Steepster Migration

Same here. The only notifications i receive now are follows. Stopped receiving updates for comments on tasting notes.

Same here.

Same! And I really like getting the notifications.

Well, spam is definitely being taking care of now, so that’s SOMEthing

Hang in there. Steepster is like a dilapidated house that’s being slowly renovated. It’s frustrating for me too but as tea-sipper noted, there have been small improvements. The 404 errors have largely gone away.

We’ve got a brand new admin team coming into an aging site that they have no previous experience with, so I’m definitely exercising patience. I second the spam. With the new moderation powers and the blocks in place, it’s much better than it once was. It’s going to be a slow road, but I’m hopeful.

It’s been 10 months since my rant and I still can’t see ANY improvements here on Steepster. Slow renovation and brand new admin team are no longer valid arguments, methinks.

Team Adagio, can we expect anything at all? Or should we consider Steepster a lost cause?

I’m with you. I’m just quietly disappointed that the only contact we’ve had has been when the entire website went down.

Yes, I’m probably a little biased because I’ve been trying hard to push moderator permissions, goals and objectives, and getting radio silence.

AJ, what moderator permissions do you believe are still missing?

One of the first things I rolled out was mod access to the admin panel. (https://admin.steepster.com/dashboard)

That effectively gives mod access to everything except direct DB access.
Best,

Hi!

If that’s the case, then these permissions might require that kind of access, which I can understand not wanting to give out. I didn’t think so at the time, as we’re able to at least access and view part of it from the admin dashboard.

I’ve detailed an entire breakdown here:

https://steepster.com/discuss/41745-a-steepster-cleanup-initiative?page=4#forum_post_235570

Of what I’m able to do/not able to do, including an infograph/tutorial with pictures of how I assume it should work:

https://imgur.com/a/Js2XrGK

This was all in response to an earlier discussion about being unable to ‘merge’ duplicate entries, to remove remaining clutter.

Dear Admin Tom C, I actually admire the way you answered AJ’s permissions problem but decided to totally disregard my post. Good job!

Apologies dreamloomer, I’ve been out of the physical office all week due to the spike in c19 cases on our area. I just wanted to quickly address AJ’s post bc that’s where my focus has been. Something regular user might not obviously see except for less spam.

We’ve upgraded the server that handles notifications/dashboard a couple months back – so that should be OK. What else in your opinion is still lacking?

If possible from my end, will gladly implement the needed features for the mods to tackle.

Tom C, thank you for your reply.
What is still lacking in my opinion? This thread and others on the forum list literally dozens that should be done to improve the page and the user experience. And the only improvements I see since Adagio took over almost two years ago are only patchings in my opinion. Ad hoc repairs of things that just should work in the first place. The dashboard works now, that’s true. Do the notifications work? Maybe, I can’t really tell, because your reply was the only notification I got since many months. There have been no changes in the structure of the page. This forum is outdated, obsolete, impracticable and unfriendly.
I thought that almost two years is surely enough time to plan some improvements and update the page so it doesn’t look and feel like it’s 2010. I thought wrong. Maybe I should be thankful that Steepster still works but my expectations bar is set a bit higher than that.

I know ideas are still being added to this thread: https://steepster.com/discuss/3-which-new-features-do-you-want-the-most?page=1?. It’s pinned to the top for easy access.

dreamloomer,

Sorry you feel that way. My #1 goal has been and continues to be essentially keeping the site running (hence the patchwork fixes you mentioned) and really cleaning up the Spam issue that has plagued this website. (the expanded tools developed for mods)
Unfortunately it does seem your expectations are high. We acquired Steepster to keep it online due to the massive historical amnt of data generated over the years. The original founders have long abandoned the property and Steepster was slated to be shutdown.

