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

BootsMullery

Molly4 said:

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 

Quite honestly, I think, if you are using the Sort function to find comps ending on a particular date, you are less likely to be missing some now than you were on the old forum when you would have been using Search by the End Date in the title. One big problem both now and before when using Search on the title End Date is that, far too often, posters were not using the EXACT correct format for the End Date and Search would have always been missing a number of comps. 
Additionally, if you are comping by End Date or Closing Date and entering on the final day as posted, there will frequently be comps that have been ended early that you will miss, ones that end at, say, 9am or 11am that you could be just too late to enter or perhaps guessed end dates that are later than the actual end date. The mere fact of comping by end/closing date will probably mean you are missing out on more comps than are caused by "mistakes" in the new Sort by Closing Date system.
The best way to not miss out on any comps is to enter as they are posted. Sort the Board by by "New" and enter all New comps each day. I look at and tick/cross every comnp posted "today" . There are so few around just now that I can miss a day or two and easily catch up the next day.
It may not suit everyone but if you leave it until the last day to enter you will always be missing out on some.

Molly4

Thank you BootsMullery for your comments and advice. 
I am aware of the pitfalls of entering actually on the closing date and the possibility of "missing out" by my own actions. 
My original post was querying whether I was doing anything wrong which caused the million pound competition to appear in my search/sort some 15 hours after the close time of the competition. I searched/sorted/refreshed the competitions ending 26/12 at least two or three times prior to 3pm 26/12 when the million pound competition closed. I can now rest assured that this particular fault was not of my doing. 
Regards
Molly4 

Misslayed

I have edited many, many posts where the closing date field has been incorrectly entered by the OP, often as the date posted. They're sometimes obvious, as they appear as closed very quickly, or end up in Game Over the next day. But not always. Unfortunately the system doesn't take account of user error.

mjm3346

BootsMullery said:

It is supposed to be impossible to post a thread without entering the mandatory Closing Date but some people are managing to do it. .

 

They are not putting a date in the subject line but it forces a date to be put on the system (I had tried to post comps without the extra faff and it didn't allow it).

BootsMullery

mjm3346 said:

Molly4 said:

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
But that does not explain why this competition 
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6226800/e-26-12-3pm-win-1-000-000 
which was posted at 9.56pm on 25th December did not show up at all on 26th December and only appeared when I searched this morning 27th December. 

I assume you were not sorting by "New" when this did not show - I believe the system uses the date entered on it to sort by date and not the date entered in the subject line and I am guessing by the "edit" that the wrong date may originally have been put on the system as I cannot think of any other reason to edit the post after it was over  "25 December at 9:56PM edited Today at 7:42AM in Game Over"

@mjm3346 I have just noticed that, when comps get moved to Game Over, they show as Edited at the time that they are moved. So the "edited Today at 7:42AM in Game Over" is probably just the time that the thread was moved and does not mean that it was actually edited at that time. It is also possible that this date is affected by the Search problem where anything posted since the previous, approx 7:30 pm doesn't show, and an edited date replaces the posted date when searching.

mjm3346

@BootsMullery There goes that reason then - never browsed GO before but as you say they all bizarrely end up with an edit date/time (which is sort of falsifying the data) and this one is the same time as the others that were moved to GO on that date - perhaps it is to do with the time lag before items show on search as it wasn't posted until 9:56 pm

BootsMullery

mjm3346 said:

@BootsMullery There goes that reason then - never browsed GO before but as you say they all bizarrely end up with an edit date/time (which is sort of falsifying the data) and this one is the same time as the others that were moved to GO on that date - perhaps it is to do with the time lag before items show on search as it wasn't posted until 9:56 pm

Yes, I was thinking about the search problem but you would logically expect Sort to take the board as it is and re-order it but perhaps the overlap/duplicate problem in Sort means that some sort of search is involved. I do know that adding a reply to a thread can change it's position in Sort so it doesn't entirely rely on the starting post. 

BootsMullery

@mjm3346 After your conversation with Misslayed in another thread, the "stickies" were edited at 5:19 and they are now appearing at the top of the list when the board is Sorted by Closing Date. So, no delay.

mjm3346

BootsMullery said:

@mjm3346 After your conversation with Misslayed in another thread, the "stickies" were edited at 5:19 and they are now appearing at the top of the list when the board is Sorted by Closing Date. So, no delay.

I think they appear where they are because they are stickies (and the original post time would be ages ago)

BootsMullery

Just to add a bit more info about this, I have been looking at threads with reply posts made during today (14/01) and trying to find them on a main board which has been sorted by Closing Date. I found one thread with a reply posted at 12:20 am which was appearing but two further threads with replies posted at 10:37 am and 10:55 am respectively, were not appearing. So there is a problem with threads or replies posted within several hours (at least 5 hours), not appearing in Sort facility results. This could well explain the problem experienced by the OP.

ETA 7:56pm: The "missing" ones are now showing.