Hit the nail on the head!
Need more folks pointing out errors on the recipe side. As @Fishaddict420 pointed out most of the folks don’t have a clue about the database. Looking at profiles when educating folks 99% of the offenders have never been on the forum side!
Thanks for all your help @Sprkslfly and your tireless effort! It is a huge job!
Thank you very much for your hard work.
Great work and thanks for putting so much of your time in this. The flavor mess is probably one of the 2 or 3 biggest issues with ELR and has been much discussed in the past. Really good to see some work being done and I’m sure 1000’s of people will appreciate the result 
One thing that I would suggest still, is a change in the brand’s naming convention. Flavour Art should be just that instead of FA. TFA/TPA still puts FA on its bottles and especially for beginners, this may lead to adding incorrect flavors in the database. A lot of brands have been renamed to their full name already, e.g. Inawera/INW, Purilum/PUR, Real Flavors/RF. I’ve been messing around with flavors for quite a while now as well, and still I see a lot of abbreviated brands without having a clue what they mean, so that adds an additional difficulty when shopping for flavors that are missing from your stash. I’ve seen some pages where you can hover over them and it’ll show, but too many pages are still missing this feature.
Is there any way that we can back up our flavor notes? Some people put a lot of time in notes and it would be a shame to lose them by the flick of a switch. It would also give people the option to remove a flavor from their stash without having to lose any info attached to it.
Input noted. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. 
The simplest way is to back them up locally (IE: a text file). If course, while it’s slightly more work, you could always post them in the appropriate forum “tasting notes” thread! 
Completely agree. And they’re appreciated by everyone!
This is the biggest reason in my opinion to have them in the forum. Most people (who know about the forum) don’t think about the notes being lost when they’re focused on cleaning up their stash. (This has been discussed before as well)
Personally, I plan to do it when I go through to thin the herd (where I have notes that are worth sharing). Several I already have (usually the ones I’m really excited about, or impressed with).
I absolutely understand what you’re saying and I do use the forum (and places like reddit) to research flavors. It’s just not convenient.
Forum threads contain a wealth of information, but if you need quick info on a flavor, it’s not the most efficient way to dig it up. Threads contain dozens of different flavors, people easily derail threads and make it very time consuming to dig up info on a particular flavor.
Don’t get me wrong, I do feel it has a place here and I use these threads a lot when I do some research before buying flavors. Just when I need to rely on quick notes when mixing, it’s not the right medium for me.
Forums also exclude the 1000’s of people that simply use the recipe site and aren’t active on the forum, so you’ll often find notes on the flavor pages from people that I’ve never seen on the forum.
Can’t put it much better than that! So, I’ll just second it.
This sounds like a perfect time to revisit the NF naming issue.
There are 3 basic types being used under the currently preffered: “Flavor (Organic) (NF)” style.
But we are really using:
Flavor (Extract) (Organic) (NF)
Flavor (Extract) (Diacetyl-free) (Organic) (NF)
Flavor (Extract) (Coffee & Tea) (Organic) (NF)
But we all just use “Flavor (Organic) (NF)” because of the mess, I guess.
@Beaufort_Batches and @r113 can perhaps jump in as they, I believe, use different varieties.
Yeah, NF is definitely one of the more complex to deal with. Even though the majority of theirs aren’t suitable for vaping (on the manufacturer’s site proper)… That’s one still under consideration for naming conventions. 
It’s Flavor,Organic NF. You’re right in that we use the diacetyl free extracts. The coffee tea one is the extract plus VG.
Mine (diyvs) aren’t diacetyl free, that’s the thing. I use flavor, organic, nf. You use flavor, diacetyl-free, organic, nf. And i believe Beaufort uses the coffee-tea with the added VG.
All three could have different profiles and possibly starting %. Lumping them all under flavor, organic, nf could cause confusion.
Edit: I think it’s ok to leave out (Extract) since nobody uses concentrates or syrups from them. Maybe we need a resource on how to navigate the NF for the unfamiliar.
Just a question about all this cleanup…
Is there also any chance that we could somehow combine or link the known rebottled brands under a base brand.
E.g. Flavour Art is being rebottled as Flavour Creative and Arte Italiano (among others I’m sure), TPA as Signature, and so on. Having them all linked in a certain way would make things a lot easier, not just for mixing but for purchasing as well.
(or is this something worthy of a new thread?)
Personally, I make no distinction in my flavor stash and list everything as the original brand, but I’m sure a lot of people don’t know and list those as separate flavors in the database.
I completely agree (as I think most would…) but I personally feel this falls more into getting folks who are likely NOT coming to the forum (to educate themselves about such things) to COME to the forum.
As long as the database is open to the public, that’s going to remain a persistent issue. Of course many of these are, BUT I’m trying to tackle the obvious, and am relying on whatever Daath has in the works for the rest.
I think a universal resource thread about nothing but Relabeled and Rebranded flavors would be an excellent sticky! (And if memory serves, such things have been discussed on multiple occasions, but without searching -I’m getting ready to pick someone up from the airport ATM- I couldn’t say or point to any specific.)
