Has anyone else noticed...
…that their old tea reviews have started disappearing?
I just noticed it this morning. For example: I was pretty sure I had reviewed David’s Tea “Mom’s Apple Pie” at least once, maybe even twice. And I definitely added it to my cupboard. Checked the cupboard: not there. Searched for the tea on Steepster: no rating/review from me. Weird. Maybe I’m going crazy.
I also finished my tin of Organic Guayusa from David’s Tea. Wanted to remove from my cupboard, post another sipdown review. Looked at my cupboard: not there. Wha? Searched for the tea: no rating/review. I know for a FACT that I reviewed this tea. I know for a fact that I said it was essentially perfect, aside from the small leaf size which starts to disintegrate when you drink it the traditional way in a bombilla, leading to inhalation through the straw. Steepster is definitely eating my reviews and my cupboard contents.
Anyone else experience this? Is this a “you did it loooong before the new tea pages were introduced so kiss it goodbye” thing?
Did you just use the search or did you go through your ratings? Very often the search doesn’t work that well for me, the tea is there but I can only find it in the “similar” list.
oh, I can find the TEA. It’s my actual rating that I can’t find. Went through my ratings, not there. Go to the tea page, and the green box at the top that has a number in it (average rating) should have another box beside it that says “YOU” and the number you gave it, if you’ve reviewed it before. Both times that box was missing. So it’s not just that it’s gone from my reviews page on my dashboard, it’s gone from the tea page, too.
If that’s not what you meant then…I clearly misunderstood. lol
For the ratings, yah something is funky with those because I’ve searched for teas that I am considering buying and it says no ratings yet but if I click on the full tea entry and then one of the reviews, the reviews have ratings.
Weird. Maybe there’s some kind of behind-the-scenes update that’s going on? Or testing? And all we can see are the “oopsies”…
Or maybe the site sorts out not-so-great reviews to make tea companies happy? I have no idea…
That would be really, really shady business. Kind of like TripAdvisor taking down a hotel review because it was negative. I highly doubt that’s the case, but if it is…I’m disappointed a tea rating of 96 is too negative to display. lol
I’m pretty sure that one of our teas lost at least one review causing the rating to drop.
Yeah i’ve noticed this, but i guess i figured i was just imagining things :)
Unicorns? Those are rainbow zebras!
(Pretty sure all my reviews are still here, but it seems to sort the reviews for teas weird, it should be chronological.)
I’m gonna make a guess it’s tied somewhere behind the scenes to the recent site overhaul. Things are likely to still be being caught up, tweaked, corrected, etc.
Hopefully Steepster will update on this soon as it sounds like a technical issue. But this got me thinking about tea ratings in general.
Maybe I’m totally in irrelevant land, but what if, say, sourcing or an ingredient change has happened with a particular tea that affects the ratings or descriptors. Obviously it’s unlikely you would know unless the company was up front about it, but it could still impact the experience of the tea. Maybe there should be an age-out period on ratings to ensure we’re comparing apples to apples? Or leaves to leaves, as the case may be.
Or maybe this just doesn’t happen often enough to warrant any kind of change to how tea ratings are aggregated over a number of years. Besides which, I suppose anyone could pull something out of the stash that has been hanging around for a long while and post a new rating on an old tea.
I think there should be “vintages” on tea pages, just like wines. You don’t rate a 2009 Chardonnay the same way as a 2013 Chardonnay from the same company because…well, they’re made with different seasons of grapes! Quality of grapes directly depends on quality of wine. Same with tea…if I bought a specific tea in 2011 and LOVED IT, it doesn’t mean that when I buy it again in 2014 it’s going to be just as good. This goes more with straight teas, but flavoured teas can be impacted in similar ways.
For example, David’s Tea just re-introduced Root Beer Float, a flavoured black tea. The first version of the tea had little root beer candies in it, along with some cinnamon and some other things I can’t remember. It was darn good. Then like all the teas I love at David’s it was discontinued (jerks! lol). It was recently re-introduced as part of the carnival collection, but the ingredients have changed. They are TOTALLY DIFFERENT. So what happened? The ingredients were changed on the tea page to reflect this. This now means that all of the old reviews are “wrong” for that tea page if they were made prior to June 2014. This, to me, is a problem…but the solution is not to delete the old tasting notes. The solution is to make a NEW tea page with “Root Beer Float (2014)” as the tea, as opposed to “Root Beer Float (2012)”. This would solve all problems relating to old reviews no longer being reflective of teas that have had their ingredients changed.
Yes exactly. Was going to make the wine connection (that’s been my career for the past 14 years) – there are so many corollaries. Champagne ratings for example have become really controversial due to disgorgement dates. Problem is, many Champagne houses don’t include it on the label. Some critics are trying to bring attention to the issue by including the disgorgement date and lot number in their reviews. It’s complicated, but that’s a discussion for another forum!
It happened to me like couple days ago I wanted review Teavivre Yunnan Dian hong which I know I reviewed not once! I don’t even have it in my cupboard.
I’m trying to avoid looking because I’ll get sad if I find my hard-typed words disappeared. I don’t tend to post new reviews on teas I have drank over and over again, so just because my review is old doesn’t mean it is irrelevant. Unless the tea changed, which can always happen. It’s tough.
Agreed. Plus, whenever I post a new review I always feel weird: “Yep, everything I said last time! But because you won’t press the ‘Show 1 more’ button, let me type it aaaaaaaaaaaaaal out for you again.”
Sometimes I also like it as a reminder not to make that mistake again if I really didn’t like a tea that I thought I should have. Like Persian apple: I like pistachios, I like apples, I like green tea, I even kinda like rose petals in my tea. But all those all together? One of the most vile things I’ve ever tasted in my life. And yet…I would probably re-order it if I didn’t have my review on Steepster warning me against it!
I don’t think it is happening across the board for old reviews but possibly just accidentally happening for some teas. The other day I looked up some old reviews of mine and they were there. And my very first tasting note is still in my log. I think I have had a tea pop out of my cupboard, though.
I wonder if the number of tasting notes is changing too? Like, if you look at how many tasting notes it says you have written. Of course, you would have to actually notice that it went down, which might be tough.
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