Question for Webmaster: Where is Graffiti Wall? Specifically the section on Agriturismos in Italy

I am afraid it is all lost. There used to be the "best and worst" for hotels and restaurants under for each guidebook. I did not copy anything because I thought it would be there for me to reference when I needed it. The "improvement" lost all our past history.

Yep, we've lost A LOT of great things with the complete overhaul of this website!

Dear Webmaster,
I am so bummed that you have removed the Graffiti Wall feature. For the last ten years, I have planned every vacation by printing pages and pages of comments. It has helped me plan an itinerary and select accomodations, restaurants and guides. I recommended it to anyone traveling abroad and made sure I made comments (both good and bad) for the future traveler. PLEASE BRING IT BACK!

Dear Webmaster,
What happened??? I find much of the useful information that was on this site is now gone. Most of my trip planning was from Rick Steves books and the guidebook feedback on the website. Important information about places to stay or eat are now lost to all of the folks which have come to depend on it. Truthfully, the new website is very cumbersome, not an improvement at all. I now have to rely on sites like Trip Advisor for information which may not be as reliable as what the Rick Steves fans post. It seems now that this website is mostly to sell Rick Steves product, which maybe that's what was intended in the first place.

Hi,
The Graffiti Wall is generally getting a re-boot with the Tips and Trip Reports section of the website. The most popular topics from the Wall are covered there or are effectively covered by the expanded Destination Q&A sections of the forum. I'm looking at making some of the old content available, but I'm not sure how to do that yet.

As for guidebook feedback, that was largely removed because, while many posts were relevant, others were misinformed. We want people to know with certainty when something is out of date regarding our published guidebooks. In our Shop section of the website, for every guidebook we publish, we link to a Guidebook Updates page that delivers this information.

Another plea for the return of the graffiti wall.

yes, bring back the graffiti wall please...I was going to jot down restaurants etc. and used it all the time in the past...

The graffiti wall was my favorite go to site for independent traveler information. Please bring it back!

Two Habitat for humanity international team leaders

Please bring back the Grafitti Wall! Like many others, we referred to it when planning our trips for ideas on what to pack/not pack, restaurant feedback, etc. You might not like it on the redesigned web site, but we miss it!

PLEASE! Return the Graffiti Wall. It was one of the very best parts of the old site! I used it as a reference constantly - whenever planning a trip. I went to find it for an upcoming trip and feel a genuine sense of loss. Please bring it back!

My searches on this site also don't turn up much useful "nitty-gritty" info anymore. Most unfortunate.

I guess tripadvisor will have to do now since the graffiti wall is gone with all it's simple to see and jot down notes reviews...alas..

I, too, am so bummed by the removal of the Graffiti Wall as I used it, as so many of you, to plan numerous trips. I just tried the new website's Trip Reports but cannot find a way to enter a country and just see reports about that specific country. To scroll through 19 pages (as of today) of topics/countries that I am not visiting this summer is a waste of time.

To reply to CM's desperate need for agriturisimos in Italy, we stayed at Villa Mazzi in Montepulciano and highly recommend it. Loredana is an amazing hostess and the facilities are so nice. Recommended it to our neighbors who stayed there the following year AND they felt it was one of the highlights of their trip to Italy.

The webmaster said: I'm looking at making some of the old content available, but I'm not sure how to do that yet.

I would ask that you make this effort to learn how to resurrect the wealth of information that was given to the Rick Steves' enterprise by your fans/clients/guidebook purchasers/word-of-mouth salespeople. First and foremost this should be done because it is fantastic and valuable information. And also important is the relationship that the business should value with those of us who support it with our dollars and our time and effort. It strikes me as being disrespectful, thoughtless, and not "business-smart" to allow such an enormous information dump to happen in the first place. It is such a perfect example of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

While no longer having access to the Graffiti wall is unfortunate, all is not lost. If you want to look at one of the last snapshots of the site, you can use the Wayback Machine, which is an Internet archive. You can find that at web.archive.org . Just enter in a site name of ricksteves.com and move back to a January 2014 version of the website. You can find the Graffiti wall there. The Wayback Machine is a non-profit so if the site is useful, please do contribute to their cause of preserving the Internet for future generations.

Regards,

Tom Schaefer

Edit: Changed ricksteves.net to ricksteves.com. Typo of course as you should enter ricksteves.com

" The webmaster said: I'm looking at making some of the old content available, but I'm not sure how to do that yet"

I know how to quickly fix this problem ( and no matter what spin comes from the RS folks, it IS a big problem ). If need be, reassign / change the employee & bring back the most used & most useful section known as the Graffiti Wall.

Thomas is correct...what a wonderful website. I just went there and got on the whole old website complete with the old graffiti wall...amazing.

LOVED the graffiti wall, that was ALL I used on your website. New website? Not so much. You have to hunt to find what you're after and if you post a question, your thread is buried in a matter of days. Just add the wall back, simple fix.