When Adagio first took over the site, we were asked about LOTS of things we would like to see done to the site by Adagio staff on this thread: https://steepster.com/discuss/41656-the-future-of-steepster . It was never made evident that only “restoring the site to a workable state” was the goal. Especially when Michael has a post that states, “I welcome your thoughts on the improvements you would like to see us tackle first. How might you like Steepster to evolve to meet your needs? Please share your ideas.” “Evolving to meet ones needs” seems to imply future improvements and updates. I don’t think anyone here had “too high of expectations” given the verbage Adagio was giving us at the time.

Ah! Fair enough Alita. Looks like I was out of the loop on that. I’ll take a look through that thread and see what I can accomplish.

Actually, let me review that thread and compile a list.

I’ll put up a poll for all to vote on so that I can prioritize my time to the features most wanted by all.

Thanks Tom.

Thank you Tom. As a former software developer, I know fixing years of bugs is no small task. But I’m glad somebody is finally tackling it. It gives me hope for Steepster’s future :)

I noticed something similar to this the other day – the new Jasmine Rooibos from DT was already entered into the database by the same person and, interestingly, the “buy now” tab for it had been hooked up to redirect to the DT website. Previously, this tab was only functional for a VERY SMALL number of companies and it now says “Your purchase will support Steepster”. So, it looks like this is actually probably being done by the Adagio team? As far as I’m aware, only they have the ability to do anything with the Buy Now tab…

I wish the entries weren’t just shells though – if they’re gonna take the time to put them into the database then filling in the information would at least be informative for anyone who comes across them.

…Yeah, okay, what the hell (I’d like to use a stronger word here). I looked into this, and I can’t say that I’m pleased.

It’s the legitimate account (https://steepster.com/administrator), I’m assuming the new admin account Adagio’s using. Right off the bat I was a little irked to see them rating an Adagio tea (breaking our usual ‘agreement’ that companies don’t post ratings on their own, or any other companies’ teas, to prevent bias), but it’s just one.

My first thought was that Adagio was testing out a bot that automatically scrapes company’s websites and adds their teas to Steepster, to flesh out our database, and that it just needed a bit (read: a lot) of work, since it’s adding items with zero information, no tagging, and is throwing down non-tea items from the website (gift boxes, tea mug sets, boba pearls, etcetera, all things we can’t or won’t review, so they have no use being on Steepster). Annoying, means there’s a lot of cleanup for us to go back and then delete those since those items aren’t a part of Steepster in its current incarnation, and people don’t have a use for them.

That’s point one. Point two: You’ll notice that all of the teas added by the account have ‘Buy Now’ links active (only addable by moderator/admin). Investigated on the back end. These are all affiliate-tracking links. So, monetized links. Which is likely the reason a bunch of anomalous items like gift boxes and the like were added. ‘Shareasale.com’ is what they’re using. You can hit up the wikia for more information: “Affiliates use ShareASale to find products to promote, and earn commission for referrals on those products.”

https://www.shareasale.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareasale

Yeah. Thanks for pointing this out, Cameron.

I mean, I’m not personally bothered by the affiliate links/buy now tab – it makes sense that Adagio wants to find some means for profitability from Steepster and this seems like a (relatively) harmless enough way to approach that. I much prefer this to seeing ads or having Adagio’s products specifically pushed – which would remove the neutrality that Steepster is built around.

But yes – all the gift sets/mugs/etc are irksome. The relevance of some of those products on Steepster is definitely debatable since we do have a teaware section and I could see an argument to be made for boba (though not sure where I personally land there) – but the entries are… sloppy/incomplete. Seems a bit counterproductive to all the clean up the community has been putting their efforts towards.

I’m not directly bothered by the affiliate links either, as I’m pretty sure Steepster’s original affiliate program/the original implementation of the ‘Buy Now’ option was meant to use affiliates. Hence the hoops companies had to hop through to be allowed to add Buy Now links to their company’s pages. But I dislike the general lack of transparency we’re seeing with it right now, coupled with the mass addition of “spam” products in an attempt to shove as many affiliate links as possible. These aren’t products Steepsterites will ever review, and in general just clutters up the rating algorithm if they were. It’s why I thought it was maybe a misbehaving bot designed to mass-add companies at first.

Agreed