** Indeed!
5 Likes
Same exact thing happened to me yesterday with this same flavor. I’m really beginning to dislike this whole merge process. I have an invalid cake flavor, but when you click notes it’s saying it’s a one shot pineapple upside down cake. I’ve never purchased anything like that. No idea what it is.
5 Likes
Cereal 27 (Capella) was 02 “invalid “ I think this was the first flavor that had that came up invalid. Also a handful of The Flavor Smiths came up invalid.
4 Likes
A handful of the new line The Flavor Smiths got the axe. Some are completely gone, like coconut jam.
And, there are 4 pages of recipes for this. Granted for 2023 this was a complete deep dive, BUT, notes are valuable to some people. This flavor is still being sold at DIYVS. Every time I enter notes, I enter the name, & the flavor house.
5 Likes
Holy smokes! THANK YOU! That’s what some of my invalids are, Gremberry or Gremlin, I just about love you right now lmao 
I forgot about Imp Dust, I actually like it as a single flavor. You made my morning! 
3 Likes
As I said before, I am painfully aware of the the Cereal 27 issue as well as some of the others. If you want accountability ok here I am, flame away. But if you’re looking for answers as to why all that happened I honestly can’t tell you because I do not know.
The database merge process is, to my knowledge the only method for dealing with the tens of thousands of wonky names…but it is also a very unforgiving mechanism if something goes awry. I have heard talk of Lars exploring a way to maybe reverse some of the mishaps, so there’s that.
But I do know this…flavor name entries and new flavor submissions by any user must be shut off. We have all known this as truth for years now. Once that happens there will be no need for a merge process (except those names that are pre-existing). So again, until Lars deploys a re-coded Recipe Calculator we have to live with what God and Lars gives us.
8 Likes
Here is a sample of what would qualify for a merge.
This is an actual recipe from yesterday.
No action has been taken, but can you see what the problem would be if this is merged into Cherry (Invalid/ No Brand Name)??
5 Likes
I completely understand you guys have been working tirelessly on trying to fix other’s mistakes. I totally wasn’t being rude. I think you’ve probably seen me comment on recipes that have errors asking people to please fix them. My stash only has 11 invalids, and most of them I don’t care about. I just wish there was some way to omit people inputting flavors in wrong. Like a red 
that would not let them move forward until they corrected it.
7 Likes
I dont have one invalid flavor in my stash .I had Cereal 27 but added it again and tada
7 Likes
I think I have 11, C27 was one of them. Some that I didn’t SFT, I can’t tell what they were.
5 Likes
I can understand totally that this whole process must have been very taxing & time consuming for you & Ken, as for the immediate solution to the ongoing mess of new invalid flavours being added back to the DB, I think this could be tackled by a small amount of coding to adjust the way adding flavours on the DB works -
So only known valid flavour with the correct spelling & brands included can be entered & there be some kind of submission form which is passed on to the admin team to look at & confirm prior to new flavours being added, I.E if it’s a new flavour from a brand / an unknown brand etc, then evidence in the form of screenshots from the manufactures be needed to confirm their legitimacy.
Taking the uncertainty out of the equation & not allowing members to just add any old thing into the DB.
How easy this change would be I am obviously not aware of, but I agree something needs to be done so random flavours can’t simply be added back further compounding the issue.
I have 1100+ flavours in my stash & I have several which I know were entered in correctly but have been removed/renamed or simply merged, I do know some of these were lesser known brands like DEA/CFL/Cornish Liquids etc, but they are all known brands with the correct names cross checked on the manufactures websites to be sure about getting them right.
9 Likes
First, my apologies that some of your stash got whacked also. Some of my own did as well so I can relate to the frustration. But I use an offline calculator so I merely compared those offline recipes to my ELR whacked versions.
As for your suggestion, it’s a good one but ideas like yours as well as some others over the years have already been submitted to Lars. Making a change to the code, however small it might be, would be a significant project. Many variables would be involved which in turn would require a bunch of testing before the server could go live again. I’m no programmer but have worked in corporate IT before, so I’m relatively familiar with some of those processes. I’m just guessing but I think one reason Lars hasn’t moved on this yet is because he’s staring at a daunting task.
