Reminder: please refrain from commenting in the sticky BLF Deal Alert thread.

It’s perfectly natural to post comments after seeing a post or deal that you like, but it’s also not too much to ask that people read words and be polite.

The sticky BLF Deal Alert thread was created so that subscribers would only receive notices when a new deal alert was posted; those subscribers do not want to get notified every time someone has something to say about a deal or discuss under which phase of the Moon a deal might be available.

It’s easy to create a discussion thread in this forum to go along with your post to the sticky BLF Deal Alert thread; it only takes an extra minute or two. Here’s one possible approach:

  1. Create a new thread in this forum with the details of your deal. This is for discussion.
  2. Copy/paste the same text into a new post in the sticky BLF Deal Alert thread, but do not post it yet. This will be the alert.
  3. Go back to view your new discussion thread and Copy the URL to your clipboard.
  4. Go forward to your new alert post and paste the URL at the end of your post, perhaps with the description “discuss here”.
  5. Save the post to the sticky BLF Deal Alert thread.

If an existing Deal Alert thread post doesn’t link back to a discussion thread and you want to discuss the deal, simply create your own discussion thread for that deal and comment there. Do not comment to the sticky Deal Alert thread.

To help yourself remember, imagine that every time you open the sticky Deal Alert thread you hear the Aladdin song “A Whole New World”, but with the lyric changed to, “A Whole New Thread”. Every deal gets its own discussion thread, whether the deal poster creates one or not.

It doesn’t help to post comments in the sticky Deal Alert thread telling people not to comment, as this merely encourages more discussion about not having discussion. Feel free to do that anywhere but the in sticky thread :wink: .

[2020-10-26] Shortened instructions and minor editing.

Well, at least you tried. :wink:
Its happens, if members would just read the thread title it be fine.
Alot of us here came from a heavy handed moderated forum so no one really wants that here.
We try to look over it and go on enjoying the relaxed forum.
It be nice to have no post but deals in that thread but it’s probably never going to happen. :person_facepalming:

Thanks for the reminder!

Sorry I wont do it again :blush:

But they apparently don’t, even though it’s in all caps, bold print, and surrounded by asterisks :wink: .

I got kicked out of a certain motorcycle forum twice for simply answering questions with solutions that were deemed too “cheap”, even though one of those solutions was at the time listed as a suggestion on the forum’s Wiki and was listed there by the mod/admin/owner who kicked me.

That was how I got kicked twice, since he restored my account after I reminded him of his own wiki entry. My second chance lasted only another couple of weeks and that time no explanation was given, though it was a similar situation and he obviously just didn’t like me or my contributions. Some members here can probably relate, even though they tolerate my ramblings :blush: .

I was a member of the forum you refer to myself eons ago, but seem to have forgotten my username/password :innocent: .

Yes, but I can keep wasting new threads on reminders almost indefinitely :stuck_out_tongue: …. Or bumping this one when necessary.

Thanks, christoph. I wasn’t calling anyone out in particular and had to revisit the thread to see that you had posted there, but I appreciate the effort. I don’t intend to make anyone feel bad for participating on an open forum; I just wanted to remind people about the intentions of the thread creator as a conversation seemed to be just getting warmed up :wink: .

SB, I think there might be one thing you could do to reduce the number of unwanted post.
Most people probably only read the “The BLF Deal Alert” part of the title of the thread then they click. New comers see this pop up and they click to the last post.
If you have ever visited this thread before then you can go straight to the last updated post. Most people will click just the new post and it takes you straight there bypassing the title entirely.
You never get reminded of the no comments or discussion part of that thread.
.
What I’m purposing is to change the Name of the thread by reverse the title. “No Comments or Discussion the BLF Deal Alert Thread”
By changing the name you are reminded ever time the thread pops up from reading the first 2 to 4 words before you even know its the blf deal alert thread.
Now everyone reads the important part first before clicking on the thread or newly created post. :+1:

I dunno if it will help, but it’s worth a try. I suggest inserting a dash, ““, after the word ’Discussion’ as it helps make it more of proper ’Title Subtitle’ type of thing.

