30/12/2000 etc


Occasionally competitions show on here as closed yet they haven't reached the date in the title, that happens when a date before "today" has been put on the system (if it's edited it will reopen) 

Molly4

Thank you for explaining mjm3346
I am sure there are many other users of the forum who didn't know that either. 
So why have a search/sort function labelled "closing date" if the system is searching/sorting information other than what users have actually asked for and information that users cannot see? 

mjm3346

Molly4 said:

Thank you for explaining mjm3346
I am sure there are many other users of the forum who didn't know that either. 
So why have a search/sort function labelled "closing date" if the system is searching/sorting information other than what users have actually asked for and information that users cannot see? 

The two dates are meant to be the same and in most cases it is - it is only if the wrong date is used when the competition is posted that it is an issue - why they do not have the system date appear as the first part of the title on a post I do not know .

Molly4

I don't know because I don't post competitions. And I still don't really understand. My simple mind sees the quoted competition as being posted on 25th December with a closing date of 26/12 and when I search for a closing date of 26/12 I expect to find all competitions with a closing date of 26/12. 

mjm3346

Molly4 said:

I don't know because I don't post competitions. And I still don't really understand. My simple mind sees the quoted competition as being posted on 25th December with a closing date of 26/12 and when I search for a closing date of 26/12 I expect to find all competitions with a closing date of 26/12. 

You would think but it makes no difference what date is put in the title as the sort does not use it.

roseroserosenose

Misslayed said:

If you select 'new' from the drop down sort menu, all the competitions posted since you last checked will be on the front page

Thank you Misslayed, great to know! I will be trying this out from tomorrow

BootsMullery

Molly4 said:

I don't know because I don't post competitions. And I still don't really understand. My simple mind sees the quoted competition as being posted on 25th December with a closing date of 26/12 and when I search for a closing date of 26/12 I expect to find all competitions with a closing date of 26/12. 

As mjm has explained there are now two End/Closing dates. The End Date as included in the post title and a second Closing Date that is not generally visible. This Closing Date is a mandatory field that has to be filled in by the OP when posting the competition and is in a full year format of dd/mm/yyyy. At the present time, this Closing Date field is used for 2 purposes.
Firstly it is used by the Sort facility to sort the Board into Closing Date order. The second use is that, at the end of the day on the Closing Date, the thread becomes "closed". Then, at some point during the following day, a BG can use the second part of the Sort function to return all of the "closed" threads which are then moved to Game Over. To use a date for such functions, it must be a specific field rather than just being part of a large text field as the Title End Date is.

In the long run, it would be good if the mandatory Closing Date was made prominently visible to all and the End Date dropped from the title but I would think that is most unlikely while MSE are still under pressure from Covid matters.

The End Date in the Title and the mandatory Closing date SHOULD always be the same but people do make mistakes (and it would seem many never check what they have entered before posting, even though there is a preview option)
It is supposed to be impossible to post a thread without entering the mandatory Closing Date but some people are managing to do it. I did recently send an email to the Forum Team pointing out a few threads that looked as if the Closing Date field had not been completed and hopefully this will get sorted but it still will not stop errors.
See the thread here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6212377/e-21-01-win-the-damned-on-dvd#latest.
The End Date in the Title has been entered as E: 21/01 but the Sort function is putting it among those with Closing Dates of 25/01/2021. The Rafflecopter countdown timer suggests the Closing Date is actually 28/01/2021. The OP hasn't visited for some 7 weeks.
Errors between the 2 dates do stand out when the Board is Sorted by Closing Date. I have pointed out a number of problems to the OPs and most have been corrected.

 

Molly4

Good Morning BootsMullery
Thank you for explaining more fully. 
So! I and many other Forum users are missing out on the opportunity to WIN big time! In this case I missed the chance to WIN ONE MILLION POUNDS! all because of a complicated system. 
As I said before when I see and read the words "CLOSING DATE" or "END DATE" in this case "26/12" and ask a system to search/find by the closing date or end date that is the results I expect to get. Hopefully this sort of thing does not happen elsewhere, where the date you are reading/seeing is not the actual date used. I can only liken it to online supermarket shopping where you ask for bread and you are substituted with tomatoes!
I previously stated I do not post competitions and I am very, very grateful to all that do. They deserve medals for putting themselves through this all for the benefit of others. 
The old forum was brilliant. I am all for change and progress but not for the detriment of others.
Regards to all.
Molly4