The Future of Steepster

Hi, we are very sorry about the loss of the profiles at this moment. However, while in the process of cleaning up the database some of these have been temporarily removed. Please know that these will be restored as soon as we can.

Our apologies for the inconvenience!

Were these individuals contact and alerted about the temporary removal of their accounts? If Mastress’ post is anything to go by, it looks like it was just dumped on them and they were left wondering why their accounts were suddenly missing. Assuming an email address is linked to each, an automated email would be the minimum courtesy.

Ugh, I hate not being able to just post replies from my normal account… Switching accounts just to use the forums is not fun, y’all…

To reiterate, the entire account is just fine, accessible, and the tea reviews (for now, at least!) are still accessible (before anyone takes what I said out of context). It’s the Profile Information that is missing, please look at this screencap that I posted above:

http://bl.canadia.info/misc/steepster4.jpg

I could post what mine used to say before I suddenly saw it had been replaced with “blank” (since I had a backup of it) but I’ll spare you.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but at least I and Todd (toddashi) received no contact/e-mail/anything of the sort. Just poof Profile information was gone.

Thanks, Mastress Alita, for posting this comment! I had previously subscribed to this thread, and I was still receiving notifications in my email from the thread, but I’ve been unable to login for at least a week. I saw your post today that my account was missing, so I attempted to log in once again — was finally able to! It looks like my profile still exists and is active. I was hoping my account would still exist since I was still receiving the emails from my subscription, but you never know…

Again, we are very sorry about how we have to tackle this. Unfortunately, the database is so clogged up that we are having trouble accessing information at all. This means that we could not even see the email addresses associated with the accounts in order to notify anyone. We want to reiterate that this is TEMPORARY. Once we clean everything up, information WILL BE RESTORED.

This has not been an easy process and we are doing all we can to ensure that your accounts and information remain intact for future use.

AdagioTeas, does that mean you’ll also eventually turn SSL back on? I am very concerned about logging into accounts on unsecured URLs…

Yes, we are working on security as quickly as possible.

mastressalitaclone, thank you for your concern. Fortunately my profile is not deleted (although it’s missing the Bio section). I’m not giving up on Steepster and will return to reviewing after the site improves a little.

Dreamloomer the bio section is what she’s referring to as your profile, not the account as a whole.

I’m getting the impression no one on Steepster has even looked at the Profiles, despite the fact all these people actually had them filled out (I actually read them, and noticed right away when they were missing!) Given that I explained again, in bold text, it was the Profile Information I was referring too, and not anyone’s accounts or tea information, with a screencap to show exactly what I meant, and yet now I’ve been “corrected” three times… That is what it is called, right?

http://bl.canadia.info/misc/steepster5.jpg

And while some folks have already had theirs restored, mine certainly hasn’t… and I still can’t post to the message boards. I’m starting to question if I’ll continue using the site myself given my usability has only gotten worse, or if I’ll go back to my old Wordpress blog that I originally left to join Steepster back in 2017…

(The fact someone would call me “mastressalitaclone” just because I can no longer post with my real, active, long-time account shatters my heart…)

Sorry to hear about all the troubles. FWIW, we don’t have a specific term for what you’re referring to, but the label above that info does say “Profile” so calling it your profile information makes perfect sense to me :)

I know Tom is working on the issues and don’t want to speak for him, but I can assure you any info not being available, wether that’s profile info, tasting notes, comments, discussions, etc, essentially anything anyone has submitted to the site, is a temporary issue. All the information is one of the biggest values Steepster has and so they definitely want to keep it to support everyone.

I’ll also say, I wouldn’t be surprised if things get a bit worse before they get better, to no fault of Adagio’s. This stuff is pretty complicated and it will take a serious effort to really get everything working as originally intended. I hope for your sake and the sake of Steepster and everyone else here that you’re able to bear with the inconvenience for a bit longer. While I completely understand how you’re feeling and know you’re totally justified, I know it’d be a shame to lose you and the other users like you.

My personal preference would be to keep all tasting notes, even the older ones. I know a lot of the tea companies (and teas) listed are duplicates so perhaps combining those would help (but without losing any notes or tea listings). Also, there are so many spam accounts so I’m not sure if those are part of the 8200 you mentioned, but that would definitely help with the cleanup if those were removed. I think the moderators have been working on some of this in the thread A Steepster Cleanup Initiative. It might be helpful if you haven’t seen it yet.

