I can’t see the forest because of the trees. Two suggestions from a newbie…
Let me search recipies with a limit on the number of flavors. I see I can eliminate single flavor recipies. But when I’m looking for ideas, like “Cream” for example, I keep finding recipies with way too many flavors.
Let me sort by number of reviews. Finding a bunch of 4-5 star recipies with only 1 review is not much value. I’m pretty sure if I could sort by # reviews, the best rated would also show up first. Not very likely that a recipie with a poor rating will have a high number of reviews.
To add to the second point, it’s also possible it will start evening out now that you have to leave a comment to rate. It won’t help for the ones that already have tons of ratings or for the people who leave things like “asdflkjavsdoasnga;ojbd” as the comment, but going forward it should start to level off a little.
Here’s a sample of what I was after, as a newbie. I displayed all recipies, sorted by rating, then scraped the first 5 screens and hacked into Excel so I could pick out the key data I wanted: Number of mixers (count), and key variables. Only picked recipies with over 100 mixers. That, combined with a list of top used flavors, gives me a way to start guessing.
Unfortunately, the low NIC and low PG% confirms the dominance of Direct-to-Lung mixers. As a mouth-to-lung, standard ohm, 50/50, and 12 to18 NIC user I know these stats will be a bit off for me. My 7 years vaping commercial juices made me an RY4 fan, almost exclusively. I found I’m in a very small minority. Only 2 of the top used recipies are RY4 based.
So, RY4 + MTL = a lonely planet for me. But I’m just an old analyst having fun.
It’s right there in my post. Just cut and paste into Excel. Maybe need to change the font and fill color, and column widths as desired. But the data fills into Excel just fine.
However, when Darth shared the secret of adding “&sort=ratecount” to the URL, this became kind of redundant.
Adding “&fcount=4” (or 2, or 3, or 6, or 13) is also helpful. But that displays recipies with the EXACT flavor count, not a less-than-or-equal, which is probably what most people want. So, to find top rated recipies with 5 or less flavors, you have to do several searches. One with 5, one with 4, one with 3, etc.
Sure wish darth would add these search criteria in a user friendly fashion, so we wouldn’t have to do silly hacks.
I missed that part, but glad to have it now! Also, I wasn’t sure what you meant when you wrote that you scraped the data on the first 5 pages - got it now.
@daath, I’d love to see a list of variables if they are public, so I can play around with the searches. I loved hearing about &fcount= ! I use it all the time now
Note that the fcount flag means “exactly equal to” and not “equal or less that” which is probably what most people want. i.e., find recipes with 5 or less flavors, no more. So you have to do multiple searches. One for 5, one for 4, one for 3, etc.
Thanks, Alisa. The recipe adaptation tool is a great feature, and I use it a lot. However, I believe all the math is linear. That’s probably OK for simply changing the total volume. But some key factors muddy the waters. PG carries flavor more than VG, NIC levels affect flavor, and wattage (temp) also impacts flavor.
So take a recipe that has been “perfected” at 20% PG, 3mg NIC, and vaped at 50 to 100 watts DTL. What happens when it is adapted to 50% PG, 12mg NIC, and vaped at 8 to 10 watts MTL. I’ve looked around for hints or tips on how flavor percentages might be adjusted in this example, but I don’t find much.
I’ve made about 6 of the top rated recipes. All were published at 70% VG or greater, 3 to 6 mg NIC, and most turned out OK at 50% VG and 12mg NIC, but I wonder if they could be even better with different flavor precentages. Or if the ones I didn’t like were not a matter of personal taste. Of course, I can test via trail-and-error, and hope to find the time and patience to do that.
I offer a small story as example. I was one of the first computer science students at my university in the late 60s. The manager of the dorms food service came to the Compsci department and asked for help. Students often bring food recipes from home and ask to have them served in the dorms. We wrote a neat little linear calculator. It failed miserably.
The problem was how to translate “a pinch of salt” in a recipe that serves 6 into a recipe to serve 600. Over the next few years, via trail-and-error, the food service folks developed a large list of non-linear formulas that were used to translate any small family recipe into one for mass consumption. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had that for e-liquid recipes.
I have found little difference in taste with altering the ratio just a longer steep time for more VG. However this may help or it may not it is something you would have to likely experiment with
Thanks for replying, @Redcrown . Sorry I didn’t get right back to you, but lost connection. (I’m on the road with my trucker hubby)
I do understand your issue better now though and I hope you’ll take @woftam 's suggestion into consideration! Please let us know what you come up with, as I’m sure there are several others that could very well be helped that are MTL’rs. !
Thanks, woftam. I had not seen that info. Very helpful, and a good starting point for trial-and-error testing. Will probably save a bunch of wasted batches and time.
go 
