Instant Regret Kit One Minute Lottery
14Ok… So the purpose of the IRK, I assume, is to keep us captivated and hanging around during your Mehrathon. To provide some fun and community-building, clear out some overstock, at the same time. Etc.
The problem with the IRK is that it heavily favours people with low latency and high speed internet. (Not that it can’t be won on a slower connection, it’s just harder… Especially when you’re only giving twenty something out at a time).
My solution. The one minute IRK lottery. Anyone who hits buy on an IRK in the first minute of it being posted gets entered into a lottery for that IRK (so users still have to watch the clock and stay on your site all day).
You could probably also rig it so that anyone who has made another purchase that day, on another non-IRK item, gets a double chance to win the lottery. Perhaps each item you buy gives you an extra “ticket” in the lottery. (But they still have to be present to click the Buy button in that first minute).
Thoughts? I think it would help you out (encourage more buying, and also more people might hang around for an IRK if they thought they actually stood a chance). At the same time, it would make a more level playing field for everyone else. One minute to get in on the lottery would still provide a level of urgency.
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Perhaps you could also pop out the winners one at a time on the page every few seconds after the minute is up to provide more excitement as people sit and wait to see if their name gets picked.
I’d avoid doing anything that says the words “buy chance and lottery” in the same paragraph.
That’s a problem for giveaways (it’s illegal), and I think it would probably apply to this situation as well. You’d get people buying stuff to improve their odds then cancelling and/or returning orders after the fact. That’s why there are no purchase necessary options, which defeats the purpose here.
You can’t really bill people for an IRK before they are selected as a “winner”, but then you’d have to run a rinse/repeat cycle for people who “win”, but don’t finish checking out.
Dailysteals used to do a “RUSH” sale, which was kind of similar to what you are describing, and it was pretty fun actually, but had none of the purchase stuff in it.
Given that other items are on a timer and available all day if they don’t sell out, there’s very little incentive to keep people engaged on meh during a mehrathon. If I know the current item is up for another 30 minutes, I don’t have to stay glued to my chair for the next 30 minutes, I’ll set an alexa timer for 28 and check back. The engagement to the site for meh comes in the write-ups, and the community. Things like scavenger hunts, photoshop contests etc.
If something sells out, it’s probably limited quantity most people would have missed it anyways. I think the way they do it now with sprinkling some IRK’s into partner sites like sidedeal/morningsave provides them with more benefits than they would get by running any additional logic on this side of the house.
No matter what you do, there’s always going to be more people trying to buy vs # available.
If the desire is there to throttle IRK buying, adding a 30 day limit would be the easiest place to start in my opinion.
-my several cents
@lichme I’m not sure if that would count as a giveaway since is something you buy. If that’s a problem they can classify it as a wait-list, it’s not illegal to have a paid wait list to buy something.
Regardless, they don’t have to incorporate the buy for extra chances part and still do the lottery. I was just trying to think of a way to make it better for mercatalyst AND their clients. More sales = more motivation.
The 30 day limit wouldn’t help meh, because then some of their best customers would be disengaged for 30 days after getting an irk.
@OnionSoup Would those same customers be disengaged if they got an IRK right away during a mehrathon? If they are only here/engaged to buy an IRK, what makes them some of the best customers? Why would meh want spend the resources developing something to increase their odds of getting one if they are just going to stop looking for the rest of the day once they are successful?
If they are going to stop coming because they think they have no chance of buying an IRK, they will also stop coming if they are successful in buying an IRK.
I think people might be disengaged because there’s no fear of missing anything you can’t buy on another day at the same or similar price.
@lichme Bestbuy does something similar for graphics cards… seems like they would not do it if their lawyers didn’t like it.
@Airwhale @lichme I haven’t scored a GPU yet with best buy’s random timer and it’s way more of an annoyance than new eggs shuffle. Haven’t bought anything from best buy for years before and have stopped bothering to try their time wasting scheme. Still occasionally enter the shuffles though.
If we really want to make IRKs “fair” then Meh can just roll back the code to the early days where the servers just crashed under the load and your chances of completing checkout was completely random. I doubt anyone would be happy then. At least now I know within a few seconds and can decide to go to bed or waste more time chasing a regrettable goal.
