The Future of Steepster
I feel a bit out of the loop as I haven’t logged on in a while, and I don’t even post that often. That doesn’t mean that steepster hasn’t been a big part of my tea growth and that I don’t cherish the interaction I get from this site.
After catching up on this thread I see that folks are worried about the new site management an that we all want to preserve the community we have here. Adagio may have very good intentions, but as of yet they are not part of our community.
Hopefully, Michael, you can understand where we are coming from, that we are fearful of this change because we seemingly have no control over it. Folks can get protective when we are fearful and maybe not believe your stated very good intentions. We have no basis to trust you because we do not know you at all. Trust will be earned by your actions matching your statements to do no harm to current content and keeping steepster as is while fixing spam, errors and adding small improvements. Once I see that you honor the statements you make, I for one will begin to trust that the core steepster community I know will remain the same and I will be fully on board with this change.
Change can be scary, so your apprehension is well justified. I thank you for giving my colleagues and me the benefit of the doubt and judging us by our actions. We will do our best to change Steepster as little as possible as we tackle the technical glitches that you and others have outlined. Our aim is to quickly transform the apprehension voiced here into a collaborative partnership that will quickly dissipate any lingering doubts about Steepter’s long and bright future.
Michael – Now that Steepster is officially owned by Adagio, are you able to share next steps, a plan of action, or a timeline for upcoming changes?
Shae, the transfer process began today but will take many days to complete. Once my colleagues have an opportunity to review the site’s technical underpinnings, we’ll have a better sense of what is possible to achieve. I have a list of everyone’s suggestions (thank you for sharing them!) and will gladly report soon on which items may be tackled in the short term and which may require more time and effort to implement. However, things will begin to improve soon.
Glad to hear it; thank you for the transparency.
I look forward to the first list of expected improvements/updates.
Michael, most frequent TeaChat users moved to teaforum.org because of everything Adagio did to TeaChat and its users a few years ago. Actually, teaforum.org was a direct response to what Adagio did on TeaChat.
Calling most users who fled TeaChat “diehard conspirators” or “unamerican” (whatever that means?) feels insulting to many of us.
I have one question for you: do you actually feel like everything that happened during the TeaChat meltdown and the dozens of users that left TeaChat is a “conspiracy”, or are you just being dishonest?
Bef, competition typically is good for customers. If teaforum.org does a better job of meeting your needs than TeaChat.com, then you are well-served and we’ve been put on notice to do better. The only part of this thread that I take issue with is the notion that positive reviews were fabricated or negative voices stifled. We have never censored content on TeaChat and have no intention of doing this on Steepster.
I am just glad Steepster will still be around and someone is looking after it. It is unique compared to other tea forums.
This is certainly not a “high priority,” but something I would like (eventually) to have would be an alternate “Night Mode” option that flips the color scheme to a dark background with light text. I have chronic migraine and typically whenever a website/program offers a “Night Mode” contrast option, I always use it because it’s easier on my eyes given my condition.
BIG +1 for that!!
A lot of my work day is spent either behind a desk top or working in a VERY white/bright lab with fluorescent lighting – it would definitely be helpful to have a dark mode after full days of that harsh/intense lighting.
Just bumping because it’s been a week now, and I’d be curious to hear an update…
We are working behind the scenes on bringing you a better Steepster experience. You’ll begin to see positive changes next month. Thank you again for providing us with a list of much-needed fixes!
Will the site still work with Internet Explorer 11? Sorry to keep harping on this, but it’s important to me!
So… maybe new glitch!?
Both VariaTEA (who can’t post on the discussion board) and myself are experiencing the same issues where, when we try to write a tasting note, the note appears to post as normal but then cannot be found in either our own tea logs, the dashboard, or the specific page for the tea.
This is different from the “usual” posting glitches/errors where either the tasting note gets stuck in the “posting” process indefinitely or only posts to the tea page/user’s specific tea log but not the dashboard. Is anyone else experiencing this!?
Possibly related, but there hasn’t been a new tasting note on my dashboard for about fifteen hours now…
Yup. I thought things were weirdly quiet, but me too. On top of that, I’m getting forum-cache problems. Specifically the forum is behind on three days. If I go into the sub-forums, then slightly newer. But all of them are at least somewhat ‘behind’. Making it hard to find and clear spam.
Yea, everything seems to be a couple days behind right now for me on the discussions and explore page. Which makes me sad because I just found this site and was excited to start posting my tea ramblings… but after a couple day of fun I can’t get the site to work anymore.
I did read about the massive amounts of spam profiles/teas/etc people were talking about in these forums, so the glass half full side of me was hoping this is all part of a major maintenance fix by the new owners to help stop the spammers.
Hopefully things get back up and running soon because my tea journey is just beginning!
Edit: Thought I’d mention that in the same way that I can see some newer posts in the forum by playing with the category dropdown box, I can also access my new tasting notes by changing the dropdown box to sort by Most Popular then back to sort by New again.
Okay, related to this glitch: Cache systems also lagging behind in individual threads. Not seeing my old posts unless I post something new and force the cache, or something like that.
So, I can only access this conversation whenever this discussion shows up in the “Recent Topics” section of the Explore tab. That section only displays the four most recent topics – often spam, so it’s been a challenge seeing this thread, and others. Any other way I click into the discussion, none of these comments show up.
Anyway – here’s the most recent tasting note appearing on the dashboard for all of it, with a thread of comments about the site wide glitch we’re all experiencing & some contact information for Michael…
Just wanted to add that I’m also experiencing these issues. Let’s hope Michael is reading this thread.
I am sorry to hear of the problems that you and other members of Steepster are experiencing with the site, but we, unfortunately, are stymied in our ability to help you. We continue to work with Jason and Mike on completing the transition and look forward to beginning to tackle the many problems you had identified. I hope to be bringing you better news soon!
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