Maybe a cheap, visible reward system would help
4So I went to look at the laptop bag comments from today's meh.com sale.
Two problems:
- Helpful information is hard to spot.
- There's not enough of it.
The Streisand Effect is currently in full swing after @snapster deleted unhelpful posts. This should subside quickly, but it does nothing to help us get better community sourced product information. I think some operant conditioning would help. Send the authors of the best posts some reward. It doesn't have to be expensive, or even real. It just has to be coveted and known to other users. A special badge? 1 week of VMP extension? Shout out in tomorrow's video?
- 4 comments, 5 replies
- Comment
I think the QP method worked out really well, so instituting a helpful comments section would alleviate a lot of the need to delete and otherwise moderate content.
I have mixed feelings about Woot's QP system. A lot of the posts that are flagged as quality posts on the first page of their threads don't actually help me make any decision on buying. It isn't as bad as Deals AtC, but it's still pretty random. A lot of the threads of previous sales, for instance, aren't actually about those products; sometimes the conversation in those old threads takes some pretty weird turns. (Like anywhere else, but it would be nice not to waste that time.) Price comparisons are too limited and generally assume Amazon Prime, which lots of people (cough) don't have. And, of course, there's the guy who uses the QP system to promote his bot.
I know it can be hard to find people who happen to have bought the product that happens to be on sale that day, but I'd put a much higher premium on personal experience -- "This was the speaker dock of my dreams because..." or "No, really, I have small hands, and I couldn't even put the damn gloves on." (Seriously, I wish I could go back in time and stop myself from buying those. It would only take a few minutes on my way to kill Hitler.)
Maybe in the shipping e-mails, there could be a line something like, "We don't know if we'll ever sell this again (unless it's a speaker dock), but if we do, pop into the thread and tell people what you thought about it. We don't promise anything, but maybe there could someday be something in it for you" -- which could play into your rewards system, @JerseyFrank. Or, if Mediocre wants to get even more daring, it could swipe the old wine.woot Lab Rats program and send out advance sample products to trusted volunteers who'd review them in the thread. It's risky but it's awesome when it works.
@editorkid I was going to me too la brats, but I figured that wine is really acceptable to anyone who'd be a la brat, but with the menagerie of meh, there's not a single persona that would use most items. The management of a program like that seems too costly compared to QP mentions, custom badges, or other fun freebies
@JerseyFrank Yeah, honestly, I'm baffled by people who buy wine mail-order... in that context, the lab rat program makes sense. Maybe one or two of the fukubukuros could have advance samples of stuff and encourage people to post when it hits the daily deal or something. Or maybe we should all convince Meh we're trained seals and hope they throw us fish. Hopefully others will chime in with more ideas.
@editorkid Wine.Woot Lab Rats. I always wondered how Cesare was always first post with links and stuff. I guess I just assumed he was a wino with a lot of experience.
Using a combination of # of stars and Moderator input pick an Informer of the Month for providing the most (and/or best) product information the preceding month. Give them a Golden Rat badge, a personalized Forum Topic, and a free month of VMP. For a paltry $60 a year Meh could add a lot of salespeople to their staff to help mislead some poor sap into actually buying this stuff.
An informer is known as a Rat. Any other use of Rat such as Lab Rat is purely coincidental.
@JonT Adding to your work load. You're welcome.