State of Steepster
I would suggest to stop posting here and stop deleting the spams. See what is going to happen in few months later?
I am probably one of those pesky women and nevertheless i persist. Don’t follow me if you don’t want to hear about my cat dying, my new job, my story sale, or the funny thing my kid said. Because all of that is me, and it goes into my notes. Where I am in my life and what is happening with me at any given time is part of my tea experience and Imma gonna record it for me. If others find it interesting, great and if not… it’s a free
Internet.
Which is all a much less politic and more self centered way of saying what Roswell said. If it was only about the tea, not about the people, I probably wouldn’t have stuck around.
I only started on here back in Decemeber and already I have fallen away. I don’t know, maybe it was the constant spam, maybe it was the site errors, maybe it was the ranking shilling by some companies. But I just got a bad taste in my mouth. Also, for a while there, I felt a constant need to review a tea every time I tried a new one. After a bit, it started to get to be a chore to try new teas because of it. Now, I have tried several new teas lately and not posted anything. I will try and post reviews if I get around to it, but I no longer feel obligated to constantly review tea. Again, I’m not sure what of the above it was that soured me to this site but something did.
Reviews definitely should be something that you do because you want to and not because you feel like you need to; sorry to hear that I began to feel that way for you. I really do hope you’re able to find a balance that works best for you – I enjoyed reading about your tea journey and foray into companies outside of Adagio. Nothing against Adagio; exploration is good though!
Just as a note – I enjoy your reviews and hope you continue to post, however frequently or infrequently works for you!
Your tea log should always be something that is thoughtful and meaningful to you, so you definitely don’t want to log if it isn’t enjoyable. I have enjoyed your tea journey too! I usually only log a tea the first time I try it, but sometimes because of that thing called life, I may not get to it on that first cuppa. I’ll check and if I’ve never logged it before and have the time and feel in the mood, then I’ll record my feelings and impressions about it. I don’t tend to log a tea again unless something changes and I feel a need to note it for myself (better with different steeping parameters or prepared a different way?) or sometimes I’ll revisit something a year later just to see if my feelings/palate has changed. But I feel you with the constant spam/site errors/rank shilling, as those are all things that drive me crazy, too.
I enjoy your notes as well. But I also get that logging can start to feel like a chore. I often take breaks when that happens and just enjoy my tea and other peoples’ notes!
Awww, thanks guys. I needed that encouragement after the [MULTIPLE EXPLETIVES REDACTED] day I had today. No really, at one point I sat down with my mothers carton of ice cream and a spoon and just started shoveling. My parent’s are sitting there staring at me like “Umm… Honey? Don’t you think this is bad for the blood sugar? Uhh… Remember you have diabetes???” And I just kept shoveling. It wasn’t even to self harm, it was basically very destructive self-comfort. Eventually they took the carton off of me and told me to have some gourmet cheese instead. So yeah, I needed those words of kindness today. Thanks all.
Gonna try to breath some new life into the discussion board and get those spam topics off the main page all in one go ;)
Interesting reading from all of you. My recent absence has been due to the unexpected death of my sister rather than lack of interest in your reviews. (Stuff like that just throws the whole world out of whack.)
As a long-timer, I think what has kept me interested and active is the incredible and interesting variety of people who contribute to reviews. Some of you are incredibly scientific; you weigh and measure and analyze and I am in awe of your preciseness. Some of you, like me, tie your tea reviews to mood, weather, what socks you are wearing, and what’s going on in your world. Both types of reviews fascinate me, and if one doesn’t, we just quietly move on.
I’m a geezer, a bookworm, and a word person, so the well-written, quirky, hilarious written reviews that have appeared regularly on Steepster appeal to me far more than other platforms. I guess my encouragement to regulars would be to keep posting, stay friendly, and ignore the minor irritations. I’ll try to crawl out of my hole and share a little soon. There’s an interesting bag of leaves brought to me from Chinatown/Chicago that I may need a little help identifying :)
One other multi-year observation: quantity and frequency of reviews are cyclical. Traffic does drop off noticeably during the spring and summer months—time to play outside!
