Suggestion Box
10I thought it would be a good idea to have a single place for suggestions.
My suggestion - a new category for those who wish to learn about wine. There could be threads about tasting (like “A cat died in my mouth” on Woot), wine storage, etc. If not discussions, perhaps some of the experts could volunteer to write FAQs on these topics.
- 28 comments, 113 replies
- Comment
At first I was thinking this wouldn’t work because of ambiguity of a threads purpose when they all appear on the main forum view together. But if there was a more visible category selection (new feature) or simply all of those threads were created or edited to start with TIL: (thing I learned) then I’m on board.
Similarly (another category function), do we want the geographic Casemate finder threads to be located in Gatherings? I think that would make sense enough and jumpstart actual gathering discussion too.
@snapster That makes sense to me.
@snapster +1
@snapster ditto
@snapster
Was thinking of suggesting that last evening. Refrained, fear of becoming an annoyance. .
@f00l I’m so glad you’re growing up
/giphy proud
@jml326
Hmmm. Growing up.
Might not be a sure thing yet.
What about the ability to hide or otherwise ignore a thread? There’s some that I just don’t need to see every day (e.g. the North Texas thread).
@klezman Getting those aggregated into their own sub-group or filtered out would be an enhancement.
@klezman I feel this way about Texas in general.
@bhodilee We are our own country!
@jeffyedwards one can only wish!
Maybe generally regional Casemate Match categories? NW, SW, MW, SE, NE. Or a simple East/West of the Mississippi. Please don’t make one for each state. Don’t want a 4 page dropdown scroll.
@mike808 4 pages for 50 line items? How small is your screen?!?!
@jbartus Mobile. Web dropdown controls (like the current category selection is) suck after about 7 options. Ever fall in love with one of those country selectors in alphabetical order when they know 99.999% of their customers are in the US, which is way down at the bottom? You must really like the dropdown selectors for state on mailing address web forms, too.
Mobile devices are not desktops with mouse inputs.
@mike808 flick scrolling keeps those from being much of a hassle for me. Sure it’s not quite as convenient as simply tapping something that’s already visible but if it’s alphabetical it’s not a big deal IMHO.
@mike808 - How about categorizing by time zones?
Interface overhaul?
@bsevern
I bet they wanna re-write it all from scratch. : )
I for sure want a place to ask questions.
@Twich22 Ooh, an AMA thread/category?
@mike808 Ask Mates Anything?
@mike808 Another Mediocre Adventure?
Ron mentioned it on another page, but it’s a good point that allowing edits for a longer period of time (or perpetually) would be nice. If for nothing else, then at least for the first post of a thread.
@klezman A problem with this is that unlike ww, mediocre forums send @mention notifications to people who are mentioned (may default to off, not sure if I had to turn it on). It also sends emails with new posts to people who have subscribed to a topic. These emails are sent when a post’s edit window closes.
You can ask a moderator such as @narfcake, maybe @thumperchick (not sure if she is a moderator here as well as meh) and probably others to make a change.
If you want dynamic content in a post, you can put a link to a Google docs document, though there are some limitations on this and allowing others to edit will require knowledge of their Google account names. There are other equivalent methods involving other external sites as well.
@klezman @baqui63 - the volunteer moderator for casemates is the great @corrado.
@narfcake is the meh volmod. I have great cosmic powers on all mediocre sites, because I’m part of the machin… I work here.
I actually decided I didn’t like getting those emails and turned that feature off. To each their own, of course.
I get it that some things would change a bit, but it’s worth exploring how people can accomplish the same things they’ve done before and want to keep on doing. Need to keep this centred on the community, right?
@klezman One thing that always chapped my ass about the antiquated woot forums is that there was no email notification of a reply/mention. It probably the main thing that caused me to abandon the forums; without the Pavlovian response to act on the notification, I would rarely go back and try to scrub through the threads to follow up on conversations.
Sure, I didn’t touch this for a day, but I came back because of the notification.
@corrado That makes perfect sense. Since currently I’m looking at it like email and “clearing my inbox” of highlighted threads it’s of no use to me. If I change my habits then I will almost certainly follow in your footsteps. And in the end, I think most of us want the software to enable us to use it how we want and not be “guided” into one particular method.
@klezman
I dig the email notification it’s not like I get that many anyways. No more scrolling through threads.
@ScottW58 Here’s one for you.
@barnabee, Can I play too? @ScottW58
@mike808 Tag, you’re it.
@barnabee You’re noy playing right.
@ScottW58 wants email so he doesnt feel lonely.
@mike808 I didn’t want @ScottW58 to get swamped with emails.
@barnabee OK. I’ll cut down on the gratuitous mehntions of @ScottW58
@mike808
No worries my delete finger works quite well!
