Keeping Track of Discontinued Tea in the Steepster Database!

DavidsTea tends to add their own teas to the database, so notifying them what is up once a consensus is reached might be a good idea!

Yeah, I currently don’t really mind what we’re doing for different harvests (which is typically just creating a new tea for each harvest with the year and season at the end). I view different harvests as different teas, personally.

And I think letting DT know whatever we agree with is probably a good idea.

Cavocorax: “I don’t think we need to add discontinued to a store that’s no longer open. I think people will figure it out?”

While a popular closed store will be known by long-term Steepsterites, new members aren’t likely to know.

Less well-known closed stores may escape notice of even long-term members.

That might be the easiest way to handle it! It would look cleaner.

+ 1

I really like this idea. It would be simple, consistent, and tidy. Plus, it would make it a lot easier to find this information on a tea quickly.

I’d be thrilled with this as an option (though I think there should be ‘discontinued’, ‘available’, and a third option where neither shows up – AKA I don’t think it should be a mandatory field).

I think this is very logical – I would have no problem with leaving it out altogether as well.

I actually would prefer that reblends not be added to the cupboard at all. there’s no reason besides ratings to change tea X to Tea X discontinued and then create a new entry that says Tea X. the change could simply be noted in the comments….ie we changed our formulation in 2007…

I like it in the title as long as it’s consistent, not in caps and we could get to some level of agreement across the community. lol

That being said, i’m wary of getting a tickbox or something, since that could also be abused if someone wanted to make folks think that teas were discontinued. shrug

I wish that there were a way to track harvest of a tea though, more readily…

The issue with reblends is that sometimes they taste totally different (like many of us experienced with 52Teas and Davids Tea). When I used to look at tasting notes to see what to look for, I got really confused. I don’t think it is really a problem, just confusing when we think we’re talking about the same tea but we’re not. BUT, places like Davids and constantly replacing stock of teas and even if they use the same recipe it can taste different and there is no way to know what batch it is from. So really, it’s just a fact of tea.

heh yea :)

I think that if a reblend tastes substantially different from the original blend, it should be treated and labelled like a harvest – like “North Winds – 2014 Blend” would be pretty analogous to “Yunnan Dian Hong – Spring 2014 harvest”. Whether or not that information should be included in the name or the description is another question, but we should probably try to make it consistent.

Yes, it would be great to be able to filter out blends that aren’t available anymore! This is something Jason & Team would have to work on, but right now I’m getting the impression that this is something that pretty well everyone who’s spoken up so far could agree on.

That would be really great, but we’d have to make sure that teas were set as available by default so we don’t miss out on a great new tea because someone didn’t tick the right box!

Oh gosh. That just makes the OCD part of my head hurt. And my eye twitch.

Yes, exactly! A lot of WP blends in particular have Discontinued tags on them – but some, such as this one, are unnecessarily wordy/lengthy and I think counter intuitive.

My personal opinion is that, since this is the same blend but reformulated, noting that in the tea description at the top where it’s more visible and then listing any relevant changes to the blend is a better way to handle it.

Or, if it has to stay in the title, simply shortening it to “Old Version” would probably suffice, and then having the new formula labelled “North Winds: New Version” (or something similar).

Anyone else have thoughts on that?

NLA
V1, V2
1.0, 1.1
1.0, 2.0, etc.

That’s a lot easier to read, for sure!

Roswell Strange: “A lot of WP blends in particular have Discontinued tags on them …”

Agreed! 29 WP teas have “DISCONTINUED” included with the title of the teas.

10 Examples: http://steepster.com/teas/whispering-pines-tea-company?page=5

Thus, the precedent already exists to add DISC. or NLA to the title.

The advantage of a title notation is when viewing the following types of Steepster pages:
- http://steepster.com/teas/whispering-pines-tea-company?page=3
- http://steepster.com/teas
You know at a glance, without having to click on each individual tea to see if a tea is NLA.
Much more time-efficient!

And this is sometimes the case for DAVIDsTEA blends (and other companies too) which bring teas back occasionally, whether it be for a seasonal collection or promotion or whatever the case is. Which is, again, why I strongly feel it’s unnecessary to have the discontinued in the title. It seems most people feel that way too, so now it’s more about figuring out whether to add some sort of statement into the tea descriptor, or whether we want to ask Jason for an “Availability Field” or filter.

yeah, that would work better … something that would allow it to change if the availability changes!

Speaking as someone who’s had to maintain documentation packages, it’s generally not a good idea to maintain the same piece of information in more than one location (unless there is some means of automatic update). The more places it is maintained, the more likely it is to be wrong in one of them. That’s just the nature of it. Presumably the in stock nature of a tea can be found on the webpage where it is sold, along with price, which is the other thing someone might choose to research if they find a tea they like. If an availability field in Steepster can’t be guaranteed accurate then we might all be better served to not have it at all.

+1 Exidy

+1

Steepster is a resource similar to a library. Many people with diverse interests utilize both of them. However, no one legitimate use is more important than another.

Eloquently put looseTman! Also, I just have to say how happy I am that everyone involved in the conversation so far has managed to stay positive/constructive! Everyone has made really great, astute observations and suggestions!

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t/can’t/aren’t using the database to make shopping choices (I do all the time).

Just that it’s clear from the way it’s structured, the functionality and the information that is included, that it’s main function isn’t shopping (you can’t buy any teas directly from the pages listing them and unavailable teas are still maintained and added), and so I think that should be kept in mind when prioritizing what information is displayed, and where.

While it’s true that most teas don’t have Steepster purchase links, I use the Steepster database to identify & consider potential teas for purchase directly from the tea supplier’s website. A highly Steepster rated tea that is no longer available because the company discontinued it or has gone out of business is disappointing.

Updated:
Thus, it would be great if we had the option to sort the Steeptster Highest Rated Teas list for teas that are currently available – excluding only teas that are permanently no longer available. Such an approach would be more time-efficient.

Information architecture is always an issue for sites like Steepster because everyone uses the site differently. I think it would be harmless to allow people to add details to a tea such as availability, harvest, and perhaps even a spot to list all the versions the tea has gone through (to keep the tea names and database clean). However, this information wouldn’t be mandatory to enter. This should also eliminate the need/desire to duplicate teas in the database (if there is a spot to type in and add to the version information as necessary).

Perhaps when writing a tea note there could be a box to indicate what version of the tea is being reviewed, if so desired.

Blodeuyn +1

“Perhaps when writing a tea note there could be a box to indicate what version of the tea is being reviewed, if so desired.”

I suspect that if a tea blender has invested a great deal of thought, time, & energy reformulating & improving a tea, they will want reviews of the new version (NV) to be separate from the previous version (PV) rather than being lumped together. Thus, if the NV is better reviewed than the PV, it will garner a higher score thus validating their reformulating efforts.