The trouble is, that “point” is not static.
2 sites allows more diversity. Some people post on both sites.
I didn’t enjoy the chit chat much on FTC.
The HO regional Ontario chit chat took off. I tried to get it started on FTC for a while, as did justpete, iirc.
There are more posts on FTC about Vancouver, Victoria and other parts of BC, understandably, since many posters are based on the West Coast.
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absolutely. people fled CH after the initial sale because of the very heavy handed moderators - and the management’s lack of cooking&food.
HO and FTC started almost simultaneously as solutions to the chaos at CH.
the irony is FTC was banning people left and right at their inception.
and indeed FTC is almost exclusively west coast.
my impression is HO has remained a bit more generalized.
there’s almost no ‘cooking stuff’ on FTC.
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I experienced a little snark from Mr Lauriston when I tried to help him with tips during a visit to Toronto many years ago.
Funny how those kind of things stay with you. (I’m guilty of being snarky at times, too. )
The fact I’ve never had any interpersonal snark with the founder of this site probably made it more welcoming site for me.
Yep - “but”. It seems it’s not very active. The main Home Cooking thread (“Home Cooking 2023”, much like “What’s for Dinner” here) has 14 posts in the last 2 weeks, with the last post dated Oct 30. Six of these 14 were by one person apparently trying to keep it alive by himself (who also posts his nice dinner photos here).
The next 10 of the Home Cooking threads ranked by recent activity haven’t had posts in 2-10 days.
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I think their active user base is quite a bit smaller than HO’s, and consists of fewer home cooks and more sushi/tasting menu bros than HO.
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I remember looking seriously at both sites as well as Mouthfuls as alternatives when CH was winding down. I was hurting and not ready to go anywhere - neither of them took off as strongly as I had hoped, with FTC really not getting critical mass in the East or anywhere really outside LA. HO , where our cooking group landed and having other fine posters, especially NYers, who had accumuated here through the years made tt a much more attractive place. But in the end, mergers only happen because the leadership wants to merge and there are real positives to combination which incent peoople to go to the trouble. Food discussion boards are not a growth industry, and I am grateful that HO particularly is here.
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Sounds right based on a quick scan of the main board. A lot of members but not so much activity. Last quarter had about 100 new threads sitewide, vs 600+ here.
And even of their West Coast specific boards, only Los Angeles has had activity today, followed by Los Vegas at 3 days and the SFBA at 5 days ago.
Looks like it’s dying.
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No, I go there every day, and its activity is pretty steady. It’s just a smaller site. And there are a fair number of people who are members of both this site and that - I’m hardly alone.
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I see, thanks. I did see a lot of familiar handles while scanning the activity counts.
The downside of my “dual citizenship” is that I see a lot of posts twice.
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That’s interesting! If you don’t talk about cooking, what is there to talk about?
I’m sort of kidding at this point, but it took years for me to realize that some folks on HO might not be into cooking as much as they might be interested in eating!
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You rang?
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in to eating vs cooking . . .
yes, and In don’t see that as a problem.
DD2 & hubbie seldom do their ‘own cooking’ - yeah, the both of them are NY’er phased…
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Chowhound was 90% an eating board and maybe 10% a cooking board for most of the time I looked at it. Its manifesto was all about “blazing trails” to ferret out new restaurants and find the absolute best version of Food X, or an inventive take on Food Y. It was where I looked for up-to-date information about where to eat and what to eat. If I wanted to know about cooking, well, there are books for that.
TL;dr: Chowhound was much about “I discovered this” than “I made this.”
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Well sometimes you discover something by making it.
Like that one time I discovered that natto goes great with oatmeal.
Yes, that was my initial impression of FTC–lots of foul language for no reason beyond they were “allowed” to which was strange given the otherwise heavy-handed approach to moderation. I also noticed the “bro” culture, but thought that might have just been my perception as an East Coast girl on a West Coast site.
FTC and HO were established around the same time (fall 2015) and there was early talk of merging the two, but I think each founder had his own particular vision of what he wanted his site to be and IIRC recall many HO adopters were not FTC fans (and vise versa).
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True, and I remember Jim Leff posting about discovering (what he said was) a good way to make one-pot tacos or something like that, and - like your natto/oatmeal combo - I will just stroll right on by that one.
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I think that was primarily one guy, and I also think he’s gone, now (by accident or design, I cannot say).
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I love hearing about what dishes people discover in their travels. It gives me inspiration to seek out the recipes and, when needed, find the ingredients to cook those dishes!
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