KuoH
@lichme @OnionSoup
I don’t think that is the issue at least some of the people are complaining about. The deck is stacked against those who live in areas with crappy internet with high latency, or can’t afford better internet, or both. It’s an issue of fairness (from the customer point of view) with respect to getting one. The drop in numbers per offering affects those folks more than the others. Sure there is timing, luck, glitches, etc., but for some they are basically closed out of getting them for technology reasons that they can’t do anything about. When it takes 6-8 seconds to load a page, regardless of your refresh timing you are basically doomed.
Related to this is that meh has spent considerable time and energy over the years (some years less than others but it appears to be back on the upswing again) building community. Lack of perceived fairness with respect to irks (since that is the topic of conversation here) negatively affects the community. Sure meh is interested in sales, after all they are a for profit business, but over the years they have also shown they are interested in community. It’s a balancing act between those two factors as they also affect each other.
I am not sure what the “best” solution is, but in my opinion it needs to involve a combination of fairness in how they offer them so everyone has a fair chance (and not just some people), along with balancing that with how they are using irks as bait to keep people on the site/repeatedly revisit the site/other on site behaviors they want/etc. during the event. Building or rebuilding trust and satisfaction is a lot harder and longer process than destroying it.
They certainly have the data to compare user numbers, drop off or increase of engagement (be it purchases, meh clicks, comments in threads and how many, engagement in games, or some other metric that matters to them, etc), etc.of people when selling different numbers of irks in any given offering (controlling for time zone, how much their target customers buy AND/OR make positive contributions to community in ways that build that since I’d imagine both would be of interest). Taking into account it is cheaper to keep customers than find new ones they likely could see what increases or decreases involvement and purchases or community involvement. I’d guess they know exactly how much it costs to get and keep a customer. And of course, as with any business, you may not want to keep all of the customers as some may “cost” them more than they are worth on the upside.
Presuming they have an employee with sufficient stats skills I am sure they can run the numbers (including longitudinally) such that they can find the impact of all these things on each other and thus find a balance in how they do things that meet multiple sets of needs/goals to the extent possible.
They should run it like a load balancer and when everyone smashes F5, only X within the total (smashers) are randomly selected. e.g. hash everyone’s IP or session cookie plus username and everyone with an ending digit of rand(0-9) is chosen for checkout. Everyone else gets a clear “you didn’t get picked randomly” message instead of the “well, maybe it is just slow” or “this checkout system is just fucked” experience we get now.
They can publish the selection code so there’s no favoritism and can be tested to be repeatable (same input set yields the same output set) and fair - i.e. an equal distribution across the participants, instead of what appears to be heavy bias to the braggarts who routinely proclaim “got mine” and “haven’t missed an IRK yet” in the forums.
@mike808 don’t think “heavy bias” is accurate there. Count up the number of peeps that proclaim such, divide by number of IRKs sold during event and I think you’ll see the impact of those that repeatedly get them are not all that high.
This last event did have fewer than usual…but, I suspect that has more to do with having just sent out a fuckton of them during the zero day/bday event. Thus, depleted supply of IRK material to ship out.
“…the purpose of the IRK…is to keep us captivated and hanging around during your Mehrathon.”
FALSE. The purpose is to prove who is superior. I’m better than you. You can only dream of achieving what I have. This serves to demoralize those who are unworthy and greatly reward those who are able to rise to the challenge and triumph. Get good, kid. One day you may join us at the top.
@medz
/giphy spit coffee laugh
@medz I have gotten over 15 irks in the past year and a half. I got good.
@mikesmells congrats. Your username should be mikesmellsofsuccess. Enjoy the feeling of superiority. Bask in it. Mmmmm…
@medz @mikesmells I got…two. One of which still hasn’t arrived. None Wednesday.
@medz I do feel superior every time I get one. This is true.
@PooltoyWolf Give it time, my guy. You will be rewarded for your greatness soon enough. Cheers to being a winner!
@SirEgg this is a feeling the inferior chase yet may never grasp. Enjoy the rush, hero of men.
@medz Thanks LOL
@medz You might be my hero for the day!
@ybmuG I think I’d buy that shirt from Meh.
You know as long as it was in grey and not in black because pets.
@Fodder650 grey IS the best t-shirt color
He said while wearing his grey cracked flask t-shirt
@ybmuG There was a discussion about this during a sale of black shirts. That’s why I said it.
@Fodder650 I do remember, and that’s what I figured
@Fodder650 @ybmuG I’m unable to participate in such discussions as the decision on whether to use “gray” or “grey” simply paralyzes me.
