Possible death of deals.woot
14This morning at deals.woot.com, cannot vote, post, or comment.
Dunno if site probs, policy changes. Or site death.
The site has been on life-support in terms of usefullness or months if not years, and mod policies of the past drove almost everyone away - many of those who didn't leave out of disgust left because there was almost no-one home.
The forums had some good stuff, and still do, in the archives, which i hope remain available even if the site dies, tho lately many of the Community questions were clearly from shills.
The "deals" part has degenerated well past usefullness into parody, tho a stalwart few souls continued until yesterday to find and post actual deals in spite of sometimes having them voted down by amazon storefront shills. Most of the "deals" on the site are just the usual valueless amazon storefront junk, not even at a good price for "junk".
Sponsored deals: lately they've been doing valueless mystery boxes.
The whole place kinda smells.
I dont know why deals couldnt overcome the junk and shills. Slickdeals, fatwallet, other sites handle this.
I wouldn't mind seeing the site get fixed and revived (if that is even possible)...but if they've killed it, i spoze it's way past time, given lack of any productive changes.
Havent seen any sort of announcement. Dunno. Anyone know anything?
- 29 comments, 70 replies
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Seems to be back up and running. But you are right about it's eventual death. Surprised that the mother ship hasn't already shut it down. Sad, it was once a fun place to play. But not nearly as fun as Meh - Muwahahahaha!
The thing that still makes me chuckle is we can always count on mtm2 to post deals from sears/kmart. Who I always remember as having the most difficult product pics to imbed.
@mfladd
Yeah, the site is up. But cant vote, add a comment, add a deal, or add a question. Been that way since i first tried a few hours ago.
@f00l Ya, I haven't tried that for a long, long time. You are right. I tried to sign in to the site, but had to go back to woot to do so. Certain links seem to still be online. I checked my status and I am still a black triangle at 98/100. THAT IS REALLY SAD.
Curious. And voting/posting still is disabled (technically, you can click all the buttons, but nothing happens) despite @mfladd's comment. I'll see if I can find out what's up.
@ACraigL that is my bad as I only checked if the page was up and top of the page links worked - leaderboard, etc. (oh, the memories)
Deals.woot was the only section of Woot! I went to for my first few years there. It had amazing deals, and I loved interacting with others. It was its best when JumboWoot was around. The incentive of the coupons and his general awesomeness was what made that place such the "it" place to be.
BTW, I do not vote, comment or post deals anymore, and I am #56 on the leader board. I have posted one deal in the last year.
If the lights get turned off, I can't say I'll miss it, what with what it's turned into in recent times.
Perhaps a reboot in the future? I dunno. Woot as a whole has much less traffic than in the past.
Oh deals.woot...what a dump it has become.
Leaderboard check:
@studerc stats...
last deal posted 2 years, 5 months ago
last comment 9 months ago for the Meh.com Haiku contest (prior vote, Meh's first product)
Current rank 82
Gave up on that place shortly after the fallout of the Deal Hunter Competition. Don't regret my decision.
@acraigl's (admittedly, I was a hold-out, but posts were few and far between)
last deal posted 7 months ago
last comment 9 months ago for the Meh.com Haiku contest
Current rank 50
I actually forgot it was there.
I mentioned offline, to a friend, that it was busted (it's a javascript issue) yesterday afternoon. The "developers are working on it" is about the gist of it, and that's pretty much all I know. It's pretty weird to not be able to do anything, but at least it keeps out the spammers. So there's that.
I found the community on deals far more to my taste that regular woot for some reason. I found woot during the deals beta period, if i remember, and deals was my go-to site for fun and stimulation for years. So many hours i spent refreshing each day.
I've been going there daily, in part cause i post audiobooks and sometimes other books. And tried to participate to keep the community part somewhat active. But so few people left. And with no critical mass, and zero decision-management attempts to control shills, and decent actual deals difficult to find unless you known usernames to look for, ridiculous and embarassing sponsored stuff, and massive site abuse/manipulative conduct by storefronts.....what's left?
Love to see it revive to something good. Community can't fix this. Skeptical whether anyone higher-up wants to bother?
Miss the good olde days. Ah well. Hope it's just busted code, per info from @Shrdlu.
@f00l It was (busted code). I posted a vague postmortem, copied directly from an answer by a developer, over on Deals. Go vote up my question, plz. It looks so sad and pathetic, all alone like that.
@Shrdlu done.
@Shrdlu +1'd
@Shrdlu Done. It's been a long time since I've been over there.
@Shrdlu though that +/- voting thing still gets my goat.
I still want to know who the shot caller was on that fuck up.
@Shrdlu Ooh, a new place to click on things! I'm in.
@Shrdlu
Thx for info, and for defuzzing issue for the rest of us. Posted my little book deal.
:)
@Shrdlu me2...even though they say it has been fixed
a bunch of assholes are still in #deals.woot.
@meh ha!
@meh no I'm not!
@meh
More assholes needed tho, non-shill variety.
@meh I resemble that remark!
