Tea Wiki?

Hello All, My computer ace friend, who is now in China, were having a conversation about a month ago over tea about starting our own tea site. He had the rather brilliant idea of starting a wiki for tea. This lets folks submit entries on teas they've tried, complete with pics. We've gotten a start on it. Before I can do more, I need a digital camera. Steve (my friend and proprietor of said site), being in China and possesing a digital camera, will, I hope, make some good contributions. We've gotten a start with two teas. The descriptions and pics aren't great, but we hope to improve it. Once I clear it with him I'll post the link.

Does anyone know of something along these lines that already exists? I think the format works well for bringing together tea enthusiasts.

Regards, Nico

Reply to
Nico
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HI Nico, I think your ideas cool. And you want to start a wiki site?

Reply to
hanry

we already have wiki tea sites and the tea wiki is a featured site recommended by wiki, here is my own link and the tea wiki that i help on i translate the names/words of tea into english and some back to chinese to check the validity of the tea classification. Since if we are talking about a tea grown it china of course the chinese name will be the original name, this helps in spotting duplicate names..

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Reply to
sherdwen

What my friend and I are working on is a Wiki site to which people can submit entries for teas they have tried, and which other people can edit and add to. I haven't seen anything like this yet.

I think tea newbies would benefit from a survey of different teas and methods of preparation, etc. Chinese folks who contribute to this forum may not realize how difficult it is to learn about and aquire good tea in the US and other non-Asian countries. Mediocre tea is plentiful. Even when you can get good tea, it's not easy to find straight forward info about it and to find people to talk to about it. This is especially the case which Chinese tea, which I hold to be the best, and is slowly gaining popularity in the US.

I realize this forum does a lot of that, but what is missing, I think, is a structured layout of different teas and tea types, methods, etc. The openness that wikis provide allows experts from around the world to contribute. I would love to have some Chinese people help out here. I will provide more updates as the project comes along.

Nico

Reply to
Nico

The place to share information about tea is REC.FOOD.DRINK.TEA. Anybody or anything else is just pretenders. The information in this group from the past ten years would choke a server. In most cases a Wiki topic is better than nothing but not by much. The topics would probably be nothing more than something about someone's favorite tea. There's no such thing as mediocre teas just one's you don't like. Price is not one of the four given tastes your buds are able to detect. Blogs will replace Wiki because the author has the vested time and interest. I'm waiting for the first IPOD cast about tea. I'm from the old school of 'letters'. Dancing icons on webpages doesn't do it for me. I probably wouldn't tune in on a webcast of anyone making tea in their kitchen. I saw Martha Stewart do that once and she got everything ass backwards. To help the newbies learn about tea it'll have to be in Chinese because there are more of them. The rest of the world knows more about tea than someone at Starbucks. My only advice to newbies it's your tastebuds and anything else is just idiosyncratic personality quirks and probably people with too much money to spend. I just sent my brother two kilos of different commercial teas not costing much more than a penny/gram and told him to have fun. I included a couple of the asian 700ml treated shock quartz glass pots with metal infusers which didn't cost more than a couple of bucks each. Babelfish can translate any Chinese tea term characters I throw at it. I wished it could handle pinyin terms. I get the clue from sites like TaoBao and Ebay and store them in a simple Notepad file with utf-8 encoding. I think the forest of teas from China are known in the West. It's just the trees that sometimes get in the way. The earliest reference I have to puerh for example is The Culture and Marketing of Tea, C.R. Harler,

1956, Oxford Press which I previously mentioned. It was the second edition 10 years after the first. I don't know if puerh was mentioned in the first post war book. What I learned about tea over the decades was from my own purchases in stores and hitting the stacks for additional information before Usenet. I'm using Ebay and Chinapost to fill in the holes of my desired representative architectural collection of puerh. Anything else I can find locally. If you can make a pot of tea then our tea knowledge only differs in minutia.

Jim

Nico wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

jim nice post, the only thing i can add is if possible dont use a metal anything and stick to glass or clay/porcelain ceramic, also use a teapot with no infuser and pour over a strainer (again if possible not metal but metal will work because it is not in contact long) then it goes into the tea pitcher, (hope danny doesnt see me writing 'pitcher')hahhaha. the reason to skip the infuser is it cramps my style,,,,i mean the tea's infusing/infusion. icetea

Reply to
sherdwen

I'll bother to reply to this when I'm able to discern what you're talking about.

Reply to
Nico

To clarify, the above comment was directed at Jim.

To clarify again, I'm not looking to suplant this forum, which I am certainly in no position to do, but rather to have a little space for people to share their tea experiences in a forum whose structure would make it accessible.

Jim, I honestly don't know what I have done to provoke this antagonism, but I view it, frankly, as incredibly childish and not worth any further consideration. I certainly won't be intimidated, which is the only rational for this that I can make out.

Nico

Reply to
Nico

I think tea leaves need room to dance. The infuser is a compromise. It gets the leaves out of the pot. I used the same clay Chinese pot with clay infuser and bamboo handle at work for 20 years. It was relatively shallow so you had to 'top' the pot for the infusion. After the first cup no more brewing. I'd dump the leaves on a napkin, fold and put in waste basket. It was no problem for cleaning services. That was work. At home no infusers anywhere. I use a strainer or a tea sock. Mostly my modified tea press where the strainer has been retrofited to the lid and only comes into play when pouring. Sort of an external strainer in the pot. I enjoy the agony of the leaves which is why I only use glass for the pot. I like the British cup strainers which fit on the tea cup rim so you can use two hands for the pot.