8 Likes
I’m no IT wizz myself so don’t know how much work is involved Dan, but my son does a lot of coding & seems to think it should not be a massive task, the testing on the other hand could well be, I also totally get where Lars is at on this as I run a couple of vintage collectors interest guides which are constantly being updated & you don’t always have that get up & go/mojo that’s required on tap.
I’ve actually not re entered any of the messed up flavours back into my stash, but would really like to try & get it back in order, just don’t want to be throwing petrol on the fire, I do know all the ones that need adding back are 100% confirmed real flavours from mainly little known brands, but the names I had them entered under were correct in terms of full name/correct brand (or abbreviation) & spelled correctly.
I do like yourself feel something needs to be done sooner rather than later to avoid more incorrectly named flavours being added to the DB, but TBH I would rather work around them than them being renamed/merged as that was creating a lot of work for myself & no doubt for others.
I know the system was a little broken in terms of all the wrongly entered flavour names, but as I said it was something you could navigate past without to much stress.
Fingers crossed Lars gets his 2nd wind going forward & we can all look forward to a positive future for ELR, as I firmly regard it as my mixing home & choose to keep supporting it & not using any other calculators for my mixing.
8 Likes
And that’s fine, for those of us that know better. But it’s also a double-edged sword. The recipe side gets new users virtually every day that don’t quite know how to navigate the names…so they enter their own and think nothing of it. Or they have somewhat of an idea but, either out of ignorance or laziness, they just select the first name that pops up. We who know how to navigate using workarounds are vastly disproportionate to the other users, who will likely just keep adding to the mess. 
5 Likes
@TorturedZen wasn’t it you that suggested TWO databases ??
The first would be pre-loaded correct flavors, that would show up in the drop down list when adding ingredients. The would be correct flavors, and would add, and be shown in your recipes.
The second would be the @$%#%^$^& database. Any time a user added a random or incorrect flavor it would be added to THAT database, and it would force that recipe to private.
That way the clean database stays clean, and the dirty one, well …
6 Likes
No. I kinda remember that suggestion but not who thought of it.
5 Likes
I mentioned it some time ago (years), but i’m sure several others had similar ideas too, since it makes sense and it’s not hard to do for developers.
Any new flavor can be entered, but only recipes of previously confirmed flavors are shown publicly.
Everyone is happy this way, everyone can make their recipes without annoying outside interference, whoever wants to publish recipes publicly will easily find a way by following some rules, noone is hurt or angry on mods, there is no additional work (mods could confirm (or not) hundreds of new flavors every week in 15 min of work and confirm those few new flavors).
something like this in the backend
Confirmed = Public, not confirmed = that flavor and recipes stay private.
This solution is much better than what other sites have (ATF, VC) where every single flavor is added by the mods themselves (more work for them) and left to their decision what to confirm or not (which is contrary to this particular site’s idea which is about adding all your flavors, dilutions, bases, etc, not just those top 30 brands that some mods ‘like’ or know, but ALL FLAVORS); on top it would save time (people can add them exactly when they want to, without waiting for mods to come around someday (totally annoying, not user-friendly solution and it’s turning off).
Everyone’s happy, it reduces mod’s work to the minimum, and site stays on its original track (which should be the goal); Asian freelancers would probably happily make it for 50$ (or in case the coding is a disaster, make a new modern site for two or three Franklins; problem solved in couple of hours).
10 Likes
Sounds like much less work on the mod team & Lars in all honesty & I agree we need this place to remain different & cater to all flavours (well confirmed ones)
6 Likes
I get that Dan, likely 90/10% in reality, but some of these other suggestions being put forward seem quite logical??
Is the a simple way to just disable the ability of users to add new flavours until the work needed can be implemented?? temporary solution I know, but would be better than it being cluttered up further in the mean time.
8 Likes