Ideas for future Connosr site features

@Jean-Luc they are both excellent suggestions .Carry on the good work!

Really appreciate the time and effort you put into this site! I would like the database to be updated to contain more new releases and single casks. It feels a bit outdated at times.

@maltmate302 :)

Thanks @Alexsweden. Yes, that will be addressed, with more emphasis on user management of the database down the line.

@Jean-Luc

1) I like some of the pictures that appear on some of the reviews. Not everyone has cloud space to upload to or knows how to link it. I wonder if it would be possible to add a feature where a small photo could be uploaded.

2) It would be great to be able to use bold, underline, non-English characters more easily.

Pursuant to both of these suggestions, perhaps a link to FAQ which has instructions for how to do some of these things...

Thanks again for your efforts!

Hi @Nozinan – both of those features have already been built into the new platform :)

1) Reviews will allow multiple image uploads, in fact it's an important part of the new review layout.

2) Text formatting will be much clearer within discussion posts and comments. In fact I was working on that yesterday. The character encoding issues are fixed.

By the way, you'll also be able to upload images into comments, attach videos (YouTube / Vimeo) and embed Tweets.

Also the @ mention method has been rebuilt so it suggests usernames as you type. You will also be alerted if you are mentioned somewhere.

@Jean-Luc

Sounds AWESOME!

Now, if I could add one more request. If the long discussion threads could load to the most recent page instead of the first page...

I'll look for a graceful solution to this. Certainly when someone replies there will be a way to go directly to that comment.

Your ideas: (1) I think a news feed would be great. I guess it'd be tricky to integrate up-voting in the right way, if it is intended to 'bump' the post up. It depends how cluttered it gets, otherwise 'most recent' is probably most interesting. (2) I can't say it all in 2 lines, and I'm afraid no one else will think-out this answer for you: I don't exactly dislike the idea of polling, and at first it sounds like a way to engage the community. But really imagining it now, I foresee complaints or disinterest, so I really think it's sensitive and has to be done the right way. 'Does NAS dumb down?' I do NOT believe many members would enjoy giving that a straight yes or no. Then, when we all look at the pie chart and see 60-40, how will people really respond? I think they will shrug so-what, or even question the validity; in the best case it they discuss the subtleties, discuss why it's an unfair question, even discuss why polling itself is inappropriate. I guess I mean to say that this community is more about discussion, and people here really dislike black-and-white / yes-or-no answers. People like to give answers that are not among the given options! And they like to see their "individual" voice heard, rather than the collective. I will paste 3 recent links here, of discussions that tried to "poll" and were reasonably popular, and you can consider what happened-- and whether these would have worked as "real polls": connosr.com/wall/discussion/… connosr.com/wall/discussion/… connosr.com/wall/discussion/…

Finally, I thought of 2 situations where polls might be welcomed. First, if the poll was actually coming from the industry. If LVMH/Glenmorangie actually cared about Connosr opinions and was asking us "would you prefer to see a single cask series but at 46% ABV, or else an NAS cask strength release that is made from multiple casks?" Then I think people would like to think their input is being heard by the industry. The 2nd situation is if the questions are about internet reviewing itself: "Do you tend to read tasting notes that are longer or shorter?" "Which of the following features would you most like to see next on this website...?"

Thanks @vanPelt that's helpful feedback

1) Re up-voting news article: Yes, recency would be the primary sort order. If the news feed became busy, uprating would allow us to show what has been popular this week or this month.

(By the way, in the new platform anything can be 'liked' so that goes for reviews, distilleries/brands, discussions, comments and photos. We can use this to pick out what is popular or trending in a given timeframe. The same would go for news items if we do develop the feed idea.)

2) Re your polling feeback: that's a fair point. It also highlights the importance of well thought question... and mine was a poor example.

I guess there are a couple of things to consider:

• Polls could have multiple answer options (they don't have to be yes / no).

• We could include a discussion area under the poll

• I think you folks could come up with better poll questions than me :)

@Jean-Luc maybe we could have a section for other spirits.There are many on this site that enjoy the odd Mezcal, Rum or Brandy . Perhaps we could have an area dedicated to this sort of discussion.

More features with the cabinet... Export to csv / import from csv? Change the display sort? Date added/purchased, by distillery, by region,alphabetical by name, by $$$, by ABV, by connosr rating, by my rating, other?

@maltmate302 @tfahey1298 Noted, thank you

@Jean-Luc, will there be a page in which members can propose bottle trades with other members? I would like to see that.

Hi @Victor, can you provide a few more details for how you see that working?

@tfahey1298 - Fwiw, I accidentally down voted your comment (2 above this one) from Feb 16th...it was meant to be an upvote...sorry!

