Which new features do you want the most?

1691 Replies
Anyanka said

The ability to easily report spam in the tasting notes and the discussion board. The current method is incredibly cumbersome, even requiring a separate account.

I don’t think I’ve encountered spam in tasting notes. How would you define spam in that context? Personal stuff rather than a tasting notes or something like advertisements?

Anyanka said

I’ve seen companies create profiles and post tasting notes as ads. I’ve also seen one tea company with about 5 fake profiles that gave tremendously high ratings and reviews to all of their teas.

Here’s a funny example:
http://steepster.com/Indianteacompany [don’t click the external company link]

Especially funny because they’re reviewing LIPTON of all things. Wow.

Anyanka said

I don’t think they’re really even a tea store because if you click the link, it’s virus city. So I guess they just picked a popular tea thinking they could compromise the most people.

Anyanka said

Here’s a new one that gives their tea a 100 rating and then goes on other similar teas and says they are not good and includes a link to their own tea. This kind of marketing doesn’t win over buyers, I just don’t get it.
http://steepster.com/Saffron%20Fusion

Jude said

Incredibly cumbersome to report spam? Just email jason at steepster.com and let him know about it. I send him links to duplicate company or tea entries whenever I run across them; recently even sent him some graphically obscene tasting note a troll had posted, which was a bizarre surprise on this site. He always responds quickly.

Would be even easier if you’re following each other.

Anyanka said

We’re going to continue to disagree because I still think it is “incredibly cumbersome”.

Clicking the ‘report anything inappropriate’ link on this page sends the user to an external site that requires a separate login. Most sites similar to this (forums, etc.) have an integrated reporting/flagging capability. Sure, users can leave the site, log in to their email, compose an email indicating what the problem is and where it can be found – many steps more than a simple flagging/reporting link and too many steps for most people. Clicking a flag and simply picking why from a list of reasons or typing an explanation like ‘spam’ is easier than the current alternatives. The reports can also be weighted by the number of people who’ve done the reporting, so the worst items get cleaned up first.

I am going to follow Jason so I can message him if he follows me back, thank you.

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I thought I saw this but option to search tea companies as well as tea types would be nice. Like being able to view what all teas a companies sales and stuff.

If you click on the Teas button up top in the black banner, it’ll bring you to the highest rated teas. Over to the right side of the screen there are a bunch of letters representing the first letter in a tea company’s name, click on those and you can search for what company you want and there will be a listing of their teas that they have on Steepster there.

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James R said

I think it would be really helpful to be able to sort tea reviews by date. As tea harvests change by season, it would be nice to sort by most recent review.

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Is there already a way to go back and see all the tasting notes that I “liked” or all the ones that another used “liked”? Along the same lines, is it currently possible to see all of my posts in the discussions at a glance? I am still kind of new here and don’t know all the features that currently exist.

Kaylee said

I echo all of those wishes!

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A mobile app, of course!

And, a bottom line feature. A lot of people feel the need to review their day rather than their tea. I just want to know if I want to drink it or not. I don’t care that you drank it after you took your six kids to school and cause it’s raining outside and you’re feeling deflated. That’s what blogs are for, not reviews.

Bottom line, would you recommend it? Is it good? BOOM. Short and simple.

That’s generally what the numbers are for.

It doesn’t bother me any. Most of those type of reviews are pretty brief with the blog aspect and the reviewer often highlights the tea-specific portion in some obvious manner (though, not always).

In a way, I often find the extra non-tea info useful. Sometimes it is nice to know the kind of mood a person was in when they chose that particular blend or if they were feeling physically unwell, etc. That way I have an idea if its a good-mood type of tea or rainy-day type of tea, etc. Sure, this is all very subjective, but so is the tea review itself. My mother said she also likes the short personal additions to the reviews. All within reason of course (We shouldn’t be writing a novel-length biographies).

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Mobile app and an alert when someone tags us in a review. With the amount of swapping a lot of us do, it would be nice to be made aware when someone we swapped with drinks what we sent. I find that part of things interesting.

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Not sure if this has been suggested but I’d rather not sift through 40+ pages to check. Lol. So sorry if this is a duplicate suggestion.

A ‘this tea is available for swap’ feature would be awesome. Like the options to add to cupboard or shopping list, but it puts it on a swap list instead.
I would love an option like that ‘cause so many of the teas I have in my cupboard are small sample sizes that aren’t sutible for swapping ‘cause there isn’t enough of them. But I don’t want to remove them from my cupboard to avoid offering them for swapping because either I have yet to drink/review them or I just don’t want to go searching for them all over again. Lol.

Jude said

+1. Well put.

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Angrboda said

A lot of people like to pay attention to which harvest/year their tea is from because some teas can be highly different from year to year or harvest to harvest, but there doesn’t seem to be any system as to how this information is added to the database entry. Some people have put it in the company description which just then becomes a muddle because people use the same entry for lots of different harvests/years. Others have added the year to the name of the tea which sometimes makes the entry name a bit unwieldy at a glance, especially when not everybody then uses the same naming scheme.

What if we had a specific entry field for this information like we have with the name and the company and the picture? So that when we filled out the form for adding a new tea it said,
Name
Company
Year/Harvest
Company description

Obviously it would either have to be a non-required field like the company description is now, or there could perhaps be a little tickybox for when it was unknown information.

That would make the naming scheme for these teas much more systematic and it would be easier to find the correct entry.

Jude said

I agree that it would be great to be able to separate by year/harvest, however there are already many duplicate tea entries, even without the year being added (I’ve been routinely sending them to Jason for cleanup but it’s continuous – people apparently aren’t immediately finding the tea they want to rate so they’re adding it). Seems that this would be exacerbated by adding a lot of new tea entries by year. How about this alternative: to add a year/harvest field for the rating of a tea which could then be sorted by users when desired.

Zeks said

I suggest adding a combobox both to the tea’s page and for tea note page that will let the user select the year they are adding/reading/reviewing. Unless something is selected in it – the user will be shown full spectrum of tasting notes, otherwise – notes for particular harvest

Jude said

Yeah, Zeks, even better.

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I’d like a way to find posts I’ve written! I can’t find some old posts that I want to reread for the information that others have given…I never subscribed to it at the time (since I get ALOT of email notifications if I do) but now I’m looking for a way to find that thread I started…ugh! It would be a nice feature to have to see past posts!

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1 word. Pleasemakeanapp.

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