Here is an example of what we are talking about: http://steepster.com/teas/discover-russia

21 blends, no reviews, no images… How should we handle this type of information?

I don’t see this company online and the user who added them is showing blank for me. Could it be spam?

On the Cleanup Initiative thread there are listed a bunch of company headings that are now empty, because we’ve been moving duplicates together, and trying to gather all the obvious spam in one spot. What if you start with that and then see?
I’d be okay with removing the Discover Russia ones if they’re truly empty, but if they have notes on them, even old ones, or someone added them to their cupboard or wishlist, then I’d feel a little uncomfortable removing it. (ETA to clarify: I’d feel uncomfortable about removing something with just one old note on it, because that is also true for many of my posts for things that I bought locally, because, hi! Danish!)

Right, don’t forget someone may have made entries to add a tea to their Cupboard for inventory purposes (and hasn’t made a note yet) or made an entry to add a tea to their Wishlist.

If the entry has “0 Tasting Notes”, “0 Want It”, and “0 Own It”, and no other information about the tea (ingredients, blend info, steeping instructions, some other notes/data in the info field), then I’d say it is probably fine to remove (if no data is currently linked to the item, I personally don’t see anything being lost). If there is some data linked to that item, no matter how small, no matter how old, I believe it has a right to stay.

But yes, we did do a lot of work over on that Cleanup Initiative Thread. (Granted, I didn’t get very far in what I was doing before the site went poof…)

Does anyone know a workaround for the infinite “Posting…” error? I’m going nuts not being able to post on the forums anymore from my normal account, and hate having to switch accounts constantly just to use the forums! If someone knows a workaround, please please please let me know!

Personally, I am not comfortable with removing companies from the database – even if they only have one or two tasting notes/no notes or are places like restaurants.

In same cases, Steepster is the only database of information for companies that either don’t have websites with their tea information or that have discontinued tea and removed them from their website. Some companies have closed up shop entirely and so their websites no longer function and there is no record of their teas outside of what was captured on Steepster (even if there are no tasting notes for the tea) – the first one that comes to mind is RiverTea. It feels wrong to purge that information.

For restaurants, many have seasonal/limited and specialty drinks/services and once those drinks are off the menu what happens to be on Steepster could be the only reference of those drinks/tea offerings. Even restaurants that carry specific teas as part of their core menu are valuable to have for the information/reviews/etc…

The only thing I would feel comfortable removing are things that are entirely not tea related – but in that case, wouldn’t that likely fall under spam?

I would support removing any vendors that no longer have products listed, or products that do not have tasting notes or are not part of a user’s wish list or cupboard. Those can always be added back in by a future user who wants to track them. If no one has tracked them in any way, there’s no need to clutter the database.

If someone has added any pertinent data to the database about the vendor/product (tasting notes/wish list/cupboard), then those records should remain, even if they are old or the product has only been tracked one time. Any tracking data like notes or lists are there because someone wants that data tracked—either for themselves or for the benefit of others.

Just wanted to throw it out there, but…

The “Discover Russia” example might seem to be “empty” tea pages at first glance, but someone has taken the time/effort to fill in a tea type for every single tea page by that company. This could very well be the case of someone attempting to catalog their local “Mom & Pop Shop” tea company or purchases from a tea company from somewhere they traveled to. The information to “fully” fill in the pages may simply have not been available. It’s not uncommon for small/local companies to only put the tea name and type on the their packaging, and to not have websites to pull information from.

We don’t know the full story, and without knowing it we can’t decide what the actual value of the information is to the user who took the time to do that. I don’t think the best route is to assume that there’s no value…

Please don’t delete any tasting notes!!! I’d personally be fine with removing companies/teas that don’t have any user data attached to them (as several others have mentioned), but tasting notes are like a journal or blog for many of us tracking our tea journey and that data should be maintained, even if the teas/companies referenced no longer exist.

Thee are lots of duplicates as well. I noticed that a shop I have several teas from has 3 entries on Steepster because everyone calls it something slightly different. There is a lot of cleaning up to do, and deleting doesn’t seem like a good idea. I know that if my notes started disappearing I would be super annoyed, and I’m not even a super active user anymore.

