A good way to get around this might be to have categories for each tobacco along with a scale of 1 to 20. Users can then select a range of averages to take into consideration when selecting similar tobaccos and reviewers. For example, people who LOVE spicy tobaccos might select 17-20 in the spicy category to get matches. Others who are only occasional Perique smokers might pick 10-20 as their average range to make matches. In this way, large amounts of ratings averaged over time can bring things “close” instead of trying to hit things on the head.

I don’t feel that there can be a much more technically precise methodology applied to what is being done here that will make it more relevant. Each reviewer has their own likes and dislikes for their own reasons and which fits their own personalities. While I don’t always agree with a persons reasons or the way they express their beliefs, I both respect and learn humanly from their observations. To me, this is one of the things that makes this gathering and presentation so great. I, as a thinking and educated human being, can use my own judgment and draw my own conclusions as to what is good and useful in my estimation of what has been said by my compatriots in this endeavor.

Whatever you can come up with, I will happily go along with because I have faith in that what has already been done and the diligence and care of those who make this site work. But, as I said, I am quite happy with what has already been done and with what we have. I actually feel special to be a participant in it’s continuance.

1. Will you be able to integrate the “Burley” tag with the “Burly” tag without manual input?

2. Will the engine be smart enough to lump together “Vaper” along with “Va/Per” along with “Virginia Perique” along with “Va Per?”

3. Can you avoid having 1000 unique (and hence useless) tags if people can tag a blend as “An Englishy Aromatic” or “A Burley Based English” or “Balkan blend with top dressing” or “Scottish American cross-over?”

Given the above, I don’t think you can avoid having to make editorial decisions to keep the tags useful and not chaotic. But I think if you allow users to develop their own tags, you simply “punt” the editorial decisions to a point where you are stuck with tedious hours of clean-up while trying to divine what a user meant by “A Balkan American blend with VaPer influence.”

Establish the tags that users can choose from, allow the users to define how the tags apply, and maybe even allow users to tag a blend with 2 or 3 tags. Also, as noted above, make it clear that if a reviewer isn’t sure how to tag a blend, they should skip the step.

– Doug Pearson (Tobold)

If we agree that there is not much chance of creating a canonical sorting of blends, then the only thing that is useful is what the average piper tends to view it as, and that is exactly what I would hope a free-form tagging system would (eventually) capture.

However, as I said, I’ve not given the controlled taxonomy angle too much thought, so I am willing to be convinced. The only real problem I see there is the possibility that we would be simply abstracting the disagreement one level. Instead of arguing about whether or not Highland Targe was a “Scottish Blend” we could argue over what a “Scottish Blend” was.

But in order to evolve into such a system, great thought must be put into the initial available labels. What I mean is that when coming up with the list of options to choose from, a) you don’t want to leave something important out (such as listing Virginias but leaving out VaPers) and b) putting something in that is too detailed or fractional (such as VaPers with Burley, Cavendish, and a dash of Cyprian Latakia).

I would post your version of such a list and let us comment on it. We can present our arguments for the inclusion or exclusion of a particular blend type for you to digest. Then, taking a page from The Pipe Tobacco Aging, Storage and Cellaring FAQ, we (you?) should list a few basic, well known, tried and trusted blends for each of the categories (like the FAQ’s “Touchstones”) that would help “define” your categories and show the spread or limits of said categories.

But above all, it should be made clear that such tagging of blends would be optional! If you are not sure of your opinion where a given blend should be categorized, then don’t tag it. Hopefully, this will help to avoid the skewing of the tag towards a useless “average”.

– Doug Pearson (Tobold)