State of Steepster

I actually started out my tea journey on Wordpress. I journaled about tea there for a year before I actually left Wordpress for Steepster. Something felt very unsatisfying about it… the lack of community. Maybe that isn’t what everyone else wants in their tea journaling journey, but that is what I was wanting: other people to chat with about tea, and see what they were drinking, and read about their journeys, too.

I only ever had two people that were reading me on Wordpress and occassionally leaving comments, and they were only there because they dropped by from my other Wordpress site because they also liked tea. No one from the “wide web” ever just happened to “stumble upon it.” Steepster was a focused place of all tea-lovers and brought people with my same interests together. For three months I actually did my Wordpress blog and Steepster simutaneously, then decided, “Ya, keeping the blog isn’t worth it; Steepster is the way to go for what I want.” That said, yes, I still “Wrote” all my content on my computer and saved it before posting it so I’d always have a backup in case I ever needed to move my data (and it’s always smart to keep a backup!), but the community is what has kept me around, despite the many, many, many problems.

Moving back to Wordpress would just bring back that lack of focused community. Even if we all had Wordpress blogs and were following each other, I still feel like we would be disjointed and scattered. And I’m not a fan of “social media” sites like Facebook/Twitter/Instagram… I never have been. I’ve found another good tea journaling site, but again, it lacks the community element of following friends and keeping up on their drinking/thoughts, so it isn’t quite what I want… in this, I feel Steepster is unique. Maybe it is that element that those of us that have put up with the lack of updates and upkeep have stuck around.

If it’s true that Steepster is for sale, I hope somebody that’s passionate about tea picks it up and really turns it around. This website gets over 1 million pageviews a month so it’s not a lack of visitors that’s hurting it but rather neglect by its owners. There’s so much potential here if only admins would recommit themselves to it.

But, one has to wonder how many of those hits are just the spam. If you check the Explore tab tons of spam accounts are being made every minute, so without any frontline spam filters or taking that problem seriously, it may be hard to get a good grasp. And now we don’t even have any active admins with the power to delete spam over a month old, so it just sits there stinking up the forums… the neglect really is sad. If it isn’t going to be sold/handed over to someone else, at the very least the moderators on the site need more authority than just being able to delete an account less than a month old as spam.

I know that Jason has been active here in clearing out spam within the last several months. I could be wrong, but I also think he is the one who controls the Steepster twitter account. I have no clue whether or not Ricky is still around. I recall seeing a post or two from him within the last year or so, but I’m not sure how involved he is in site administration and/or development at this point. I think Jack left ages ago due to his writing career taking off.

Interesting. I’ve only ever heard Jason’s name bantered about. Never heard of Ricky or Jack (though might be interested to see who Jack is and what he writes). Well, I guess, JASON IF YOU ARE READING THIS I WILL DONATE TO ANTI-SPAM COSTS.

I don’t do Twitter so I don’t know how to contact him there. But for real, if he isn’t into running the site anymore, lets get him to pass it on to those who do. If anyone knows the best way to get his attention, here or otherwise, I think this is going to be the best way to save this site.

The original Steepster team was Jack, Jason, and Mike. I always forget about Mike and have no clue if he’s around either. I don’t recall seeing any posts from him in the discussion forums during my time here and noticed that his tea log has not been updated in around 5 years, so who knows if he’s still kicking around behind the scenes. I’m pretty sure there was another administrator named Ricky at one point.

I’ve been trying for a month just to simply get the ability that some members have to delete spam accounts. I had been e-mailing Jason saying yes, yes, yes, I want this ability, just to try to help the site in the tiny way that I can. I still don’t have this ability. So… good luck?

For the record, I’d also gladly monetarily support the site, but I also get the impression there is no one behind it that cares that much about it as us active members do.

