HA! Loved that show… never understood why they cancelled it.
It’s auspicious that it didn’t work out with FTC. Stick to your guns.
It’s like having two cars. You have to have twice as many drivers and use twice as much gas.
That’s not quite right.
I don’t believe a community-driven food discussion site will make a significant profit, so I don’t see the point of doing all the extra work to create a 501(c)(3), solicit donations, and so on. Discourse is designed to promote a self-governing community and my goal is to facilitate that with minimal expense and effort. I think an unprofitable sole proprietorship is the simplest way to accomplish that end, second only to someone else doing all the work.
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Here’s the full discussion to date of merging the two boards:
Robert Lauriston robert@lauriston.com
Sep 26
Apparently some of your users have suggested merging the two boards?
I’m open to that if you’re interested.Apparently some of your users have suggested merging the two boards?
I’m open to that if you’re interested.
Sampson Shen
Sep 27
Robert,
Can you clarify what your proposal is? What is the objective of your website?
Thanks.
Robert Lauriston robert@lauriston.com
Sep 27
I set up foodtalkcentral.com as an alternative to Chowhound since the
deletion of the regional boards and reorganization of their topics
into a more Yelp-like site undermined the foundation of the regional
communities.
I don’t have any particular proposal. It wasn’t my idea, ipsedixit
suggested I contact you. See this topic:
Sampson Shen
Sep 28
Hi Robert,
I started the site with two purposes, with the one most important to me is to eventually build an operating model that retains the collective knowledge depository in the public domain via a not-for-profit structure to minimize accessibility risk to these knowledge (like CH now). this is an attempt to avoid the pitfalls that turned CH from what it was to what it is today. the other is to address the site design issues.
If you feel that this is the same purpose that we can work towards, let’s discuss the path forward.
Thanks.
Robert Lauriston robert@lauriston.com
Sep 28
I believe the problem with Chowhound is not that it’s for-profit per
se but that it’s owned by a company whose primary business is to sell
advertising.
Setting up a 401c3 seems like a lot of extra work and expense compared
with just being realistic about the inherent lack of potential profits
from operating a community-focused food discussion site.
From my perspective, moderation style and practices aside, the main difference between the two sites is the copyright portion of the terms of service.
HO uses the Discourse default, which is the Creative Commons license adapted from open source, basically you’re giving away everything you post:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
FTC’s is pretty much the opposite, posters retain all rights:
Food Talk Central is not the publisher or author of any works posted by its members. It is a passive service for storage and dissemination of the works that Food Talk Central members may choose to post and distribute via Food Talk Central. Food Talk Central does not screen works before they are posted, and no prior approval is required for posting. Food Talk Central disclaims all copyright and ownership in such works and all responsibility for them.
I’ve thrown this out before, but I do think that HO and FTC would do well as “sister sites”, with mutual support, rather than a single entity, especially given the different philosophies of the respective founders. It could cut down on cross-posting, and both sites would benefit from their users thinking to check the other now and then.
In the old days websites joined “webrings” and these days the phrase is more often something like “network” but some kind of umbrella would surely do more good than harm to two fledgling sites with largely mutual interests, and a largely common potential userbase.
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There’s sort of an umbrella already in the sense that both are hosted by the same service.
Two sites would make more sense to me if they were using different software, e.g. if HO used something with a more threaded interface. (Discourse actually has a thread structure, it just usually displays discussions as flat.)
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Want to clarify- I don’t know if 501c is necessarily the right model. In order to maintain the quality of discussions, by definition the site will be relatively small. Only if in the very unlikely scenario that the site grows large enough like, maybe a Wikipedia, that such a structure really justifies itself. But that’s really a very long-term question that no one needs to worry about any time soon, if ever.
Not-for-profit just means not monetizing the content the way CH or other for-profit entities are incentivized to do. My view is that poster retain all rights, not the owner of the site (that’s how some food writers drifted away from the site when CH made claims of ownership of content at some point). The loose vocabulary used in the correspondence, and the license, admittedly needs some tightening up.
I read some criticisms/ misinformation of Robert or myself here and on FTC. While I don’t know Robert personally nor do I know the direction Robert likes to take FTC in the future, he has done a great job in fostering a community. That effort should be applauded.
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But unless there’s a part of that service I’m unaware of, it’s the same sort of “umbrella” as wordpress or tumblr, where there’s no guarantee that like-minded sites will find one another. They just use the same service. Intercommunication is the part I’m concerned with.
Which, right now, everyone’s talking about CH and OH and FTC, but if any of the sites are around in 3 months from now we will need to be talking about other things, and that crosstalk will have died down even though it will still likely be necessary for growth.
If a user stumbles onto HO six months from now, will they know about FTC? Vice versa? That’s the user I’m thinking of here as much as anything, the ones that will grow the sites.
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Here and on FTC, and during the LAT thread on CH where these two new sites have been characterized as elitist for wanting to leave on the one hand, and I’m guessing obstinate for not wanting to join together on the other.
I’m glad the two of you as founders, and your better supporters, have kept an even keel in all this. It’s fine to disagree but there are plenty who are just mouthy pro and con, and that does neither of you any favors.
If there are parallel categories on both boards, people who are on both will surely post links back and forth, just as we post links to Chowhound.
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Ah, see I’ve stopped posting at all to CH, so I’m unaware of all that.
As a Wikimedian, I think you may have a misimpression of what a Creative Commons license is. Each writer does indeed retain a copyright over their writing, but they expressly allow anyone to use (and edit) their work, as long as it is credited.
For example, even though Wikipedia and Wikivoyage are sister sites as well as both using Creative Commons licenses, when people patrolling new edits on Wikivoyage find that someone has just copied and pasted large amounts of Wikipedia text without even crediting the Wikipedia article in their edit summary, that edit is reverted (deleted) as a copyright violation.
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I think it makes sense. I’m on both sites and think it would be good to merge.
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My preference is no one can do anything with my work without explicit written permission.
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As a former Hound now mining the actually quite fertile ground of Central Ohio now (and as someone who visits the Bay Area still regularly) I’m very happy to see a bit of a return to what had been with this site and FTC.
No real dog re: merge vs. no merger, but I’m glad to have more of a reason to check in more often.
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“My preference is no one can do anything with my work without explicit written permission.”
Did I just violate your preference by quoting your post with credit?
No, since by posting here I’ve agreed to the Creative Commons deal. But I probably wouldn’t post reviews on a site with that policy.
Robert. You doing a good job with your site and Sampson is also doing a good job too. The two sites can talk about merging in the future. For now, it seems we are not ready yet.
Your opinion is appreciated about what you would and won’t post reviews on a site with whatever policy, but please keep in mind that you are the owner/host of another site, and it calls into question when you lecture people due to your unique position. If a site is doing something you don’t like, just leave it be. It isn’t like we are doing something illegal or immoral. If someone wants to put ketchup (as opposed to mustard) on their hot dogs. Let them do it.
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