Have your say on the future of Competitions Time

pate-ci0

As per some previous posts:

End date essential, I check it all the time to ensure I catch the latest additions that end soon. I know it is possible (and simple!) for Server side to check the string in the Title and automatically fill in the correct End Date field, or alternatively prepend the End Date to the Title string. If no End Date entered by the OP in both Title and End Date field an Error should be generated.

The ability to undo a green or red checkbox if clicked inadvertently. We used to have it and that is one of my major irritations with the current layout. The checkboxes really must remain on the main page since scanning down each page quickly shows which comps have been dealt with and which are still to do. While I usually show comps by Hot, just to check I've done all today's and the near future comps I do also use End Date filtering.

Show the green and red checkboxes on Search results would be VERY useful, as would the ability to Search for comps where I have NOT checked either of the checkboxes. Search used to be very accurate, but does not seem as useful or stable as it once was a few years ago.

I don't see the point of having the Comp-liment button if it is limited to 10 entries shown. I used to use that to indicate if I had already entered a comp that allowed multiple  entries, without checking the green checkbox, because those checkboxes to me indicate I have finished with that comp, but it also allows an OP to see how popular their post is and thus help with whether or not to post certain types of comp. However, showing with a different colour when I select it would at least cover the first purpose (though I do know Bookmarks can be used for this).

Requiring tags when posting a comp would be a nightmare. There would be many categories that a comp could go into and choosing what to select would take (relatively) ages and much angst, especially when others object to your choices. Tags might be useful and over time become predominant, but please do not make them required.

Moving expired comps automatically should be a no-brainer. I personally would comment on Compers Chat Corner rather than a Closed comp post if I had something to say relevant to that comp, so comments might as well be closed, but they do need to be retained for checking details should a win arrive.

Opening a comp in a new tab automatically would be useful. Again, we used to have that but it went away when there were security issues.

The Info Box idea might be useful. However, many compers enter a large number of competitions every day and need the important and relevant information immediately at hand on the main page (End Date/Checkboxes/Prize/Type of comp such as purchase/Social Media etc) and I'm not sure what would actually go in the Info Box without detracting from Forum useability if we had to click open another page to see these details.

I would like to easily view what posts I have posted or commented on. Don't know where that has gone now.

One-Eye

Thanks to everyone taking the time to post here. There are some good ideas and one or two I don't agree with. Here is my list.

THREADS I HAVE STARTED/REPLIED TO

I have mentioned several times recently I would like to be able to easily spot in Forum View those threads I have started. pate-ci0 raises the wish to also spot on Forum View any threads to which you have replied and I totally agree. Notifications do not really do this as another user must reply for a Notification to be activated.

 

TICK & CROSS CHECKBOXES

The extension of the checkboxes to replies would be great. Currently the checkboxes are “radio buttons” and once activated you can’t uncheck, only switch to the other one. As many have stated, I would like to be able to uncheck, and also if possible to have both tick and cross checked simultaneously. This would give 4 different ways to mark a thread – OFF/OFF; ON/OFF; OFF/ON; ON/ON

(I could use ON/ON to mark threads I have replied to/started and thus solve the “Discussion Options” problem we have been discussing recently!)

 

SEARCH RESULTS

I would really like the tick/cross currently unique to Comps Time to show in search results. With the aim to “integrate” Comps Time with the rest of the forum, hopefully this can be done. It would be nice, but not essential, if the checkboxes were active.

 

SEARCH

Search works fine – It has gradually been improved so I can make it do exactly what I want. The problem is that it is too complex to set up for most users, but I think it would be very hard to make it easier. I think that being able to search according to the checkboxes would be useful, but maybe a step too far.

Pre-Vanilla, search would look for links hidden in “clickies” but Vanilla does not. It would be very helpful if Search would search inside “clickies”  eg:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2643743 - search will find www.bbc.co.uk (but not "www.bbc.co.uk")

LONDON WEATHER - search will not find www.bbc.co.uk

 

HIDE MENUS

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6467327

We currently have the temporary fix to stop the drop-down menus always getting in the way. It would be much better if the menus were not activated by “hovering” but required a click to show them. Incidentally, the temporary fix does not work on the Search page.

 

POSTING AN EMAIL ADDRESS

Can we finally make posting an email address easier instead of having to manually type the mailto: in front of it. Can we solve the problem that makes an email address link fail every time you subsequently edit the post.

 

THE B ) EMOJI

I agree that the B ) emoji should be banished. B ) is used a lot in answer options for a comp.

 

CLOSING COMPS

I don’t really care as long as they somehow get to Game Over. I would prefer them to remain open for posting/editing but it’s not a big deal for me.

 

HOVER/EXCERPTS

I like the two-line excerpt as shown on “Recent Discussions” and would love this on Comps Time. We would then not need the much requested “Hover” function. By the way, we already get a 2-line excerpt on search results and it is very very useful. The only minor disadvantage I see with this is the resulting length of a page.

 

OPEN IN NEW TAB

This would be much better as a default. Regular users like myself will have already adopted “standard” procedures to avoid this, such as right or center clicking or dragging links (which also avoids the “referrer” problem when visiting sites from MSE).

 

INFO BOX

I don’t see the point of this – why not just put the information in the post? Would an "info box" be searchable?