@mike808 Well, maybe one or two or 1000 gratuitous mentions of @ScottW58 wouldn’t hurt.
@klezman a piece of public software like this can only really work in a limited selection of ways functionality-wise. For example there would be no way to allow for indefinite editing without breaking the functionality of the aforementioned email notifications and certainly no way to do so selectively based upon the individual user’s preferences. Presentation is a different neater entirely of course.
I admire the sentiment you’ve expressed relating to software in general and largely share the same sentiments myself but there’s a distinct difference between a piece of software installed locally on my computer and a public facing service with hundreds or thousands of active users in this regard.
Tagging @ScottW58 for posterity
@ScottW58 - it looks like it’s been a bit since someone tagged you. HAI!
@Thumperchick
If you tempt me I will spend all day tomorrow filling up your email inbox
@jbartus No, obviously you can’t support completely arbitrary use cases. I can think of ways around some of the specific issues you mention, at least logically. I clearly don’t know the specifics of the back-end design here, so I cna’t speculate as to what is or is not possible. At least I know enough about software design and engineering to know what could even be possible…otoh, in my work world we try to specify what we want first, then let the dev team tell us what is possible and when. After that we usually make changes
@klezman it’s not that it can’t be done technically, it’s that allowing such would break the functionality of being able to follow the discussion via email. I suppose if limited to first posts this would have limited impact except in the edge case where someone is tagged in the first post.
@jbartus I think we need @ScottW58 to weigh in on this.
I would not want to get emails of what someone wrote and then edited to say something completely different. Like to remove an @ScottW58 or a @klezman reference that disappears after the email is sent.
@mike808 I think you just wanted to tag @ScottW58, but I agree with your sentiments regarding edits.
@jbartus @mike808 Yeah, it’s an interesting set of things to balance. I don’t see it as “following” the conversation by email, since you’re not subscribed to the thread. You only get emails when people mention you specifically. If three intervening comments don’t mention you, then you don’t get notified. In any case, the request has been made, so the Mediocre folks can sort out the best way to implement/ignore the idea
@jbartus I think @klezman wants in on some @ScottW58 action.
@mike808 poor @ScottW58, even @Thumperchick is getting in on things
@jbartus
Nothing is wrong with the email system…
@jbartus @Thumperchick mike808
stop
@jbartus @Thumperchick @mike808
whining
@jbartus @Thumperchick @mike808
@ScottW58 Where’s the love for @klezman ? He’s the one that wanted some cheese
with his whine. 
CC @jbartus
@mike808 @klezman @Thumperchick @jbartus
dammit I forgot, but I like the way you think
@ScottW58 joke’s on you I don’t get the emails. No need to whine here. @mike808 @klezman @Thumperchick
I hereby propose that we call ourselves “casemateers.”
@NightGhost https://goo.gl/images/DPCy27
@CorTot All for wine, and wine for all!
@CorTot
Is this the image?
How about “gunners” - based on the ordinary language use of “casemate” its denizens would be gunners…
We’re also gunning for deals…
@rpm there are already enough guns. Dont need more.
@mike808 think football punting not point and shoot stuff.
Can we have a mobile way to ‘hide’ or turn off threads we’re not interested in.
Maybe a ‘swipe’ to archive/hide/whatever and it disappears. Kind of like an ‘unstar’ or unsubscribe.
Maybe a VMP feature?
@mike808 YES
My use case (see what I did there?) is to ‘swipe’ and hide the casemates finder threads for areas I don’t care about (no offense intended).
@mike808 I like this idea. Would balance well with a personal favorites list.
@snapster an unfavorites list?
@shawn completely expecting a no as a response but figured it doesn’t hurt to ask anyhow. What are the chances of getting a settings field the user can use to add their own (sanitized, someone must have a library for this) CSS to the site? One problem I’ve always faced with the custom color project is that it’s cumbersome, requiring a browser plugin, and, on mobile, use of a specific browser to even have a chance at a plugin.
Completely expecting a no chance response but with the pretty strong interest in tailored experiences being expressed here in the thread I figure it can’t hurt to ask.
A possible temp fix for the localized sharing and gathering topics? Color the font for them? That would make them easy to skip past, visually.
PS. I was a coder decades ago, but not since. I presume that shows.
@f00l How about an entire sub-category for this. No offense, but certain people don’t care a whit about casemates in Oshkosh - ya’ know, people who aren’t in Oshkosh.
@NightGhost See my above suggestion for an unlike or swipe to hide such topics.
@mike808 Sure, but they already implemented the subcategory, called “gatherings.”
@NightGhost so why do they appear on the endless topic scroll?
Does a moderator or volmod need to move them to the other category? How do we suppress the other categories, then?
Not expecting you to solve it, and im not frustrated. Just helping the Mediocre Labs tech guys brainstorm a solution. This is still evolving.
