Have your say on the future of Competitions Time

chocoholic123

Could we look at improving the search functionality? It’s currently quite temperamental. For example, when I search for ‘MD’ (for Mag Daily), it returns 21,000 results. Even when I try to filter by ‘Standard Online Competitions’, all the game-over ones still appear.

Also, could we please have checkboxes visible in the search results, so we don’t have to click into each individual entry to see whether we’ve entered or not? This would save so much time! 

Lastly, it would be really helpful if the checkboxes had a neutral/default state. At the moment, if I accidentally tick a competition I haven’t actually entered, the only option available is to mark it as ‘Skipped’, even though I might want to enter later.

Apologies if any of this has already been raised, I did have a quick check beforehand.

Thanks 

eyeballpaul

I think we all want it displayed the way we want it

If we could display it the way we want to see it everyone would be happy?
Have a personal settings option to hide MD, Social Media, RS etc.
I would also like to be able to hide low value prizes, e.g. sub £100, but I would imagine this would be very difficult

Thanks.

LizB62

It would make things a lot easier for me if the Search results were formatted in exactly the same way as the normal forum display, i.e. showing the green tick/red cross so that I can tell whether I've already entered the comps that are shown when I do a search

Hurricane19

eyeballpaul said:

As I don't  do Social Media or MD, I would like them to in their own separate sections please

I think for many of us, the more separate sections you have, the more complicated and time consuming it becomes. Fine to make it clear in the heading (eg by the "MD") where it's come from so people can choose but not in separate sections. 

mlb1999

I use the tick/cross options to keep track of what I have/haven't entered and use the compliment button to 'thank' the user of any competitions I enter. 

As others have mentioned, it would be useful for the links to open in a new tab, though you can just right-click so not a huge issue. 

I usually work backwards from the last page of competitions I have entered and work my way through the list. 

martinsnest

definitely IG and facebook comps separate perhaps
I dont like change when it changed before I remember not being able to hover over to see the comp!
Bring that back would be good.   

Moneybot

martinsnest said:

definitely IG and facebook comps separate perhaps

Although it would be useful to have this I think it would create  more issues than it would solve. Also where would competitions that have a number of different entry methods be posted? For example the B&M comps - would they be posted on two boards?

If there was an easy way to note entry methods in the heading for example a set of check boxes so you could tick all the platforms the competition was on. The use of letters in the heading works well but not all posters use this and it is easy to not see there is a facebook entry as well as Instagram for example.

Midnighter

A simpler way of adding an email address would be nice. The current system is a step down from the old system where you could just include an email address and it would automatically be parsed into a working link.

purple_ronnie

button to say you have entered that comp

MSE_Stephen

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for all the suggestions so far!

Very soon our provider will release a feature we've been waiting for - The ability to restrict tags to categories. This means Competitions Time could have its own set of tags used only here.

We know there’s plenty of debate about how to categorise things - if at all. But one area where I think there’s the most agreement is around tagging by Entry Type. So that might be a good trial to run.

Tagging is currently very basic, but we could set it up now so it’s ready for much more powerful uses in the future:

A planned feature is “Tag Following,” where members will receive notifications when new content is posted with those tags.

In future, filters will be available at the top of the page (similar to the Latest Threads to filters by tag). When this is available, this should hopefully preserve the checkboxes. 

Until then, we can add a few sidebar links to show items with a specific tag -

...and possibly an alternative link to the Search page filtered by that tag -

Please let us know what you think