 

TAGS & CATEGORIES

I am against TAGS.

I have reviewed the thread from Aug 2023 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6468251

I think the comments in that discussion still stand. In particular I think they would be very unpopular with prolific posters as it would slow down posting. ANYTHING slowing down posting would be unwelcome.

MSE_Stephen’s comments from that thread sum it up well:

I haven’t checked if it’s possible to combine more than 1 tag because combining tags doesn’t exclude results. e.g. “Facebook” and “Tech” would show all Facebook results and all Tech results rather than just Facebook results for Tech.
Tags are site-wide. There’s no way to only show Comp Tag suggestions on the Comp forum.
Tags can’t be sorted. They show in order of popularity. 
Tags can’t be made mandatory.
I think I’d summarise that tags may only be of limited use for power users of the Comps board. They may be much more helpful to more casual users, but they’d be dependent on comp posters tagging.

 

SPLITTING CERTAIN TYPES OF COMPS INTO THEIR OWN SECTIONS

NO

The evolution of the comps forum over the last decade has been to cut down on the number of sub-forums and have as much as possible in the main forum. Each step has been an improvement. The current arrangement works well – posting in the wrong place has been virtually eliminated, and there are fewer places to look and thus confuse casual users.

I think posting (MD) and (RS) in the titles is sufficient and as these are all posted by experienced users you can rely on it being done properly. It is so easy to ignore these comps in Forum View if you don’t enter them (and just click on the cross checkbox).

FB,IG,X,TT,GL,RC etc. in the titles is not quite as reliable because some are still posted by novices, but I still much prefer putting them in the title than splitting them off into a different section or implementing Tags.

 

COMP-LIMENTS

I would not like to lose the compliments button. The ability to only see the last 10 users who have complimented is poor. Prior to Vanilla we could see a list of every user who had thanked a post. Once more than 10 users have complimented, you can’t see if you have complimented a post – the only way is to click comp-liments again and see if the count goes up or down. A colour/icon showing when you have complimented would be a big improvement. This applies especially to replies on long threads. The extension of the tick/cross checkboxes to replies would definitely help with this.

 

NOTIFICATIONS

I like the Notifications and the way you can set Notifications Preferences. For some reason, it seems that many faults and software changes seem to disable Notifications!

 

EDITOR

The editor is still the worst feature of the forum (when everything is working!). A ridiculous number of my posts that look OK in the editor subsequently look different when posted. The line spacing is the worst fault – something with single spaced lines on the editor can end up with no line spacing or with double or even triple spacing. Bullet points, Quotes and inserting images all have their particular problems. I seem to recall a revised editor has been a plan for some time – it can’t come soon enough for me.

chocoholic123

Please can search results show the 'entered / skipped' boxes, so we can see if we have already entered the competition without having to click into it. 

GillianY1

Would be great if you could use filters such as prize type (cash, vouchers, holiday, electronics etc) and also filter out things like social media competitions.

Dumdeedum

I cheat and made myself a Tampermonkey script that already makes all the changes I want in the site.

Basically it:

1. Changes the « and » in page navivation to "Next >" for easier clicking.
2. Binds left and right arrows on the keyboard to navigate page forwards and backwards (probably not one for everyone but I like it).
3. If the expiry date is today or earlier it highlights the date in red.
4. The main one, it highlights any competition I haven't seen in yellow, like this: 

It used to do a load of other things, mostly to simplify the layout, but that's not needed with the current design.  I toyed with the idea of keyword highlighting and all that, but decided it'd be more trouble to maintain than it'd be worth.

spendaholic

Before migrating to the current system, we were able to ‘thank’ every post we’d seen, and it was obvious that we’d done that as it was a different-coloured thumbs-up. Now we have to ‘un comp-liment’ to see if we’ve seen it and then ‘comp-liment’ it again to show that we have. If the comp-liment is staying, it would be great if it could be coloured if we’ve checked it, or if there was a check mark, or something…

Another vote for the link automatically opening in a different window here, too, rather than having to right-click for it to open in new tab/window.

MSE_Stephen

Hi 

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback so far!

I can see a lot of things I already know there's an option for in the upcoming 'New Layouts' that we can move to when the Comps Time integration is done - I won't mention specifics in case of disappointment if it turns out we can't do something.

But one thing that's been mentioned a few times is having the Comp-liments 'reaction' change colour so you know if you clicked it. 
Reactions changing colour when clicked is a feature in the new layouts:

Midnighter

Dan29 said:

With regard to other features, it would be good if the Comp-liment button could highlight whether I've pressed it. At the moment I can't see if I've Comp-limented a post, unless I'm one of the ten most recent people to do so. It would be great if it could go bold and/or a colour after I've clciked it, and appear that way when I go back to the thread later. This would be especially useful for threads such as the Take a Break Puzzle Magazines thread because there are multiple comps posted within a thread, so people use their Comp-liment status to track whether they have entered the competition on that post as they can't use Skipped/Entered which only appears on the thread as a whole.

I rarely, if ever, use Comp-liment when using the Regular and Standard online competition boards. On both boards it displays how many new posts there are within each thread (See below for an example.) and opens on the most recent unread post when you open one. It'd be really helpful if both of these could be retained.