Which is so disappointing and kind of baffling to me. I mean, you created this amazing, one of a kind tea community, watched it flourish and then… just ignore it and watch it die? Like, you don’t even want to put it out there to the members, “Hey, our lives dictate that we can’t keep up with this website but we’d love to have it live on with our members and community so here is what we are proposing,” kind of thing? I don’t get it myself. It is just frustrating to know that there are people who want to keep it going and improve on it but there isn’t a way to make that happen with no one at the helm.

What I have never understood about this situation is why the admins have been so reticent to expand the duties of the moderators because, quite frankly, the abilities granted to the moderators are too limited. I also don’t understand why there has seemingly been a lack of willingness to bring in some of the more established, active, and dedicated members for basic administrative duties. Even those of us who do not have an IT background could be useful in marketing and promoting the site, maintaining spam control, performing basic maintenance tasks, etc. I know implementing some sort of captcha program as a way of slowing down spammers has been brought up numerous times, but there has been seemingly no willingness to look into it or implement it. It’s always been a get back to you guys later kind of thing. I’ve seen Steepster’s lack of development and maintenance mentioned and/or mocked on other sites. To me, it doesn’t look like this site has been updated much in at least five years. I have long harbored the suspicion that the administrative team has fallen apart and mostly moved on to other projects.

That’s the exact impression I’ve always had too, eastkyteaguy, and I’ve had that impression since I joined back in 2017. Whenever something was mentioned in the bug thread, it was always, “We’ve noted that” or “we know about that” or other members mentioning they have the same problem and never an actual fix to the issue. Everything is in a perpetual state of “that’s broken right now” without any show that anything is “being worked on” to resolve the issue. We had to come up with our own work-around for the tea reviews being stuck in the mobile view… which is still a problem. The 503 timeouts continue to be a problem and cause issues with the PM system, the forums, and even logging in. Tea entries can’t be merged. The answer is always, “That’s broken right now.” There is never an ETA, any sort of updates, a “we’re working on that”… it’s obvious any development was long abandoned. And I suspect the mass amount of new accounts being made every minute from the spam probably has a lot to do with many of the problems, that has to be a massive server strain… and rather than impliment front-line tactics against it, it’s just, “delete it when you see it.” That isn’t really a solution. Then if you even want to help delete it… good luck. How long can it possibly take to flip the switch on an account to grant that access? Oh, right. That “feature” is probably “broken” as well. That’s always the case, and no one wants to actually “fix” anything.

I agree with you on all counts. Most forums/sites/etc. have a full team with different levels that do different things. We may not be web devs, but can’t we do something to help? This is ridiculous…

The saddest part is that if the site is so “broken” they can’t be bothered to post on/use the forums (I know of at least some members who can’t because they are getting 503 timeouts when they try… you know, that problem that has been going on for months that no one will fix?) Twitter would be an option for posting updates, yet no one uses the Steepster Twitter for this purpose. Any time Steepster went down, I always checked there first to try to find out what was going on. Why was the site down? Would it be back? Approx. when? Most places post stuff like that on Twitter. “Site is down guys! We don’t know why or when it’ll be back but we’ll keep you posted!” or “We are doing server maintenance, site will be back up tomorrow!” Just keep folks in the loop. With Steepster, several people would be tagging them on Twitter asking what is up, and it could still be a day or two to find out any kind of update/news about a site outage.

Bustle article about thermoses? Wonder if that’s spam too lol. Or maybe using their previous venture (Steepster) that they’ve given up on but has a following to promote their new business… In thermoses…?

mtchyg, yeah it was a link to some article on Bustle about the three best thermoses for tea. It didn’t look like the work of a spammer. It looked like someone with access to the account actually tweeted out the link to that article. I’m guessing the twitter is still active.

Not sure of the mechanics of Twitter precisely but you should send them this discussion link on Twitter haha

Hi! And awesome! Now if only our input was being seen by the appropriate people we could crowd source this problem together!

Just checked it out, it’s definitely livelier than Steepster right now. I see some familiar users on it too…tea bloggers, tea companies, and former Steepster/Teachat members which is good. I might just set up an account there too.

