No suffering is for naught — or at least it shouldn’t be 
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The excellent thing about the forum format when it’s managed well (as I think HO is), is that you can choose what topics you want to see and handily ignore the rest.
I’m not in New England. So I don’t read the Boston area board. But I’m glad it’s there in case I visit. Similarly, I DO watch a lot of movies, so I participate in the “what are you watching?” thread. There’s another devoted to music and such on “what are you listening to?” That intrests me less, so I don’t read it.
I fail to understand the issue.
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How do you figure that?
The “Critters” thread was started in Nov 2023 and has 2105 posts. So that’s basically two full years of posts constrained to a single thread.
As for “food related feedback” posts, they greatly outnumber the critters. Take the monthly “What’s for Dinner” threads for example. Here’s a screenshot showing some of those monthly threads and the total posts to each:
You can also look at the monthly What Are You Baking threads, or the wonderful travel discussions and reports, and so on.
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This.
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I’ve been reading message boards nearly 40 years, and this is basically the norm. Topics are pretty clearly labeled and organized—moreso than many places.
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Yeah, this is still my main association with eGullet—it’s where Bourdain posted, and you could ask Paula Wolfert a question about cassoulet, and realize that the guy you just saw on a Food Network show is the guy who had the weird flame war about peppercorns a couple years ago, etc. It went through a weird period of self-importance among some of the mods and posters that seemed to come a year or two after most of the pros stopped posting, and I stopped reading not long after. But every time I check in or look for an old thread, it seems to have a relatively active, steady userbase, just much smaller than 20 years ago, like most places.
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This must have been exactly when I joined. I always felt that CH had sort of Jonathan Gold vibes, and then I went to try eGullet and it was trying really hard to be Helen Rosner. (And not quite getting there.)
Emphasis on the trying, I think, but I’m not trying to be mean. Some of it coincided with the … it was the FTC, I think? … the crackdown on blogs not disclosing that they had received free stuff, that kind of thing. And when people were getting book deals based on their blogs. There was a lot more attention being paid, and I guess elbowing everyone and saying “stop fucking around and tuck your shirt in” is a natural reaction to that.
As one of the “village elders” who joined CH before 2000, when Leff had just published “The Eclectic Gourmet Guide to NYC” & started the"board", and then joined eGullet in its infancy, then Steve Plotnicki’s “Opinionated About” (OA), then Mouthfulsfood.com, then DonRockwell, then here and FTC (all without leaving any), I can probably do a lecture series on food board chronology. And one on masochism.
I still enjoy the virtual connections & the memories of well over 100 meals I’ve now shared in the “real” (?) world with probably over twice that many other posters.
However, I do still wonder whatever became of Leff’s dog mask. I guess I could go on his slog & ask him. Well, maybe not.
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It’s still active but I think Steve’s death really hit eGullet quite hard
lf I’m allowed to veer slightly off topic, do any of you have a favorite CH thread, one that was about food or restaurants?
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There’s the infamous pistachio risotto that comes to mind, most any with the late Sam, and the dinner party stories about Mooch and … (blanking on the other name now).
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Yep. There was one about deviled crab in Tampa, Florida and surrounding areas.
And pretty much anything Sam posted. And The View from the Kitchen Window, too.
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Other deaths and several notable departures really caused me to lose interest. I haven’t been there in years actually- sometimes I go back just to look and see what’s going on. I posted there under a different name than mine here.
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Do any of you remember the dispute about whether or not “vintage olive oil” was a good thing? It came up in a report about a meat restaurant inside Eataly.
Two spring to mind, probably because I put a lot of effort into them. First is a thread I may have started, in which I documented replicating the ‘pork bung as imitation calamari’ test I first encountered here: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/484/doppelgangers
The second was a thread on making ersatz Twinkies from scratch. I had a very VERY long reply, starting with planting and growing wheat, that included how to make vanilla extract by making rum and harvesting some vanilla pods. I did not actually get to describe how to make the filling nor final assembly, because the OP never said she was ready to grind her own flour or any of the other ‘from scratch’ steps I enumerated.
I did enjoy the Roz threads, even as I doubted their veracity. They weren’t really about food nor restaurants, though. Same same for SanJoseChowhound (?) and the story of fantastic ribs.
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Hooch. That was from JanetfromRichmond, a friend of mine. THAT was a long-spiraling thread of Mooch and Hooch’s attempts to ditch their portion of the dining out bills with friends!
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definitely competition - I remember when Jason Perlow appeared on Chowhound and started making suggestions rather aggressively on how to improve it; Steve Plotnicki also made moves around the same time. They each went off to start their own websites, and frankly the world was better for the diversity, but they were so obnoxious that I at least rarely felt inclined to visit their sites - and probably missed a lot of good stuff. It was only years later that I realized that my goddess Paula posted on eGullet for example.
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The one about people’s best meatball recipes/strategies. .
Perlow is quite …peripatetic.
oh, btw:
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