For many years, I've had a long list of wouldn't-it-be-nice projects for this site. Threads like Interested in being an HB wiki editor? Thoughts on the future of HB and Supporting Membership? raise some interesting ideas, but they've never gotten off the ground for lack of time/resources. While this year may end up no different, I'm mulling over the possibility of hiring an intern for the summer to code some of these improvements.

From the last time I floated this suggestion:

• Create a wiki-based FAQ curated from forum discussions
• Update all the how-tos; modernize and refactor them for more friendly browsing
• Produce a bi-weekly newsletter

The discussion in Should there be a forum about water? has me thinking of another possibility: Curated tagging that cuts across forums (e.g., "Problem diagnosis", "Water treatment", "Plumbing", "Getting started", "Advanced", "FAQ", "Trending", etc). Any other suggestions?

PS: These are suggestions from last year not related to coding. If there's more interest in these than the above, another option is hiring an intern editor instead of programmer.

• Produce a weekly podcast
• Establish a monthly coffee review schedule (and stick to it!)
• Invest in pro-quality video production equipment (Whole Latte Love does this quite well)
• Publish monthly content from paid authors and have them professionally copyedited.

Mike Zhu, owner of New World Cafe, suggested taking the Cafes forum and creating a mobile app for cafe recommendations. Sounds like an excellent idea! For ease of implementation, it could be a (limited) wrapper of the current site content with customization (i.e., basically a "thinned" version of the Cafes forum only showing recommendations and supporting votes).

I like this idea and other app creation too, like one for dialing in a shot and other brew methods.

Maybe a section specific to each machine. I am certain that the dose/yield etc. recipe on a commercial machine will not be right for a smaller lever machine. I think it would be fun to share recipes among users with similar machines and have a place to go back to for reference.

HB wrote:Mike Zhu, owner of New World Cafe, suggested taking the Cafes forum and creating a mobile app for cafe recommendations. Sounds like an excellent idea! For ease of implementation, it could be a (limited) wrapper of the current site content with customization (i.e., basically a "thinned" version of the Cafes forum only showing recommendations and supporting votes).

BeanHunter is a great app well used across Australia that I've said before more of us should just start using. But yeah, this is an area that could be improved upon!

Beanhunter is great, but there's a bit of an issue where some commodity level cafes get high scores and might be less than what I imagine the typical member here would expect.

I think simply the ability to +1 specific posts in a thread might help clean up the content a bit and make it easier for readers to see which ideas might have consensus.

e.g.
- use a scale and weigh everything +3000
- Actually, you should use volume to measure the output because that is the official definition +2

Other suggestions in Mark page read and IOS app for HB.

I feel the above idea about a cafe locator would be fabulous, and it doesn't have to be something as complicated as a new app. It can just be a geotagged list connected to google earth via their api. I personally wouldn't want it to be off-site, as I prefer to only see recommendations that come from members of H-B.


Also, I would love to see a "not interested" button in the thread list or in the tools (Subscribe, etc.) in the thread. This, in addition to the other ideas about "Mark Page Read" would help to thin the length of the Unread Posts, etc. The "not interested" threads could be demoted to the bottom of a user's list so that they still appear but are tagged for that user as something that's not relevant. I apologize if it seems snobbish, but the wealth of information flowing through this site is huge and anything that can be done to thin the herd might be useful.

shawndo wrote:I think simply the ability to +1 specific posts in a thread might help clean up the content a bit and make it easier for readers to see which ideas might have consensus.

e.g.
- use a scale and weigh everything +3000
- Actually, you should use volume to measure the output because that is the official definition +2

This would be a good improvement but I hope it's clear if it's a "like" (think Facebook which can become a popularity contest) or a "I found this helpful" (a lot of help sites do this but isn't the same as another expert weighing in saying, "yes, this is the correct answer"). Not sure which is the best approach but the +1/like approach seems to be what we do on H-B?

Edit: I know those are similar, but yet I feel like a clear distinction could be helpful, almost like there are different types of threads: problem-solving ones and looking for opinions and advice ones, and just general sharing our coffee experiences.