Perhaps @woftam could sticky (and rename? If needed) any such existing thread that might be found? (Sorry to throw you under the bus)
Great work, I like the way you think. I m\y self, when adding a new flavor to my stash, tend to go with the flavors that have the most recipes using them, scientific? nope but has seemed to work for me so far 
I appreciate EVERY effort to make some sense of the flavor database and clean things up, but not only do I have to fight with flavor doubles, I’m struggling with the actual flavors I have in my stash right now. It feels more and more like this new naming convention is more disruptive and not thought through (or debated) enough and leaves my stash with a lot of inconsistencies.
I’ve been mixing a lot the last few days to build a stash that will last me a few months. I use the official juice names to sort my flavors and it feels like all consistency has left the ELR flavor naming convention. I felt like everything was kind of OK before these names started to change (minus the doubles and incorrect names - which weren’t in my stash anyways).
IMO this convention will only increase the amount of duplicates because the original name is what people are most likely going to enter in their stash, no matter what pops up as suggestions. Names that don’t look like what’s on their bottle is going to confuse people.
I get the whole idea about it, which is nice if it would or even could work… but can it really? What IS the rule really? Cream, Whipped… so also Cream, Vanilla Ice?
If my sweet cream is going to be Cream, Sweet… am I also going to get a Cream, Vienna and a Cream, Orange… Panther, Pink or Cheesecake, New York… Cheesecake, Yes we?
Where do you draw the line and where are you going to blur your own naming rules because things stop to make sense at a certain point?
Has @Daath even communicated with his moderators/staff in terms of progress updates or what’s coming down the pipe? I realize we are not privy to such things but it seems like you guys are as much in the dark as us commoners are.
I’ll start by saying, I understand what you’re saying, and I respect your thoughts (and where you’re coming from.
This “original name” that you reference has been at the root of the majority of the problems to start with. Primarily because many vendors change things (in varying degrees, from small to large), use an incorrect label (FA for TFA) etc.
So there has to be an adjustment somewhere, or there’s always going to be dupes, and other issues in an open system. Again, Lars has stated previously that he has plans for a new system. But until then, we have to work within the current system.
Pink Panther is one of the exceptions to the “rule”. And yes, there are, and will be, others (as I mentioned above in the first post).
However, the rest of your example questions are correct: “am I also going to get a”
Cream, Orange
Cream, Sweet
Cream, Vienna
Cheesecake, New York
Cheesecake, Yes we?
Yes. Ideally, that’s the goal.
Doesn’t it make more sense to have them organized (and view them) like this when it comes time to mix? So you know what creams you have? Or what cheesecakes? Etc.
IMO, no, we already have a function for that. The negatives that come with these changes dominate the positives.
Take for example the Banana Cream… IMO the main flavor is Banana, and I want to see which bananas I have.
Are we arguing about Banana or Cream coming first? The same goes for the Orange Cream that was mentioned in my previous post. That is definitely an orange flavor to me and I wouldn’t want to have to search for it in my creams.
Cookies and cream, another one to go to Cream, Cookies and ?
Again, where do you draw the line of it making sense.
Not everyone will be happy with however it is finally sorted, at least in this current state. Sparky is doing too much, in my opinion, with a fatally flawed database, especially given the fact that he is not staff, just a concerned member, and I see that I seem to like commas, and run-on sentences. However he sorts it, I will get used to it. And it will be worlds better than the current model of randomness and redundancy.
Yeah, I do appreciate someone putting time in it and I am one of many who’ve been knocking their heads against the wall because of all the flavor mess. I do know that Rob isn’t a member of staff, he’s not getting paid for it or anything and that makes it even more commendable 
I just don’t agree with the method because it’s obvious that it’s going to bring a whole new range of problems with it.
Not sure if you have experience in IT, but it looks the same discussion to me between putting stuff in folders or labeling stuff with tags. This method is going to put stuff in folders and the more flavors you’re going to get, the more problems you’re going to generate.
In the above examples with cream, you could argue it makes sense, but more and more vendors come with multiple flavor concentrates and that’s where you get issues and where you loose all consistency in your own rules. (strawberry cheesecake or cheesecake, strawberry, toast with strawberry jam or strawberry, jam on toast, banana milkshake or milkshake, banana?)
IMO, if your rules have flaws like this, it’s time to think of something else that does hold up to current and future concentrates.
I find the whole thing resembles the new Flavorah bottles problem. It’s good to come with innovation , trying to improve an imperfect situation but if you realize it may not be what everybody’s been waiting for… it doesn’t make sense to continue and put more time in it.
On the other hand, if this is exactly what everyone’s been waiting for, let us hear it and I’ll be silent forever
Maybe for such changes, maybe a poll would be nice to check on the temperature it has with the user base.
That’s sort of the point. When and if Database 2.0 ever happens (which locks it down and forces standardization), all this goes away. Sparky knows that but is doing what he can to make Database 1.0 as palatable as possible. It’s a summer situation at best- summer going to like it, summer not. And even still, it is all for naught unless these adopted standards are met and embraced, and the DB is routinely patrolled to clean it up. Randomness and redundancy will always be rampant as long as the door remains wide open, regardless of how many documents are released and how many warnings appear.
I agree with that, but since no one knows if there will ever even be a Database 2.0, I can only commend him for his efforts and pat him on his firm little behind for all he’s doing.