Just spent many worthless minutes in “What can I make” wrestling with the problem of many different spellings (typos) of the same flavor. My case, it was with Acetyl Pyrazine, which in no surprise has been spelled dozens of different ways. Add the vendor and it gets worse. Some use TPA, some use TFA, some use lower case, some add 5%, some don’t. Looks like sometimes “FA” means “Flavor Apprentice”, sometimes it means “Flavor Art”.
I’m almost 20 years outside the IT business now, but back then the solution to this problem was called “normalization.” Databases were built with a “master” and “aliases”. The most classic application was with addresses, so that “123 Cherry”, “123 Cherry Lane”, “123 Cherry Ln” would all be treated the same.
I imagine it would be a significant task for ELR to normalize the all the flavors, but it would also be a big improvement.
The problem is, as frequently as we strive to correct inaccuracies, and misspellings, custom-formatting by those who don’t yet understand that even though “their” flavor stash is set to ‘private’, they don’t understand what a database IS, much less the fact that, it’s shared, even when their stash ISN’T.
Much less other issues…
These depend largely on how long the mixer, and vendor, have been involved in the realm of DIY.
I wrote up a bit of history on the subject of TPA vs TFA, and you can search the forum to find out why that one is what it is…
As for FA, here, and every other DIY forum I’ve read in, it is, has been, and will always refer to FlavourArt (Italy). Some vendors just use obstinate methods/reasons in the pursuit of somehow “making their product stand out” among their competition.
Users, staff, and members who try to help shrink the duplicates (etc) alike, all know your pain. The latter two categories, exceedingly well.
I’m confident in saying some form of “normalization” is being considered, and will be coming… But we’re all at the mercy of the folks who: can’t type, can’t spell, can’t speak the language, don’t care about others, don’t have correct information (from being new, or don’t know yet that FA is NOT TFA, but thanks to a vendors “bonehead decision moment” they see FA on the label, etc, etc. *We’ve all had bonehead decision moments. lol - I guess it’s just how you recover, should one choose to that is.
It’s an ongoing battle, and if you’d like to be part of the solution, please feel free to submit duplicates to assist those trying to fight the good fight on your behalf!!
Thanks for caring about ELR enough to notice, and post a suggestion. Rest assured though you’re not alone!
Part of the problem is highlighted in your Heading! Until Americans learn to spell words correctly and stop dropping letters and use a s instead of an z you are never going to get “Flavours Normalised on here”…
That seems like a great solution. I could see it being a lot of work up front creating a so called Master List of flavors. In the end you would only have to add new ones as they are released. Of course it seems like new flavors are released everyday. I am also still somewhat of a noob. I still see flavors on threads and places on sites I have never heard of. So I could see some flavors missing the master list. It is a bit frustrating when I can’t find a flavor listed on ATFs that I have so have to create a name. Finding a medium between limited and limitless is well beyond my thought capabilities. Thank you and those who work hard to make ELR a great place and always thinking of ways to improve.
Thanks for the feedback, and encouragement. I just got an order from Nicotine River yesterday. Five bottles are labled “FA” which are actually from “Flavor Apprentice”. You have to use a microscope to read the words “Flavor Apprentice” below the bigger letters “FA”. Three bottles are from “Flavor Arts”, but with that spelled out in larger font in a different location, no abbreviation.
And according to Google, of the 360 million who speak English as first language, 70% use the American version. Of the other 1.2 billion who speak English as a second language, 90% use the American version. I speak American, but I really like to listen to the British version.
What NR did with TFA is confusing to the point to where I had to use a label maker and type in TFA so it wouldn’t be read wrong. Ecig express has TFA also but it’s called signature. Almost have to look for the original manufacturer logo to organize it physically in the stash. TFA has 5% and 10% AP but NR has TFA AP with no percentage written on the bottle. So it’s a mess all over and the vendors should get things fixed on their end.
If you buy natures flavors organic extracts, put these as "Flavor (NF Organic)
I think you are right. I believe they used to and found it confusing. I think I’ll shut up cause I have no idea what I’m talking about. Pardon the fast exit
I’m entering all of my NF in this format, but the Cheesecake (Organic) (NF) keeps switching to lower case! I’ve tried it 5 or 6 times, the choices I’m clicking in the drop down are upper case, but it switches after I click the add button! Cleared cache, refreshed, nothing works, just typing in properly and hitting the add button doesn’t work either.
I’ve been waiting to see a thread like this and have already tried helping with the database clean up, in terms of duplicates. And I would like to get involved more but this statement of Americans not spelling correctly kind of threw me off.
So… Mr. Bluenose, I could care less where you’re from, but I’m a proud American who knows how to spell. And I would appreciate it if you would refrain from making such narrow-minded blanket statements. You merely point out that using a Z instead of an S is incorrect. I think everyone reading this thread would be better served if you contributed something with a little more substance!
Whoa, TorturedZen. Step down from the political correctness soapbox and take a breath. The Bluenose post was made in jest, even signed with a smiley/grinning emoticon. I got it. So did 6 others who “liked it”. Can’t we have a little fun?
If I knew where you lived. I’d come over an “put a handle” on you. Look up some Aussie friend to find out if you should be offended.