Jim

sherdwen wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

In what way is RFDT inaccessible?

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com9/6/05 10: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

Just think, Lew. With his own forum, Nico could pick and choose among those who want to participate. He could cut right to the wheat, and chuck the chaff. Of course, he will be lonely, but what they hay.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Plant

You don't have too. It is one of my stream of consciousness tea rants brought on by lonely bloggers,webmasters,portals looking to generate traffic for their own special interest. I give you Usenet is media challenged. But for a discussion group we can hold our own while Google never forgets and everything else is trash blowing down the street. The only reason I stick around is this curmudgeon still can learn a thing or two about tea. I'm sitting on the sofa drinking another cup of Xiaguan Iron Cake. I've noted the taste of the single note versus the complexity of others in another post. It stuck me it is the taste of camphor from a recent cooked crop so I don't have to spend my money on old stuff.

Jim

Nico wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

Hey, Michael, pull out your old album of the Velvet Underground with the Banana. That Nico is the same gender (I think).

Jim

Michael Plant wrote:

Reply to
Space Cowboy

PUT YOUR LEAVES BACK in your pants.......you know it is funny no matter where you go on the internet or even in real life, people like to argue and compare...i say less fighting and more action...i say this forum is ok,,, and when the wiki is up i will be there too, by the way my site is good,,,,,just kidding..mmmm maybe not?! icetea

Reply to
sherdwen

Don't worry Nico, I fall into that same category somewhere too because I have been the subject of many of the same specious rants for years now. Where I come from we call it "intolerance". It is this same intolerance that has driven so many others away from here. Don't let this self-proclaimed curmudgeon (a bad-tempered, disagreeable, stubborn person) bully you around. Follow your own heart and do your own thing. I don't particularly agree that yet another tea forum is needed but then who am I to impose that belief upon others. Go for it if that's what suites you, OR if RFDT doesn't suite you could try Tea-Disc or Teamail as well.

Mike Petro

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"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed." Samuel Johnson, 1775, upon finishing his dictionary.

Reply to
Mike Petro

Wo there, my friend. I have no desire to control what people have to say. I guess I perceived the possibility of having something to offer- just maybe. I guess I imagined somebody wanting to look up a kind of tea and seeing what others have written about it, or something. I'm no expert in this kind of stuff. I just thought it might be cool and wanted to see what other's thought of it.

I see this derision as completely unneccessary. Is what I said so offensive that it warants this sort of thing? Why do you have to assume the worst motives on my part? Why can't you formulate some constructive criticism? Isn't that what this forum is about?

Let me just state this clearly. There is nothing anyone could possibly type out in this kind of forum that will make me flinch for even a second. My ego is not that fragile. I have nothing to prove. I just want to get feedback and advice.

I think I'll just limit the site to folks who seek it out. We'll see from there.

Respectfully, Nico

Reply to
Nico

What might (maybe), be lacking is an index of tea with info and reviews, which curious people can access. In other words, a wikipedia especially for tea.

Also, I do indeed like RFDT and will continue to use it, despite some folks' seeming attempts to drive me from it. There are certainly many very nice, knowledgable, and helpful people who frequent this forum, and I wouldn't want that to change.

I suppose this is a good a time as any to express my appreciation to all of you have provided clarity for me in my continuing quest to find the best cup of tea.

Regards, Nico

Reply to
Nico

Well, if my gender is really an important point of discussion, I usually identify as male (Nico, in my case, being short for Nicolas).

I'm flattered that you'd take such an interest in me.

Nico

Reply to
Nico

Reminds me of the now stale "We Review Teas" site

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which was a very good effort that did exactly what you are speaking of. However, this is the danger of such a site, it takes someone to commit to maintaining it perpetually or it quickly becomes stale. There was talk of reviving the above site in a sort of "open source" community model, but I am not sure what the final decision ever was.

Mike Petro

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"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed." Samuel Johnson, 1775, upon finishing his dictionary.

Reply to
Mike Petro

snipped-for-privacy@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com9/7/05

00: snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com

No, no, no. Just playing with words, just goofing around, just maintaining my reputation for nasty. I agree with what Mike wrote in his last post: Just go for it if it seems right to you. Nonetheless, be aware that there are already alternatives out there, as he mentioned: TeaDisc, TeaMail, and probably others you might uncover. If you do decide to proceed, here's my advice: Thematize your site. There are already generalized tea sites, and yours would be redundant. Just thoughts.

No. This is usenet. I'll say whatever I damned well like, and you'll put my posts in your kill file if you don't like it. Sorry, but that's reality.

Your post here proves otherwise. Sorry, but that's another reality.

So, Nico, now that we've had this little chat, where are you from, and what is your favorite tea, and where do you get it? BTW, and this is for Mike and others, please include your respective URL's in your signature so we can click them with the spontaneous outbursts for which we have become justly famous.

BTW, isn't :"Wiki" that encyclopoedia thing that invites the people's input? If so, I'm a fan and support it wholeheartedly.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Plant

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