@Pudge72 ...and now I can't count either, apparently. :)

@Jean-Luc, I was thinking that there could be a page on which members made posts listing of bottles for which they are interesting in trading and bottles which they would have available to trade. You could call it something like "Swap Page" or "Swap Meet". For example:

Available to trade: Pappy Van Winkle 15 yo, Pappy Van Winkle 20 yo, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof 12 yo, 70.1% ABV, and some less expensive bottles of bourbon

Wanted: Octomore Orpheus 2.2, Highland Park 25 YO, Willett 23 yo Rye "The Iron Fist", Amrut Portonova

...OR, offers for trades could be more specific. For example, I am willing to trade a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 15 yo for a bottle of Octomore Orpheus 2.2.

@Pudge72 Not to worry... down-voting will be a thing of the past soon :) there will just be 'liking' or for extreme cases you'll be able to flag content as inappropriate.

...Details, and more prolonged negotiation would be by private messages.

@Jean-Luc

What about an easy ay of flagging inappropriate new members (the ones that are simply flogging their business)? Might make it easier on you a bit.

@Victor It's a good suggestion, I would need to work through the details.

Some initial thoughts:

• It would be good to filter listings by country and state/region to find 'traders' near you
• Traders could say if they are happy to 'post' or 'swap in person'
• Members could leave traders feedback to build reputation

That said, we'd also need to consider what could go wrong? Is there risk of loss or damage in the post? Who is responsible? What happens if there are disputes etc?

@Nozinan I've been giving this some thought as well. We're planning to allow 'established' members to flag and suspend new accounts which are obviously spam or misbehaving. Those account would then be reviewed by Connosr admin as soon as possible (and most probably deleted).

I feel it's important that people can join and participate straight away; but with the solution above it means that nuisance accounts can be disabled if they join while we're offline :)

@Jean-Luc, with respect to bottle trades, I would think that Connosr would probably be just about making the initial contact, and that all arrangements beyond that are private transactions with private liability. I know that I would be more likely to make trades that could be transacted face to face.

Yes, location by nation should be provided with listings.

Re: Swapping-- This kind of thing is done in my "parallel whisky universe" (mostly for samples though), but I think it would work much better on Connosr. Check the link here to see how it's done: www.reddit.com/r/scotchswap You can see that they recently had a "bad swap", and you can see how they (don't) deal with it. Very probably Connosr will need to state a legal disclaimer avoiding all responsibility, that all deals are considered made in private. You'll probably also have to state that it is barter-only (no cash exchange).

I think Connosr could be much a more elegant website for enabling this kind of swapping, because we actually have user profiles here. This means there could be a section on our profiles where we list whiskies that we want to sample (or indicate desire to own a whole bottle) and list whiskies that we can offer in return (much like our cabinet lists or wish lists). Since people will want to trade cheap-for-cheap and rare-for-rare, it would be convenient if we could indicate each whisky's "preciousness" with 1-5 * stars. It would also be easier for us to choose our country/location in our profiles, which would make searching easy too.

Finally, I like the idea of earning "trust points": When you agree on a trade with another member, you both click "initiate trade with [other member]". Then it's registered and you can see it on your own profile's "trades-in-progress". When you receive the other person's sample, you can click on a thumbs-up (or thumbs-down...), and then the other person gets an extra trust-point listed on their profile. You would also have to list the number of unique trade-partners, to avoid trust-point scams.

Above all, please do not delay Reboot to implement this! It's a nice-to-have, but not the priority, I think.

@vanPelt It's one for our development 'roadmap' but good to discuss at this stage as it's better to plan some aspects in advance. For example, I will future proof the cabinet and user profile databases to provision for some of these suggestions so it's easier to implement when we're ready.

@vanPelt Thanks for the reddit link btw

Hey all! We've added an image upload field on the 'Write Review' page. It would be great if you could attach a photo when you submit reviews.

The next version of the site will really make the most user-submitted images so this is interim step get some photos into reviews between now and the relaunch. You can also add images to existing reviews via the current 'edit review' function.

Most mobile phones take good photos these days so have a go and see what you can come up with. The image could be of the bottle, the label or a nice shot of your tasting glass or sample bottle.

I took this shot on my iPhone with the bottle lying on our wooden flooring and will be experimenting with different backgrounds and lighting connosr.com/workspace/uploads/…

Shout if you have any questions.

@Jean-Luc

Good job, @Jean-Luc! I really like the option of adding your own picture to a review

I really liked your photo on you r most recent review.

However, I was not able to upload a picture of the bottle for my inaugural review, Bladnoch 10

@Nozinan Can you send the image to support@connosr.com and I'll try and see why you couldn't upload it?