Lately you might have spotted a few posts here about a wish for a new and better calculator. You might also have seen a post about fixing ATF. Heck, you might've even seen a video from a certain Wayne on youtube, about such a topic.
Granted we saw a lot of people bounding together (and a little fist-throwing) in the threads, we have come to the conclusion that we do not need a new ATF-style site.
"But why Kitty?" might you ask.
Well, why make a new one, when we already have one that needs a little fixing!
Over the last two weeks, a taskforce over on your DIY_eJuice Discord has been debating, suggesting, thinking, collecting, fighting and trying to figure out how to clean up, fix and get ATF to be even more awesome again.
We have collected some of your best ideas here along with setting up a board of our own ideas concerning bugs, features and such in a roadmap. But we need more!
This is where you as a member of this great mixing community comes in!
We kindly ask you to bring your suggestions in this post and the post every second week (thursday's the day!), so we can add the best of the best ideas and suggestions to our roadmap. Then we'll look at what is possible and what aren't possible and whip u/queuetue into doing a little work.
Ideas and suggestions thus far:
- Flavor Tagging
- A collaboration tool
- Improved user pages
- New possible import of flavor stash
- Updated vendor sync.
- Updated List of flavors with group discussion on flavor notes
- Analytics and historical data
- Substitute suggestions (for instance a "CAP Puke can be substituted by FW Barf" in the recipe or such likes)
- Backups (bug)
- Google Sign-in (bug)
- Gift subscription
- Lifetime subscription
- Recipe versioning
- Recipe folders
- Sensible Filtering
- Average percentages (needs some fixing)
- Mix and view count (bug)
- Fixing the "most popular 24H recipe" on the front page
- Being able to change cover image to a different colour on your recipe
These are some of the things we are looking into as of right now on our roadmap.
But we cannot fix ATF without the community, so please chime in here with suggestions of things you feel like should be a feature on ATF, a bug you have discovered or if you just want to see a large image of your hero u/ID10-T on the front page.
We kindly ask you to NOT start any fights and bickering in these posts - if you aren't here to help or have anything positive to add or say, then please find another post you can spew your bile all over, thanks.
Let's hear YOUR thoughts!
One thing I'd like to see is an independent log in. Currently you have to be on some form of social media (which many of us abhor) or give Google permission to track your every move. I'd like to have a login name and password that belong to ONLY ATF.
Being able to leave a review without having a paid subscription is my biggest wish. I've always felt that it was the biggest negative of ATF. Make them create an account if you need to but allow those accounts without a subscription to at least be able to leave reviews. Peer review is what drives this community.
I completely agree with the last part but I think opening it to everyone invites a lot of junk. ELR is a great example of what is likely to happen. I know a guy who wrote a whole treatise on recipe reviews, trying to “coax the kids into leaving thoughtful reviews” (Oh, that was you) and it seems like letting unpaid accounts review recipes would increase the review counts but mostly in the “non-review” category you mention in that write up.
You know what I'm going to say right? Then add moderation or other requirements besides money to the process.
i agree. There are many processes that could filter out most garbage reviewers, including requiring unpaid accounts to be at least X days old , the account having mixed a batch of the recipe longer than the steep time ago, having more than X views or ratings on their own recipes, limiting unpaid reviewers to 1 review a day, requiring the reviewer to have all the flavors used in their stash, requiring unpaid accounts to have more than x batches mixed previously, review moderation/flagging... none of these would be a failsafe but combining a number of credibility checks like this on free accounts could drastically improve the signal to noise ratio for reviews and allow more of the community to help highlight the great recipes.
This would be key.
Moderation of reviews should be happening either way.
I’ve seen plenty of paid people leaving stupid ass reviews like “subbed this for that, recipe sucks.” “Cant wait to try this!” 1 star
I think creating an account should be the only pre requisite for leaving reviews, but they should be moderated in some fashion.
In addition, I'm putting some effort towards that open plan going on, either supporting some of their goals on ATF, or helping them to provide a service with those goals - to begin with, ATF has an API available for independent app developers to leverage and I've implemented a global ID scheme to help coordinate between different flavor / recipe / mixer systems out there. If you're excited about the nerdy stuff, find me on discord.
I'm curious as to what happened with tagging. Was just not enough people using it?
P.S. I'm afraid to watch that video ... How bad is it? :)
Flavor tags still exist, and all of the data has been preserved, but yes, few people were making use of it and more than a few were reporting errors with it, and too many people who were using it didn't understand what a tag was and would type a novel in the tag box. :)
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As a result, it was pulled offline for revamping with a better UI and I got swamped with other things. This new assembled crew is going to help me focus and define a suitable User Experience around tagging, and bring it back for general use - the tags that were entered before the tagging was taken offline will also return at the same time.