It is quite active but it’s only laid out for discussion whereas Steepster has tasting notes. I really like the tasting notes. I used to search a tea and read the reviews if I was thinking of buying it.

Yep, I would ALWAYS check other tea reviews on Steepster before I bought any tea. Steepster is essential in so many ways for me.

That all sounds accurate to me, eastkyteaguy. As I said, I had some contact with Jason at the beginning of the month as I was trying to get the access to delete spam to help out the site in that capacity. After replying to this e-mail saying I wanted to do this, I heard nothing in reply. That first e-mail was on April 1st. I mentioned that in this thread, on April 16th, about how I had been trying to get that access to help out since the first and still hadn’t received a response in half a month. Suddenly, I got an e-mail back… which gave me the impression that Jason was “lurking” this thread since the timing was a bit coincidental there. I replied once more saying I still wanted to help with the spam problem, and that response was on April 16. Here it is the 19th, and I haven’t heard anything else. I still don’t have that capability on my account. I haven’t had any other contact.

Mastress Alita, I meant to message you and say that I have found a workaround for some of the 503 timeouts. I noticed that about 50% of the time, clearing my history and cache made it easier for me to log in. When that doesn’t work, I’ll click one of the top tabs first and then try to log in from there. It still doesn’t work all the time, and I suppose it could be pure coincidence, but it’s something I guess.

If I clear my history and cache, then I can’t log in, as that “forces” me to log out, and then the “log in” box always gives in a 503 time out over and over again in a cycle and I can’t get back into the site. The only way I can log back in again is by using the “Google” log in, not the “log in box”. Once I’m logged in, I can stay logged in keeping the tab open, and just hope I don’t need to clear my history/cache which would force another log out.

Sometimes if I get really backed up, my Dashboard gets to a point where it stops loading and I have to manually load up everyone individually off my Following lists to catch back up. Every now and then a Like doesn’t stick but not frequently. I don’t have issues with disappearing/duplicating comments that I have seen. I get 503 timeouts very, very frequently trying to use the PM system. My friend (account name Todd/toddashi) can’t access the PMs at all from the website; he only can from the e-mail notifications that he has a PM, somehow the “direct link” in the e-mail will load, but if he tries to load his PM box within Steepster, it will never work for him.

Mastress Alita, that dashboard thing is strange. That has never happened to me. I was having the issue with the pm system that Todd was having a month or so ago, but then it seemed to suddenly resolve itself. I have no clue what was going on there. Daylon sent me a couple messages and I was trying to respond, but I just couldn’t. Then it was fine and working normally. Also, I think you are probably one of the few people to have any semblance of contact with Jason recently. I haven’t seen him post anything since like January or February (could be wrong about that).

It is a bit surprising that amongst the (very few) Stickied threads isn’t a Welcome/Introduction thread where new people can go to introduce themselves to the community, talk about where they are currently with tea, and start to find folks to follow/follow back to start building up that sense of community, because honestly, it is only the community here on Steepster that I love so much I want to stick with it and stay, the people here are so great. I imagine someone new wouldn’t know where to go and might feel out of their league, and most forums have an easy-to-find “welcome” spot. Here the first impression is usually spam.

As no one has the ability to sticky threads, it doesn’t really matter much, any thread of such capacity being formed for that function would just constantly get buried every morning under the overnight spam-flood. And any thread like that would also constantly have to be cleaned of spam, too. Sad situation…

If nothing else, I’ve been taking this situation to try to find those users I didn’t know about that have been posting here and get them added to my list. I joined in 2017, and since the “featured members” lists haven’t been updated in 3-7 years, it was worthless for me to try to use it to find the active users on Steepster when I joined.

I am sorry to hear you got ripped off by a Steepsterite! That is not the usual way here. I hope any future experiences you have here will be more uplifting!