Again, I’m so sorry for your loss! Thank you for pointing out the lovely difference of tasting notes: the scientific and the moody. I also figured the Steepster traffic MIGHT be down because it’s now Spring.
Continued prayers for you, gmathis! Take your time, and it is good to know you are here!
Actually I would think tea reviews would increase in spring considering most tea is spring tea!
For the tea drinkers who very heavily drink straight/traditional tea it probably does bump up a bit; but the predominant reviewing group of tea drinkers on Steepster is still flavoured tea drinkers and more casual tea drinkers (even though the site has been slowly shifting to more straight tea drinkers for a while) the Spring tea harvest doesn’t effect them the same way. So you see the review spike in the fall/winter when they’re drinking an increased amount of hot beverages because of the weather.
For what it’s worth, Jason and/or one of the moderators definitely were on the site at some point today – there were several discussion threads earlier that I couldn’t clear out because the accounts were a month(+) old that have now been removed…
Yeah, I noticed that too. I was wondering if only the mods had the power to remove the older spammers.
To Jason and all: I personally am not chiding you guys for not being on top of things. Life will get in the way of Steepster sometimes. But many of us just don’t want to see Steepster fail. I recognize the work Steepster has been all these years!
I suppose it depends on your meaning of “moderator”. Like, I’ve got “mod powers” in the sense that I’m able to remove spam – but only if it’s less than a month old. After that, I’m SOL & the same is true for others with spam zappy abilities. Though, “Moderators” in the sense of the Steepster team (Jason and others) can remove any spam…
Also adding that I am very appreciate of Jason & team! I love Steepster, and appreciate the hard work and effort that went in to building it as well as recognize how challenging the up keep likely is. That is part of why many of us want to help as best we can in maintaining it.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure if there are “tiers” of mods. I can remove spam too, but I wasn’t sure if there were others that had slightly more powers than me, yet slightly less powers than Jason and crew, if that makes sense. haha.
I was told I’d get the “within one month” spam removal abilities too, and here it is nearly one month since that exchange started and my account still hasn’t been switched over. Guess I’m the only one not in the club. I’ve pretty much given up hope at this point.
Ah well, nice to see the “older than one month” spam has finally been deleted, thank you. It really is an eyesore on the boards.
@Mastress Alita – I wasn’t around when mod powers were being handed out, so I am also unable to do anything. Haven’t asked, though, to be honest!
I actually have e-mails where I agreed to the terms and was told it would be granted, then it never was, that is why I feel upset. Especially since I was just trying to help out. This is why I stopped posting spam links to the Spammers on Steepster thread. I just felt like they just don’t care.
I am late to this discussion. A couple of years ago, i dropped off a lot of forums and pretty much went cold turkey from social media sites. I have never had much interest in Facebook. I just needed a break to focus my attention on a few things. I am middle-aged, and I miss the sense of community that we used to have with old school technologies like listservs (what’s that the youngsters say), BB forums, etc. I have lifelong friends from my early days on a fly fishing listserv. We met in person. It wasn’t just cyber. It seems most of my hobbies are extremely vertical niche as they say in the business world. One of those hobbies is ornamental penmanship. It’s having a resurgence these days, but still a small group. That group has also migrated mainly to Instagram. However, you can’t have meaningful deep discussions on Instagram. Instead, you get people posting their work and people saying “Awesome”, “Terrific”, “wow”, “you’re amazing”, etc. But the comment section does not lend itself to true conversation. I see the same thing in the tea world. There are tea bloggers, Instagram posters, and video blogs. I enjoy all of those a lot. But, they are all mostly one way communication. Again, the only discussion is a little taking place in the comments section. It seems these days to form a tight group, you need to be a producer. You need to share information via YouTube, have a blog, and post regularly on IG. That then gets you plugged into resources that aren’t available to most (sometimes). It’s an interesting environment. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety, but I can’t help but feel we’re losing something valuable by communicating primarily in these one way (mostly) mediums.
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