@Fodder650 @ybmuG
Ditto! Off to the lab in my grey flask shirt for a day of crackpot science!
@ybmuG
Weed not being all that legal in Texas, there will not be pot in every IRK.
I have just given up on IRKs, which is kind of a shame. But having very slow internet means I will never get one unless the “rules” are changed in some way.
Or they could just keep it the the way it is and maybe people with slow internet’s can go to a friends house or the library that day.
@Star2236 or, bribes…don’t forget bribes!
How about if the first 200 to click on buy, and check whatever box and/or identify motorcycles (plus have their address and billing info entered if not already saved) are put into a (choosing words carefully) pool of potential buyers from which 100, 50, 30, 21, etc. names are drawn.
Keeping with the IRK theme, put every potential buyers name onto a pie graph, with Irk in the center of it spinning around saying things like, “Let’s see who’s day we’re gonna ruin next!” or “what in the hell were you thinking when you clicked buy?”
Or to make it even more twisted… IRK picks the lucky folks who won’t get a box full of stuff they neither need nor want and saving them $5 in the process. Once all the “lucky” folks are spared from getting a bunch of junk, the remaining poor souls will watch their debt increase ever so slightly and will rue the day this crap lands on their doorstep!
And to give even more people a shot…
If you make it into the pool of potential winners but don’t win an IRK, you’re chided for your poor decision making skills and must have additional help in exercising good judgement and therefore will be prevented from attempting to buy the next IRK as well… After all, what good are the forums without a few folks screaming about how much they hate this site and that they are never coming here again.
This is especially true if they lose on the 2nd to last IRK of the day…
How about after you click the buy button, instead of CAPTCHA you have to spin a wheel, or something along those lines. If it lands on “win” you get to buy the IRK, if it lands on something else you lose the chance to buy the IRK. The IRK sells out when the predetermined number of winners is reached. This way maybe more people with slow connections have a shot at getting an IRK. And nobody will miss CAPTCHA, other than @Mediocrebot.
Please realize CAPTCHA is a fellow robot like you.
I am pretty sure the purpose of an IRK is clearly defined in its very name. I am also pretty sure, based on this post that it has
% served its purpose in doing so.
@kellie0896 Yes. Unfortunately, the regret is only lessened by a successful purchase. Which contradicts its purpose, and paradoxically shows the product is a failure in eliciting copious amounts of regret. Quite the conundrum.
Did it ever occur to you IRK-less souls that instead of complaining about your slow connection, you could simply move to an area that offers faster service?
@elfunkman better yet, just go get a job at the Cloudflare datacenter that primarily services Mercatalyst! Tap right in and always be first.
@elfunkman you will be happy to know, I am actually in the process of building a new house in an area that I hope has faster internet.
My only reason for moving is in hopes of winning more iRKS.
@elfunkman
Buy my house for my asking price, and I’ll move to somewhere with faster service. Oh, you don’t have the money? Well, then, sucks to be you.
@werehatrack I’m not sure how you know of my financial situation, but yes, it does in fact suck to be me.
@OnionSoup
Wouldn’t a tattoo be easier?
@Barney I’ve tried. They never have the tattoo thing open anymore.
@OnionSoup Sorry.
Maybe we could all just buy raffle tickets for $1 and IRK could read the lucky numbers live on Twitchy
Oh, oh, oh, I know
Identify who hasn’t gotten one in a while and therefore really deserves one and just give it to them
Or
Count the words people have typed whining about not getting one and those with the most words get one automatically.
Yeah that’s it!
@ybmuG
Erm. Nyet.
I don’t pay for high-speed internet with low latency to NOT get an IRK. Go to hell @lichme.
@ACraigL No U
@lichme
The best thing that could come of all this would be if as soon as StarLink is complete there is enough COVID relief money still lying around for the FCC to broker a deal with Elon to setup every man, woman, & child in the country with identical speed internet service to level all the playing fields, and then, the very day this all goes live for Meh to never offer another IRK again.
I love the idea of some mechanism that allows me a chance to buy an IRK. I have not gotten one for years. This time the page more often than not said “sold out” as it loaded for the first time.
To me a part of the irk is the challenge of getting an irk…. I’ve succeeded a few times and failed way more than success. I say you leave it the same, it’s kind of the point, you either get the irk (regret), or you get irked (-regret)…. But either way you played the game.