Auction House W/ Concepts

[SOUP!]

Auction House Concept

This is probably an idea that's been thrown around before by other people. Auctions have been pretty popular on this site, given there's a whole forum section dedicated to users posting their pets for bids. In my opinion, sometimes setting up auction posts and organizing them can seem very overwhelming. I figured something like this would make auctions easier and more accessible, as well as help with the flow of commerce on this site. I've always wanted a feature like this since joining CS, so I figured that I'd bring it to a semi-full concept to share with everyone!

I threw together some mock site pages for an auction house. Obviously, this is just my version of the idea. If this feature is ever actually added to the site, the CS team is free to do whatever they'd like with the layout/concept.

*Disclaimers:
•These are very rough concepts that I threw together in a couple of hours, so they don't reflect what a final concept would actually look like
•I do not know how code works, so whether or not any of these ideas are possible is totally unknown to me
•Please be respectful if you have any opinions about this concept

You can see the mock-ups below!
*Sorry about the quality, they got a little fried from uploading

Main Page:



This is what you'd see whenever you click on the link for the auction house. There would be some information about the page under the title, as well as three buttons for creating a new auction, managing already existing auctions, and managing active bids on other users' pets.
There would be a drop-down menu to sort the pets you're able to see in the auction house, which would be used to filter pets by newest auctions, popular auctions, pet rarity, pet species, the year the pet was released (although this may be finicky with re-releases), and wishlist pets.
Columns underneath would be organized by the pet up for auction, the rarity of the pet, the username of the auction host, and the time remaining on the auction. With the automatic pound timer being implemented into the site sometime this year, having a live countdown for auctions could potentially be a possibility! When countdowns are finished on an auction, the timer would be replaced with "expired", and the pet image would be grayed out. After this, no further bids would be submittable.
Clicking on a pet in the 'Pets for Auction' Column would bring you to the 'View Pet for Auction' Page, where you would be able to place a bid. The usernames next to the listed auctions would also be hyperlinks that would take you directly to the user's profile.
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Phew! That was a lot...
Anyways, onto the next page!

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View Pet for Auction:



This is what you'd see when clicking a pet listed on the main page. The pet up for auction would have its information front and center, just as it would usually be displayed while looking at pet groups. Underneath, like trading rules, the auction host can put their rules and preferences, similar to how forum posts are usually set up. At the top of the page is also a button to return to the Auction House's main page.
The live timer for the end of the auction would also be displayed on this page. Underneath the timer would be the button to initiate a bid. Details for how bidding actually works could be figured out at some point, but I'd imagine it'd be similar to setting up a trade.
Underneath the bid button would be where existing active bids could be viewed by other users. The bids would be sorted by their bid number, which would be issued in the order the bids were received. Next to the bid number would be the user's name, as well as the date and time the bid was submitted. On this page, usernames would be hyperlinked to make the bids viewable to anyone who wants to see them.
Auction hosts would also be able to pin their favorite bids to the top of the list, in order to keep track of who's in the lead.

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So that's the whole concept for now! What do you think?
Would this feature be useful for you? Do you think it would make auctioning more fun and accessible?
I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks about this idea! Feel free to share your thoughts!

Thanks if you've read this far! c:
I may continue to flesh out this concept in the future, but don't count on it lol

[bark]

I love the layout you showed, support! It would be easier to manage auctions.

[SOUP!]

Yippeee!! I'm so glad you like it! c: Thanks for the support!

[Rabid_Jaguar]

One small note - I would imagine that if a feature like this were implemented, the usernames wouldn't be displayed for who submitted each bid. If you link to a trade on CS, the usernames of the participants aren't visible. I believe this is a matter of privacy

Other than that, very nice concept! I imagine it might make it easier to search for higher-demand pets that people have for trade.

[SOUP!]

That's a really good point! Do you think that if just the auction host could see the usernames, it would still maintain the privacy? I can definitely see how having the usernames visible to everyone could become an issue. When I made this, though, I was thinking of how some pm communication would be needed for a feature like this. I think there could definitely be a way to work around this while still keeping the privacy aspect.

And yes exactly! It's so hard to find specific high-demand pets to trade for sometimes. I think this would make some parts of trading much easier! c:

[Snowpuppy]

Support! You said having the names visible to everyone could be an issue, so an option could be to allow the host to make usernames public to everyone, public to only them, or completely anonymous

[SOUP!]

Thanks so much! That may be a way around it Good idea! I'm also now realizing that the bid # could be the hyperlink to view posted bids rather than the username. This would also clear up some of that issue as well.

[Snowpuppy]

Thanks so much! That may be a way around it Good idea! I'm also now realizing that the bid # could be the hyperlink to view posted bids rather than the username. This would also clear up some of that issue as well.

Glad I could help!

[Pallastronomy]

I imagine this would be a really coding intensive project for Nick, but as a hypothetical long term project I’d say support!

[sesshy]

Support!
I actually love the idea of bids being automatically seen by other users, and I'm sure they'd just implement some sort of anon bid option or make it standard to auto-anon it for privacy sake.

My only concern lies with the functionality of it.
The implementation of this would be interesting because most sites operate auctions on a time-based, 'highest bidder' process. Creating a system that functions within the current forum standard of allowing users to choose a winner, or for auctions to end without a winner, sounds difficult (I don't code at all) so I'm curious whether this would functionally end up just being a giant listing of pet images with a trade link next to it.