Deals Page -opinions still wanted

["Brian Haygood" <Scirious@hotmail.com>]

Patrick Bureau said:

>How about  setting up a yahhoo mailing list " A1 Parts for sale " ?? and
>just keep it all off this scirocco based list and get all A1 involved in
the
>parts "find a deal place"?

E-mail lists are too temporal.  If someone has a good suggestion, it should
live on the site forever, much like a tech section of a website.  We can
already search out archives and dig this stuff up, but I think good stuff
should be easy to find.  I don't think a list solves this problem.

Whether it should be part of the Scirocco website or something totally
independent is another question that will have to be answered.  Perhaps even
if it starts as a Scirocco thing, with proper organization and with the
kinks worked out, it could become its own entity dealing with all cars (by
"all" cars I do not acknowledge the existance of anything designed or
produced by a company based anywhere West of Iceland, incidentally).

I didn't have in mind that this would be a feature of the scirocco LIST,
though several people's responses have indicated that I gave this
impression.  I'm invisioning an actual webpage.

Patrick brought up more good points, that others echoed:
>Personally I don't deal with most "commercial places" because they are
usually (and because of
>overhead and cost of rent, electricity cost etc. normally are a % above
what you can find it elsewhere.)

That's the frustration I've had.  The trick is finding that one place in the
midst of all of the spammers and idiots where real deals should be found.
If people submit to a webmaster, then nothing gets in without being
de-spammified to some degree, and a ratings system could help narrow it down
(obviously low enough ratings would get a place booted - perhaps to a
warning page).

Colin chimed in with:
>     Second suggestion involves organizing things.  IMHO, organizing by
parts
>and putting a tag/note on each entry for confirmed, suspicious, proven
bogus,
>etc might be easier.  We usually know what parts we're looking for and
>would tend to hit the list when the need was there, rather than just for an
>opportunity to impulse shop.
>    I look forward to seeing something like this.

I don't know, I kinda like to impulse shop for car stuff!  -and I'm usually
just sniffing for deals, not shopping for specifics.  So I think we have to
make it easy for both of our styles.  A table type format, with a column for
a rating/tag/note sounds like a great way to separate the "suspicious" stuff
from the proven.

I had imagined the only organization being sections like 1)Group buys,
2)Shop discounts, 3)Mail-order OEM parts, 4)Mail order accessories,  and
maybe even 5) dealership/shop ratings - but that's kindof a different issue.
SUB-sections by type of part (maybe the groups used in ETKA?) would be my
choice.  If it gets so big that you can't just thumb through it then a
search capability would have to be added (not that I have any clue how to do
that, but I'm betting we can figure that out).

----What does everyone else think?  How do you want it organized?  By type
of deal like I outlined in the previous paragraph, or by type of part first?
Any other suggestions??????

I figure (4) will attract the most garbage submissions, but its necessary
for things like Optima, RedLine, and other things people commonly ask where
they can find.

My idea was to keep this thing trimmed down and organized as much as
possible so it doesn't become bloated and useless.  Section (5) above
definately conflicts with that, but that's helpful info, I think.  Maybe
that should be an entirely different entity from the deals page (one is
about saving money, the other is about dealerships.  I usually don't group
those two concepts together).

Keep the suggestions coming.  If anyone wants to sketch a drawing of how the
site should look and send it to me (screenshots, scanned sketched, whatever)
send it to haygood@hotmail.com (i.e. reply to me personally, as you can't
send it to the list.

-BH



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