E: 04/03 12 pm WIN! The Cotswold Company double mattress worth £599 Facebook

libra10

Notebook
The Cotswold Company offers three mattresses - what are their names?
Answer (from comments) The Stow, The Dursley and The Malmesbury
Competition closes at noon on Thursday 4 March 2021

Ms_Dee

'E: 3/03 WIN! The Cotswold Company double mattress worth £599 Facebook'

Thanks for sharing, please could you update your title to say something similar to the following, making sure that the date is in a 4 digit format, DD/MM, thank you.

E: 04/03 12pm Win a double mattress worth £599 (FB)

libra10

Have updated, as requested.
However, now the end-daters will be upset as they could miss entering, and have previously messaged me asking me to state previous date.  As I do when posting Hurst Media competitions.

becky004

Am not an end dater, but have to agree with libra10, if a competition ends during the morning/afternoon on a particular date, then I date it the day before, as people that enter as soon as they are posted will do so, and the end daters will also get a chance. It affects nobody to post the date the day before, whereas it potentially affects the end daters to post the date and time on the actual end date xx

libra10

Thanks @becky004  Sometimes I feel that I can't do right for doing wrong!

pate-ci0

Would a solution to this problem not be to use the Closing Date field in the New Thread form to identify the actual closing date and the Header to show the recommended "entry by" date ie Closing date 04/03 and header 03/03. I am assuming of course that the Closing Date field is how the MSE system orders the competition list and removes out of date comps,  and the Header field is now just whatever text you like and not used to order the comps. The competition would be slightly out of order in the list, however it would ensure that folk would enter before a noon end, and end daters would still see it listed.
If I'm wrong in my assumptions on how the order system works I am more than happy to be enlightened.

libra10

Thanks @pate-ci0 I think that if the two dates were different it might complicate things more.
I usually post this competition each week, using the same format, and haven't been pulled up about stating incorrect date previously.  

thingamaBob

This was discussed some time back and the majority of end date compers said that they preferred the end date to be entered exactly as it is rather than a day early as long as it is made clear when a time is stated. On that basis this one should be E: 04/03 Noon or E: 04/03 Midday (12 PM always confuses a lot of people as to whether it is Midday or Midnight).
I always used to put the previous day on anything timed up to about 5 pm but changed after that discussion.

The Hurst Media comps are somewhat different in that their dates are stated as eg; 2021-03-27 00:00:00. This SHOULD mean at the beginning of the day on the 27th March i.e. the comp has ended before the 27th actually starts, so it needs to be stated as E: 26/03. It is quite possible that Hurst actually mean a day later but without knowing how they are thinking it is safer to use the earlier date.

Ms_Dee

@libra10 @becky004 @pate-ci0 @thingamaBob

I feel a bit of hostility against me, on this thread. I was more pointing out that you hadn't used the 4 digits, as per forum format, which would also effect things, hence why I said 'something like the following' you didn't have to change the date if that was what was agreed.

becky004

@Ms_Dee I was in no way being hostile, that's why I put "xx" at the end of my post, as I am well aware that the written word can be misconstrued, no hostility intended if that's how it has come across, was merely my own personal opinion as in the past, end daters have requested that comps that end during the day, be dated the day before so they don't miss out.  xx

libra10

In future I will post in the format suggested by @thingamaBob and @Ms_Dee Hopefully end-daters will be OK with this.
I posted a Gransnet competition earlier, using this format, no comments up to date ......