Support for using PDO/PEG in place of PG in a mix.
Exclusionary search options.
Searching (including exclusionary) via tags.
BTW, recipe versioning already exists, in a way - copy the recipe you want to modify, edit the copy name to include a version number, and modify away. Yes, being able to undo edits to a recipe might be nice, but I suspect storing that data would be excessive in memory requirements. But maybe making the copy/modify a single click wouldn't be a horrible idea.
I'd like to see an infinite scrolling option for search results, and the ability to expand all recipes in search results so you don't have to click on each one to see the ingredients.
In regards to improving ATF, I’d really like there to be an easier way to add new flavors. I don’t want the ELR-type mess where there are six different INW Shisha Strawberries, but there’s gotta be an easier way to add new vendors/flavors.
About a year ago, I filled out that Google spreadsheet with the available information (vendor, flavor, website), but none of the flavors were ever added (I just checked to be sure). I ended up having quite a few flavors that I couldn’t add to my personal inventory, which in turn made me stop using ATF.
This. New flavors that need to be added to the public database and/or personal flavor stashes would require to be filled out within a fixed range of values to avoid that mess. Filling-in separate boxes instead of full names which can easily be mis-typed, formatted or misinterpreted like on ELR. It would look like:
<"flavor name">, <"prefix">, <"manufacturer"> or <"manufacturer">, <"flavor name">, <"prefix">
A way to sort these on flavor name or manufacturer when browsing would be nice as well.
Some form of (auto)moderation may be required when someone tries to add completely new flavors though. New flavors could be allowed temporarily and after approval by a mod, they would be added to the global search query and database.
Ultimately I'd like to see ATF and ELR combined somehow, with the best of both worlds.
These are just my thoughts, I have no ability to code, nor am I an expert.
There's currently two FA Fuji Apples in ATF - wish someone would merge them. Unless I'm not aware FA Apple Fuji and FA Fuji are two different flavors.
I’ve noticed doubles of other flavors before. In fact, I just saw two FLV Pink Fruits earlier. Not sure how it happens, though.
I think most of the flavors are being put in by hand, I know I’ve added probably more than 1k myself. But some of them might be automated and, AFAIK, those are how the dupes have happened. Pink Fruit was probably added by hand pre-release and then then automatically added when it went on FLV’s website.
Not that there shouldn’t be a simpler way to add flavors but the current system has cut down on dupes by an order of magnitude when compared to ELR and I add new ones all the time. Until a new method is created feel free to PM me (or comment here) the flavors that are missing—I’ll add them for you.
I'd like to see a similar recipes list generated at the bottom of the page when you go to a mix. That'd be awesome if possible.
If/when flavor tagging is deployed (recipes would inherit flavor tags but also be eligible for their own tags, and "similar recipes" could be determined by tag lists.
I for one, dont like the suggestion for a "substitutions" feature. If a mixer wants to suggest a sub, then they can. Thats their choice. However, to have an automatic(if I'm understanding this concept correctly) substitution pop up for any of my recipes...well? Frankly, one substitution can screw up the whole mix. Just my 2 cents...
I haven't really looked into the other features mentioned. This one caught my eye and I thought I would comment, because to me-that would do more harm to a recipe. And then to get a crappy rating because ATF suggested a substitute....well? Yeah.
I out in a support message about my account showing up as expired in the app, yet if I sign into the site it shows as paid. Haven't heard back yet. Seems I might fall into this Google sign-in bug?
Let's be clear with what problem you're experiencing:
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If you mean the android app, then that's essentially dead at this point. The web app is far superior, and the Android tool should be considered something that's slowly being replaced or just decommissioned (you can't download it from the Play Store anymore.) Subscriptions through the Android app entitle you to full usage on the web app (and always have.)
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If you mean the web app, then you are logging into the wrong account, and will have to log into the right one to use your subscription.
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The 'login bug' is not connected to this, and should only affect a small number of google web users (in fact, only one has reported it to date.)
2 things I'd love to see:
Ability to filter/block/blacklist by user or at least specific recipe (there are a handful of users who have created completely pointless "recipes" and made them public ... looking at YOU "Bland" with your "This is a test recipe, i wouldn't make it this is only a test" description and the countless recipes with descriptions like "Just trying something out I will later update the notes if it is good." that show up in my "what can I mix" list)
Ability to sort/filter my flavor stash by level on-hand so that I can check what I need to order based on what I'm getting low on without needing to actually pull my flavors out and look at the bottles.