You are aware that you can follow people and then stick to only looking at your personal dashboard in order to only view tea reviews by people who write in the manner you prefer? I personally love all reviews I read on here, be they about strictly the tea, or largely a personal blog of sorts. I believe it adds tremendously to the community feeling. This site is not just a collection of reviews, but a community based around sharing tea experiences. I’m sorry you don’t feel that way, but the style of review here is not restricted, therefore it is entirely appropriate to include whatever one wishes when reviewing a tea. It’s unfortunate that you felt you needed to make rude comments about me and my friends; your opinion is your own but the nastiness is unnecessary.

The “snobbiness” presented by many of the tea drinkers on other tea forums/Reddit is part of why I have never really felt “welcome” there, while I never felt ostracized for what I drank, how I drank, or how I chose to talk about my tea thoughts on Steepster. The community here was always very open and welcoming and had far less of that “holier than thou” attitude I find many tea drinkers seem to have in other parts of the web. I had a bad month a few months ago, and I found more kind words from my Steepster friends than just about anywhere else, which meant so much during that time. Things are more personal here, and feel more friendly as a result; I feel I know the people on my Dashboard as more than just a list a names; I start to know their tea preferences, their interests and hobbies, where they are in life, and those things play into the tea journey. The variety of different styles of tea logs is what, for me, makes them so interesting to read. Tea reviews — of any style, from highly technical to highly personal — contribute to this site. Spam, on the other hand, contributes nothing.

I’m very sorry to hear that you had a bad swapping experience; I personally have only had positive ones so I can only imagine how awful that must have felt. Hopefully it was more of a reflection of the person you swapped with over the community as a whole, though.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, some people “batch” their tasting notes and post a large quantity of them during their free time or during a set day during the week, rather than space them out throughout the week – so what you may have been experiencing were days were some people were emptying out their “queue” of compiled tasting notes rather than actually drinking that large of a quantity of teas in one day.

Personally, I love when people write a combination of actual review/tea content and personal content; it adds to my feeling of community. I also know that, since I largely use my own tasting notes as a personal reference, that sometimes sharing real life associations (such as what I was doing when I was drinking the tea or the state of mind/mood I was in) can help me remember the tea in the future or reflect on why I might have experienced it a different way that time compared to another.

My ideal Steepster dashboard is a mixture of all review types; that way I get my fill of community interaction and tea education.

I had to have a long think about whether or not I should respond here, but I ultimately felt that I had to. First, allow me to state that I remember you. You were the first person to follow me here on Steepster and also gave me my first positive feedback when I started posting tea reviews. I still appreciate that. Now, that being said, let me ask you this: did you really feel that rudely sniping about the contributions of some of the more active users was necessary? Yeah, this site has fallen off, but rather than only showing up to trash the content generated by a particular group of users, why not start contributing the kind of content you think is more appropriate? There is no reason you can’t be the change you wish to see. I understand that you may prefer a certain type of content, but as has been pointed out previously, you can choose who you follow and it’s not like you have to read everything posted by everyone or follow everyone. You are free to determine your own experience, and if you follow users whose content you don’t like, sorry, but that’s on you. Again, this has been said, but there are no set guidelines pertaining to the actual content of tasting notes. People are free to treat them as a straight-up review, as more of a personal blog entry, something in between, or whatever. Also, it sucks that someone ripped you off. I’m sorry about that, but changing your username and unfollowing everyone over that and your own annoyance over the users you follow/notice and the content you choose to pay attention to seems extreme to me, almost as if you held the entire community accountable for a combination of one misfortune and your choice in the content you follow and process. In my opinion, that was neither fair nor mature. Not all of us are the person who wronged you or the people who annoy you. And if you couldn’t or wouldn’t make that distinction in the first place, wouldn’t/won’t tailor your experience to your preferences, and won’t generate the type of content you think is most appropriate for this site, why stick around at all, and why go to the trouble of criticizing the contributions of some of the people who still clearly care about this place and are willing to put in the work to make it more viable? Again, that seems immature, not to mention petty. It’s also a total waste of time and energy.

I am still around and I agree. I need to get back on track. The new duties at work mean long hours and I don’t have much time in the evenings. I need to do some stuff on the weekends.