@meh I also resemble that remark! Methinks you tend to forget that your audiences overlap. I don't think you want to push people away from Meh by insulting them. There's room here for all types, without being intolerant of people who still shop there. So, let's just all sit down, hold hands, and sing Kum Ba Yah.
@cwolfpack3 Just wanted to make sure you know, @meh is just a forum member. Staff members have little flasks next to their names.
@cwolfpack3 i don't think you actually resemble that remark :-/
@sammydog01 well that just takes all the fun out of it.
@sammydog01 Yup, I got that. I'm just sick and tired of all the slams against Woot and Wooters here, especially when there are many who still do both. Forum members can easily push potential customers away from sites, as well. Case in point with the down-voting trolls at Deals, as mentioned here in this thread.
@meh
@cwolfpack3 #deals.woot is an IRC channel that's been around for 4-5 years (+?). there's a bunch of assholes [still] in there. including me. you probably woulnd't like to join, you don't seem to like assholes.
@meh I totally forgot about the IRC channel. I used to frequent back in the day, haven't been there in ages! Think I stopped using it shortly after Crap-Gate with the Pirate Treasure hunt thing. Stupid fucking CrapBeard bullshit.
@studerc lol i remember the pirate crapbeard scandal. such dumb.
@studerc OMG I hated that game. I just thought I was terrible at it, but wow was that stupid.
@meh You are right. Not my flavor. I have enough grief in my life without it. I remember visiting Lich's chat channel once or twice. Just don't have time for more these days.
i'm still #28. dammit. @lichme is still ahead of me though (#14)
LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICH!!!!
@carl669 you are #1 in our book....
@mikibell aww...
@mikibell ...the mehcronomicon
@hallmike
@hallmike
@carl669
@mikibell
The Fucking Mehchronomicon.
@f00l
@mfladd
@jaremelz OK... THAT'S creepy!
When I couldn't vote in the am, I thought it was my computer as it has been on the fritz lately. Glad to know it was them not me. I still check it out and vote once in awhile. I go in binges.
Who the fuck cares......
@somf69 You sound lonely. Why don't you come over to deals.woot for some chatter?
I haven't voted for anything in years. Never post any deals. The only thing I do is answer questions for newbies about why their crappy deals were deleted. Somehow I'm still ranked #19.
@cengland0 I'm ranked #725!!!
I did an experiment in December to see what it would take to get to #1 on the leaderboard, I think I posted 3 deals and voted a couple times. Boom. I'm still at #13 though today was the first time I've been over there since.
Spent a year or so fairly regularly visiting over there, posting deals on and off. (@ID is a different color hardwood tree.) Commented a fair amount. Got in the top 10 several times. (Sometimes inexplicably.)
But wow, seems to be mostly a @mtm2, @faugh... and @shill show today!
Didn't spell out @faugh... Because they were the final trigger to leave. A couple of us caught @faugh... doing anti-social stuff and deleting constructively negative comments about his(?) deals.
A moderator contacted me directly via email, confirmed the shenanigans, apologized and claimed to have spanked @faugh... But it was too late. Got tired of the pervasive (anonymous) down-voting and the moderators largely didn't seem to care or were tasked on something else.
Don't miss it a bit. Especially after seeing it again.
BTW, @f001, I up-voted your deal.
@RedOak
I missed @faug.... getting caught being a dick. That must have gone down during one of my "get a life" intervals. Knew there was stank on @faug... without knowing why.
Sadly, that's just one of the really offensive things done by a few members of the unsupervised-by-adults deals.woot staff along the way.
Now that the site practically belongs to crappy storefronts and their sockpuppets, i wonder if anyone ever actually clicks thru on a deal anymore.
@f00l based on the thick @faugh... deal density over there, he must spend a good part of his day finding and posing deals.
Makes one wonder how Amazon can justify his (?) salary based upon the empty shell that is deals.woot.
Does woot get much revenue to speak of for a click thru? Don't those click thru's have to turn into sales to result in more than a few pennies or fractions of pennies?
I stopped frequenting Deals.Woot in 2011 sometime. I was highly involved there for a long time, and even wore the crown for a few stints. I loved that site. The deals pulled me in, but the forums made me stay. I really miss it. I hate that Woot ruined it with their changes and bullshit moderating. I still would creep in the forums from time to time and even posted a few times, but it was just never the same.
Once Meh went live, I don't think I ever went back. I'm honestly surprised that Amazon hasn't pulled the plug yet.
@capguncowboy surprising the power of the retail marketplace...I posted one time and all-of-a-sudden went from 100 to a 60 score...you know what? Fuck that shit....kudos to all you assholes with <90...but seriously. Fuck all y'all. Aint nobody got time for that.
@therealjrn I'm up to 0.15%.
@sammydog01 :sillyassgrin:
@capguncowboy I like the forums here and all, but there isn't near as much chat going on as there was there in it's hay day.
Plus I liked the 2 sections over there: deals & chat
And the downvotes were nice for those good ol' roundups
@luvche21 I won't say who, but there was one user I used to downvote relentlessly. It didn't matter what they would do or say, I would automatically downvote it. It became a game. Every single thing they did got at least 1 downvote. I wonder where that person is these days ?
