Post History

Shopping

### Site Name

shopping.codidact.com

### Description

Shopping advice, product recommendations and buying guides.

I think this will be an interesting topic for this site because buying products is in everyday necessity in the today's world. Modern economics produce a huge selection of consumer goods and services, and the internet allows everyone access to many of them through online retail. The problem is now *consumer confusion* - there is too much junk information out there and too many options to make sense of it without expertise, but not everyone has the financial means to *gain expertise* in every product they need to buy. Everyone needs a car, but not everyone is an expert on which car is good.

Some big sites like Stack* have historically been very strictly against "shopping" type questions. Many other places failed to respect the consumer and sold out to advertisers, which killed the community. Particularly, including the "blogosphere" and YouTube channels have now been completely demolished due to rampant paid advertising. Reddit was a notable place that provided product recommentations, but due to recent changes in policy many redditors are likely to abandon ship. Search engines are currently very poor at returning useful product suggestions. Sites like Amazon have failed to fix review manipulation and other predatory merchant behavior. I see this as an opportunity to provide a quality resource to ordinary people and drive growth for the site.

Note: This proposal may potentially generate controversy. I humbly remind users that https://proposals.codidact.com/categories/68 is a good place to post questions about individual aspects of a proposal. It's a lot easier to discuss some things in a question as opposed to a comment thread.

Lastly, here's a random quote:

> Living in the US and not being a consumerist is like living in Paris and not caring about art.

### Topics

This site will be a community where users can share advice, recommendations and experience regarding consumer product purchases.

Topics covered would include:

- Recommend me a product that does X, with Y features, and in Z price range
    * These types of questions should make an attempt to be *general*, so as to have relevance to multiple users. It's also good to educate and inform the general community about *shopping techniques* and reasoning about purchasing decisions
- Asking about equivalents or alternatives to a discontinued/unavailable/expensive/ethically questionable product
- Comparisons of competing products
- Questions about a potential purchase
    * Should be framed in a general way, so that even people who are not planning to buy that product can learn something from the discussion.
    * Ex: Is product X by company Y actually organic/sweatshop free/made in USA?
- Questions about good places to shop for types of products.
    * Ex: Is there a good store with an inventory of underwater basketweaving equipment? Or is it better if I shop separately at diving shops and crafts stores?
- Questions about regional retail equivalents
    * Ex: I moved from Germany to USA, and they don't have Aldi here! Where do I get discount groceries?
- Questions about retail policies, returns, shipping
- Questions about *efficient* shopping
    * Ex: Is Amazon Prime worth it or is it better to just pay the shipping cost?
    * Ex: How can I see the price history of an Amazon product?
- General questions about shopping
    * Which types of product are better to buy or rent
    * Best time of year to buy seasonal goods (skis)
    * Indicators of quality products (and red flags) for a particular product type
    * Reasonable price ranges for a type of product
- Questions about brands:
    * Reputation and history of a brand (in particular history of misconduct or scandals)
    * Which brands are reputable for a type of product
    * Provenance (brands that are actually owned by the same company)
    * Brands which are known to make a great product of one type, but their other lines are terrible
- Questions about buying used goods
    * How to determine if prices are good at thrift stores
    * What types of wear or defects are not worth the savings
- Services aimed at consumers are generally allowed.
- General consumer education topics
- Questions about consumer movements, for example which companies respect the "Right to Repair"

