Merge reviews?

BryanG · February 3rd, 2007, 04:12 PM

I have a duplicate product in my reviews database and both have reviews.

Is there a way to merge the two into one?

Chuck S · February 3rd, 2007, 08:20 PM

Well You can not merge products but your reviews you can reassign to another product if you wish like so

UPDATE rp_reviews SET product=newproduct WHERE product=oldproduct

BryanG · February 4th, 2007, 11:02 AM

Might be an idea for a future version.

ski-whiz · May 4th, 2007, 01:35 PM

Chuck, is there a way to prevent duplicate products from being posted??

given the exact same product, is there a way to prevent them? Sort of like duplicate emails being used in vbulletin. So review post would check to see if the product exists in the database...

Like a conditional, if "product name exists" then ......

I just don't know how to code it.

Chuck S · May 4th, 2007, 02:27 PM

what do you mean duplicates? People can name things anything they like. How would the program know something is a duplicate these are the things one must ponder when thinking about something like this

ski-whiz · May 4th, 2007, 02:34 PM

For example, if someone posts a product for "apples".

Well, another person comes along, and doesn't notice the product... So he posts a product for "apples". Now there are two exactly named products.

For another example, if I submitted a "product" for Marine Depot on your site reeftalk, it would let me.
http://www.reeftalk.com/reviews/showcat.php/cat/38

There's nothing that would prevent it from having more than one, unless you moderate every product. Which can be tough when you get a good number of reviews.

That's all I'm saying. No one wants more than one of the same product to be submitted.

Chuck S · May 4th, 2007, 02:41 PM

Who is to say though that a product named apples would be the same as another product named apples do you see the point I am making.

ski-whiz · May 4th, 2007, 03:11 PM

I can see your point. For example, the Viper forums that run review post. I'm sure they get a lot of duplicate stuff.

I guess I'll have to manually watch it.

Chuck S · May 4th, 2007, 05:32 PM

Yep thats why its near impossible to do

BryanG · May 13th, 2007, 11:37 AM

Would still be nice to have a way to merge reviews in the event that two products are the exact same, or possibly for something to come up as they are uploading it and say "There is already a product with this name at [this link]"...

I've got over 3,100 products and remembering which ones have already been put up isn't easy. And, when someone uploads 20-30 products at a time, it can be very time consuming to double check each one.

There isn't even any option at this point to even look for duplicate products unless I manually check through the list alphabetically.

Chuck S · May 13th, 2007, 12:10 PM

Well as I have already posted how does one tell a product is duplicated? It is virtually impossible as in what do you try and match? Filenames can match but pictures be totally different

BryanG · May 13th, 2007, 12:19 PM

What about if the manufacturer and product name are the same?

I can understand it would be impossible when you're talking about a specific product, but generally a single manufacturer is only going to make one of those specific products.

So, if you're talking about toasters, then a "Black and Decker Toaster" would be a specific product, so you wouldn't want someone to post another "Black and Decker Toaster" again...

Chuck S · May 13th, 2007, 12:25 PM

Okay but who to say that is the same product do you see what I mean here. Someone could be posting an entirely different product

What I am saying is there is absolutes and if there are no absolutes or safegards then you are basically coding a bug into the product.

BryanG · May 13th, 2007, 12:34 PM

Maybe just put a way to list "potential" duplicates with an option to merge or delete them (kind of like the product approval section)?

I can see your point, but the above would be a nice feature to have "just in case". Like I said, there's no way to tell at all right now if there are even any duplicates without going through the entire list of products and looking for them.

And if you do happen to run across them, there's no way to merge them if need be. The only way to do it is to manually edit the database.

BryanG · May 25th, 2007, 11:58 AM

Here's the query code just in case anyone wants to look for duplicate products in your database:

Code:

Content visible to verified customers only.

This will give you a list of any duplicate products.

David Bott · June 12th, 2007, 11:11 AM

I agree with the members above on both items. Checking for duplicates and also being able to merge the data if needed. We have run into this already and have only had the site open from this past Saturday, not even 4 full days.

At the very least if ReviewPost see the same product name, it should show the duplicate to the poster and ASK the poster if he still wants to post it or not as it may be duplicated. This would result in a choice being made that it may or may not be the same product.

Please, please add something like this in. And also a way to merge the data. (That seem like almost a must.)

David Bott · June 13th, 2007, 06:38 PM

Ran into 5 more of these with the movies that the member are entering. It really would be good to have it say something like... "This product seems to have already been entered into the system. Do you still care to submit it?" And may list the duplicate info.

Thanks