@mike808 The solution is to take them out of the “all” category.
@NightGhost That’s just it. I don’t want an “all” category as the default. Categories are helpful…so I’d suggest something like “finding casemates”, gatherings, social, offers/deals.
@klezman Well, I think there should be a “catch all” category for most things. Perhaps they could rename “all” to “general,” or something like that. My personal recommendation would be “NightGhost Rules!” but I don’t think they’ll go for it.
@NightGhost I think what would work is not the “all” category but rather a “not already in some other category”.
The “all” category includes all of the other categories. I want to exclude threads that are already in some other category and see just the ones with no category.
@mike808 We’re getting down to the fine points. I wouldn’t mind seeing the current deal in the main category. I also don’t care much about the polls, but maybe that’s just me.
I see that someone (apparently) from the winery (well, their last name is Little, it’s a pretty good bet) has popped up in the discussion for the launch wine. If we can’t have a banner identifying folks from the wineries, maybe a badge, like a wine bottle or a bunch of grapes?
@InFrom Yeah, and not sure why Rich hasn’t yet chimed in on the thread…
I’d tag him if I could again find his post.
@InFrom @rjquillin https://casemates.com/forum/topics/little-vineyards-band-blend-track-9#5a5ceeedd3ba060f54d68cf3 https://casemates.com/@jesslittle2
@communistjack That’s the one!
I don’t know if this is the right place for future offer requests but im gonna post here anyways.
I was just enjoying one of my last bottles of Dusted Valley CS, and would love to buy some more. Can we make that happen?
Can we have a “Tasting Notes” category?
Maybe the
threads can go in there.
Never tired any Eberle Wine, but I recall reading an article from my PennStater magazine months ago. Has anyone tried?
@jml326 Yes, visited there a while back. Some rather tasty stuff, including a wine they had on closeout that we bought 3 bottles of and should have bought a case or more.
I just want to add to the suggestions related to the need for another thread grouping. It’s good to have “Gatherings” “Deals” “Polls”, but we need another category for other types of conversations where those posts not related to any of the above can be grouped.
CyberPub?
Other?
WinoChat?
EverythingElse?
Frankly I don’t care what it’s called, but something else would be great and would allow for conversations to flow more readily and not get lost in the shuffle…
@vaaccess See my earlier post/reply to NightGhost. I agree with you.
,
I think what would work is not the “all” category but rather a “not already in some other category”.
The “all” category includes all of the other categories. I want to exclude threads that are already in some other category and see just the ones with no category.
,
@vaaccess there’s a Pub buried down the page a bit. But I guess your point is not to let it get buried?
@vaaccess I’m jiggy with EverythingElse…
@InFrom Yeah, but, maybe the “Pub” doesn’t need to be a single thread like we’ve always had previously. if you think about it, a Pub is often a bunch of people, in separate groups of conversations. And you kinda move around from one convo to another…well…a category or collection of threads fits well into that “pub” idea, I think. shrugs But really, just something other than “All”…
@vaaccess Yup, anything on those lines would be my thought. Both a “social” type category and a “misc” category to sit beside the “all” firehose. Then we get really fancy when we get to set a default for which one we see when we just point to casemates.com/forum
@JOATMON
Reminds me of eBay, and some strange stuff residing in EE.
@rjquillin Damn. There goes me down the rabbit hole. Be back in a year…
@ThumperChick @dave how about changing the price per bottle to reflect the lack of shipping charge if the person is logged in and a VMP?
@JOATMON Yes. Or just remove it and let people do the division themselves, since it appears to be causing confusion.
@klezman Why not the most straightforward - list the price and the shipping.
@NightGhost problem is with vmp there is not always shipping, and taxes will very state to state. Really it should just be a base price and that’s all.
@jml326 They should put shipping info out somehow. VMPs will know it doesn’t apply to them.
@NightGhost shipping cost shows at check out. Yes?
@jml326 Yes, but it would be nice to know before you hit the buy button, since shipping varies.
@NightGhost Agreed. Just show price and shipping cost and be done with it. Simplest of the answers.
@NightGhost
Go ahead and hit it. Nothing happens until you confirm the purchase. That way you see all the information and total cost inc ship, tax, and discount codes.
@Lighter I am seeking the most convenient solution. That is clearly not it.
I would love it if replys to replys showed up under the reply instead of as a general reply under the original comment.
Drives me crazy when you have a long set of replys on a single comment but there’s no quotes to “easily” see who’s replying to who. I prefer the Reddit style forum.
isnt that what the @ symbols are for?
@Twich22 In a long series of reply’s it can get confusing, what is a reply to which comment. (at least to me)
I’d like a pizza.
@capnjb Red or white?
@NightGhost Yes, please.
