In a larger piece about how we are rating everything from purchased light bulbs to airport restrooms, Bill said, “If a waiter forgets my salad, I get over it. I don’t whip out my phone and post, ‘Bitch, you’re going down.’”
Considering what we all do, food for thought.
Bitch, are you directing this at me? (joke)
Only maybe.
Out with family or friends, say just four people. One dish is grossly over or underdone. Sorry restaurant you CANNOT make this better. The person subject to your mistake sits and watches everyone else eat while the kitchen tries again and then everyone else sits and watches that person eat while they sit around. Got a movie time? Someone goes hungry.
So yes, I’m going to Yelp and Google Review and TripAdvisor that experience.
For a simple side or salad the Garde Manger can push out in two minutes that’s fine. On the other hand if I have to hunt the server down, never get my side of steamed broccoli, and it still shows up on the bill and I have to hunt the server down again then see above for my rant.
Just. Not. Okay.
Can’t help but notice Hungry Onion isn’t on that list!?!?! 
Considering what he does and says the rest of the time, I don’t give it much thought. Different things trigger different people.
My travels so rarely take me to places that HO has geographical groups for I don’t even think of it. Other than the big metro areas the regions are simply too big and there is more and better organized data in other fora. Even for my home area HO just isn’t useful for eating out. Too many locales I don’t care about.
HO isn’t competitive in Annapolis MD, Newport RI, Charleston SC, Miami FL, Fort Lauderdale FL, St Georges Bermuda, Southampton UK, much less https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=&find_loc=horta+azores&ns=1
But we rock New Jersey! 
Question is, how do boards get built up if everyone sits on the sideline waiting for there to be an audience before they want to post? At some point all of the sites you mention as a resource had empty boards or locations that it took people’s participation to become a value added resource to their respective site.
The recent lousy tipper and the buzz about posting it online comes to mind since it was posted on HO.
Is it easy to spot a fake review? Because the only wasted review on my eyes are the type that review, shrilled high or low, but haven’t actually tried the food, drink, book, etc. A general opinion is a variation on a review but not a first hand exp.
I absolutely agree. I’ve been an early adopter on a number of fora including Yelp and ActiveCaptain (a boating thing). In every case I saw a commitment and structure that made sense to me and made the effort to give to the community.
You asked about HO and I gave you an honest answer. I get very good value from the Cooking group and the Culture group. The “Regional Dining Discussions” group is useless to me. There are too many alternatives and the structure of HO isn’t helpful to me on travel and too amorphous at home.
I’m not necessarily a Yelp fanboy. They insist that my home in Annapolis MD is “part” of Baltimore MD. I’m not driving that far so I ignore the local recommendations. But I can say where I am and get recommendations for a cuisine and filter by ratings. That gets me in the ballpark on travel and I can stay on top of new local places at home.
I’d like to see more discipline in the Yelp star rating system but I can work with that as is. There is nothing similar I have seen at HO. I can also quickly drill down to the person rating at Yelp and filter out those who complain about everything and those who give nothing but five star reviews.
Long way around to saying that the Regional Dining Discussions on HO don’t help me as they are and the structure and tools don’t give hope for improvement. Barriers to entry vice Google Reviews, Yelp, and TripAdvisor (which has credibility problems) are high for HO. Stick to one’s knitting.