Most people do follow the thread rules, but it doesn’t take many extraneous posts to thwart the intended results.

I've suggested that people just add a link to a deal ....and then making their unnecessary comment. The truth is people will do what they want and hate to be told what to do or not to do .

if you doubt this at all simply PM someone and suggest they edit / remove a comment they made in a thread . All hell will ensue and you can be assured they will hate you forever .

the long and short is people are idiots ... Welcome to the internet

I'm not a great fan of people who only subscribe to a deal alert thread in the first place . to me it seems pretty selfish so if it doesn't really work for them then I'm not overly concerned .

Having the forum become more and more of a slickdeals site where deals get spoon fed to members vs. one where people actually share is kind of pathetic .

It's crazy that so many people seem to not know how to read /can't follow simple rules ..or just don't care .

Until now I didn’t realize why people want to avoid comments in the deal alert thread. I’ve seen several discussions that said “don’t do this because that’s against the rules of this place”. Only now I see “please don’t do this because it hurts my legitimate interests”. Such message is much more powerful and has much larger chance of being respected. At least in a free place like BLF. Thank you leftdisconnected for framing the discussion this way.

But I think that a discussion forum thread is inherently a wrong form of storing a news list - precisely because discussion is just natural in such place. Comments elsewhere feel artificial and disconnected from the original message. And are likely to be missed.
I feel that not being able to discuss near the new item hurts my legitimate interests.

And honestly, I don’t see a good way out of it without moving the discussion to an entirely different platform. Which would feel wrong as well. Maybe there’s some forum engine plugin that could enable people to select whether their message should send a notification to subscribers? Or maybe something that allows some regexps in subscriptions, so comments containing quotations could be ignored?…

The power of BLF is the fact users can post (almost) anything.

If you are going to moderate every comment, or tell them what not to do, people will leave (exactly the reason why people leave other forums, as discussed above)
They will feel a certain distance, where one has more privileges over the other.

So just try to be friendly over BLF please
(or just move on)

Well, we’re definitely not going down the route of imposing general restrictions on commenting on a forum-wide level. This is just one single special thread out of 72,000 normal threads, so I don’t think anybody should feel overly restricted by it.

Great idea, thanks, I just changed it.

I mostly agree with you, but it’s just one thread in an entire “Deal Alert” forum. I don’t see it as selfish, as it’s an attempt to allow a large group of people to share deals with one another.

Full disclosure: I’m not subscribed to the sticky Deal Alert thread, but I can understand why people would be and why it shouldn’t be an intolerable over-reach to ask that members learn to use that thread as intended or simply not use it at all. It’s virtually impossible to keep up with all of the forums and threads at BLF and it’s okay if people want to receive notices about potential deals.

No one is accusing me of anything, but I expect no draconian measures and only intend to politely remind people, especially new members, about why that thread has special rules. We don’t need to punish people who don’t follow those rules, but it is rude and disrespectful to break them after learning why they exist.

Ignorance is generally innocent; purposeful disregard is generally an act of evil, even if it’s a relatively minor evil :wink: . SB isn’t asking that much. If someone doesn’t like the rules of that one thread, they can participate in thousands of other threads and make as many threads of their own as they like, as I did here :innocent: .

I often participate in the Image Boss thread. The whole point of the thread is that its participants agree to the contest rules laid down by the thread’s founder many centuries ago :stuck_out_tongue: . We can’t stop people from disregarding those rules, but it would ruin the game. Friendliness isn’t found in the chaos of everybody doing whatever they want; it’s found in open cooperation. Cats are free, but dogs are friendly :slight_smile: .

The interesting thing here is that this conversation about not having conversations in the Deal Alert thread is bumping the reminder right up under the Deal Alert thread :crown: . I’m a genius in my own tiny mind :student: .

I appreciate hearing everyone’s perspectives, regardless. Here’s to BLF :beer: .

Now I feel old!

You have to convert Centuries to Internet time. The conversion rate is 1/1000 or something like that; it varies depending upon meme and sunspot activity.