@capguncowboy Ooh, almost sounds worth it to go back and downvote even more :)
Those roundups were sure fun though, especially when a cruddy company would show up and lie to us.
@luvche21 I used to do the same shit. I was number one a few times, voted, posted, voted, posted, voted, posted....it was stupid.....wait it is stupid. I just went back and looked at my stats, I last posted something over 2 years ago, sounds about right. I can't stand that place. I Mort and Monty could escape from that hell hole
@therealjrn Now I'm at 37.58%. What the fuck?
@sammydog01
The magic of Woot reps.
@sammydog01 crazy! You should be at least 37.73%!
@therealjrn I feel like upvoting every deal just to see what happens.
@sammydog01
You might get yourself a reputation. Watch out!
Just took a look at the deals leaderboard. The top questioner, wigi, appears to have last been active in the questions area some years ago. Sign of increasing entropy on deals?
@f00l ironically, this meh string likely caused a noticeable blip in the deals.woot site visits! ;-)
Short-lived tho.
Haha-- I just checked an old comment I posted on a woot site. Apparently I was deals.woot.com rep 7/100. Then they abandoned their loyal customers...
Just checked...I'm a purple triangle still with 83/100.
I was inspired to post a deal. It seems counterintuitive to this conversation, but I always was a bit of a contrarian.
Now go forth and buy some Anchor Hocking storage things.
If you want.
@ceagee I don't have shelf space for Anchor Hocking storage things but I upvoted it, because I now know that's a thing.
@ceagee Wait, I couldn't find it.
@fool voted up your audio book.
Are we going to have a Meh.com post deals on Deals.wOOt day? Oooo..that sounds like fun!
@mfladd It's not that hard. Just look for a black triangle under fresh deals. Plus my name is the same you could look that way. You have been away a long time.
As for your proposition. Of course I'd be in. Will we have a theme ? I always loved theme days.
@sammydog01 So what you are saying is that you need storage for storage. Very interesting and deep to sit and ponder. I mean, if you got storage for storage, where would you store that ? How far does it go ? A new house ? A new city ? A new world ?
Anyways. I'm glad you now know it's a thing. Knowledge about things can be important. Or some other such drivel like that. Whatever.
@ceagee Found it. Down-voted. hehehehehehe, JK. You got my vote. I will leave the down-voting to Zippy.
@ceagee I think a themed day takover, like crab days of old would be the best before we are shut down.
As the OG Double Black Undisputed Deals.Woot leaderboard leader, I too, have not visited in many trips around the sun.
I was never an actual member of Deals.woot, but I was a regular reader of it for years, and watched the slow decline from something very nice to the shambling mess that it is now. I always regretted not joining then, but since most of those people are now here, it's less of a regret.
I still visit every now and then just to see the questions (the folks answering questions now have the patience of saints considering Youtube comment-level grammar and content mostly).
I'm in 98th place and the last deal I posted was on Dec. 14, 2012 for a solar powered cockroach: http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/460c9028-5fa3-40fb-a718-226c789f8f2d/solar-energy-powered-cockroach-toy#15
The thingy is suggesting that I've posted enough deals, and that I should tattle on deals to increase my rating.
I still have one of those cockroaches kicking around somewhere...
Okay, did you all just break deals.woot? I just went there for the first time eva (peer pressure and all) and it states it is temporarily down for "maintenance". Poor thing, just couldn't handle its sudden popularity.
@kathyl Whew! It has sprung back to life (somewhat) again...
Anyone know if the mod(s) who had a vendetta against lingerie are still there? Besides crabs & shovels, that would be an excellent choice for a theme day.
@dashcloud
I wonder if we could entice @ohcheri to come to the Meh side.
Meh, got any cookies?
@f00l OMG...@ohcheri. She is the one person who got away with lingerie stuff and had a following. What happened to her?
@mfladd
The deals.woot staff abused her continually, and in ever new ways, until she'd just had enuf and quit trying. She was, as always, quite nice about it.
I miss her.
@f00l I liked her and she always played by the rules. Bad mods. They should be spanked. From the OhCheri website.
@mfladd
+1
http://www.ohcheri.com
@f00l Unfortunately, I am now at 0, Zippy -1'd me.
That bastard! :)
@mfladd
Oooo, you're special. That's proof.
Dammit, @medz! I answered and voted yesterday, and now I'm up to 22nd place. I'll never dip below 99% at this rate!
No good deed goes unpunished, yet again. After being outta the top list for a while (that's good), i'm now #1.
@f00l All Hail The Queen.....
We will note for the record, your honor, that interest in this topic is about a billion times higher here on Meh than anyplace on *.woot.com.
It’s ashame…deals,woot was not only a great place for buyers…small online businesses relied on it for great targeted traffic! I have yet to find a good alternative that allows the posting from your own website. I decided to start my own! DealsWoot.us
@Lanetech I’m not sure if I should click on this- Mediocrebot says you’re a quiet, creepy, lurker type.
@sammydog01
What’s wrong with quiet, creepy lurkers?
@PlacidPenguin
/giphy creepy lurker
@PlacidPenguin