#### Additional general rules

* Where possible, answers should have clear and sound logic, supporting evidence and be verifiable. Subjective or highly personal reasoning ("I like brand X because they use my favorite color", "One time a guy from X store asked me out so I like that store") is discouraged. The goal of the site is to help members of the community make better shopping decisions that are in their own interests.
* Answers should generally consider the best interests of the asker. They should not perpetuate anti-consumer attitudes. Marketing language that does not convey useful information to the consumer, misleads, confuses or manipulates them should be avoided.
* Answers should be genuine. Misrepresentation, misleading phrasing, lies of omissions, etc should be avoided.
* Affiliate links, kickbacks, paid advertising is not allowed. Where individual products or stores are linked to, it must be done in a way that cannot benefit the poster (no URL shorteners or tracking parameters).
* Shilling and astroturfing is not allowed. If a user appears to post unreasonably positive or negative content about specific companies, moderators will judge it on a case by case basis and maybe ban them.
* Conflict of interest is acceptable if declared clearly. An employee of company X may make posts related to X iff they clearly declare in the answer *and* their profile that they are affiliated with the company.
    * Even after declaring CoI, the post must still meet the regular quality standards of the community.
    * There can be CoI even without formal afiliation. Ex: My ex worked for company X so I hate all their products now.
    * More generally, if you have a personal bias regarding a product or company, it is *polite* to state it in your posts.
* Users should be respectful of each other's budget and financial situation. When a user ask for advice and specifies a budget or price range, this should be followed, even if the price seems outrageously high or low. It is okay to mention that the price range is unrealistic, as an aside, in an answer that makes a genuine effort to provide a solution in that approximate range. An answer consisting solely of telling the OP they're a miser or profligate is not appropriate.
* When users declare specific personal or ethical preference, answers should respect this and not argue with it. For example, someone asking for a quality synthetic leather jacket because they are vegan, should not be lectured in the answers with defenses of the animal products industry.

Generally speaking, a good model for appropriate behavior is that of existing reputable, non-profit, apolitical/bipartisan consumer advocacy organisations such as Consumer Reports. 

### Exclusions
These topics or types of posts would be out of scope:

- Questions about completely free products and services are off-topic
    * Products that are *normally* sold for money, but given free as a special promotion, are on-topic
- Certain type of products may be regulated. This site makes no additional restrictions, but users are responsible for following applicable law. Site admins reserve the right to comply with legal requirements as they see fit.
    * Ex: It is illegal to advertise tobacco products in some places.
    * Ex: Financial regulations may prevent some people from commenting on a company.

(I'm thinking about putting some stuff from the "rules" in here, like no astroturfing etc.)

### Special Features
These can all be grouped under an "articles" section, and we can use tags to distinguish each format.

* Buying guides: A comprehensive overview of the best products of a type, broken up by price ranges and class.
    * Ex: https://www.logicalincrements.com/ for computer parts.
    * When people need to buy an X, it's common to start by doing an inventory of what's available, what are the price points, major labels before picking one. This work is often redone by many people trying to buy X, so we can easily share it instead.
* Roundups: Suppose you can't choose between a shortlist of products, so you decide to buy all of them and see what works best. The results of this comparison can be shared to help future buyers save money.
* Individual reviews. Since the number of products out there is vast, it makes no sense to aim for a comprehensive set of reviews. Instead, it's best if the review has some general take home, such as about the brand or the class of product.
    * The feature would be for people who feel like sharing a product they have. For reviews *by request*, you would ask a question like "Does anyone have experience with product XYZ123 from Acme Corp?"

### Overlaps
- Questions about budgeting should go to a personal finance section
    * When purchasing a set or basket of related products, optimizing their total price is on-topic
    * Ongoing cost of ownership is on-topic
- Specific legal questions should go to a legal advice section. For example, if you want to sue a company over a specific situation and you want advice regarding your particular case.
    * General legal/policy questions, such as how returns are typically handled, are on-topic
- A friendly rivalry with various DIY-style communities :) I am a big fan of *DIY-over-consumerism*, and responding to product recommendation requests with DIY alternatives is allowed and encouraged. However details of how to implement the DIY solution should be moved to the DIY-focused site. Ideally, don't tell people that they can just build their chair instead of buying one - tell them to ask about it on the woodworking site.

Generally, many communities overlap with products, since there are few activities one can do without considering related products. There is an argument that the best place to ask what hiking boots to buy is a community of hikers. However, often other communities want to focus on discussing their interest and not the purchase of products related to it. By collecting all of them here, we can help keep those sites focused while also letting *shoppers* interact in one place. I don't think access to experts will be affected, because users of Codidact cross-post freely.