@capnjb NY style, deep dish, pan, thin?
@capnjb I make my own, it’s amazing how simple it is to do.
@markgm I do too
I was just making an astute observation. 
@markgm I actually do a lot of baking. In fact, my daughters first pet was a sourdough sponge
@capnjb Nice! I got creative with this last one:
@markgm Yum. What type of ham is that? Porchetta?
@capnjb I made a red pizza with light mozzarella and goat cheese, baked it, and then topped it with prosciutto, spinach, and a fig glaze (3 dried figs in a blender with just enough water to liquefy it). Fig jam would have worked well if I had it.
@markgm Sounds awesome. Nice job
@capnjb @markgm
Ever try a Blackstone ?
I’ve seen these cook a pie in under three minutes.
@rjquillin No need to rush it
The gadget geek in me would love to cook on it, the happily married me knows it’s probably best if I don’t own one. Heh.
@capnjb unless you have a bunch or ravenous wooters that have been sucking on bottles and are ready for food, NOW!
I first saw this in action at a SoCal gathering where we were concocting our own hybrid pies. In and done in under 5-minutes was a real plus.
oops, thread creep
@capnjb Only the square beyond compare for me. Provel, baby!
Lenaspizzastl.com available locally at Dierberg’s.
@rjquillin @ScottW58, we haven’t run the Blackstone with you guys in ages!
@klezman
Yeah I love my Blackstone
@mike808 That looks fantastic! @rjquillin, the Blackstone looks great, but it would be covered under snow half the year. I pretty much have a dedicated pizza oven now, it just doesn’t get up to 700 degrees. My next purchase (once my stone breaks) is a steel. I would like something a little larger so my ever expanding pizzas don’t drip on the oven floor.
How about adding a “/FORUM” clicky thing to the right of the Casemates logo in the header, like Meh has?
My suggestion is to fix the main page so that it scrolls and displays properly. (Galaxy S4, Samsung browser) It currently has the columns overlaid on each other rather than sequentially in the vertical orientation.
How about customer support on the weekends. Last weekend I bought a 4 pack before being able yo find classmates local. When I did find a mate there was no one to help me with my ticket to cancel and reorder a case instead to share.
@NatasG or even better…give us the ability to cancel or upgrade our order while a sales event is still active
@NatasG Just be sure to share some wine with the teacher.
<jk>
@NightGhost haha…meant to say Casemates (not classmates) of course. Nice Pun! Since one of the intents of the Kickstarter and now business venture is to encourage wine enthusiasts to work together to sample lots of new wines and save by going in on cases, it would be great for the platform to support better ordering flexibility to cancel and change our orders as group demand changes…at least during each sales event that currently runs 2-3 days.
@NatasG Someone else posted something similar. Casemates is trying to work out the kinks in the sharing model. My personal solution is just to buy the case myself, and then collect from whoever wants some later.
@snapster @dave
It would be great to have the ability to expand the comments on posts in time sequence between the posts that get shown. This is in contrast to having the all-or-your-settings version where there’s only one button at the top to expand all.
For example:
Post 1 @ 3pm yesterday
Post 2 @ 4pm yesterday
Post 3 @ 5pm yesterday etc…
Post 24 @ 2pm today
My settings have posts 14, 18, 22, 23, and 24 show up by default.
I’d like a button between posts 14 and 18 to expand comments 15-17, and another one between 18 and 22 to expand #19-21. Double bonus if they default to having the replies hidden until I click a button to open those.
As threads get longer and longer (e.g. the what are you drinking discussion) it gets rather cumbersome to have only the binary choice.
For the event emails we receive a day after a new wine event launches:
Is it possible to only send the emails to accounts whose saved addresses are in an available state for shipping? That way those of us who only have access to a small portion of the events don’t receive emails for things we can’t buy.
The only downside would be if people in those ineligible states order wine to a neighboring state to pick up. But they would likely have a saved address for that state, so they would still receive the email in theory.
@andrd Maybe just put the ship-to states in the email?
@NightGhost That would also be nice! Being emailed ads for items that you can’t buy 80% of the time just makes it so that one doesn’t even bother checking anymore.
When reviewing a wine, please tell me how well it will pair with the garbage I eat. Is this more of a “frozen chicken nuggets” wine or a “boxed mac-n-cheese” wine?
Joking.
sort of
As you work on this site with respect to ordering could you please find a way for us to link our order splits with our case mates. Maybe a at check out let us list user names so they can see the order and tracking number in their order history.
So with whispers…when we reload the forum, it doesn’t show threads with my unread whispers as having unread items. That messes with my process! Any chance it could reflect unread items that the user can see?
@klezman @dave
whispers issues continue Dave, any chance we could get some tweaks to help out?
How about an icon or something to alert us we have unread posts.