1) they should show us pictures beforehand so we can decide what we want
2) once it's in your cart, it should be locked for some period of time the way ticketmaster does it.
Then some jerk will add a bunch to their cart and decide which one's he wants. I think this is the fairest way of doing it, and I assume many people will agree. You just have to be quick.
I disagree that quickness is a measure of fairness. It makes no sense to have an item pulled out from under you during purchase.
I'm truly disappointed here; I had exactly the one I wanted and by the time I checked out it was gone.
If our goal is to be fair in the sense that everyone has a uniform chance of buying a key, there are better ways: raffles, order numbers / waitlists, etc. batched sales, auctions, etc.
-R
I will have to ask everyone to take their opinions of fairness and take them to this thread,
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=53373.0
...nevermind
Binge, it's very heartening to hear you are working to resolve issues for fans, and trying to improve things. I can imagine it is very difficult to create a reasonable user experience for you as well.
In this case I hoped to buy 2 caps; one for myself and one for Sed8op8 b/c I know sed wants one, and being stuck on 3G for the sale seemed like a real bummer. We didn't talk about it, I didn't mention it to sed. It just seemed like a nice thing to do in the moment. And I had them but ended up with nothing.
My suggestions above assume the goal of uniform purchasing opportunity. If uniformity is not a goal, that's totally fine. I suspect that fans who assume that uniformity is the goal (as I did) feel very frustrated by process oddities (like caps disappearing from their carts). Conversely, fans who assume it's a matter of chance or speed may feel less frustrated because their experience matches their expectations.
It is worthwhile to consider explicitly the distribution you want, and to assess whether the process achieves that distribution. Let your fans know that information, and there might be less frustration out there.
Thanks for all your effort! I love your work, and am very glad to hear you are working on improving things for your fans.
-R