Proposal for Regional Boards - format the title

I personally wish that all topic headings for the regional boards began with the place. There are too many topics with the place at the end, or not in the heading at all. That makes me open links, or think about opening them, when I actually don’t have any interest - at that moment - in the topic, but just can’t tell from a quick perusal.

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That’s the proper way it’s always been done. It comes down to the OP. Efficiency is satisfying.

Also, the OP should be able to add tags at the time of starting the thread. Still not possible. The solution is someone edits your OP to add tags (I hate it). Little things like these are so irritating.

I don’t want to kitchen sink this by adding new problems. It seems perfectly logical and user friendly to me that a poster would title their regional post [place][query/topic]. But some don’t. I don’t know how to impose this naming convention either unless the mods decide it’s important and send some messages to all. Yesterday, there was a title about pizza that went on and on, and said something about Los Angeles at the end of its many words. You had to open the topic to see it was about LA. I just don’t get it. That was just the top of mind one. There were others.

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Was the topic within the regional dining discussions?

Yes, on the home screen (I use my laptop), the top discussions on the page are regional. Boards on the left, topics on the right. Often, the topics on the right are generic and you don’t know what region they are for until you open them.

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Am I correct that this problem doesn’t exist on phones? I know what category the post is in before I open it.
What you propose is- Los Angeles: pizza, so you’d know to ignore it?

I posted in a very specific city/regional (sub)forum - elsewhere - did not include the location in the post title, got my azz ripped by some old bitter bitty.

so, I don’t do posts like that anymore, nor do I bother with tags - somebody almost always objects to those as well.

let staff do the organization - same reason they don’t let ordinary people re-shelve books in a library . . .
or simply cease the practice
or simply have sub-forums for every region, as defined/required/demanded by the poster
or simply have sub-forums for every city in the country/world

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Yep

My understanding is you have to choose a board where you start a post. But on the home page, the top posts in the large category are the 5-6 that are shown at any time. For something like cooking or culture, those have a broad audience. However, for regional boards, the top 5-6 are from all over the place. Living in WA state, I have zero interest in a thread about a restaurant in NJ. And while the post may have been placed on the NJ board, on the home page unless that’s in the title, front and center, no one will see it just scrolling through. You have to open it to find out. It’s not a biggie. Just a minor irritation that could be easily fixed if people just put the location in their heading, if it is a location specific topic…

yes, for some odd ball reason there is no sub-forum for Small Town USA
same issue with several forums - they are region-centric.
if you don’t live in CA, there’s not much reason to hang around foodtalkcentral.
hungryonion has become chowhound 4.0 east.
I have a database of all post offices in the country, so with a bit of fiddling, I could tell you how many regional boards are needed to satisfy those members who insist every location specific comment/message must be in its own sub-forum. it’d be pretty ugly.

the problem is when one carefully selections “Regional San Fran”
but you don’t use “(San Fran) Resto Review” in the title and some old bitter bitty whammies you because you didn’t put (San Fran) in the title of a post in the San Fran regional sub-forum . . . well, there’s something wrong there - especially when the moderators / administrators let the obnoxious personal remarks/attack stand.
that kind of behavior does not encourage user participation.

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Until the arrival of the CH refugees, we were folksy and forgiving, and no one cared.
So the chicken sandwich thread, for instance, is nominally on the NJ board, but folks from everywhere contributed.
Apparently that isn’t good enough anymore.

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Eh, I don’t think I’m asking for something that major. And what is the point of having a user based room if users can’t ever state that improvements could be made.

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Depends on the definition of improvement.
A lot of us like the casual motif which is rapidly evaporating.

What staff?

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I don’t mind casual at all. I’m not going all totalitarian on you. I’m only saying that if the home page is going to feature the top 5 or 6 active posts in a large category that encompasses every regional board, that a poster might title their post “Paris FR ISO of best beef stew” instead of “ISO best beef stew.” That’s neither difficult nor non-casual. YMMV. Of course it’s not up to either of us. So I just put the idea out there to see if it would get any traction.

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for some unexplained reason, the world is still not perfect.
what you are asking - or perhaps better phrased . . . - suggesting is putting the place first, so searches work more better.

it is not some goofy unreasonable idea - the unpleasant part comes in when small minded members decide to bash other people for not conforming to their standards.

HO was spun off CH because of over bearing moderation and official bashing of members. now they are all here, and insisting this world change to meet their standards which, in part, are responsible for the decline and ruin of CH.

something to think about.

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I think I was on CH for about 10 yrs. I witnessed its demise when there was too much micro-managing. That said, I think some improvements could be made here, by users, to the organization of this site, for us and on our behalf. That’s just my 2 cents, and I can’t make any of these changes alone. Either people will agree or they won’t.

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This is what I see on my phone.
Clearly visible as to what subforum.
I’ll m still trying to figure out the problem.

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Laptop/desktop version doesn’t have the forum listed under the topic. At this moment, everything has a place on it, but it often doesn’t.

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Sasha, if you click on the header (Regional Dining Discussions in bold) to expand that set of discussions, the regions will show and you can pick which to open.

before:

after

But like BBQBoy, I generally just go to ‘latest’ to see what’s new.

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