Interested in ramping the board activity up? Register your interest here:
The purpose of this thread is to connect folks from this geo so they know 1) there is mutual interest in building up the board and 2) that if one start posting there will be others who join in at the same time, to avoid the ‘are there others here?’ syndrome.
Edited to add:
You may say, well why not just start posting? Please do that too, but please comment your interest in this thread as well. The problem is that if interested user A post a review on the 1st. Interested User B sees the review on the 15th, doesn’t comment. Interested user C sees the review on the 30th, doesn’t comment. Users A, B, and C may all individually think that there is minimal interest in such a board.
But if users A, B, and C all express their interest in this thread and start talking around the same time, we can avoid the problem of ‘the illusion of lack of interest due to time lag in interested users coming onto the site.’
There is. The problem is more if interested user A post a review on the 1st. Interested User B saw the review on the 15th, didn’t comment. Interested user C saw the review on the 30th, didn’t comment. User A, B, and C may all individually think that there is minimal interest in such a board.
But if user A, B, and C all express their interest in this thread, and start talking around the same time, we can avoid the problem of ‘the illusion of lack of interest due to time lag in interested users joining.’
But you brought up a good point that its a bit confusing. I will change the title and move this post to the Philly board so more Philly folks can see.
I do understand the problem to be honest. We have many people read, but do not comment. This creates an environment which discourage participation. What I don’t understand is: (1) Are you asking us to ramp up discussion about Philadelphia? Or (2) are you asking us to split Philadelphia from Greater Philadelphia?
Since hungryonion is new and our participation level is not that high, I think it can be beneficial to allow “side conversation”. In other words, even if people get a little off topic, let them do it as long as it (most of the time). The reason is that conversations feed on themselves. Sometime what make a topic alive is actually the side conversation. Once the side conversations are stopped, the traffic also reduces.
With this thread, I am just trying to see how many Philly folks want to post about Philly but are deterred currently because they think the board is quiet.
Oh I see. I initially thought you want to split Philadelphia away from Greater Philadelphia. To answer your question, yes, I am interested in posting about Philadelphia, and will continue to do so. However, the lower level of responses certain do not help to be honest (this is why I think we are at a stage where “any comment is better than no comment”)
I’m not sure it matters. Chowhound never had a thriving Pennsylvania board. When I came to Lancaster, I was stunned to see that its vibrant ethnic, fine dining, and artisan food scenes were absolutely unmentioned. Yelp buzzes with comments about the food here and that’s about it. The trick seems to be getting people from anywhere in Pennsylvania to comment at all.
I know some don’t like Yelp as a platform, but after sorting through the noises there are some gems to be had on Yelp. Are there anyone you follow at Yelp that you think its worthy to invite here?
And why do you think CH never caught on in Philly?
Great question. It sort of caught-on yrs ago, but IIRC some move by management annoyed folks who then left for greener pastures. CH in Philly wasn’t ever this dead though.
