Which new features do you want the most?

1691 Replies
Adele said

I’m new here and really enjoying the website, but I’ll admit that I haven’t read all 30 pages of suggestions. One thing I think would be a great addition to the tasting notes are optional additives – milk, sugar, honey, lemon, etc… I would love to see how other people take their tea and which teas lend themselves better to what.

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Azzrian said

On ratings. Its really not that different on any site that allows ratings. I may purchase a movie, or a electric tool on Amazon and love it where as someone else may find fault with the tool, it may break on day three due to their misuse which they fail to mention, the movie is very subjective to one’s taste, etc. Ratings are simply a guideline, not gospel. I do agree that leaving comments is important because at least then we can see the perspective of the person rating. I need to get better with this myself. However I think one thing that would be great is if we could get an added feature – which would be to check how much experience one has with teas. Myself, I am new to loose teas so I fear my ratings are not going to be as astute, complete, or complex as others. I also fear that over time, with more experience, I may revisit some teas and either like them more, or less, depending on how my own taste evolves and what I learn. I would like to easily have the ability to notate with my ratings and reviews that I am a newbie so that maybe others can understand where my point of view comes from. Then again I suppose people may feel they are more or less experienced than they are – then we are back yet again to everything being in perspective.

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Good points, Azzrian.

And I like your idea of adding a feature to ‘qualify’ the rating a person makes about a tea by their experience, but that’s subjective, too. I’ve been drinking tea and writing reviews for about 8 months now, but some peeps are brand new to this site and write much more in-depth reviews that I do (for a myriad of reasons). So I wouldn’t to use time as a factor, for example, of ‘experience’.

I am with you on this: “Myself, I am new to loose teas so I fear my ratings are not going to be as astute, complete, or complex as others.” Still, my reviews have evolved in the time I began writing them, and I hope they will continue to evolve. One interesting thing to do is to look at a person whom has been around awhile (maybe, like, at least a year) and look at some of their recent reviews and compare them to their earliest reviews. On some, I can clearly see a difference. And, with regards to your own reviews, you can always opt to add another tasting note at any time to add any new information, experiences etc. that have changed about a tea you already wrote a review for.

I sometimes note that I am a newbie on a particular class of tea, or type of tea, but that’s up the the person reading my review to look for that. I base my opinion on a tea much more on the written parts, and on how many reviews have been written about a tea (there’s got to be something to a tea that has 50+ reviews, wouldn’t you say?). Anyway, just my thoughts. :)

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Hello all! I am loving this community so much and wanted to throw out a few suggests. One, could there be an improvement for mobile devices (Specifically iOS) on rating a tea? the slider bars for steep time and temp are very very difficult to accurately maneuver. Second, it would be nice to have an eye candy thread, there we could post pictures.. of delicious tea and I know some of us have beautifully designed tea accessories. Lastly, sometimes I wish I could search for a specific type of tea (like Dragon well) and have it list by highest rated.
In response to the “qualify” idea, I think the thought behind this is wonderful, we all know some ratings are more informative than others. It would be kind of nice to upvote or downvote a rating to make the communities most informative submissions towards the top.

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Angrboda said

The blue colour of the threads with unread replies in them is very very pale, I think. I find it difficult to get a quick idea of which are blue and which are white at a glance, especially if there isn’t a white coloured thread nearby to compare with. I would greatly appreaciate it if that blue colour could be slightly darker so that it was easier to see a difference.

And while I’m at it, some sort of little marker or something to indicate which replies to a forum post are new since last time we looked would be nice as well. Especially when the threads grow into several pages, it would be quicker to find the new replies.

I second this first point!
A slightly darker blue would be very helpful. :)

Ian said

I couldn’t agree more with the second! Sometimes I spend 10 minutes looking for replies on really long threads (like the swap thread) and a marker would be so helpful!

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I’d die for an iPhone/iPad app. I understand that a lot of people have iPhones… but I don’t, so iPad compatibility would be incredible.

That and the ability to toggle “gong-fu” brewing style in the tasting note section.

Maya said

Yes please! Or, even simplier, a mobile version of the website would be ok at the beginning.
Oh, I know youu can make mobile apps from web application, so a mobile website could be made into an app very easily so it would not be wasted.

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Scott B said

I apologize if any of this has been mentioned before, but I don’t feel up to reading a 31 page thread.

Anyhow – It would be great if the results from text searches had the teas number rating listed as well as the number of reviews-and even better, those results sortable by rating. For example, when I type a search for “Lapsang Souchong”, I get 235 results with absolutely no inkling as to the Steepster score on any of them. I don’t want to have to click on 235 teas to find say, the top 10 or top 25 in the results.

Another thing that would be nice is to make a members’ tea reviews searchable. Many members here have hundred of reviews and a searchable review function would be nicer than having to go through page after page of reviews looking to see if they have reviewed a particular tea (or going through dozens of reviews of that tea looking to see if that particular member has reviewed it).

Not sure if these are the kinds of things that would slow the server down, but they would be nice.

I almost forgot – A “reply with quote” feature would be amazing so that new replies to older thread comments could easily be found and read. For example, if you wanted to comment on something that someone said on page 15 of this thread, you could click “reply with quote” on their post and a quote of their post would appear in smaller type at the top of your post on the most recent page. I’m sure that I am not the only person who has given up trying to find the “new” post on multi-page threads.

Kittenna said

Yes – I totally agree on somehow linking a member’s reviews to their account so one can easily locate specific reviews by a certain person. In fact, that would be incredibly useful for locating my own reviews – sometimes, I know I have logged a tea and want to check on my awesome steeping parameters from the last time, and I have to click through pages of reviews of a popular tea in order to find it. (Is there already a shortcut for this??)

Scott B said

Indeed, anyone who has several pages or more of reviews could benefit from their own reviews being searchable.

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I would really like to be able to sort the reviews of a particular tea by date, so, most recently posted first (I guess you’d have to go by the date on the last one if there are multiple tasting notes), and oldest last. Sometimes a new review can be more valuable than an old review that has lots of ‘likes’ (especially for the more ‘seasonal’ teas).

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I would love to be able to mark certain discussions as favorites. And being able to “like” discussion posts would be helpful also. Another thing that would be helpful is being able to make notes on our teas without having to share it. I might really like a tea but don’t want to spend 10 mins describing every flavor I taste. Just to be able to say, “yum my fav so far. Buy more!” and not worry about tea describing etiquettes would be grand. Thank you for listening!

Kittenna said

I don’t think you really have to worry about ‘tea describing etiquette’ :) Everyone has their own style of note-writing, and although many people (including me) tend to be quite verbose, at least in my opinion it’s perfectly acceptable to write ‘yum my fav so far. Buy more!’. As an example, TeaEqualsBliss often writes quick notes on her backlogs.

Thanks Krystaleyn!

I totally agree with Krystaleyn.

Anny Oxidant & the Tea Bullie: you are free to post as much or as little as you want, in whatever format you want, and as frequently (or infrequently) as you want!

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I don’t think anyone is going to look down on you even if you just post, “Yum. Like.”

I think there would be complications in marking discussions as favorites (or like-ing a post), but I can see a benefit to the ability to do that (almost like bookmarking a particular webpage)

Thanks SimpliciTEA.
Does anyone know when an update will take place?

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Scott B said

If reviews could be sorted by steeping parameters-So many times I look up a tea and all I want to do is see how other people brewed the tea and I have to wade through all the reviews where people don’t bother to fill out the parameter info.

Teas in common-If you click on a person’s profile, it could show you certain teas that you both have in the cupboard or have both reviewed.

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