Maybe there’s a way to archive them but not have them come up right away on tea searches? I know I have a different opinion than others but I find it annoying when I’m searching for a type of tea and old tea notes and tea companies come up.

That’s trivial to fix; just set it up so you can sort newest posts first.

Sometimes those oldest notes are the most useful. But it will definitely help people looking for teas they can buy right now to have the newest posts first. Just don’t kill the oldest ones.

It’s very disheartening to see so many people on the FB/Twitter posts that are pro purge. It maybe makes me an asshole/elitist to say, but the mass majority of people responding on FB right now are not active users and haven’t been for years – I feel like if you’re not an active user, you probably shouldn’t get as much weight behind your ‘vote’…

Considering so many of the “regular, longtime users” can’t even access the site right now, either a) due to the instability, b) because they don’t know or don’t feel comfortable about the lack of the SSL, or c) can’t post to the forums due to the errors, that gives that userbase even less of a voice…

I didn’t realize they had posted to Facebook and Twitter so going over now to throw in my two cents. I tend to agree with Roswell about giving preference to active users. I hope Adagio is taking our concerns here into consideration as much as those on FB at least, since we have been here fighting for the site since before the official takeover.

We understand your concerns. The type of “purging” that is being discussed is NOT across the board. But would entail removing companies without any content. (i.e. no tasting notes, tea, images, etc.)

We are only looking for feedback at this stage and no decisions have been made.

I’m glad it seems you’ve moved passed your idea of purging companies with 1 or 2 tasting notes from 6+ years ago. In my opinion, if it’s got a tasting note, no matter how old, someone took the time to write it because they wanted that note documented for whatever reason.

No tasting notes should be purged at all – especially if a tea company only has one tasting note, because that’s the only direct user information available about that particular tea/company.

While I’ve just started this journey, I know I’d be very upset if six years down the road someone decided my tasting notes were expendable, just because I wasn’t drinking a “popular” enough tea for it to have gained multiple notes about it.

Unfortunately, whether you meant to or not, that’s what you originally proposed to the users of this site – a purge of their tasting notes from the rarest teas they’ve sampled. Just because a tea hasn’t been tasted by many members, doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of documentation.

Please do not purge anything unless it’s obvious spam.

Although I don’t often post tea notes (at least not in the last few years), I agree with the opinions of everyone here — please do not purge notes at all; someone took the time to write these and they matter.

I subscribed to this thread when it was started and was getting the email updates, but have been unable to get to the site for at least three days (using Chrome) until this evening (503 error). I’m grateful to be able to get on and get caught up now.

Didn’t know I was deleted. The site was completely non-existent for me for a ?week?: couldn’t resolve host no matter whether I attempted to connect from a logged in or logged out account, personal or work IPs, through a VPN, without SSL, and through a variety of browsers.

I have noticed on my Dashboard > Tasting Notes nothing goes beyond a note by Roswell Strange one day ago. The See More button at the bottom of the page is missing.

I believe that no one was able to access it without using the http (not https) route…

In regards to the above/your account being deleted… If I’m understanding Mastress Alita correctly it’s not that your account as a whole was deleted but that your profile information was removed. This is apparently temporary, but users affected by this were not given warning/notice.

And a huge sign of the progress they’ve already been able to make is that I can now reply using my main account and don’t have to create a new one each time!

^ Though just as you’ve gained the ability to post others, like Mastress Alita who COULD post prior, have now lost the ability…

Yea, it’s unfortunate. It’s gonna take some time to get the foundation solid enough so that there isn’t as much inconsistency in what functionality works for different users. At the very least I’m confident no users are being “targeted”, sometimes bugs can just manifest in ways that make it hard to fully track down and squash.

My point was more that I don’t think you can call it progress when, where one person sees improvement, another sees equivalent new issues. At the very least, certainly not “significant progress”.

I agree that it doesn’t seem like anyone is being targeted and the wide assortment of very specific bugs/issues seems to be very random – so not counting the cache issues of recent memory or the https access being disabled for all users.

I, for one, hate having to use a “bogus account” just to use the message boards when I was able to post just fine days ago. Now… Nope… For me at least, my usability has only gotten worse…

Well hey! At least the certificate’s updated and things are secure again. Back to chrome!